Some fifty or sixty years ago the poet, James Thomson (“B.V.”), wrote as follows in his journal:—
“It being a very wet Sunday, I had to keep in, and paced much, prisoner-like, to and fro my room. This reminded me of the wild beasts at Regent’s Park, and especially of the great wild birds, the vultures and eagles. How they must suffer! How long will it be ere the thought of such agonies becomes intolerable to the public conscience, and wild creatures be left at liberty when they need not be killed. Three or four centuries, perhaps.”
This gloomy prognostication hardly seems likely to be fulfilled, for there has lately been a great awakening of the conscience, if not of the general public, at least of the humaner section of it, and much improvement in the condition of the wild animals in the “Zoo” has now been effected. Ever since its establishment in 1891 the Humanitarian League has been drawing attention to the cruelty of cellular imprisonment for animals as for men, and it is therefore with legitimate satisfaction that humanitarians note the introduction of a reform which they were the first to advocate. Here, for example, is an extract from a pamphlet which I wrote for the League in 1895, under the title of “A Zoophilist at the Zoo”:—
“‘Christianos ad leones’ was the cry of the heathen persecutors in ages long past, when the Christian martyrs were flung to the lions in the Roman amphitheatre. Time has now had his revenges; but we do not know that the new version of ‘Christianos ad leones,’ as daily exemplified in the stream of visitors to the lion-houses at the Zoo, is altogether edifying. Indeed, it has sometimes occurred to us, when musing on that strange medley [102]of thoughtless sight-seers, who derive an unaccountable pleasure from staring at the wretched life-prisoners in our great animal convict-station, that the infra-human is not always confined to the inner side of the bars, and that there was some force in Thoreau’s epigram that God made man ‘a little lower than the animals.’ Well, we must hope for better things in the future. Less than a century ago it was the fashion to cage pauper lunatics where passers-by could see them; and benevolent nurses, when inclined to give a treat to the children in their charge, would pleasantly take them to have a peep at the frenzied ravings of the maniacs. We marvel now to hear of such inhumanity, but it may be that a future generation will equally marvel to hear that the sight of caged animals—those martyrs of Christian civilization—could give any satisfaction to the children, and the grown-up children to whom a “Zoo” is a Paradise.
“It all depends on how we look at these things. At present menageries are simply part of the whole system which regards the lower animals as mere goods and chattels, created for the use and amusement of mankind, without any definite claim, in return, to a free and healthy existence. The animals are no more than subjects for the museum or menagerie, the laboratory or dissecting-room. Does a rare bird alight on our shores? Our object is to knock it down first, and, as the taxidermists say, ‘set it up’ afterwards; or, if it still lives, to confine it in a cage or aviary. The London Gardens are doubtless a great deal better than many other menageries; but our whole method of treating animals is stupid and barbarous. We want a more humane and intelligent appreciation of animal life, and that sense of kinship which would make us desirous of seeing our rudimentary brethren under happier and more natural conditions.
And, after all, we have ourselves paid the penalty for our lack of humanity, by the loss of humour that accompanied it; for the bathos of the notices that used to meet us at every turn in the Gardens was very depressing to those who were alive enough to feel it. The Bengal Tigers’ den labelled, ‘Beware of Pickpockets’! The Eagles’ Aviaries labelled, ‘To the Refreshment Rooms’! Were ever such incongruous ideas set in such ludicrous[103] proximity? There, disconsolate in durance vile, sat the fabled Bird of Jove, who bore off Ganymede to be the god’s cup-bearer, while, within a few yards, the modern Ganymede was serving out coffees and lemon-squashes, and enjoying (though perhaps he knew it not) the most complete vengeance on the great Raptor who enslaved him.”
The most powerful indictment of the Zoological Gardens, as they were, was the series of articles contributed by Mr. Edmund Selous to the Saturday Review in 1901, and afterwards reprinted as a pamphlet by the Humanitarian League, under the title “The Old Zoo and the New,” a picture of what the Zoo actually was, as contrasted with what it might become. It was the publication of this trenchant criticism, synchronizing as it did with a movement for reform within the Zoological Society itself, that brought about the present improved state of public opinion as to the management of the Gardens, and caused the Daily Mail, that enterprising journal which is ready to exploit even humanitarian ideas when they seem likely to be popular, to publish a number of caustic articles on “The Tortured Animals at the Zoo.”
From America comes the same complaint, as in the following passage taken from an article in Our Animal Friends (New York):—
“It is indeed high time that the conditions of animals in menageries and zoological establishments should be made a subject of very practical concern. In many cases their condition is pitiable. Few things are more distressing to observe than the restive motions of the larger cats, such as lions, tigers, and leopards, or of smaller animals like wolves and foxes, pacing back and forth in their small dens, as if suffering an agony of restlessness, as indeed they often must be. No animal ought to be kept in any such condition, and the time may come—we think it has already come—when this form of cruelty may be abolished by the strong hand of law, where it cannot be terminated by the milder methods of persuasion.”