by Lorraine Murray
The term “vivisection” is used today to refer to all animal experimentation, but its original meaning was the practice of surgery and dissection on live animals by medical researchers.In 1903 in London, an anonymous brown dog was subjected over the course of several months to repeated live surgery—described by witnesses to one instance as having been conducted without anesthetizing the dog—in a laboratory and before students in a lecture hall of a London medical school. All this was done in the name of science before the dog was finally killed. The presence of two witnesses interested in the welfare of animals brought publicity to the final incident and to the cruelties of Edwardian-era vivisection. The “Brown Dog Affair,” as it was termed, turned into a national cause célèbre that did not die down until the end of the decade and continues to resonate even today.
The Death of the Little Brown Dog
About the brown dog not much is known beyond the circumstances of his death. He was a terrier-type dog used as an experimental subject at the medical school of University College London. Britain’s National Anti-Vivisection Society (no relation to the U.S. group of the same name)—which then, as now, was in the forefront of animal protection efforts, and whose history is intimately connected with the Brown Dog Affair—gives the following description of what was done to the dog:
[In December 1902] Professor Starling at University College London performed his first operation on the terrier dog, depriving it of the use of its pancreas. During the following two months the dog lived in a cage, upsetting many with its howls and whines.
In February 1903, Professor Starling opened up the dog’s abdomen to inspect the result of the first operation. He then clamped the wound with forceps and handed the animal over to Dr. Bayliss, who made a completely new wound in the neck for the purpose of a lecture demonstration to students. After another half hour, the animal, apparently suffering greatly, was given to Mr. Dale, an unlicensed research student who killed it either by chloroform or by surgical means.
In the audience that day were two Swedish anti-vivisectionists who had enrolled as students in order to document such incidents. The two women, Louise Lind-af-Hageby and Leisa K. Schartau, published a book that same year, first under the title Eye-Witnesses and later as The Shambles of Science: Extracts from the Diary of Two Students of Physiology. The story of the dog was included among their evidence of cruelty in vivisection. The book came to the attention of Stephen Coleridge, secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, who realized that two anti-cruelty laws had been broken in the animal’s handling: he had not been anesthetized, and he had been used in more than one experiment. Coleridge made a provocative public statement against the scientists that led to Bayliss’s bringing a libel suit against him.
Coleridge lost the suit, but the publicity surrounding the trial brought the Brown Dog incident vividly to the public’s attention. It drew many allies to the antivivisectionist cause and galvanized the movement.
The First Statue Is Erected
An antivivisectionist benefactor donated the funds for a memorial that was placed in the London Borough of Battersea, at the Latchmere Recreation Ground. It consisted of a statue of a dog sitting upright with noble posture and looking into the distance with a long gaze. This sat atop an ornate cylindrical base that contained a public drinking fountain; there was also a water trough at the bottom for use by animals. The monument bore the following inscription:
In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog Done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903 after having endured Vivisections extending over more than two months and having been handed over from one Vivisector to another till Death came to his release. Also in memory of the 232 dogs vivisected in the same place during the year 1902.
Men and Women of England
How long shall these things be ?
The memorial was controversial from its very inception. At the meeting of the Battersea Borough Council at which the funds were received and the memorial was discussed, a scribe from University College was found to be taking notes and was ejected. It was anticipated from the beginning that pro-vivisectionists, who had been rumbling about the proposed statue, would move on to full-blown protests, and the sponsors of the statue also provided money to indemnify the borough council for any damages or legal proceedings that might arise. A watchman kept guard at the chosen site. At the unveiling on Sept. 15, 1906, the mayor of Battersea stated that “in the interests of humanity the Council were prepared to take whatever consequences came to them” (see source below, J.H. Baron).
Vandalism Thwarted, and the Brown Dog Riots
Sentiments against the monument simmered for more than a year. Medical students, medical professionals, and their sympathizers complained of the accusatory nature of the inscription and the very impulse to commemorate the death of a vivisection subject let alone impugn the practice of vivisection in general. Finally, on the night of Nov. 19, 1907, a plainclothes policeman guarding the memorial overheard a small group—said to have been students—who had met at the site discussing a plan to gather there along with some 500 others. One member of the group moved toward the statue with a sledgehammer and another made an attempt to destroy the dog’s feet. Backup police arrived and stopped them before any damage was done. The judge in the case described a situation that potentially involved 500 people as “calculated to lead to a public riot” and fined each member of the group 5 pounds.
This censure brought matters to a head for the vivisection defenders. Several weeks later, medical and veterinary students from London, Oxford, and Cambridge numbering in the hundreds marched on the Recreation Ground and on Trafalgar Square. They went through the streets carrying the judge’s head in effigy and representations of the brown dog on poles. Upon reaching King’s College, they attempted to set the effigy on fire but, failing that, threw it into the Thames River. At the same time, the residents of Battersea and anti-vivisectionists also gathered in response to the protestors, and meetings between the two sides resulted in violent skirmishes known as the Brown Dog Riots. A biography of Dr. Bayliss describes these as “the worst riots in London until the Poll Tax demonstrations in the 1980s” (see source below, Helen Pridley).
In the days following, intermittent protests continued, including bonfires and marches, which led to more arrests. Over the next months, correspondents to the British Medical Journal (which deplored the inscription and the movement) wrote to express their sentiments on the Brown Dog question. One wrote, “When a peace-loving student peacefully defaces [the statue] with a hammer he is doing what is his moral duty to his college, teachers and comrades, and his strict legal duty to his country and his King.” His argument was that it was the duty of citizens to remove public incitements to break the peace, which, he implied, was exactly what the monument constituted. (It is interesting to note that today, when animal welfare activists rather than vivisection sympathizers destroy property in order to—as they say—promote their own moral values, they are often termed terrorists and new legal definitions of “terrorism” are coined to support that judgment.)
More attempts to destroy the statue were made, and, in the end, the borough of Battersea rethought its decision to sanction the placement of something that had caused so much trouble. The borough council had it removed, suddenly and quietly, on the night of March 9/10, 1910. It is not known for certain what happened to the statue, but it is said to have been given to a blacksmith, who melted it down.
The Present and Future of the Little Brown DogThe anti-vivisection movement continued throughout the 20th century, and groups like Britain’s National Anti-Vivisection Society continued to lead the way in that country. The little dog was not forgotten, and in 1985, a new statue was commission-ed by animal-welfare supporters and placed in Battersea Park. It bears the same inscription as the original, although there is no drinking fountain and the dog statue is substantially different from the original. The model was the dog of the sculptor, Nicola Hicks, and its manner is less detached; it appears to be reacting to an unseen taller figure, doubtless a human. In this regard the current Brown Dog memorial is less like something on a hero’s public monument (such as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square) than the original was—not a stoic “Everydog” victim of vivisection but a pet-like and sympathetic individual. He still stands, however, to commemorate explicitly the suffering of millions of animal test subjects, past and present.
The incident continues to inspire tribute and animal-welfare activism. To commemorate the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the original statue’s disappearance in 2010, Chicago artist and gallery owner Robert Wayner, of The Black Walnut/Robert Wayner Gallery, has issued a call for submissions for an exhibit called “The Brown Dog Affair: 100 Years Later.” The exhibit will feature the work of artists who believe in the rights of all living creatures and are proponents of anti-cruelty toward animals. Wayner says that the gallery “wishes to remember the Brown Dog Affair a century later with the hope that the ones who have suffered are remembered, and the ones who will suffer can perhaps be saved.”
Postscript: The exhibit did not take place as planned, but we owe Mr. Wayner thanks for having brought this story to our attention.
Images: The original Brown Dog statue in Battersea, London; the second Brown Dog statue, now in the Old English Garden, Battersea Park—both © National Anti-Vivisection Society.
To Learn More
- Home page of the [UK] National Anti-Vivisection Society
- J.H. Baron, “The Brown Dog of University College,” British Medical Journal, Sept. 1, 1956 (preview only; full text available by subscription)
- “The little brown dog,” National Anti-Vivisection Society
- Hilda Kean, “An Exploration of the Sculptures of Greyfriars Bobby, Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Brown Dog, Battersea, South London, England,” Society and Animals Forum
- Helen Pridley, “Sir William Bayliss, 1860-1924,” The Bugle 2003, Wolverhampton University Local History Society
- Gillian Sutch, “Brown Dog Statue,” reproduced from Issue 57 (Summer 2002) of The Review (Friends of Battersea Park)
- For a dissenting opinion from the medical community, see Professor Steve Jones’s article, “View from the lab: Why a brown dog and its descendants did not die in vain,” Telegraph (UK), Nov. 12, 2003
- Black Walnut/Robert Wayner Gallery