On this day in vegan history · September 15, 1906
The Brown Dog Memorial Is Unveiled in Battersea
A bronze statue of a small brown terrier, put up to shame a vivisection lab, made a South London park the flashpoint of a national riot.
The facts
- Unveiled
- 15 September 1906, Latchmere Recreation Ground, Battersea
- Speakers
- George Bernard Shaw, Charlotte Despard, Mayor James H. Brown, Rev. Charles Noel
- Major riot
- 10 December 1907, medical students vs. police in Trafalgar Square
- Removed
- 10 March 1910, before dawn, by 4 council workers and 120 police
On 15 September 1906, anti-vivisectionists unveiled a bronze drinking-fountain memorial to a brown terrier who had died during repeated dissections at University College London's medical school in 1903. The statue went up on the Latchmere Recreation Ground in Battersea, with George Bernard Shaw, the feminist Charlotte Despard, Battersea's mayor James H. Brown, and the Reverend Charles Noel speaking at the ceremony. Its inscription accused the university's vivisectors by name and asked, in bronze, how long English men and women would tolerate it. Medical students took the accusation as a public insult to their profession, and for the next several years they tried to tear the statue down, culminating in a night of street fighting with police in Trafalgar Square in December 1907. Battersea Council finally had it hauled away before dawn in March 1910, and it was reportedly melted down.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog Done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903 after having endured Vivisection extending over more than Two Months and having been handed over from one Vivisector to Another Till Death came to his Release. Also in Memory of the 232 dogs Vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and Women of England how long shall these Things be?
the inscription cast into the Brown Dog memorial, unveiled 15 September 1906
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It was one of the first times a public monument tried to put vivisection on trial in the language of a courtroom, and the backlash it triggered showed just how far institutional medicine would go to protect the practice from public scrutiny.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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