Grey. the Appointment of Two English the Duke of Argyll's Nephew, Was

Book Reviews Lord Shaftesbury's Lunacy Commission. implemented. Notably this occurred in its Previous government attempts to introduce attempts to prevent the transmission of rate funded district asylums in Scotland, idiocy by restricting boarding out to certain like those of the 1808 English County age groups. Andrews explores the Asylums Act, had also been resoundingly contemporary debate about the relative defeated on a localist agenda. merits of the Gheel and cottage systems, Andrews pauses briefly over the 1855-57 again teasing out the divergence of Scottish Lunacy Commission inquiry which individual opinions from the Commission's led to legislation and the establishment of a published views. full-time Lunacy Commission. This was It is hard to escape the feeling, after initiated by the American reformer reading this monograph, that there were Dorothea Dix, supported by the Duke of more similarities than differences between Argyll, and the Home Secretary, Sir George the Scottish and English Commissions. Grey. The appointment of two English Nevertheless, Andrews has provided an Lunacy Commissioners onto this Inquiry, excellent account, fleshing out our albeit one of them a Scotsman, and indeed understanding of lunacy administration the Duke of Argyll's nephew, was deeply north of the border and the different unpopular. Many thought that they had set emphasis which the Scottish Commissioners out to do a job on the Scottish system, in placed on many of the same issues. much the same way as they had on Bethlem Hospital. Many Scots were proud of the Nick Hervey, charitable basis of their Poor Law and Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Hospitals' subscription hospitals, and were Medical and Dental School (GKT) fundamentally opposed to the introduction of a Commission. Mr Podsnap's comment on Commissions in Our mutualfriend, "No! Never with my consent. Not English", could just as well have applied to Scotland. There was widespread disquiet at the Hilda Kean, Animal rights: political and Commission's introduction, and after five social change in Britain since 1800, Reaktion years, there were formal representations to Books, 1998, pp. 272, £19.95, $29.95 Government for its discontinuance. (hardback 1-86189-014-1). This monograph tracks the developing composition and influence of the Scottish Today, animals (non-human ones, that is) Board, profiles the individual commissioners have, according to Hilda Kean, "become an and teases out their specific contributions. integral part of political, as well as cultural Andrews successfully captures the tension and social life" in Britain (p. 7). The major between Scottish national pride which was political parties now routinely include opposed to the importation of anything animal welfare issues in their election English, and the need to puff those elements manifestos. Our television screens are full of of their mental health system which were heroic pet rescuers and rescuees, protestors seen as specifically Scottish. at animal cruelty and endangered wildlife. He pays particular attention to the debate Toyshops have become menageries of little over the single care of lunatics and idiots plastic personalized creatures. Kean asks, boarded out in the community, drawing on implying answers in the affirmative will the work of Harriet Sturdy. He discusses follow, whether we can make sense of "all the Commission's promotion of boarding this", and whether exploring the history of out, and identifies the impact of wider opposition to animal cruelty and the hereditarian concerns about the way it was incorporation of animals into our cultural

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 20:19:24, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300066643 Book Reviews life will help us understand "the position and medical science in Victorian society animals hold in British life" (p. 8)? Such an (1975), is described as being solely about exercise will, she suggests, further our science. understanding of political, social and Given the breadth and scope of her cultural change more generally. ambitions and the complexity of "all this" This is a large agenda. Addressing it to be explained, perhaps it is not surprising takes her from eighteenth-century that she does not, in the end, come up with Methodism, the paintings of Joseph Wright very satisfying answers. Her command of of Derby and the French Revolution, detail and of cultural nuances is often through the nineteenth-century creation of impressive but the direction of her overall zoos, the changing form and location of the argument is often unclear. The book veers meat trade, campaigns for cab horses' between being a study of attitudes to welfare, Victorian and Edwardian anti- animals and a study of animal protection vivisection, and the trade in wild birds' activity: connected but analytically separate feathers, to the role of animals in the First studies requiring different sources. The one World War and campaigns for the "right to ought to include a sustained examination of roam" in the 1930s and right up to the most animal cruelty, which this book does not; recent campaigns against intensive livestock the other would need a much stronger rearing and live animal exports in the 1990s. analysis of political process than is And lots more besides. apparent. The weakest chapter is the short In the course of this rather loosely steered final one which appears to attempt to cover voyage, she brings to light many largely the post Second World War period (and neglected episodes in our past dealings with ought but does not provide answers to the animals. Her book should help to foster questions she posed at the beginning). Of interest in this still neglected but now course, given all that has happened in the growing field. For me, the best aspects were last fifty years, narrating its history her emphasis on the continuing presence of warrants a whole book. But a brief many animals in urban settings throughout discussion of Compassion in World the nineteenth century (rather than Farming and a few points from an anti- assuming they were largely banished to vivisection group's press releases are not a rural areas) and her portrayal of very substantial substitute. I agree with her human-animal relationships in domestic implicit premise that there is a great deal settings and in the First World War. Other more continuity between campaigns of the sections, particularly the discussions of past and the present than today's so-called Victorian animal protection campaigns and animal rights' campaigners or their their links with feminism and radical opponents always acknowledge. But one thought, were less striking. But these are might have expected a book actually fairly well-worked areas: perhaps more so entitled Animal rights to include some than Kean gives credit for. Her references discussion of the emergence of a distinctive literature in the (or lack of them) to earlier debate couched in the language of rights field are sometimes For baffling. example, and liberation, if only as a cultural Animal revolution Richard Ryder's (1989), phenomenon, and more than a passing which covers very similar ground to her reference to the emergence of terrorism as a own from an even more explicitly (albeit campaigning strategy. animal protectionist stance), does not appear in the bibliography. Richard French's magisterial study of Victorian animal protectionism as a social, political Mary Ann Elston, and cultural phenomenon, Antivivisection Royal Holloway

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