Martin's Act at 200

It’s 1822. In London, England, the city’s population is growing by the thousands. To feed them, sheep and cows from as far away as Scotland are driven through the streets to Smithfield meat market to be slaughtered. To entertain the workers in the new factories, bears, bulls and badgers are baited with dogs, sometimes for weeks. In Westminster, at the seat of government, a group of politicians is plotting something that has never been done before. These wealthy but compassionate men—women won’t get the vote for another 100 years—have tried and failed in their task many times already. But they are not discouraged. Their goal? To bring about a new, almost unimaginable law. One that will change our understanding of the world. This is Martin’s Act at 200, an audio documentary about a group of people who couldn’t bear injustice and cruelty to animals—some animals at least—to overturn thousands of years of history in which the law was meant to protect humans only, and make animals property. This is the story of how the first piece of legislation for animals, known as Martin’s Act after its sponsor Richard ‘Humanity Dick’ Martin, came about two hundred years ago this year, and what its legacy means for animals today, around the world, and in our collective future. This landmark law transformed not just the streets of London, but the very way we think about animals, and about the law as a tool to afford them protection and, perhaps even, rights.Join us in this series as we talk to activists, artists, academics and experts who have devoted their lives to working for animals. This documentary is part of the Chart2050 project, a two year exploration of the past, present and future of animal advocacy and protection. Martin’s Act at 200 is coming July 22 and is a production of the Culture and Animals Foundation. Subscribe now at Apple or Google podcasts, or via our website www.chart2050.org.

Richard “Humanity Dick” Martin (left) was both a man of his times, and an exception to it. In this episode, we find out how this distinctive personality—impetuous, generous, dogged, and pugnacious—pursued his causes, both in parliament and outside it. We learn of the context of his life: the revolutions in France and the United States; the emancipation of Catholics and the Act of Union, which saw Ireland joined politically with the rest of Great Britain; and the reformist movements and shifts in relationships with other animals that marked the era. We also explore the blindspots and assumptions that were to mark animal advocacy for two centuries.

Richard Martin was not the only parliamentarian with a passion for animal welfare. In this episode, we meet two more: Sir William Pulteney, who brought a bill against bull-baiting by dogs to the UK parliament two decades before Martin’s Act, and the charismatic orator Thomas, Lord Erskine. We delve deeper into Erskine’s convictions, and unpack the speech he made to parliamentarians in 1809—words and ideas that ring as true today as two centuries ago. We follow the contentious debates leading to the introduction of Martin’s Act, and its close call in 1821, which sent Martin, Erskine, and their supporters back to the drawing board. And we hear about the dramatic parliamentary maneuvers required to finally get Martin’s Act passed.

A piece of legislation is only as good as its enforcement, and, with no police force yet to call upon, Richard Martin characteristically took it upon himself to arrest individuals, prosecute them, and then take them to prison. In that first year, sixty-three court cases of animal abuse were brought, including by Richard Martin himself. The establishment of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) would also have immediate consequences. This episode explores some of them: the founding of SPCAs around the world, including in the United States, under the auspices of Henry Bergh, whom we meet in this episode; the creation of Battersea Dogs Home in 1860; and the failure of the Cruelty Act of 1860. We also meet the personalities who were to found the SPCA—including the Rev. Arthur Broome, and, in particular, Lewis Gompertz, who was not only the only Jew among the SPCA’s Christian founders but the sole vegan.We also look at the Pease Act of 1835 and subsequent pieces of legislation for animals through the nineteenth century, tracking the legacy of Martin’s Act and the development of sentiment for animals both public and private before the death of great animal supporter Queen Victoria, in 1901. Along the way, we’re introduced to two giants of the era: Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and Frances Power Cobbe, who brought public attention to the issue of vivisection (live experimentation) of animals in laboratories.

In this episode, we explore interrelated strands that connect the animal activism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We learn about the “monstrous veganism” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) with scholar Emelia Quinn; we explore the radical Quaker vision of Donald Watson, the co-founder of the Vegan Society (1944) with Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole. With novelist Paula Owen we enter the world of antivivisectionists Lizzy Linda af Hageby and Liesa Schartau in the “Little Brown Dog” riots of the early 1900s; and Tony Milligan tells us about the tragic story of Laika, who in 1957 became the first animal in space.The threads that weave the centuries together are the power of memorials both to affirm the hero and to stir unrest; the effects of war on animal advocacy; and the century-long challenges between attempting to moderate institutional cruelty and indifference and espousing a more radical vision of social change, veganism, and ending animal exploitation.

The passage of Martin’s Act both expanded and delimited the interests and rights of nonhuman animals. It sanctioned—that ambiguous word that means both “to forbid” and “to allow”—(some) cruelty against (some) animals by (some) people. So, what legal, political, and social lessons can we take from its passage? That legislative wins are difficult, time-consuming, and often limited by the system; that collaboration across areas of expertise is key; and that enforcement is as much an issue as the law itself.We also look to the future: thinking about what is missing, and how we can create a just, inclusive, safe and effective animal movement as the model for the society we want to live in by (at least!) 2050. Listen to insights and opinion from Mariann Sullivan, Anita Krajnc, Paula Sparks, Maneesha Deckha, Tony Milligan, Bernard Unti, Richard Ryder and Jane Tredgett in this final episode of the series.