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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1837-1901] Victorian Age » Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Inhumane Inhumanity

All The Year Round

[1866-Mar-17] Charles Dickens, "Inhumane Inhumanity," All The Year Round 7 (18626-Mar-17):238-241; Google Books: Online Library of eBooks.

Man may be justfied—thought I doubt it—in torturing hte beasts, that he himself may escape pain, but he certainly has no right to gratify an idle and purposeless curiosity throught hte practice of cruelty.

Will the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals be good enough to look after the Royal Inhumane Society? I make the request on behalf of the dogs, the cats, the guinea-pigs, and the rabbits, who have a very serious charged.&38230;I hope that it is not true that the spirits of the departed see and know what we do on earth; because, if Oliver Goldsmith could see such cruelties practiced by the society which he helped to found, he would not be happy even in heaven.

Painful as it has been to me to write the words, and painful as it must be to every person not quite insensate to read them, I have quoted all these record of deliberate cruelty, because the subscribers of the Humane Society may not trouble themselves to read the annual report of their officers, and may, therefore, not be aware of the cruelties which are practiced under their sanction.

But no doubt it will be said by some that such experiments are justifiable and necessary in the interests of surgical science for the benefit of mankind. Their necessity I dispute. Man may be justified—though I doubt it—in torturing the beasts, that he himself may escape pain; but he certainly has no right to gratify an idle and purposeless curiosity through the practice of cruelty.

Commentary-Extracts-Reprints-Reviews

[1903-Sep-01] "Charles Dickens and Vivivsection, extract from Inhumane Inhumanity from All the Year Round, Saturday, March 17, 1866," Animals Defender and Zoophilist 22 (1903-Sep-01) 94-96; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks

Now that the Home Secrectary has given Professor official prermission partiall y to drewon dogs over and over again without any anaesthictics, in the supposed interests of human beings, we think that our reaers mya be interested in the following extrct from "All the Year Round," which shows what Charles Dickens thougth about such abominations. Throguht this articles was wirttedn a long ago as March, 1866, every word of it is applicable to the present day.