THE Christmas festival is not wholly of Christian origin. Besides the fact that the period at which it is held is obviously derived from the old Roman Saturnalia, many of the beliefs and usages in various nations have been incorporated Into it from heathenism. It seems that in our country, which prides itself on being the most Christian of the nations, the genius of the people has inclined more to the pagan ideals of the festival than to the religious, with the result that our observance of one of the most sacred of the Church’s festivals has been allowed to degenerate into a species of carnival in which those who are able indulge to excess, while to those who are not in a position to do so it is a season of accentuated hardship.
It is perhaps too much to expect now, that the ideal of the early Christians will ever again be attained, or even attempted, by the majority of the people; but « united effort on the part of those who are dissatisfied with the present development ought still to be able to do something to check the worst barbarities. It is with the hope of drawing attention to some of them that the present paper has been written.
Christmas cruelties do not differ in kind from those of other seasons, but they certainly do so in degree, as all must admit. At this season a determined effort is made by everyone to be happy, with the result that untold misery follows. This may sound like a paradox, but it is easily explained by Goldsmith’s well-known couplet:
“He sees those joys the sons of pleasure know
Extorted from bis fellow-creatures’ woe”
—a truth too little realised in our lives. It is only when one gives the matter consideration that one realises how almost universal is the truth that the joy of one is bought at the price of toil and pain of another. Yet it is very simple: what one man has another cannot have; what you take for yourself someone else has to do without.
Pleasures there are, undoubtedly, and they are the deepest and most real for those who can enjoy them, which bring no pain to any fellow-creature. Such only we might expect to find at this season of “Peace on earth” and “Goodwill towards men.”
How little is this the case is shown by the literature of the season, which is said to reflect the public taste. Where can one open any book or paper on the subject, or any so-called Christmas number, but a prominent feature is the promise of high feeding? Even the dainty Christmas cards show us arrangements of robins sitting on Christmas puddings, slaughtered birds hanging up by their legs, huge joints on dishes, and foaming tankards of beer, as though these represented the most appropriate means of commemorating the birth of the Prince of Peace.
Even the gentle Washington Irving, in his poetical presentment of the ideal English Christmas, apparently did not feel how the picture was marred by introducing the head of a dead pig on a dish, with a lemon in its mouth.
Much might be said about the sufferings brought on our fellow men and women by the sons of pleasure at this season. The overworked shop-assistant, trying to get into two weeks the work of four; the worn-out seamstress in the sweater’s employment, struggling to finish the costumes for the folk calling themselves “smart; the overladen carriers and postmen, toiling till past midnight; and the slaughtermen, extra busy, standing in blood up to their ankles—all to commemorate the birth of the world’s Saviour.
But our object here is to deal only with the woes of the sub-human animals, of which we must, however reluctantly, give a few specimens. Some of the commonest symptoms of the mania which seizes us at this season of the year are too familiar to us all to need more than a bare mention.
First among these is the Cattle Show, held conveniently at Christmas-time to’ fall in with the abnormal demand for meat—the Cattle Show where royalty and the aristocracy unite in contesting with the farmer the glory of producing the pig or ox which can carry the greatest amount of unwholesome fat, Next we have the overladen shops of the butcher and poulterer, piled up with the mangled bodies of slaughtered creatures, and festooned overhead with strings of singing-birds; the prize ox driven through the streets, decorated for sacrifice with ribbons and coloured flowers, or exhibited at the local butcher’s for the delectation of his lady customers, who go to gaze and select the particular part they would like to bespeak for their own tables.
These are the most apparent of the outward and visible signs of the inward and carnal spirit. But let us look a little below the surface and see some of the details of this great annual British religious festival, which we may conveniently take course by course.
For the unoffending TURTLE who provides the soup for those who can afford it, we hardly expect to find much sympathy, when the more highly-developed animals are so barbarously treated as they are. But though comparatively low in the scale of nature, he is a sensitive creature, as his wincing under the knife plainly shows.
His history from the time he leaves his native shore is a sickening recital. A recent writer in Pearson’s Magazine on turtle fishing, who holds that “really the trade of turtle-catching is fall of romance,” nevertheless writes:
“I can imagine nothing more absolutely pitiable than the sight of a fall hundred turtle, overturned on their backs in the full glare of a noon Sun, awaiting shipment over the 4,000 miles of rolling Atlantic weather, to meet a dooms intimately associated with the beginning of a city alderman’s dinner. The eyes of a panting turtle seem to express a knowledge of its impending doom; the poor brute is a sight to tum away from—one which mast always be remembered at the first reading of a rich menu.”
But this is only the beginning of the suffering. Imagine the sea-voyage, when, packed like goods, they suffer from hunger and thirst for weeks, and are kept in such conditions that it is said 60 per cent. succumb on the way in spite of their great tenacity of life.
Then follows the journey by rail, and they may be seen at the stations lying again on their backs, stretching up their poor legs in hopeless misery, receiving the kicks of passers-by, until thrown into the van by thoughtless porters with no more care than if they were blocks of wood.
The last stage of the journey has been described by a writer in the Daily Chronicle as follows:
“They were too large for a man to carry over the pavement, so they were dragged across by means of a couple of ropes tied to each of the fore-legs of the unfortunate crustacean. Thrown upon his back on the stones the poor creature is dragged along, the rope cutting deeply into his flesh, until he reaches the cellar, where be lies until he is killed for soup.”
The “cruelty” of nature is often used as an excuse for man’s barbarities, but what execration should we think too strong if one of the carnivores treated his prey with such callous brutality as this before devouring it?
The SKYLARK next, whose joyous song might give him some claim, even with the professed glutton, to be exempted from the death-penalty, is a very favourite victim. In winter these birds congregate in vast flocks, and repair to the open downs, where they do great good by eating eggs of insects and other foes to the crops. They roost on the ground together at night for the sake of warmth. It is then that the bird-catcher’s net sweeps over them, and they can be taken away by thousands with fatal case.
In spite of protests, skylarks continue year after year to festoon the poulterers’ shops. Hundreds of thousands of them are sent into London for culinary purposes. “You can hardly strike an average,” said one salesman. “Some weeks there may be none; the next whole truck- loads are sent up from Cambridge and Lincolnshire and the Brighton Downs. I have seen truck after truck on the Groat Eastern loaded with nothing but larks.”
The game and poultry course in the dinner presents few attractions to the humane man, who thinks before he cats. The TURKEY—a special victim of the Christmas season—has made a bad exchange from his native American coverts for civilised life in England. Under the present régime his food is thrust down his throat against his will and in spite of his struggles, while he is closely imprisoned and denied water. The art of poultry-farming has of late years become a manufacture pure and simple, Machinery has invaded all branches of industry, including the management of living creatures, and birds are systematically ‘‘crammed” by 2 man who works a machine, of which the following is a description by a recent witness:
“The cramming apparatus is a kind of pump on wheels, containing a reservoir filled with food of the consistency of paste, and made of Indian and barley meal mixed with milk. This is squirted through a thin tube when the treadle is pressed by the foot, The attendant takes each fowl in his arms, gently opens its mouth with his band, and, thrusting the tube down its throat into the crop, pumps in a supply of food. It is done so quickly that an expert can feed twenty dozen birds in an hour. Experience has taught him the exact quantity. A beginner is liable to make two serious mistakes. He may easily burst the crop if he does not know exactly whom to stop, and be must learn to keep the bird’s neck on the stretch, If be does that, the tube passes down without meeting any obstruction; but should there be any slackness or twisting there is great danger of lacerating the throat.”
The fate of GEESE is, of course, no better, and for them an additional horror is added through the practice of plucking them alive. Several cases of this kind have been brought into court. We remember one in which a man was charged in Norfolk by the R.S.P.C.A. The goose, it was stated, were plucked almost naked, and then turned out into the field. In the defence it was urged that live plucking rendered the flesh more toothsome. One newspaper comment on the case concluded with the words: “It is to be remembered, too, that, even if it is cruel, live plucking is always easier than the post-mortem plucking, and at Christmastide the temptation to run the risk of being cruel is very great.” In another similar case the defence was that no unnecessary pain was caused.
Last month two cases illustrating the horrors of railway transit were reported in the Animal World (November), where we read:
“Of fifty-four fowls packed for more than twenty-four hours in a two-docker crate, of which the division-board had broken at one end on transit, so that the fowls m the top division bad fallen on the others, twenty were dead on arrival.”
In the other case 640 geese sent from Ireland were found at one station too exhausted to move. Many of them had to be taken in wheelbarrows to a field, “where they were given water, for which they were ravenous, and where they could eat grass.” The next morning seventy-two of them were found dead. That such occurrences are not unusual, and are regarded as part of the day’s work, is evidenced by the following extract from a private letter received by Colonel Coulson, J.P., from a North-Country goods guard and porter:
“What I saw in the performance of my duties was a revelation to me concerning the amount of suffering inflicted upon living turkeys and geese destined for the Christmas market. High and low, rich and poor, all display the same marked indifference to the sight of unspeakable torture inflicted upon living things. Porters, in their mad rush for ‘tips,’ indiscriminately throw about baskets of living produce in order to secure the luggage of the first-class passenger, blending in hopeless confusion the carcasses of hares, rabbits, geese, etc., with their living freight. Often the labels attacked to these poor quivering things would become detached, then they would be placed in some conspicuous corner of the parcels depot for three or four days and nights at a stretch, without food or water, until claimed by the owners. No time, no thought can be given to these poor creatures, panting out their life in agony for want of food or water. And all this suffering is needlessly enacted, year in, year out, to perpetuate the birthday of Christ.”
But besides these victims of the farmers and tradesmen, those of the sportsmen or amateur butchers figure largely at our festival. The PARTRIDGES and PHEASANTS, and other game birds, have fared badly before they take part in our Christmas festivities.
By way of charitable toll, a hamper is occasionally sent to a hospital, especially at Christmas-time, but the mass of birds knocked down are just as much an article of commerce as the meat at a butcher’s stall, and at many battues the game-dealer’s cart is actually on the ground. It is loaded by the noble amateur slaughtermen who have just killed the birds, often nearly as tame as farm birds, urged within firing range by a cordon of beaters.
“Formerly,” says a writer on the subject, “it was not necessary for a sportsman to possess the intellect of a Cambridge tutor, but he could not be a perfect fool. Under the battue system nothing is required of him but the power of bringing down his bird. As to finding his game, that is done for him. The head-keeper posts him or tells him where to go, and the beaters do the rest. Supposing him to be exceedingly languid, he can still enjoy the fun; for in that case he takes about with him a seat, a thing with one leg, on which be rests like a kangaroo on its tail. Possibly he may fire from it. He has a servant to load his guns, so that there may be no pause in the enjoyment of slaughter.”
Those who patronise battues say nothing about the many pitiable creatures which, though crippled, are still alive, and have strength enough to gain some quiet thicket far away from the banging of guns, where they lie in torment until next day, when maybe the keeper comes to give them their coup de grâce. Some are doomed to linger on, unable to move in search of food, until they die of slow starvation. And at the festive throng gathered around the dinner-table afterwards, how many will bestow a thought on the fate of these wounded creatures, except, perhaps, to laugh about the hare who ran screaming back to her form hard hit, and to lament that she gave them the slip after all?
In “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” Thomas Hardy thus graphically describes the sequel to the battue. Tess, it will be remembered, is passing the night alone in the wood.
“. . . She heard a new, strange sound among the leaves. . . . Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes it was a sort of gasp or gurgle. Soon she was certain that the noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when, originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall of a heavy body upon the ground. . . . Day at length broke in the sky. . . . Then she perceived what had been going on to disturb her. The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down at this spot into a peak. . . . Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly moving their wings, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating feebly, some contorted, some stretched cut—all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more.”
VENISON, again, is considered a delicacy of this season; all the better, we believe, if it has been kept about six weeks until decomposition has well set in.
The barbarities of the hunting of tame stags have so often been shown up and condemned so publicly and practically by the abolition by the King of the Royal Buckhounds, that it is a wonder how anyone even claiming to be a sportsman can still keep and follow such packs.
The hunting and slaughter of wild deer as at present carried on for amusement is no less cruel, We constantly read at this season accounts of how the deer, terrified and exhausted, has leapt for refuge into the sea, or how he has been mauled by the dogs or impaled on barbed wire, or perhaps in despair has run into a town, where, in the presence of the assembled populace, the huntsman has cut its throat with his knife, and, as we recently read, “the place is turned into a slaughter-house.”
When we turn to the vaunted ROAST BEEF so much in evidence at this season, we find a story if possible still more harrowing.
If any evidence is required of the carelessness and cruelty of the manner in which our slaughter-houses are conducted, it can be found in the report of the Admiralty Committee published last year. From this we learn that the slaughtermen are “made up of all kinds of people,” that they have no proper training, that they are often “full of beer” when at their work, that the appliances are inefficient, and there is no proper supervision. It reveals, in short, a perfectly disgraceful condition of things. In the hurry of the specially “beefy” season all the horrors are naturally accentuated.
The process of flaying alive, and even of dismembering animals before the breath has left their bodies, was discovered by Colonel Coulson to be far from uncommon in private slaughter-houses. A horrible case of cruelty to a bullock was investigated by the magistrates at Newcastle-on-Tyne, an inspector of the R.S.P.C.A. having caught a slaughterman in the act of skinning the animal before it was dead. The man did not deny this charge, but merely said that it was done to save time, and jauntily offered to pay any fine imposed. Colonel Coulson was not satisfied to let the matter drop, and in the course of subsequent inquiries he elicited the following from the butcher in whose slaughter-house it occurred:
A young butcher from one of the largest killing centres in England, being in the neighbourhood for his holidays, offered to help this master-butcher. The offer was accepted. The man, after half killing a sheep, proceeded to skin and take off one of its legs. But let Colonel Coulson tell it in his own way. He says:
“My friend, being humane (I am thankful to think how many butchers are), at once checked him, and told him to let the poor creature pant out ‘the bitter little that of life remained.’ The reply was, ‘DO YOU WAIT? WE NEVER DO.’ I understand that many slaughtermen are paid by the head, and, as some animals take long to die, longer than is supposed, they care not to waste tine.”
If you make inquiries, you will find that a large proportion of the flesh, palmed off on the poor as English meat, is foreign, As a proof of this, one of the principal butchers in a cattle port lately confessed that not ten English beasts had been killed there in one week to supply its flesh-eating population of 250,000. Yet the beasts that supply the shops are mostly killed on English soil, after the protracted miseries of a sea-passage more or less long and torturing.
“Oh, the roast beef of Old England!” ejaculates Mr. Macgregor of “Rob Roy” fame. “The sad twinges borne by the ‘undercut’ before we eat the sirloin in London! The Slesvig thumps to drive it into a pen on the Weser; the German whacks to force it up the gangway on board; the haulings and shoves, the wrenchings of horns, the screwings of tails, to pack it into the hold of a steamer; the hot, thirsty days and cold, hungry nights of that passage; the filth, the odour, the feverish bellowing and low dying moan at each lurch of the sea—who can sum up these for one bullock? And there are thousands every day. Who dare tell them, or ought to tell them, unless the cruelties can be put an end to?”
It is not till the transit of live cattle by sea is altogether stopped that the horrors will cease. If a poor bullock gets sea-sick he frequently dies; if he is even weaker than his unhappy comrades, and lies down after two days and nights of balancing on sloppy boards and tossing about, he is trampled under the others’ hoofs, and squeezed by their huge bodies or suffocated by the pressure and foulness. The law now forbids that cattle should be carried otherwise than in pens, of a fixed size and strong make, with proper footholds to avert slipping, so far as it is possible; while not more than four animals are allowed for each pen, or five if they are small. But what are such precautions to meet the pitching of a vessel in a storm at sea?—and they, even, are frequently disregarded. Through the livelong might, in one part of the world or another, scenes such as these described are enacted for the supposed profit of mankind.
Surely, if we are ever to become a civilised people such practices must be abolished. If meat must be imported, why not as meat in a frozen or refrigerated state, when it would be less perilous to the consumer and more compatible with civilisation?
For the perpetration of these cruelties, and many more not described, we find no justification, whether the matter be regarded from the social, commercial, ethical, or religious aspect. Of course the object of all is pleasure, and the pursuit of pleasure is not less reckless and cruel than other absorbing passions. There is, as we have said, a determined effort at this season to make merry at all costs, and the means employed to attain the desired happiness are not taken into consideration. To some extent the effort is, at any rate, temporarily successful, owing to the influence of the mind on the body. The persistent belief that you will be happy, and that you are happy, cannot but have some effect in bringing about the desired result, especially in the upper classes whose troubles are largely the result of imagination and the want of regular work. But we are too apt to judge the world by our own little circles. The toiling majority have long realised the fraud. You do not find that real troubles give way to Christmas feasts; rather, you will notice that it is the feasts which have to give way where real troubles are present. Even in our limited experience we know many, and those not amongst the most oppressed, who sigh with relief when the season is over, and thank God that Christmas does come but once a year.
While pleasure and pecuniary gain are undoubtedly the objects which have wrought the degradation of this holy festival, the justification offered for this degradation and for many other evils is that it is “good for trade.” It seems to be held by most people that if only money is made to pass from one person to another there must necessarily be a gain to the community. This is, obviously, not true. It is a fallacy that all trade is of necessity a gain. The gain or loss depends altogether on the nature of the transactions. Take, for instance, the slave trade. This occasioned the circulation of much money, and gave employment to a large number of workers. But who would now dare to urge that slavery should be encouraged because it is good for trade? Those who were formerly employed in the work presumably, in due course, found other employments less illicit and demoralising, and so it would be in all other cases of harmful luxuries, including Christmas festivities.
“Good for trade” usually means good for one branch of trade at the expense of another, and if the particular branch happens to be injurious, it would be better for the country and the world that our acts should not be good for that trade.
There is no fear that money, if kept out of injurious channels, will not be circulated. It has no value or object unless in circulation. The temporary possessor cannot take it from the world with him. When public opinion decides that any form of trade shall be discontinued, the capital and labour employed in it are quickly turned into another channel, and nothing is lost to the community; while, on the other hand, the distinct gain is achieved by the substitution of that which is better for that which was worse.
Most trades as at present carried on—to satisfy the greed of individuals—are in reality, in greater or less degree, slave trades. Trade in living animals is especially so. It is literally a trade in patient, willing, uncomplaining slaves, and we may hope that the day will come when this will be felt, and it will be realised that we have no more right to live and amuse ourselves by and through the sufferings of animals than by the enslavement of human beings.
It has been stated that ten million pounds are spent annually on the so-called sport of pigeon-shooting. Were the pigeon-matches discontinued, this money would be forced to run into other channels which could hardly be more unprofitable. And who can say that the immense sums squandered on eating and drinking at Christmastide might not be spent with more dignity, more appropriateness to the event commemorated, and with more lasting benefit to the community?
The religious aspect of the matter we would rather leave to someone more competent to speak of it than we are. To us it seems that there is no religious aspect in it at all. In Biblical times, truly, men used to sacrifice animals to the glorification of their God. We have improved on this method: we bring our sacrifices in ever-increasing number, but we eat them ourselves now.
The one fact that stands out clearly is the strange incongruity of the whole proceeding. Were our object to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Darkness instead of the Saviour of the human race, we know no way more appropriate than by that great wail of anguish beginning weeks beforehand on the plains of America and other far-distant lands, gathering in its progress fresh increments from all sides, and converging to this city of London which we call the centre of civilisation.
Ernest Bell
The Humane Review, 1905-6, pp. 193-205