Chapter Sections
1. Steven Best
2. John Lawrence
3. Andrew Linzey
4. Richard Martin
5. The McLibel Two
6. Ingrid Newkirk
7. Jill Phipps
8. Henry Salt
9. Henry Spira
10. Peter Singer
11. Tom Regan
12. Richard D Ryder
How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals
Martin was an Irish politician and animal and human rights activist. He is especially remembered for pioneering legislation through the United Kingdom parliament to outlaw cruelty to animals and for being a leading founder of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).At age 22 Martin became a member of the Irish Parliament for two decades. But when about 1800 the Act of Union dissolved the Irish Parliament he took a seat as a member in the United Kingdom parliament in London, representing County Galway, where he was born.
Martin had a reputation for being extraordinarily kind hearted to people and animals, earning the nickname Humanity Dick. He was a keen duellist and considered one of the best exponents in Ireland. When an unbalanced bully, George Robert FitzGerald, killed a dog, Martin challenged him to a shoot-out and they wounded each other. Martin encapsulated his passion for duelling and his concern for animals in a reply he was said to have given when asked why he defended animals so utterly. Sir, he said, an ox cannot hold a pistol! The law later hanged FitzGerald for another offence.
Martin fought for social reform on many fronts, including emancipation for Catholics, abolition of the death penalty for convicted forgers and freedom for slaves. But he is remembered in particular for the legislation, popularly called Martin's Act, or the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act, that, with the help of others, he drove through Parliament. Martin's Act banned the ill treatment of equines, cattle and sheep. Martin's Act was the first law passed by any country to proscribe cruelty to animals.
Extract from the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822, also known as Martin's Act:
"...if any person or persons shall wantonly and cruelly beat, abuse, or ill-treat any Horse, Mare, Gelding, Mule, Ass, Ox, Cow, Heifer, Steer, Sheep, or other Cattle...and if the party or parties accused shall be convicted of any such Offence...he, she, or they so convicted shall forfeit and pay any Sum not exceeding Five Pounds, not less than Ten Shillings, to His Majesty...and if the person or persons so convicted shall refuse or not be able forthwith to pay the Sum forfeited, every such Offender shall...be committed to the House of Correction or some other Prison...for any Time not exceeding Three Months."None of Martin's further attempts to introduce laws to protect animals - including a ban on dog-fighting, cock-fighting and bull-baiting - succeeded and people took to mocking him for his energetic prosecution of anyone ill-treating animals.
In 1824 Martin led the founding (with others including William Wilberforce and Arthur Broome) of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The RSPCA was the world's first animal welfare organisation campaigning on animal issues. It inspired people in other countries to establish similar societies, such as the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in 1839, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in 1866.
Martin was a sport hunter, however, hunting his 9,000 ha (22,000 acres) estate, a third of County Galway, that he inherited from his father. Many influential people who supported the RSPCA were also sport hunters, which is why, after a good start, the organisation foundered by excluding wild animals from its remit and did not start to become a more effective humane society until over a 170 years later in the 1990's.
When Martin was 72, because of political intrigue and inheritance debts on his estate, he fled Britain to Boulogne, then still a busy French port and a popular resort for British expatriates. He died there a few years later. However, a year after his death, Martin’s Act was enlarged to ban the fighting and baiting of animals. His grave in Boulogne was bombed during the Second World War but later his bones were interred in the cemetery's ossuary and a marble plaque erected there from RSPCA funds. The plaque, in English and French, reads: "...he piloted...the first act to protect animals."
| How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved. |