Dogs and Vivisection: The British Middle Class and the Development of the Animal Rights Debate in the Late 19th Century

For the animal rights movement in the early twentieth century, the most crucial development is the growth of the middle class. Throughout most of human history, dogs primarily served as animals of labor except for a select few. This is why the first pieces of legislation that protected animals focused on preserving them for hunting. As British society shifted in the latter half of the nineteenth century, people like influential animal rights activists and feminist Francis Power Cobbe formed bonds with their companions vastly different than the British aristocracy. They neither perceived dogs as tools like many in the working class did nor as an opportunity to display wealth and prestige as an aristocrat often would. The new relationship people in the middle class shared with dogs directly led to the development of animal rights activist groups. The people who formed these groups often times supported other progressive movements like the British feminist and anti-imperialist movements. These similarities highlight the new perception of animals in these middle-class circles. Like colonial subjects of the British Empire and women, animals too were subjected to and exploited. Many people in the middle class viewed preventing the abuse of their furry companions as the morally just thing to do, alongside opposing imperialism and supporting women's rights. Indeed, for decades before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, the middle-class involvement in the animal rights debate saw great strides in protecting dogs and other animals from cruelties. Their perceptions of dogs, altered by their interactions with them in the conflict, laid the foundation for how we understand our relationship with dogs today.

My proposed poster would have a bibliographic collection of some of the essential actors in the animal rights debate, most notably Francis Power Cobbe and Lind af Hageby. This section will show the connection between middle-class individuals and the animal rights movement. It would also highlight some of the important pieces of legislation and parliamentary debates concerning animal rights, like the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 and the bill to prevent medical experimentation on dogs that passed in 1908, showing how the debates about the animal experiment and rights shifted as the middle class became more prominent within Britain. Lastly, the poster would contain media sources, such as newspapers and photographs during this period, showing the vivisections medical professionals performed on dogs that helped to reignite the debate about animal rights in the decades before World War I after it petered out following the perceived success of the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876.