Diamond Dogs: The Queen’s Corgis
This Sunday, we will be watching, with baited breath, to see if the Queen takes her corgis aboard the Royal Barge, the Spirit of Chartwell, to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee with her. Well, perhaps not, but in Britain the Pembroke Welsh corgi immediately evokes images of Queen Elizabeth II, walking her adored pets through the […]
Rabbits: from prey to pet
Even though the domestication of the rabbit occurred 2000 years ago, rabbit care before the 19th century was not in the local vet or farmer’s repertoire. This explains the lack of lagomorph related content in our historical collection. Contrary to what you may think, rabbits don’t belong to the rodent order but sit in a […]
From burial ground to picnic spot
May is local and community history month so that, together with a rather nice photograph from 1913 that was included in the material we received from Fegans (see the previous post), has led to me writing about one of the places I go to eat lunch – St John’s Gardens on Horseferry Road. The garden started […]
Our home on Horseferry Road – 100 years old today
Today we are celebrating the 100th birthday of 62-64 Horseferry Road, the current home of the RCVS. The plaque on the corner of the building records the laying of the foundation stone like this: “Mr Fegan’s Homes” (incorporated) to the glory of God and the welfare of orphan, needy and erring boys, here and hereafter, […]
The many layers of the dog
There has been a lot of discussion of anatomical illustrations recently following the opening of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery Leonardo da Vinci anatomist. We have a number of stunning anatomical illustrations in the Historical Collection – the most well known would be in Stubbs’ The anatomy of the horse and then there are […]
Pet keeping: a brief history
National Pet Month (7 April – 7 May) is now drawing to a close but one of the enduring messages of the initiative is the benefits of pets for people, and vice versa. What we need from our companion animals has changed over the centuries, dogs are no longer solely hunting partners, and cats are […]
A not so tall tale
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. This has happened to me recently with King George IVs giraffe! In 2010 I found an […]
Brunel on the power of the horse
Search the library catalogue for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, born on this day in 1806, and you will find one entry – for William Youatt’s book The Horse: its history, breeds, and management to which is appended, a treatise on draught first published in 1831. The link to Brunel? The inclusion of his ‘treatise on draught’ – […]
Horses and the problem of sore backs
“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 […]
The thrill of ‘The Chace’
Today is World Poetry Day, so to mark the occasion we have brought out one of the poetry books we have in our Historical Collection, William Somervile’s The Chace: a poem (id 15172). This was first published in 1735 and we have a copy of the fifth edition which was published in 1767. William Somervile (1675–1742), […]
Equal Pay for Equal Work – Part 2
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 […]
Equal Pay for Equal Work – Part 1
Part one of two guest blog posts from Julie Hipperson, PhD student at Imperial College London. In February 1943, the Council of the SWVS were not surprised when their attention was alerted to the fact that the Veterinary Record was carrying adverts which offered different salaries for men and women. The issue of equal pay […]