League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports

Organised opposition to hunting with dogs began in 1891 when Henry Salt founded the Humanitarian League. Due to the domestic pressures of the war and the death of his wife, Kate, Henry Salt disbanded the Humanitarian League 1919. The demise of the League also brought to an end “the most effective organised effort we know against blood sports”.1

Formation

Four years after the Humanitarian League disbanded, Henry B. Amos, secretary of the Vegetarian Society, led a campaign against rabbit coursing on Sundays in Morden, Surrey, and this brought him into contact with Ernest Bell, the former Humanitarian League chairman.2 Buoyed by this success and recognising the need for an organisation to campaign against bloodsports, he and Bell, with the encouragement of Henry Salt,3 founded the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports in order to continue the work started by the Humanitarian League.4 Unlike its predecessor, it focused soley on the issue of bloodsports, rather than spreading its resources across a range of issues.

Many former Humanitarian League members joined the new league and served on its advisory committee. Its first president was Sir George Greenwood, a former Humanitarian League committee member, and Henry Salt was vice-president.5

In the 1927 the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports consisted of:

Hon. Treasurer
Ernest Bell, Esq

President
Sir George Greenwood

Secretary
Henry B. Amos

Advisory Committee

Sir Herbert Barker
Lord (Bernard) Coleridge
Ald. M. Conway, J.P. (Ex-President National Union of Teachers)
Lady Cory
Canon Frederic Donaldson (Westminster)

Rev. Dr. Robert Forman Horton
J. Walker King
Dame Louisa Innes Lumsden, LL.D. (Edinburgh)
Lady Emily Lutyens
Donald McLeod (Ex-Mbr. Brit. Olymp. CL)
E. Rosslyn Mitchell, M.P.

Henry W. Nevinson
Lord Olivier, K.C.M.G.
Henry S. Salt
Percy A. Scholes
Miss Sybil Thorndike
Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh

The RSPCA and the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports

Recently it has been claimed that the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports was a break away organisation from the RSPCA6. Henry Amos and Ernest Bell were undoubtedly frustrated with the refusal of the RSPCA to oppose hunting with dogs. However the RSPCA’s stance on hunting was long standing and generated criticism even in the days of the Humanitarian League when the Reverend Joseph Stratton publicly attacked the RSPCA for its attitude toward to the Queen’s buckhounds.

The formation of the LPSC came out of a necessity for a pressure group on hunting, not as the result of a break away from the RSPCA. It wasn’t unusual for those on the LPCS Committee to be members of several organisations including the RSPCA, the Vegetarian Society and Anti-Vivisection groups. Lady Cory and the Hon. Stephen Coleridge, for example, remained active members of the RSPCA after joining the LPSC.

League Defectors

In 1931 the Hon. Stephen Coleridge resigned as the League’s President over what he termed his “dissatisfaction with the conduct of some members of the League.”7 Ernest Bell, the League’s Hon. Treasure and co-founder resigned, around the same time8. Coleridge was succeeded as President by Lady Cory. She resigned in July 19329 after objecting to the use of the League’s journal for “criticism of other societies as well as private individuals”10.

On 8th July 1932 the League defectors held a meeting to form the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (NSACS)11.

The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports was renamed to the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) in 194212 in order to avoid paying income tax13.

  1. League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Cruel Sports, 1927, p. 1. ↩︎
  2. Tichelar, Michael (2017), The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century England (Routledge), p. 85. ↩︎
  3. Cruel Sports, June 1939, p. 48 ↩︎
  4. Tichelar, Michael (2017), The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century England (Routledge), p. 55. ↩︎
  5. Cruel Sports, January 1928 ↩︎
  6. Celebrating 90 years of protecting wildlife pamplet (2014), League Against Cruel Sports, p. 3. ↩︎
  7. Cruel Sports, 1931, p. 33. ↩︎
  8. Thomas, Richard H. (1983), The Politics of Hunting (Gower Publishing Company Limited), p. 86. [No citation]. ↩︎
  9. The Reading Standard, September 10, 1932, p. 11. ↩︎
  10. Western Mail, October 31, p. 13a. Henry B. Amos disputed the Lady Cory’s claim. ↩︎
  11. Thomas, Richard H. (1983), The Politics of Hunting (Gower Publishing Company Limited), p. 86. [No citation]. An announcement on the NSACS foundation was published in The Guardian, November 3, 1932, p. 10. ↩︎
  12. Letters in the press dated February 1942 still bore the LPCS name. One of the first appearances of the the League Against Cruel Sports name was in a letter published in The Mercury and Guardian on April 29, 1942, p. 4, from its Secretary, J. C. Sharp. The LPCS was referred to as the ‘League Against Cruel Sports’ in the Herald and Express, August 26, 1927, p. 3. At a LPCS meeting at the Queen’s Hall, Faversham on June 1, 1938, the LPCS Chairman, Mr. F. R. Bones, of Broughton, stated that he was in his position because “he was in sympathy with the League against cruel sports.” (The Faversham and North East Kent News, June 4, 1938, p. 1). ↩︎
  13. Pedler, Ian (2008), Save Our Stags (Black Daps Press), p. 55. ↩︎
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