Breeding Frankenstein's Bulldog
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Breeding Frankenstein’s Bulldog: Reimagining the Pedigree in Nineteenth Century England By Grace Burchell Dissertation presented for the Honours degree of BA School of Geography University of Nottingham 2015 Word Count: 9,613 Abstract This project draws on trans-disciplinary work to understand how bulldogs have been appropriated by different social groups in England. Initially bred for bull-baiting, then reimagined as a result of a wider reformist atmosphere, the bulldog is a complex and misused pedigree. The majority of the information required for this analysis was obtained online, at the Kennel Club in London, and at the British Library- situating this study within a contemporary movement in geography to find the animal in the archive. The main conclusion drawn is that the bulldog embodies post-structural ambitions to blur the nature- culture binary. i Preface I would like to thank the staff at the Kennel Club for their generous offering of books, David Hancock who helped me without knowing, and most of all Steve Legg for his consistent enthusiasm, encouragement and advice. ii Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….….…..1 2.0 Literature Review……………………………………………………………...…….... 2- 5 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………….…… 2 2.2 More-than-human Geography………………………………………………. 2-4 2.3 Cultural and Historical Geography…………………………………..…….. 4-5 2.4 My niche; Historical Cultural Animal Geography …...……………..…….. 5 3.0 Methodology………………………………………………………………………….….6-10 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………..6 3.2 Philosophical Underpinning………………………………….…….……….. 6-7 3.3 The Internet Archive……………………………...……………………………7 3.4 Archival Research…………………………………………………….………..8 3.5 Literary Analysis…………………………………….………………..…………8 3.6 Visual Analysis…………………………………………………….……………8-10 3.7 Conclusion……………………………………………….………….….……....10 4.0 Breeding the Old Bulldog: Bull-baiting in England…………………….……..…….11-18 4.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………..….……….....11 4.2 The Origins of bull-baiting…………………………………..…….….……….11-12 4.3 The Bandogge………………………………………………….….….………12-13 4.4 Bulldogs, War and Englishness…………………………...….…………... 13- 15 4.5 The Georgian Bulldog………………………………………..….……………15-17 4.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………....17-18 5.0 Reimagining Blood-sport…………………………………………….….…………….19-25 5.1 Introduction……………………………………………………….……………19 5.2 Reimagining Bull-baiting……………………………….……….…………….19-21 5.3 The Ban……………………………………………………….….……………..21 5.4 The Pedigree Cult……………………………………………..….……………21-24 5.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………….…..………24-25 6.0 The Modern Bulldog: Evolution’s Antithesis………………………………..……….26-33 6.1 Introduction………………………………………………..……….………... 26 6.2 The Emergent Pedigree………………………………………….…..……….27-31 6.3 Survival of the weakest………………………………………….…..………..31-32 6.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………….…………..33 7.0 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….34 8.0 References……………………………………………………………….…………… 35- 43 9.0 Appendix…………………………………………………………………….………… 44- 46 iii List of Figures Figure. 1. Country Life Article………………………………………………………….…….… 7 Figure. 2. BNP biting back…………………………………………………………….….…….. 9 Figure. 3. A seventeenth-century bulldog……………………………………………………. 14 Figure 4. Bull Broke Loose…………………………………………………………………….. 14 Figure 5. Fine Bulldog Specimens……………………………………………………………. 16 Figure 6. Tame Lion Bait……………………………………………………………………….. 17 Figure 7. The people as a bulldog………………………………..…………………………… 18 Figure 8. Westminster Pit……………………………………………………………………… 20 Figure 9. The Pedigree of Don Pedro……………………………………………….…………23 Figure 10. Ben White and his bulldogs………………………………………………………. 24 Figure 11. The English Bulldog vs The French Poodle…………………………….………. 25 Figure 12. Details for the consideration of the judge……………………………………….. 26 Figure 13. Oliver’s reception by Fagin and the boys………………………………………. 27 Figure 14. Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends…………………….…………………. 28 Figure 15. Advertisement for canine models………………………………………………… 29 Figure 16. Taxidermy champions form the early 1900s…………….………………………. 30 Figure 17. The Undershot Jaw……………………………….……………………..………… 31 Figure 18. Basford Revival 1922……………………………………………………...………. 32 iv List of Abbreviations SPCA- Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals BSE - bovine spongiform encephalopathy BNP - British National Party BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation v 1.0 Introduction The bulldog: “a manufactured breed of dog, evolved gradually from the nameless and breedless curs who far back in history made sport for their masters – who were themselves of the lower possible type – by fighting, and by bull and bear-baiting. Gradually, as the sport increased in favour, these dogs were bred expressly for the purpose, and in the course of time became known as ‘Bulldogs’” (Cooper, 1905: 9). It is the word “manufactured” that this project draws attention to. The manufacturing of species is not part of some dystopian future- it is something very real, normalised, and most importantly, it is something that has been happening to bulldogs in England since the beginning of recorded history (Ritvo, 1987). This project pivots on the 1835 Cruelty to Animals Act, which banned, amongst other sports, bull-baiting. Either side of this moment, the bulldog’s history has been dominated by two prevailing human recreations; blood- sport and dog-fancying. Paradoxical in nature, and not without internal conflicts, the social groups which mobilised these pastimes (mis)used and (re)imagined the dog repeatedly, creating a complex and dynamic amalgamation of transspecies experiences. These human and more-than-human relationships, often conceptualised in human geography products of the nature-culture interface (Whatmore, 2005), are a rich source of academic inquiry. The bulldog is a highly appropriate more-than-human to use to unpack this relationship as it has been mobilised in a vast array of cultural practices; from its medieval origins as a bull-baiter and bear-baiter, to exotic lion-baiter and redundant fighter, to pedigree art form, satirical symbol and prized pet, the bulldog embodies dynamic components of English history. Of course, this embodiment has a very literal dimension as the dog has been breed selectively for its given purpose to create a distinct and exaggerated creature. The bulldog was created for the fighting ring, and recreated for the show ring. The breed owes its existence to an unlikely concoction of the English love for violent sport (Rogers, 2004) and the Victorian penchant for pedigree extremes (Ritvo, 1986). The overall aim of the project is to understand the bulldog as a “cultural product” (Nash, 1989: 357). Playing on the notions of Frankenstein’s monster (Shelley, 1818), the bulldog is seen as monstrous amalgamation of socio-economic and political influences which has been created by humans, for humans. Darwin (1868: 413 [online]) writes of these artificial creatures: “they frequently have an unnatural appearance, and are especially liable to loss of excellence”. By doing this, the project hopes to reveal the past every day geographies of the bulldog, and show that they are truly a “synthesized conception of society and nature” (Nash: 1989: 358). 1 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 Introduction This project sits within a contemporary poststructuralist movement in cultural geography that aims to decentralise the human by emphasising that social categories are simply cultural constructions (Crang, 2009). Within the wider “cultural turn”, the concern for the Other is paramount- and, as Emel and Wolch (1995: 362) have argued, “Animals are the ultimate Other”. Drawing on Said (1978), geographers have conceptualised the othering of species in physical terms (Wolch, 1998; Davies, 2000), and metaphysical terms (Serpell, 2000). Thus animal geography, having been informed by “a range of conceptual notions derived from political economy, social theory, cultural studies, feminism, post-colonial critique, psychoanalysis, and anthropology” (Philo and Wolch, 1998: 107) rejects the typical Western mode of “human chauvinism” (Philo, 1995; 659) to centralise more-than- humanity as a subject of examination in its own right. Although animal geography can be traced to the late nineteenth century as the study of the spatiality of animals (Guppy, 1893; Eagle Clarke, 1896; Sclater, 1894), its existence diminished until extinction in the 1970s (Philo and Wolch, 1998). The animal geography that re-emerged in the 1990s was twofold; zoogeography, and cultural animal geography. The latter subsection, popularised by Wolch and Emel’s (1995) call for “bringing the animals back in”, looked at animals “as something other than natural and unproblematic”, i.e. not passive entities (Philo and Wolch, 1998: 107). The bulldog requires exactly these types of probing attitudes to unpack its geography because, principally, the bulldog is not “natural”. It is a highly manufactured breed, and on top of this, its history is indeed problematic, brimming with conflicts of interest in violence, (im)morality, recreation, and aesthetics. These conflicts operate from either side of the nature-culture binary and are what has defined the bulldog’s complicated heritage. Studying this type of intricate interface between nature and culture is precisely, as Whatmore (2005) explains, the unique interest of (more-than-) human geography. 2.2 More-than-human Geography At best, Philo (1995) claims, geographers have written incomplete accounts of more-than- humans, and at worst, they have excluded them altogether. Philo and Wilbert’s (2000: 5) study suggests that animal geography