Britons, we are sometimes advised, are an animal-loving folks. This comforting nationwide delusion has an extended pedigree. As far again as 1860 The Times reassured its readers that:
‘Whatever may be our shortcomings as a nation … we have little to blame ourselves with as far as animals are concerned.’
The widespread assist loved by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), based in 1824, was proof sufficient of how warmly the Victorian public regarded ‘dumb animals’.
If the RSPCA’s latest surveys are any information, little has modified. Respondents routinely charge animal welfare extra extremely than human rights, world poverty and little one welfare as a trigger worthy of their assist. Moreover, within the 2023 survey, a powerful 69 per cent self-identified as ‘animal lovers’, with a mere three per cent confessing that they didn’t like animals.
Beneath the headline figures, nevertheless, lurks a extra sophisticated scenario. Nearly three-quarters of Britons settle for that chickens are sentient, but greater than 60 per cent see no compelling purpose to maneuver away from intensive agricultural strategies. Likewise, whereas practically half of the inhabitants believes that ‘humans should never use animals in ways that cause them harm for any reason’, nicely below 10 per cent of the UK comply with a vegetarian or vegan weight loss plan. As the authors of the RSPCA’s 2023 report put it, relating to animals and their welfare, there are sometimes evident gaps between beliefs and actions.
Few animals have skilled this extra profoundly than the horses despatched underground to work in mines. These residing haulage machines performed a essential position within the growth of the coal business within the nineteenth century. Their job concerned pulling tram-loads of coal from the coalfaces to the mine shafts. They have been immensely highly effective, extremely manoeuvrable and had one nice benefit over most various sources of motive energy: they have been unlikely to set hearth to the flamable gases that would build up within the pits.
Horses have been labored underground from at the least the mid-18th century, however their numbers elevated considerably because the coal business boomed within the Victorian interval. Precise figures aren’t available till the early twentieth century, though it was estimated that there have been 9,000 horses employed within the mines of South Wales alone in 1875. We are on safer floor once we get to the 1910s: no fewer than 71,526 horses have been underground in Britain’s collieries in 1912.
The horses and ponies have been subjected to the complete gamut of human feelings. Many of the human employees they met underground handled them with nice consideration; some positively doted on them. Keir Hardie, the long run founding father of the Labour Party, was famously hooked up to the horses he labored with as a young man within the pits of Lanarkshire. Jack Edwards, a miner in South Wales within the 1910s and Nineteen Twenties, was decided that the horses didn’t undergo. He often introduced apples and ‘little tit-bits from the garden for them’.
But for all of the individual acts of kindness, the horses might be handled brutally by their human handlers. The abuses have been stunning; within the very worst of circumstances, colliery firms pressed costs. Hauliers, pissed off with animals that refused to work, might mete out vicious beatings. Horses misplaced eyes, some had their tongues ripped out, others have been thrashed with iron bars and pickaxes. Kickings with heavy hobnailed boots have been routine. Some horses have been even deliberately killed by employees. In such a harmful workspace, it was straightforward sufficient to move off an execution as an accident.
When such circumstances got here to mild, the general public was outraged. There was nice love for the pit horses within the mining communities; coalfield inhabitants have been delighted to see the animals gambolling in fields after being dropped at the floor throughout prolonged industrial disputes. And when, from the Eighteen Eighties, particular colliery horse reveals have been staged, big crowds – together with miners – flocked to see the animals having fun with a number of hours within the recent air and daylight.
Out of this nice reservoir of public love for the colliery horses, a welfare organisation particularly set as much as take care of their pursuits emerged. It took a very long time, nevertheless. From the 1820s, working horses on the floor might count on the RSPCA officers and members of the general public to intervene in the event that they have been handled cruelly, however the Pit Ponies’ Protection Society was not shaped till 1908. Those animals within the colliery have been rather more vulnerable. Mine officers refused RSPCA requests to be allowed underground to examine horses on the grounds that the pits have been too harmful for guests. They additionally claimed that horses have been more healthy for being stored underground; the hotter, unfluctuating temperatures meant they lived longer than their counterparts on the floor. Or so the argument ran.
One man, Francis A. Cox, was sceptical. In the 1900s, he collected testimonies from miners who have been prepared to behave as whistleblowers. He wrote up their proof in a collection of hard-hitting pamphlets. He included examples of individual hauliers cruelly abusing their horses, however he was additionally eager to spotlight the structural violence that formed each working horse’s expertise. He advised of roofs being too low for horses to move below with out reducing themselves. He underlined the lengthy hours the animals have been anticipated to work. He identified how hungry and thirsty they have been allowed to change into whereas away from the underground stables. And he demolished the lie that residing and dealing underground made for a more healthy equine expertise. The pits have been terrifying locations for such extremely delicate ‘flight’ animals.
Cox’s work achieved outcomes. By founding the Protection Society he gave the welfare of the pit ponies an organisational focus. And due to him, the 1911 Coal Mines Act contained a battery of rules all designed to enhance the circumstances below which the horses laboured. An inspectorate was arrange with the duty of guaranteeing the rules have been adopted.
Nevertheless, as right now, there remained a substantial hole between society’s beliefs about animal welfare and its actions. The pit horses have been beloved within the mining communities and the nation at giant. Concern for his or her welfare was real and widespread. Yet, finally, financial issues decided the animals’ expertise rather more profoundly than did worries about their welfare. The apply of depriving horses of daylight, recent air and circumstances through which they might dwell ‘normal’ lives continued till the Nineteen Nineties. Human pursuits – even the pursuits of those that recognized as animal lovers – all the time trumped the horses’ pursuits. Only when the final mines closed have been the horses lastly retired.
In 1999, Britain’s final two colliery horses, Robbie and Gremlin, labored their ultimate shift. They have been taken from South Wales to an RSPCA relaxation home close to Milton Keynes. Thus ended two and a half centuries of underground equine labour. In the identical yr, Welsh artist Mike Petts unveiled his earthwork sculpture of a pit horse on the location of a former colliery close to Caerphilly. Measuring some 200 metres from nostril to tail, the carefree ‘Sultan’ is galloping joyfully within the daylight. Francis A. Cox, the ‘Pit Pony’s Friend’, would absolutely have authorized.
Andy Croll is Principal Lecturer in History on the University of South Wales.
