Plea for mercy to animals / by James Macauley.

  • James Macaulay
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plea for mercy to animals / by James Macauley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion. Each, van holds about fifteen calves, and I travel at the rate of five miles an hour.” A dealer at Guildford was lately prosecuted and fined for carrying calves in a cart, tied with their heads hanging down, and there are few magistrates at petty sessions or quarter sessions who would not convict on information of such cruelty. As to the cruelty in the slaughter-house, its removal must be the result of public opinion, and to help this the mystery of “ white veal ” has been explained. A word from purchasers to the cook- and the butcher would put this to rights. If a certain amount of whiteness is required, ascertain that it is not produced by the slow torture of bleeding when the calf is alive. The pole-axe being used, and the head then taken off*, the draining of blood from the dead carcase should be the only whitening allowed. This plan is not only more merciful, but the veal is more nourishing and more wholesome. What is true of cattle and sheep is too sadly true of almost every creature used for man’s food—there is a great amount of thoughtless and heartless cruelty. Take for example the following report of what was lately witnessed by a correspon- dent of the “ Times : ” “ On returning last evening to town by the Great Western Railway, when arriving at Swindon my attention was arrested by the loud and continuous cackling of geese conveyed by the train. Having a presentiment that something was wrong, on reaching Paddington I sought out the trucks in which the poultry were, when I found that they were pent up in flat wooden cases, two deep, which, without having measured them, I should say were about two yards square and say fifteen inches deep. Air was admitted at the top of the cases by apertures, the dimensions of which may be gatliered from the circum- stance that it was only by means of the most careful and
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