Your horse belongs to the army now – part one

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The popularity of Michael Morpurgo’s book War Horse, the success of the stage adaptation and now the release of Steven Spielberg’s film has brought the role horses played in the First World War to the public’s attention.

Joey, the main ‘character’ of War Horse, belongs to Albert, the young son of a farmer.  He is sold by the father, to a Remount Purchasing Officer on behalf of Captain Nicholls.  Later, Captain Nicholls reassures Albert that Joey will be looked after, even though “your horse belongs to the army now”.Paintings on display as part of the war horse exhibition

In the RCVS archives there are two paintings of the heads of horses that were acquired by the Army Remount Service, the department that purchased horses for the army, during First World War.  The two horses spent time at Romsey Remount Depot during 1916, where they were painted by Lionel Dalhousie Robertson Edwards (1878-1966).  Edwards served as a Remount Purchasing Officer in World War One and was to become a well known sporting artist in later life.

The depiction of Joey’s purchase by the army in War Horse could give the impression that the acquisition of horses for the war effort was a small scale operation – in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

For our next post, we’ll be delving into the requisitioning of horses during the First World War and the history of Romsey Remount Depot, where Edwards served, and its veterinary hospital

The two paintings, along with other items connected with the role of horses in war, are currently on display in the Library.  Why not come and see them and combine it with a trip to the excellent exhibition War Horse: fact and fiction at the National Army Museum?

Image: Paintings on display in the library

Your horse belongs to the army now – part two

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In the second instalment of our two part post on army horses in the First World War we will take a look at the scale of the operations of the Army Remount Service and in particular the work of the Romsey Remount Depot.

The  acquisition of horses for the war effort was an enormous operation.  In his book, The horse and the war, Sidney Galtrey states that 165,000 horses were ‘impressed’ by the Army in the first twelve days of the war alone.  Records show that during the course of the war some 468,000 horses were purchased in the UK and a further 618,000 in North America.  

This massive increase in numbers required a rapid expansion of the Remount Service, part of this expansion was the establishment of a new depot at Romsey to receive horses that arrived in Southampton, having been purchased in the USA.

Construction of Romsey Remount Depot began in November 19Entry for July 1916 from The story of Romsey Remount Depot14.  It was completed in just over four months, for a cost of £152,000, with the first two horses arriving on 19th March 1915.  The Commandant of the depot, Colonel H M Jessel, recorded its activities in The story of Romsey Remount Depot.

A fairly typical month was July 1916 when Jessel records the daily ‘ins’ as 2533 animals and the ‘outs’ as 1374.  During the course of the war a total of 118,755 animals came into Romsey and 114,636 were sent out for active service.

The record of the veterinary work at Romsey for May 1917-October 1918 shows that 5,458 animals were admitted to the Veterinary Hospital but just 35 died or had to be  destroyed.  The most common reasons given for the deaths is enteritis or fractures.

It would appear from the inscriptions on the paintings by Lionel Edwards that featured in our  earlier post at least one of these horses spent some time receiving veterinary treatment at Romsey as the painting  is labelled ‘nasal eruption not glanders’.

If you are interested in finding out more about the remount service – why not pay us a visit and look at the items that we have in our collections?

References
Galtrey, Sidney (1918) The horse and the war London : Country Life and George Newnes
Hume, Robert (2010) The story of the Army Remount Service (unpublished)
Jessel H. M. [1919] The story of Romsey Remount Depot London: Abbey Press

Image: Entry for July 1916 from The story of Romsey Remount Depot

All aboard the SS Templemore

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‘We embarked on Friday 10th November, but owing to bad weather did not leave L/pool [Liverpool] until 12.30 noon on 12th November’

so reads an entry in a small notebook which is part of one of the treasures of our archives – the Sir Frederick Smith Collection.Burying a horse at sea

Smith sailed for South Africa  on the 12 November 1899 with the 13th Hussars aboard the S.S. Templemore.  This little book is his record of the veterinary care he gave on board as well as in later operations in Natal including the Battle of Colenso, Vaal Krantz and Brakfontein.

In his book A veterinary history of the war in South Africa Smith describes two ways in which horses were transported overseas – they were either carried with the troops on transport ships or they went on board freight ships.

He states that animals conveyed in freight ships suffered ‘a great disadvantage,’ when compared to those on transport ships, as they were accompanied by less experienced men who had many more horses in their care.  So the horses on board the SS Templemore could be classed as lucky!

Two days into the voyage, on 14th November, the entry in the notebook records the first fatalities like this ’C127 strangulation, found dead, C57 staggers, died, C118 staggers, died in 2 hours’.  It is not clear what C127 etc refers to – perhaps it refers to the location of the horse on the ship or it may be the number attached to the horse by the army.

Races on board the SS TemplemoreOver the course of the 4 weeks of the voyage the notebook records a total of 12 deaths and numerous conditions from which the horses recovered.  The only entry for 28th November records Smith’s own sickness – ‘I was ill in bed all day’.

We also have an album of photos in the Smith Collection which contains a number taken on board the SS Templemore.  These include a photo of a horse being buried at sea, a rather dark image of some animals on the horse deck, and some more light hearted images of  the troops keeping fit by racing each other around the ship and doing exercises as part of their physical drill.

If you can shed light on what C127 etc means do let us know.

Reference
Smith, Frederick (1919) A veterinary history of the war in South Africa 1899-1902 London  H. & W. Brown

Images: photographs from the album in the Smith Collection

A green monkey, a baboon and…

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Skeleton of Eclipse in the RCVS Museum

Skeleton of Eclipse in the RCVS Museum

The story of the RCVS Museum Collection is not particularly well known –  any attention it has received focussing on its most famous ‘resident’ the skeleton of Eclipse (donated in 1871 by Professor John Gamgee.)  This is a shame as it housed a number of other interesting items, as a glance at the catalogue (item id 26652) compiled by Edward Reuben Edwards in December 1891 reveals.

The majority of items listed relate to horses, sheep and cattle but more exotic species are present – the first items are an ‘entire preparation of a green monkey’ and ‘the skull of a baboon’.  Later on we come to the ‘skull of a polar bear’ and, my personal favourite, the ‘trachea of the first giraffe ever brought to England.’  The human animal is also represented by a ‘human eyelid’ and eight skulls amongst other things.

It appears that the care of the Museum Collection was not one of the College’s priorities.  It took 27 years from the first recorded donation to the formation of the Museum Committee, in 1880. Whilst the first official record of the committee meeting is in August 1889 – nine years later.

This first meeting happened at a time when the Museum was described by Council as being in an ‘unsatisfactory state.’   There were two further meetings in the next nine months, with Council granting £100 to be spent on ‘repairs and other requisites’ and Mr Edward’s appointment at a salary of £3 3/- per week.

Preface of the 1891 museum catalogue

Preface of the 1891 museum catalogue

In the preface to the catalogue, Edwards’ laments that “compiling this catalogue has been a work attended by several difficulties, chief amongst which – perhaps – has been the almost entire absence of any history of the individual specimens.”  In fact, he did not include any item that was unidentifiable, with the result that the catalogue only contains 334 items, whilst the RCVS annual reports for 1853-1891 record almost 500 donations.  One notable absence in the catalogue is Eclipse!

Fast forward another 10 or so years and it appears that the Museum and its contents have once more fallen from the radar.  On the 11 April 1902 Council member Professor Albert Mettam says:

“is the Museum Committee ornamental or is it useful. Does it ever meet, or has it anything to do with the museum?  I was in the museum this morning and I think it is more a place to set potatoes in than anything else.” 1

In view of this somewhat chequered history it is little wonder that, in 1925, the RCVS gave up on its ambition to maintain a museum and agreed to disperse the specimens.

Why not check out the list of some of the more interesting donations to the museum that we have compiled from the annual reports and the catalogue?

1. Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons: report of quarterly meeting of Council.  Veterinary Record  19 April 1902 p654

Dogs, dominos and Dickens

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Dog playing dominos

Dog playing dominos from Dog Breaking by WN Hutchinson (1850)

One of our recent tweets  featured an illustration of a dog playing dominos.

This was taken from  Dog breaking: the most expeditious, certain, and easy method: whether great excellence or only mediocrity is required by Lieutenant Colonel W.N Hutchinson, (John Murray 1850.) The image shows a dog playing dominos with its owner Monsieur Leonard surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.

In the Historical Collection we have another image of a dog playing dominos, this time on a plate which was generously donated by Norman Comben in September 2011, the inscription reads: “Chien Munito gagnant son maitre aux dominoes.”

Plate showing Munito playing dominos

Plate showing Munito playing dominos

Munito, known as the ‘Learned Dog’, was first shown by Signor Castelli in London in 1817 before touring in Europe. As well as playing dominos he excelled at picking out playing cards and performing arithmetic.

It would appear that his performances were unforgettable.  In All the year round 26 January 1867 Charles Dickens writes:

“About 45 years ago, a learned dog was exhibited in Piccadilly –  Munito … He performed many curious feats, answering questions, telling the hour of the day … picking out any cards called for from a pack on the ground.”

Puzzling over how these feats could be explained Dickens returned a second time and discovered the secret.

“We watched more narrowly … noticed that between each feat the master gave the dog some small bits … of food, and that there was a faint smell of aniseed from that corner of the room.”

Dickens believed that as the owner set out the cards, he pressed his thumb on the chosen card impregnating it with the scent of aniseed which Munito had been trained to recognise.  He confronted Signor Castelli after the show, when all the audience had left, with this explanation.  Signor Castelli ‘did not deny the discovery.’

Munito also appears in Dick Sand by Jules Verne (published 1878) where the explanation of the feats is based on Munito being trained to respond to sound rather than  smell.

Whatever the explanation for these ‘tricks’ Hutchinson sums it up rather neatly “It is hard to imagine what it would be impossible to teach a dog, did the attainment of the required accomplishment sufficiently recompense the instructor’s trouble.”

Reading for Pleasure

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Convolvulus Jalapa from Medical Botany by John Stephenson. Vol. 1, 1834

Today is World book day.  Some of us will remember the £1 book tokens given out at school, picking out our favourite book at the book shop and rushing home to read it– today is definitely a day for the bookworm!  World book day is a celebration of illustrators, authors and, most importantly, reading.

As a veterinary library, we are mostly visited by vets and veterinary nurses doing personal research.  We would love for more of our library users to while away the hours in our Historical Collection, reading just for the pleasure of it.  Our Historical Collection contains some fascinating and important works that our users may not know about. Even without the veterinary background that puts the contents of our collection into context, I am still constantly surprised by the beautiful artwork or an old fashioned turn of phrase.  Some of my favourite pictures and extracts make a weekly appearance on our Twitter feed.

Our Historical Collection contains some great material.  George Stubbs’ (1724-1806), the renowned English painter of horses, appears in the collection.   If early photography is more your thing, how about Animal locomotion an electro – photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements ; 1872 – 1885 by Eadweard Muybridge, the man who proved a horse could fly?  Perhaps 16th century country affairs is what interests you? The oldest work in our collection is a 1514 copy of the Libri de re rustica published by the Aldine Press in Venice, purchased by the RCVS Library in 1963 for just £25.

So if you are ever in London, stop by to read and explore our truly unique collection.  We’re always happy to show it off!  Please contact the Librarian, Clare Boulton, for visiting details c.boulton@rcvstrust.org.uk

Read more about how we safe guard our valuable collection, with our Adopt a Book scheme

Celebrating women’s achievements

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Thousands of events will take place around the world tomorrow to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD).  This day has been observed, in one incarnation or another, for over 100 years.   Today, IWD celebrates women’s achievements and looks forward to a bright, safe and equal future for women.

Over the next few days the Library blog will feature two guest posts, on ‘Equal pay for equal work’ for female veterinary surgeons, from Julie Hipperson, PhD student at Imperial College London.  The RCVS Charitable Trust, in collaboration with Imperial College London and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), are supporting Julie’s PhD entitled ‘Veterinary training and veterinary work: a female perspective, 1919 -2000.’  You can follow Julie’s work here, on her blog, Pioneers and Professionals.

In honour of IWD, the Library has designed a small display that showcases our extensive archive on the first female president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), Dame Olga Uvarov, a Russian refugee.

Equal Pay for Equal Work – Part 2

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The final instalment of Julie Hipperson’s piece to mark International Women’s Day.

The last post looked at how in its early days the SWVS was conflicted about adopting whole-sale the notion of equal pay for equal work based on their physical ability to do the job, an ambiguity beautifully encapsulated in an interview held with Mary Brancker, as part of the Capturing Lives in Practice project. When asked about the physical strength required in being a vet, she replied:

Well, in a way, in those days particularly, you realised you weren’t as strong as a man; that you were different, and that it was a strain trying to fit yourself in…You didn’t really compete with the men, if you were sensible.  Some of them tried to compete, and that wasn’t satisfactory.  I did sort of realise that wasn’t…that you must admit, in all honesty, there were things you couldn’t do.  But on the other hand, you did realise that you’d got to try to do things that didn’t come naturally to you.[1]

Their nuanced response was perhaps largely subsumed by the SWVS’s decision at policy level in the 1940s to formally protest against pay inequality, but it was not entirely extinguished.  In 1947, for example, when the Ministry of Agriculture issued a proposed revised scale of salaries, the SWVS felt that it ought to lodge on behalf of some of its members that the Society ‘strongly disapproves the scale for women, which do not uphold the principle of equal pay for equal work”. Again, we can see that whilst formal objection focused on equal pay, the caveat to this was that it was not a view universally held within the Society.  I would suggest that it was this reluctance to subscribe wholesale to the notion of equal pay which made the Society wary of aligning themselves with the BFMPW, refusing its invitation in 1945 to affiliate, not because its members did not, in the majority, support the principle, but rather because the aims and tactics of the other organisations were predicated on a certainty of equality in all forms, a certainty which was not necessarily shared by all members of the SWVS.

It was a complicated issue, further nuanced in the 1960s and 1970s by developments such as part-time work, disputes about pay scales linked to qualifications, and greater questions being asked about women’s ability to hold their own in the market place.  However, looking at the SWVS’s views on equal pay in the early days begins to tell us much about how the Society positioned itself on questions of feminist principle, and it begins to say something about the wider profession’s assessment of what makes a confident, competent practitioner.

Read more about the profession on our webpage, Capturing Life in Practice  Follow Julie’s blog, Pioneers and Professionals

[1] Quote used courtesy of the British Library and the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University.

Horses and the problem of sore backs

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“Sore backs appear inseparable from mounted service, they have existed as long as the horse has been used in war … it was reasonable to suppose … as knowledge advanced, a reduction in this class of injury should have been possible.”

So says Frederick Smith in his book A veterinary history of the war in South Africa 1899-1902 (item id 003722) in the section on the history of sore backs.  He then goes on to claim that in the 40 years following the Battle of Waterloo all “the lessons of war appear to have been forgotten.”

Later campaigns meant that the topic became a matter for discussion again. In the early 1880s General Sir Frederick FitzWygram, Commander of the Cavalry Brigade, studied the problem showing that it was often the construction of the saddle that was to blame.

Smith - skeleton of a horse shoing back bone and ribs

Smith’s Skeleton of horse showing back bone and ribs

The topic then became the subject of a series of lectures, delivered by Smith, at the Army Veterinary School in Aldershot. These lectures were eventually published in 1891 as A manual of saddles and sore backs (item id 26542).

The manual is set out in four sections: the first covers the anatomy and physiology of the back because, as Smith states, “no accurate conception of the fitting of a saddle … can be formed until we have some knowledge of the structure on which the saddle rests.” This is followed by 16 pages on the construction of a saddle, 8 pages of instruction on how to fit one properly and finally 17 pages on ‘sore backs – how they are caused, prevented and remedied.’  The book contains 11 illustrations – 6 are anatomical, 5 on fitting a saddle with the final one showing the sites of the various injuries.

In spite of the lectures and manual it would appear that little changed – when referring to the South African War Smith states that “sore backs represented one of the chief causes of inefficiency.”

Smith - How to fit a girth correctly

Smith – How to fit a girth correctly

This view is also expressed by William Snowball Mulvey in his little (20 page) book Sore back and its causes in army horses on a campaign (item id 26379) which was published in 1902. Sore backs had been the topic of Mulvey’s RCVS Fellowship Thesis and one of the reasons for this choice was “The fact that nine out of every ten cases which came before my notice in South Africa were the so-called sore backs.” By publishing his thesis Mulvey hoped to make his observations more widely available.

The book is very much a practical manual – it identifies 9 causes of sore backs and  then shows how to prevent the injuries occurring in the first place – as Mulvey says in his closing words “the rational treatment of sore backs, is of course, the removal of the cause.”

Interested in finding out more? The notes and illustrations Smith made when carrying out research for his lectures and manual form part of the Frederick Smith Collection , they provide a fascinating insight into the meticulous way Smith carried out his rearch on this topic.

References

Mulvey, William Snowball (1902) Sore back and its causes in army horses on a campaign . Fellowship theses later published by H & W Brown

Smith, Fred (1891) A manual of saddles and sore backs London: HMSO

Smith, Frederick (1919) A veterinary history of the war in South Africa 1899-1902 London: H. & W. Brown

A not so tall tale

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One of the things I love about working in libraries is the weird and wonderful questions you are asked and how, on occasions, information you find for one enquirer can be useful in answering another – sometimes years later.Giraffes at Belfast Zoo copyright Kenneth Allen from Georgraph

This has happened to me recently with King George IVs giraffe!  In 2010 I found an article in The Veterinarian about this animal for someone who was going to give a talk on the subject  – they also wrote  about it on the Brighton Royal Pavilion and Museums collections blog.

The giraffe had been given to George, in 1827, by the Viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali (who also gave a giraffe to Charles X of France at the same time) and was kept in the King’s menagerie at Sandpit Gate, Windsor Great Park. Unfortunately the giraffe did not survive that long, dying in 1829, a fact that was satirised in a number of prints that can be seen on the Royal Pavilion and Museums blog.

All of this came back to me when I was doing some research on the RCVS Museum Collection and saw an entry in the museum catalogue of 1891 which read “the trachea of the first giraffe ever brought to England”.  I wondered could this be from the famous giraffe that belonged to the King?

Well the answer is yes it was.  The link is the donor of the specimen William J. Goodwin who was an RCVS Council member from 1844-1861, Veterinary Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV, and Queen Victoria – and the author of the article in The Veterinarian

The article contains information on the health of George’s giraffe in particular as well as more general information on an animal that most readers of The Veterinarian at that time would not have encountered.

Speaking of the giraffe kept at Sandpit gate Goodwin writes:

 Extract from The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219

Unfortunately it’s health did not improve

Extract from The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219

And it remained small in stature

Extract from The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219

Sir Everard Home  had also spent time with George’s animal and wrote about  the tongue of a giraffe in  volume 5 of his Lectures on comparative anatomy (p244-250) which was published in 1828.

In spite of all the pain the giraffe must have suffered Goodwin is able to write of its gentle nature

Extract fron The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219

Perhaps a more fitting way to remember this creature than the one portrayed in the satirical illustrations?

Reference
GOODWIN, W.J. (1830), ‘An account of the giraffe: which lately died at Sandpit Gate.’ The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219

Images
Image of giraffes in Belfast Zoo © Copyright Kenneth Allen from the Geograph website and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Extracts from The Veterinarian Vol. 3 No. 26 pp. 216-219