The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-07-10 00:00:00

THE POLICE AND THE DOGS:

The following letter ban been eildressed by the
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to the
Secretary of the Dogs' Home:
"4, Whitehall place, S.W., July 1.
"Sir,—The Commissioner of Police of the Metro-
polis desires me to inform you that he has read the
Twenty-fifth Annual Report of your Committee, and
desires to make a few remarks upon the statements
therein made. _

"It appears that out of 23,578 dogs sent by the
Commbsioner to your home during the year 1885,
you have only returned to the owners or sold to the
public the small number of 4613; in other words, you
have destroyed four out of five of all the dogs confided
to your care by the Commissioner.
"In the face of this wholesale destruction of more
than 20,000 dogs, the Commissioner quite fails to un-
derstand why you should view in so hostile a spirit the
action of the police in killing about 300 dogs during
the year in the public thoroughfares, which were in a
rabid condition and endangering the public safety,
your Committee having asserted that they had
rendered an eminent public service by the destruction
of the unhappy animals suffering from rabies in the
Dogs' Home.
"The Commissioner likewise quite fails to under-
stand on what grounds yo„: take to yourself the merit
of removing rabid animals out of the highways of
London. You say (Page 11) : tiny institute which
takes rabid animals out of the highways of a densely-
populated town commends itself to every benevolent
person as a ievans of protecting human life.' Now,
it is evident that your institution does this in a very
minor degree; the bulk of this hazardous work is
done by the police at the risk of their lives, and what-
ever credit is due on this account is due to the Police
Force and to the State. Your Committee simply re-
ceives the dogs brought by the police, and destroys
all those not owned or sold. The Commissioner has
no reason to doubt that this wholesale destruction of
dogs is carried out without cruelty on your part, but
he cannot but think that your grave insinuations
against the police must recoil in an intensified degree
upon yourselves.
Your Chairmaa says: I dare not trust myself to
speak of the horror of a death from hydrophobia, but
I will ask you to suppose for a single instant that the
CO mad dogs had been allowed to wander in the
streets of the metropolis, and then try to imagine the
result. Instead of the figures being twenty-seven,
seventy times twenty-seven would not represent
the sacrifice of human life consequent thereon.'
And yet you say in your remarks, the loose
system of the police in assuming that a dog is
mad because he foams at the mouth should be put
aside altogether fcr a mere scientific method of diag-
nosis; this can only be secured by calling in veteri-
narians.' The Commissioner gathers from this that
while allowing that if mad dogs are not removed from
the streets the deaths from hydrophobia would be
70 times the pres-nt number, yet, at the same time,
a police-constable, when called upon by the public to
remove a mad dog, should not act on his own judg-
ment, but must run away, leaving the public to their
fate, in order to call a veterinarian to give a profes-
sional opinion.
" The Commissioner has to point out to you that
by the reasoning of ycur own Chairman the police,
by their exertions in removing dogs from the streets,
have saved the lives cf 1863 persons from hydrophobia.
It is, of course, quite probable that among the dogs
killed in the streets there may be many suffering
from epilepsy, convulsions, and other canine diseases,
but it is quite certain that a great portion of them
were suffering from true rabies ; and the Commis-
sioner feels confident that if only one life was saved
from hydrophobia instead of 1863, the action of the
police in removing these dogs vihieh endanger the
public safety would be fully justified. The
Commissioner has to point out that in en-
countering these rabid dogs the police officers
have shown an amount of physical and moral courage
for which he himself feels and has expressed the
highest admiration, and he feels most deeply the
cruel injustice of the false accusations that have been
so persistently made against police officers in protect-
ing the public from hydrophobia. No less than 180
police officers have been bitten by dogs since last
November. Two were sent to M. Pasteur to Paris to
be treated some weeks ago, and one police-constable
bitten by a dog certified to be mad is on his way to
Paris to-night. During the past month the Commis-
sioner has commended no less than eleven constables
for courage and determination in killing mad dogs.
"Arrangements have been made that the carcase,
of all dogs killed by the police shall be sent to your
Home for post-mortem examination by a veterinary
surgeon. The Commissioner regrets that in the case
of the mad dog killed in Upper Baker-street, about
which so many inaccurate statements have been made
in the public papers, you should have omitted to make
a post-mortem examination of the carcase, which was
duly forwarded to you.—l am, Sir, your obedient
servant,

"(Signed), W. F. M. STAPLES, Chief Clerk.
"J. C. Colarn, Esq., the Secretary,
the Dogs' Home."