Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals in Historical Literature, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »» Nathaniel Ward

Emily Stewart Leavitt notes Nathaniel Ward's contribution to "rights of animals by enacting statutory legislation to protect them from cruel treatment. In 1641 the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony voted to have printed their first legal code…[in which] cruelty to animals is forbidden…the first anti-cruelty law [in the United States] and the first law to protect animals in transit." (Emily Stewart Leavitt, Animals and Their Legal Rights [1968])

1641 | Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641

Off the Bruite Creatures

92 No man shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use.

93 If any man shall have occasion to leade or drive Cattel from place to place that is far of, so that they be weary, or hungry, or fall sick, or lambe, It shall be lawful to rest or refresh them, for a competent time, in any open place that is not Corne, meadow, or inclosed for some peculiar use. (Massachusetts Colony [Nathaniel Ward], Body of Liberties of 1641)

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1641 | Massachusetts Colony [Nathaniel Ward], "Off the Bruite Creatures," Liberty 92 and 93 in The Body of Liberties of 1641 reprinted in A Bibliographical Sketch of the Laws of the Massachusetts Colony from 1630 to 1686, by William H. Whitmore (Boston, 1890; Digitized by Google, 2006).

Emily Stewart Leavitt, "The Evolution of Anti-Cruelty Laws in the United States," Chap. 1 in Animals and Their Legal Rights: A Survey of American Laws from 1641 to 1968 (New York: Animal Welfare Institute, 1968).

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