'Your Suff’Rings, Sinless Things': Changing Attitudes Towards Non-Human Animals, and the Cattle Plague of 1865

Abstract

Within Britain the severe cattle plague of 1865 marks a watershed. A watershed, first of all, in the understanding of disease; the ways in which research into the 1865 plague contributed to a general understanding of germs and viruses have been widely acknowledged. But also a cultural watershed: this paper argues that the cattle plague of 1865 can fairly be seen as marking a cultural divide: on the one side centuries-old habits linking humans to non-human animals, on the other habits we now associate with modernity. The paper looks at various historical markers, and also discusses a poem on the subject of the cattle plague by the Scottish poet Janet Hamilton.

Keywords: cattle plague, rinderpest, Janet Hamilton, animal welfare, animal disease, germs, viruses, human and non-human animals