N.B. The following text in this blog-post Reverend Arthur Broome Founder of RSPCA (Part One) is Copyright © 2012 Philip Johnson.

One hundred and eighty-eight years ago today (16 June) the RSPCA was established in London. This is a long post of more than 21,000 words and thus requires a time-commitment to concentrate and digest. It will be followed by a separate second post (Part Two), and the latter post will list all the bibliographical sources used in Parts One and Two.

REVEREND ARTHUR BROOME FOUNDER OF RSPCA

Contents to Part One:

PREFACE

• Giving Christians Due Credit
• “Secular Silence” About Christians
• Royal Assent to SPCA
• Clergy and RSPCA
• Prize-Winning Competition of 1837
• Darwin and Vivisection
• 1837 Essay Contestants
• Australian Examples
• Christian Women
• Sir Alfred Stephen
• RSPCA as a Post-Christian Charity

INTRODUCTION

1. GIVE HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE: WHO REMEMBERS BROOME?

2. RAISING THE CURTAIN ON FORGOTTEN FACTS

3.  OMISSIONS LEAD TO INCOMPLETE PORTRAITS

4. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

5. MARRIAGE (The Trollope Family)

PREFACE

On Wednesday 16 June 1824 a meeting was convened in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in St. Martin’s Lane, London. The meeting had been called by Reverend Arthur Broome (1779-1837) for the purpose of creating what he called a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Present at that meeting were various Christian luminaries including Thomas Fowell Buxton MP, Sir James Mackintosh MP, William Wilberforce MP, Richard Martin MP, and Basil Montagu. Arthur Broome was appointed as the SPCA’s first Secretary, a position that on paper he officially held until 27 February 1828.

At the first meeting on 16 June 1824 there were twenty-two men who formed two different committees within the SPCA. One committee had as its brief the responsibility for arranging the publication of material (including sermons). The publications were meant to persuade the body politic to shift in its attitudes about the abuse of animals. The second committee was concerned with finding ways to monitor the actual conduct of people on the streets, at the London abbatoir, and in professions such as coachmen where animals were used in hard-labour.

Apart from Lewis Gompertz (who was an influential creative Jewish activist and vegetarian), there were twenty-one Christians among the original twenty-two founder members. In that group, alongside Broome were two other members of the Anglican clergy: Reverend George Bonner (St. James Cheltenham) and Reverend George Avery Hatch (Cheapside). It is important to keep in perspective the fact that the impetus for organising the SPCA came from a group of people whose shared values about protecting animals sprang from a monotheistic understanding of life. In order to understand Arthur Broome one must appreciate his worldview, which seems to be a stumbling-block for some current-day writers.

*****

Giving Christians Due Credit

Before delving into Broome’s life some preliminary and wider points need to be discussed.

The creation of the SPCA was not undertaken by a band of influential reformers gathered together around Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-1832) utilitarian ethics and motivated by his reflective question that today is over-quoted out-of-context and is only found in a footnote in Bentham’s book (1789: 282), “The question is not, can they reason? nor can they talk? but, can they suffer?” Nor were the founders of the SPCA devotees of other kinds of secular-based Enlightenment-shaped humanitarian values or following the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant’s humanocentric ethic.

When the story of the SPCA is set to one side, and the wider topic of animal protection in history is discussed, readers should consider how evenly balanced are books that discuss the matter. Do they give balanced and fair coverage to both secular and Christian figures?

“Secular Silence” about Christians

While mass-market readers usually do not bother reading footnotes, graduate students and academics know that the trail of footnote documentation cannot be ignored. It is interesting to follow what academic writers insert in their footnotes. Footnotes do not merely indicate what sources they rely on (though they reveal an author’s selectivity) but also can disclose supplementary points that an author feels is worth mentioning.

Thus, in the early section of one post-graduate dissertation the discussion alludes to the public discourses about animal issues from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A footnote is inserted listing representative examples of influential people from those days (O’Sullivan 2007: 6)

“Many influential figures of the early modern period commented on animal issues. Examples include Voltaire (1649-1778), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Jeremy Bentham (1742-1832), David Henry Thoreau (1817-1862), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Gandhi (1869-1948). For further information see Clarke and Linzey (1990).”

Notice that the selected individuals listed here primarily consists of non-Christian philosophers and litterateurs (Alexander Pope, as an exception, was a lay Catholic believer), and it excludes professional theologians, clergy, and Christian political reformers from that era who wrote in opposition to acts of cruelty to animals. O’Sullivan refers to a book which is an anthology of passages about politics and animal ethics (Clarke & Linzey) for more details about the influential figures she listed. Readers who are unfamiliar with the book she mentions should take note that the co-editor is Andrew Linzey the Anglican animal theologian, and that this anthology also includes many passages about animals written by various Christians.

In the main body of the dissertation the discussion that comes immediately after this footnote we read (2007: 7):

“The humanitarian stream of Enlightenment thought that spurred early reformers to enhance the lives of vulnerable groups such as slaves, children, women, animals, and the poor continues to influence contemporary debate. But concern about animals appears to have fallen away.”

Surely it should be stated that both Christian humanitarians and secular humanitarians were active in social reforms in this era. The credit for social reforms and animal campaigns hardly all lays in the lap of secular humanitarians. Many NGOs of that era were started by Christians. So, to be balanced about that era one really has to acknowledge that Christian reformers were not merely active on a broad front of social reforms but that they derived the principal inspiration for their ethical action and social reforms from both biblical and theological sources. While they were undeniably living as part of the Enlightenment era, and often drew on the analytical reasoning tools that characterise that era, these Christians hardly drew inspiration for their ethics from non-theistic discourses by philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Bentham!

There is no denying that to their great credit some secular-humanitarian thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did express concerns about the abuse of animals. Their contributions in highlighting the ethical problems about animal abuse must not be ignored in any broad historical survey, and several historians and many anthologies certainly give due consideration to secular humanitarians such as Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Salt. However, the social conscience about the plight of animals in the modern era did not begin because of the writings of Jeremy Bentham or the socialist beliefs, activism and writings of Henry Salt.

When we shift from the works of professional historians, one has the uncanny impression that some of today’s advocates for animal causes concentrate on praising the efforts of past secular humanitarians such as Henry Salt while under-emphasizing or virtually dismissing as irrelevant the contributions of Christian humanitarians. Those that refer to Broome do acknowledge that he was a clergyman but little else is said about Broome’s theological and ethical motives in creating the SPCA. Reading some present-day animal rights texts you would never know that most of Broome’s co-founding colleagues in the SPCA were also Christians because that fact is often passed over in “silence”.

While this is not a trait in all publications, there are a few books on animal issues that convey to readers such as myself the strong impression that the author almost begrudges giving credit to the efforts of nineteenth century Christian reformers. Sometimes famous individuals like Wilberforce and Buxton are mentioned but without any acknowledgement that they were practicing Christians and that their faith played an important inspirational role in shaping their social ethic and their social activism.

Richard Martin is invariably praised as the champion of the anti-cruelty legislation of 1822 but (his three biographers notwithstanding) there is deafening silence on the fact that Martin was an Irish-born Roman Catholic who was deliberately raised as a Protestant to enable his education and career to advance. Irrespective of the sectarian background and motives of his parents and family, it should surely be noted in animal rights literature that the man was a professing Christian.

Is this a deliberate omission of fact? Is it because some current-day animal rights activists cannot stand the Christian church, and perhaps seek to use “knowledge as power” to marginalise or even suppress in their narratives facts about past Christian contributions? Or is it that some writers just pick up information second and third-hand and are unaware that Christians played an important part in the history of animal protection? These awkward questions do not occupy the centre-stage of the present post. Nevertheless, some candid appraisal of what appears to be an apparent prejudice in the animal rights genre does seem to be warranted.

*****

Royal Assent to SPCA

In 1840, just sixteen years after it was founded (and which was sadly three years after Broome’s death in 1837), Queen Victoria granted official royal patronage to the organisation in England which is known today worldwide as the RSPCA. That patronage, which continues to the present-day, has elevated the RSPCA’s status and helped to ensure that it is the oldest and longest-running animal protection organisation in the world (with its bicentenary approaching on Sunday, 16 June 2024). Queen Victoria, by the way, was crowned on 20 June 1837 a mere four days after Broome’s death.

*****

Clergy and RSPCA

Among the elements of the RSPCA’s early history that many (but not all) Christians have forgotten is that in a meeting convened in June 1832 it was recorded in the Society’s minutes that: “the proceedings of this Society are entirely based on the Christian Faith, and on Christian Principles” (RSPCA Minute Book No. 1, pp. 38, 40-41). There is, of course, a story of internal conflict among the committee members in 1832 that stands behind “why” that minute was entered into the official records, which I need not comment upon at the moment (the conflict involved an attempt to unseat Lewis Gompertz who was the only Jewish member of the committee, and Gompertz did resign and he started his own animal advocacy organisation).

During the nineteenth century in England various clergy preached annual sermons on behalf of the RSPCA. In its earliest days when Broome was its Secretary, small pamphlets containing sermons against cruelty to animals were published.

Prize-Winning Competition of 1837:

In late 1837, through the generosity of a donor, the SPCA sponsored a prize-winning essay competition (one hundred pounds was the prize). Sadly, Broome was not alive either to participate as a potential essay contestant or simply as a witness. The notice for the competition stated (Mushet 1839: xi-xii):

“The Committee for the Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have the pleasure of announcing to the Public the Donation of a benevolent Friend to the cause of Humanity. This humane individual intends to confer the sum of ONE HUNDRED POUNDS upon the Writer of that Essay which, in the opinion of the arbitrators, to be appointed by the Society, shall combine in the highest degree literary merit, with a judicious treatment of the subject, and the best practical, moral and religious application. The Essay required is one which shall morally illustrate, and religiously enforce, the obligation of man towards the inferior and dependent creatures–their protection and security from abuse, more especially as regards those engaged in the service, and for the use and benefit of mankind–on the sin of cruelty–the infliction of wanton or unnecessary pain, taking the subject under its various denominations–exposing the specious defence of vivisection on the grounds of its being for the interests of science–the supplying the infinite demands on the poor animal in aid of human speculations by exacting extreme labour, and thereby causing excessive suffering–humanity to the brute as harmonious with the spirit and doctrines of Christianity, and the duty of man as a rational and accountable creature.”

Notice that the competition called for essays to address human obligations toward animals in a moral and religious framework. Cruelty to animals was specifically branded as “sin”, which underscored the theological dimension of the task for the essayists. The competition’s brief also clearly linked the sin of cruelty to the practice of vivisection. This stance on opposing vivisection in 1837 in the SPCA’s history is very interesting when contrasted with the later position that the RSPCA officially took in the 1870s to support legislation (Cruelty to Animals Act) that was pushed from outside the RSPCA by both Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and was passed by Parliament in 1876.

Darwin and Vivisection:

Under the provisions of that 1876 Act animals could be legally experimented upon within specific parameters. Huxley and Darwin were relieved that biologists would not have their hands tied from undertaking experiments on animals. While Darwin was a complicated figure who had affection for animals, he likewise found himself in the contrary role of being scientifically enthused about dissecting animals. In his youth he had been an enthusiast for the sport of hunting, which was something he felt quite differently about as an old man.

In his journey on the HMS Beagle Darwin visited the colony of New South Wales and participated in a shooting expedition of a platypus. Harriet Ritvo (1997:4) draws attention to this incident:

As Charles Darwin wrote of a successful platypus-hunting expedition in New South Wales, “I consider it a great feat to be in at the death of so wonderful an animal.” [Letter from Darwin to Philip Parker King January 21, 1836].

Desmond and Moore (1991:427) in their lengthy biographical study of Darwin mention something of his scientific enthusiasm for dissecting animal corpses:

His letters acquired a ghoulish air: I ‘am watching them outside,’ he said, eyeing his birds, ‘& I then shall skeletonise them & watch their insides.’ It was not only pigeons. Fox showered him with dead ducklings and chicks, and volunteered mastiffs and turkeys. ‘Very many thanks for your offer,’ Darwin responded. ‘I have puppies of Bull-Dogs & Greyhound in salt. – & I have had Carthorse & Race Horse young colts carefully measured.’ Horses, dogs, ducklings – ‘I am getting out of my depth.’ He tried all means of killing his pigeons: chloroform took too long and he squirmed at the sight. Better was potassium cyanide in a bottle; the prussic acid gas it gave off was quick and painless. But however swift, the death of his pigeons affected him; ‘I love them to that extent that I cannot bear to kill & skeletonise them,’ he wailed to Hooker. Seeing his funny gawky chicks lose consciousness was always sad. ‘I have done the black deed & murdered an angelic little Fan-tail & Pouter at 10 days old.’ The corpses mounted, skeletons, measured and unmeasured, lay everywhere; cadavers were arriving by post, boxes crushed and intestines hanging out. Even he admitted it was becoming ‘a chamber of horrors’.

While Darwin did not dissect living animals, Desmond and Moore (1991: 615) remark that in the mid-1870s, “He was master-minding a rear-guard action against the rising anti-vivisectionist movement.”  They go on to say (1991:615):

Darwin was atypically British, an animal lover who loved his colleagues’ autonomy more. ‘Physiology,’ he warned Henrietta, ‘can progress only by experiments on living animals.’ These must be conducted freely, ‘in the search for abstract truth.’ Any abuses should be corrected by ‘the improvement of humanitarian feelings.’

Preece and Fraser (2003:411) quip about Darwin on vivisection: “Animals mattered. Knowledge mattered far more.”

1837 Essay Contestants

While the legislation that permitted vivisection was three decades away, the 1837 essay competition shows that the donor of the SPCA’s prize was in no doubt that vivisection was a form of cruelty, and cruelty to animals was deemed sinful.

In this competition the essayists were required to argue against the pro-vivisection cause. The theological thread continues as essayists were expected to connect their arguments to the spirit and doctrines of Christianity, which also includes the concept of human accountability for their moral actions (in other words theological ethics and the doctrine of the eschatological Last Judgment).

The competition prompted thirty-four contestants to submit essays and a three-man panel consisting of the Earl of Carnavon, Reverend B. W. Noel, and Mr Sergeant Talfourd MP adjudicated (Mushet 1839: xi; Styles 1839: vii-viii). The prize was awarded to the Reverend John Styles’ The Animal Creation; its claims on our Humanity stated and enforced. In 1839 the manuscript was published by Thomas Ward & Co. Styles inscribed the text by way of a dedication to the Queen (Victoria), and he acknowledged that the book was published under the SPCA’s auspices. All proceeds of sales went to the SPCA.

Although Styles won the competition, some of the losing contestants were not entirely discouraged. David Mushet and William Youatt (the RSPCA’s first official veterinarian) released their “essays” as published books in 1839. Thus a fruitful outcome was that several books that were theologically informed on the subject of opposing cruelty to animals were published. The Irish Unitarian preacher William Henry Drummond missed the submission deadline by one day (which he remarked on in the preface) but unperturbed he too arranged for his manuscript to be published in 1838.

I find it a little odd though that the three “official” books that tell the story of England’s RSPCA (Fairholme & Pain 1934; Moss 1961; Brown 1974) never make reference to the 1837 competition nor to the prize-winning author Reverend Styles and his book The Animal Creation. Of the books that came into print as a result of the contest, historians sometimes refer to Youatt and Drummond (but not in reference to their books being part of an essay competition), while Styles is completely overlooked and forgotten.

The same year (1839) that witnessed the publication of the books by Styles, Mushet and Youatt, also saw the release of a different prize-winning work from a post-graduate theological student at the University of Edinburgh. James Macauley’s book Essay on Cruelty to Animals won the prize of “twenty sovereigns” from an endowment by Mrs Gibson of Edinburgh, “for the preaching of Annual Sermons on this subject in several of the principal towns in Scotland” (Macauley 1839: 4). Books grounded in theological ethics about the evils of cruelty to animals  “chugged along” very nicely that year.

During the second-half of the nineteenth century, Christian clergy and lay-believers alike played their part — alongside other generous spirited individuals — in the formation of “sister” organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America.

Australian Examples:

Here are brief examples of Christians who were involved in the early history of the state branches of the RSPCA in the Australian colonial states and/or after Federation in 1901:-

Sir William Foster Stawell (1815-1889) was the first president of the Victorian SPCA (1871-1886). Stawell was an agnostic who in 1848 was converted to Christian faith and was thereafter a devout Anglican. Barbara Pertzel’s (2006: 8) “official” history book of Victoria’s RSPCA profiles Stawell but she never once states that he was an active Christian. What makes the exclusion of this information all the more problematic is that Pertzel bases her profile with strong verbal reliance on the biographical article about Stawell in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (and that article is at pains to discuss his religious conversion and faith). Why did she omit to record that Stawell was a Christian and to consider that his faith would have been a strong motivating factor for taking up the cause of animals?

Wallace Budd’s account of the RSPCA in South Australia does give due credit to the many Jewish and Christian citizens in that state who created the SPCA and participated in its development. The chairman who presided at the meeting to create the SPCA in South Australia was John Colton (twice served as SA Premier), and served as Vice-President of the SPCA. His biographical article in the Australian Dictionary of Biography remarks:

“Wesleyan Methodist by profession, Colton sponsored the building in 1850 of the Pirie Street church and parsonage. His generous gift of £100 toward the £600 required for the half-acre (0.2 ha) site was described at the time as ‘an act of great faith in God and in the future of the city of Adelaide’. He was trustee of more than a hundred Wesleyan churches and benefactor of many more throughout the colony. One of the most influential laymen in the church, he served as Sunday school superintendent and lay preacher. He opposed state aid for churches in the 1840s and was a leading figure in the League for the Preservation of Religious Freedom. As a champion of ‘social purity’ he was active in the temperance movement and in parliament sponsored the young persons protection bill. He was the founder of the Stranger’s Friend Society and an executive member of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Zealous in community service he was for many years chairman of the Adelaide Hospital Board, and member of the boards of the Blind, Deaf and Dumb Institution and of the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. He was active in opening the Franklin Street Wesleyan Day School years before free education was introduced in the colony, and later played a leading part in founding Prince Alfred College; the Colton wing now bears testimony to his generous benefactions. Patriarchal in spirit he was fearless in controversy and sought with undoubted sincerity to help those less fortunate than himself whether by his generous gestures or his legislative activities. Admirers described him as broad in his Christian sympathies but narrow in worldly pleasures because of his hatred of gambling and of spirituous liquors and his abstention from theatre-going and dancing; detractors, not without justification, charged him with a lack of humour. His striking appearance on a public platform won tribute from a contemporary: ‘If Sir John were simply to rise, stand in silence for a minute, and produce a hush, stroke his beard, a venerable structure eighteen inches long, and in oracular terms bid his audience good morning, he would produce more effect than many other members could by an hour’s speech’.”

Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois (“Jarvis”) served as the 2^nd President of the SPCA South Australia from 1877-1883. In the Australian Dictionary of Biography he is described:

“He was a popular chairman of meetings of the Bible Society, the City Mission and other philanthropic institutions and lectured in aid of funds for the Young Men’s Christian Association.”

Reverend Johannes Heyer served as the Secretary of the Hobart Branch of the RSPCA. Heyer served as a Presbyterian minister in Tasmania and the Australian Dictionary of Biography states:

“An outstanding personality of the Presbyterian Church in Tasmania, Heyer was scholar, theologian, historian, poet, organist and composer. Besides writing poems and hymns, he composed hymn-tunes and music for the Te Deum. He published a booklet, The Lord’s Prayer, its Implications and Confessional Value (undated), and also wrote local church histories. Of greatest and lasting importance is his comprehensive book on the history of Presbyterianism in Tasmania, The Presbyterian Pioneers of Van Diemen’s Land, published in 1935 to commemorate the centenary of the establishment of the Presbytery of Van Diemen’s Land. He was a strong supporter of the Children’s Aid Society and was secretary of the Hobart branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

These few examples could be easily multiplied. The emergence of “sister” organisations in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere witnessed clergy preaching sermons against the inhumane treatment of animals, and even “collection plate” donations gathered from individual congregations on behalf of the RSPCA. “Animal Sunday” services were not an unusual phenomenon in these nations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Christian Women

Christian women were also prominent in this much longer story in animal protection campaigns in Australia including Frances Deborah Levvy (see here) and Dame Edith Campbell Walker (see here). The role of Christian women in animal campaigns in England, Canada, New Zealand and the USA likewise cannot be ignored. Most of the women who entered these campaigns were also involved in campaigns on behalf of the poor, prison reforms, child-labour reforms, abolition of slavery, temperance, and sometimes also in the suffragettes.

Sir Alfred Stephen

Sir Alfred Stephen (1802-1894) who served as Chief Justice of NSW, President of the NSW Legislative Council, and as Lieutenant-Governor of NSW, made several attempts to pass animal protection legislation. He was an Anglican and involved in all kinds of charitable activities as the Australian Dictionary of Biography states:

“A prominent Anglican layman, Stephen in the 1840s was a member of the Australian Diocesan Committee and in 1858 was a delegate to the synodical conference. He was vice-patron of the Commercial Reading Rooms and Library and a committee-man of the Temperance Society. From the 1850s he served as president of the Sydney Female Refuge Society and the Sydney Ophthalmic Institution, as a director of the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children, on the committee of the Diocesan Board of Missions, as a vice-president of the Australasian Botanical and Horticultural Society and as an official trustee of the Australian Museum. In 1861 he was a founder and president of the Home Visiting and Relief Society, and in the 1860s a director of the Sydney Eye and Ear Institution and a vice-patron of the Orpheonist Society. … In the Legislative Council Stephen introduced eighteen bills, some of them repeatedly, and many connected with law reform, of which four were enacted. He failed four times with his animals protection bill…”

These examples remind us that being involved in protecting animals does not correlate to an indifference to the plight of humans who suffer. There is a clear Christian heritage in animal protection work that today is largely being “forgotten”, and individual Christians and local church gatherings would do well to ponder that heritage and reflect biblically and theologically about animal ethics in the present.

*****

RSPCA as a Post-Christian Charity

Although for a variety of reasons England’s RSPCA underwent organisational transformation from what the founders started and envisaged, and it is no longer a Christian-run charity, the Society nevertheless has long fostered positive relations with churches in England, particularly in encouraging annual “Animal Sunday” services.

I hope that this post concerning the RSPCA’s founder, Reverend Arthur Broome, will serve to remind Christians about what some of their forebears have contributed to the history of animal protection and welfare. It might also hopefully prod some Christians into reflecting on how animal issues relate to theology and ethics. I also hope that this post might goad others into undertaking renewed efforts to exhaustively research and then compose a much fuller biographical account of the Evangelical Anglican Arthur Broome.

*****

INTRODUCTION

Most people have heard of the RSPCA but the life and work of its founder Arthur Broome (1779-1837) is not as well known. There appears to be a paucity of available evidence, or at least that is the generally received and unquestioned wisdom among writers on the history of animal protection movements.

So, when Broome’s role in establishing the SPCA is mentioned in books and articles, the profile of his life, and any discussion about his Christian beliefs, tends to be very cursory. There are important points in Broome’s life that have not been given sufficient emphasis. Various authors have discussed some points about Broome’s role in the SPCA particularly making comments about his ignominious experience of being in a debtor’s prison. However, even on critical matters like this one other relevant information has sometimes been overlooked. There is also something loosely akin to a “cold case mystery” surrounding Broome’s death.

While I am not composing a proper biographical study here, I am pointing to sources and facts that inexplicably have been overlooked by some authors and scholars alike.

It was the apostle Paul who instructed the Christians living in Rome to render “honour to whom honour” (Romans 13:7) is due. In some respects there has been patchy and inconsistent recognition accorded to Arthur Broome by authors writing about the nineteenth century animal protection movements. Similarly, some clergy and theologians who have turned to the past to find inspiring examples to encourage or even emulate have sadly overlooked or quickly passed over Broome.

*****

1. GIVE HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE: WHO REMEMBERS BROOME?

In this opening section, I am concentrating attention on authors that I have read who mention Broome (and to identify a few who fail to speak about him), and also to note here and there some of the weaknesses and anomalies in what some authors have written.

1.1 Molly Baer Kramer

Nobody has written a book-length biographical study of Arthur Broome, and the task is a challenge largely because no-one is really sure if there’s enough primary source material available on him to turn into a biography.

Molly Baer Kramer (2004) has contributed a six-hundred word biographical article on Broome in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Although skeletal in form, and missing some details, Kramer’s article at least ensures some permanent recognition for Broome in an important reference work. However, one of Kramer’s glaring errors is stating that Broome was “probably unmarried”. As will be shown below, Broome was married in 1817 and his wife outlived him.

1.2 Popular Works of History

In some popular books about the general history of animal welfare and ethics Broome is briefly profiled because of his role in the RSPCA.

1.21 E. Douglas Hume, Charles Niven & E. S. Turner

E. Douglas Hume (1939: 34) is one of the early chroniclers who spoke of Broome in terms of being “the moving spirit” at the meeting which brought the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals into existence. E. Douglas Hume’s discussion concerning Broome though is limited to just one page.

Charles Niven’s (1967) History of the Humane Movement, does a neat job of discussing the start of the SPCA and across several pages Broome’s role is repeatedly mentioned.

Again, Broome is briefly mentioned three times in the account of the SPCA’s origins in E. S. Turner’s (1965) All Heaven in a Rage. Turner (1965: 129-30) stated that “Broome, vicar of the church now called St Mary’s, Bromley-by-Bow, undertook the secretaryship. At his own expense he had already employed a man named Wheeler to gather evidence of abuses. Although resources were meagre, severely limiting the diffusion of literature, the Society became a force to be reckoned with in the area round Smithfield. In its first year it brought nearly 150 prosecutions.” These details that Turner has jotted down are based on Arthur Moss’ (1961) history of the RSPCA, Valiant Crusade.

1.22 Major C. W. Hume

Major C. W. Hume’s (1957:1) study The Status of Animals in the Christian Religion was not intended to be a work of history. Nevertheless, C. W. Hume did look back at aspects of the Christian tradition noting which theologians contributed helpful and unhelpful understandings about the status of animals. At the start of his book C. W. Hume mentions Broome (the highlighted text relates to the discussion of another author’s “borrowing” of material below):

“The founder and first secretary of the R.S.P.C.A. was an Anglican priest, the Rev. Arthur Broome, who gave up his living in order to reform the treatment of animals. Owing to the apathy of the public he was soon in prison for the Society’s debts, from which discouraging situation he was rescued by the generosity of a Jew and of a jovial Irish duellist and humanitarian, Richard Martin.”

1.23 Gerald Carson 

Gerald Carson’s (1972:53-54) popular chronicle on the history of cruelty and kindness to animals refers to Broome just twice:

“In 1824, then, a small group of persons of good will toward animals, under the leadership of the Reverend Arthur Broome and including “Humanity Dick” Martin, of course, and among others William Wilberforce, the philanthropist who had worked successfully for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, gathered at Old Slaughter’s Coffee-House in Saint Martin’s Lane, famous then as a resort of painters and sculptors. Out of this assembly came the SPCA, the first organized effort to make the new animal defense law effective and to work for its improvement when experience indicated that changes were needed … The first years were difficult. At one time the Honorable Secretary of the SPCA, the Reverend Broome, was thrown into debtor’s prison because the society could not meet its obligations, which the most recent historian of the RSPCA describes as “a most unfortunate position for a clergyman of the Church of England.”

Carson correctly footnotes his quotation about Broome’s “most unfortunate position” from Arthur Moss (1961:25).

1.24 Lewis Regenstein

Now compare both the extract above from C. W. Hume (1957), and Carson’s quotation (1972) with the short paragraph from the next author, Lewis Regenstein (1991).

Replenish the Earth is subtitled A History of Organized Religion’s Treatment of Animals and Nature–Including the Bible’s Message of Conservation and Kindness toward Animals. The author Lewis Regenstein has been a noted figure in the USA for his activism on animal and ecological issues, and for his interest in fostering inter-faith approaches to these questions.

Regenstein is not a professional historian and his book was written for a mass-market audience. While keeping that fact in mind, it is nonetheless curious that for a book that is concerned with giving an account from both past and present on the attitudes and responses of organised religions to animal questions that he only refers to Broome in this short paragraph (1991:94):

“The founder and first secretary of the R.S.P.C.A.–the oldest animal protection organization in existence–was an Anglican priest, the Reverend Arthur Broome. He devoted his full time to helping animals, and, as a result of the public’s apathy, was imprisoned for his and the society’s debts–a singular distinction for a clergyman of the Church of England!”

Notice how verbally similar Regenstein’s remarks are to those of Carson’s quotation from Moss? In that paragraph Regenstein does not supply a footnote but in a subsequent paragraph refers to Gerald Carson and E. S. Turner as his sources on the story of the RSPCA. His comments about Broome’s ignominious plight bear close verbal resemblances to Carson. Similarly there are enough verbal similarities between C. W. Hume’s passage written in 1957 and what Regenstein is passing off as his own words.

At least Carson supplied a reference for his quote. The original comment about Broome’s plight is in Moss (1961:25). By the time Regenstein makes the point about Broome, the information as he presents it is derivative to the point of being third-hand, and the paragraph is undocumented even though he has quite clearly relied on Carson and C. W. Hume.

As I will show in a forthcoming separate book review of Replenish the Earth, the quality of Regenstein’s work is at times very poor particularly in the manner in which he interprets and represents some sources that he uses (often being at odds with what the author originally intended). I have noted in another post that he is among a host of people who have failed to investigate original sources with respect to a prayer that is attributed to St Basil of the fourth century but which was actually a prayer written and published by the liberal Baptist theologian Walter Rauschenbusch in 1910.

*****

1.3 Rod Preece’s Scholarship

Rod Preece is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Wilfred Laurier University, and has been an active leader in the SPCA in Ontario, Canada. The corpus of Preece’s work, which is generally very engaging, is curiously lop-sided in terms of recognising Arthur Broome. Three of Preece’s earliest works (1993;1999; Preece & Fraser 2000) fail to refer to Broome when the discussion alludes to the founding of the SPCA in 1824.

It is particularly peculiar that Preece (1999:144) omits Broome while at the same time he refers quite warmly to “Christian reforming members of the establishment” who spearheaded efforts to oppose cruelty to animals, such as Richard Martin, William Wilberforce and Sir James Mackintosh.

In two other publications Preece (2002: 223; 2008:263) does mention Broome but in each case it is just a passing reference in one sentence. As Preece has often called into question the sweeping negative judgments made against Christianity concerning the status and treatment of animals, I am unsure as to why he has not written more about Broome. Undoubtedly, many readers might expect that as Preece has been intimately involved in a “sister” organisation in Canada, that when writing about the creation of England’s RSPCA that he might have had a lot more to say about its founder.

*****

1.4 Charles Magel’s Bibliographical Research

There is a different kind of problem that sometimes surfaces in other genres of literature concerning animals where Broome is mentioned. The problem is where an author acknowledges Broome was the founder of the SPCA but then incorrectly names someone else as the Society’s first honorary Secretary.

Charles Magel is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Minnesota State University, Moorhead. During his tenure he taught courses on the philosophy of animal rights and has commendably produced two different bibliographical reference volumes concerned with the subject of animal rights. Magel (1989: ix; 58) twice mentions that Arthur Broome was the founder of the RSPCA. However, Magel (1989:78) makes an incredible factual blunder in describing Lewis Gompertz who was the only Jewish member of the founding committee of the RSPCA. Magel says, “Gompertz, a brilliant inventor, first secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later became RSPCA), rescued it from financial disaster.” Broome was the first secretary and Gompertz was the second person to occupy the office of the Society’s secretary. [I note parenthetically that Roderick Nash in his The Rights of Nature repeats this same error when citing Gompertz‘ book. Nash states that Gompertz was the first secretary of the RSPCA]. Gompertz deserves to be honoured for his own role in the RSPCA and in animal issues but it is a disservice to both Broome and Gompertz to muddle the facts about who was the SPCA’s first honorary secretary!

It may be noted in passing that Magel (1981) produced an earlier bibliographical reference work on animal rights which included sources from ancient and pre-modern times. His entry for the Old Testament carried reference to just two passages as presumably being the main representative texts for attitudes about animals: Genesis 1:20-31 and Genesis 9:1-3. Given that there are more than 3,000 references to animals in the Bible, what Magel points to is far from helpful for any one trying to ascertain what one can discover about animals in the Old Testament or for that matter the entire Bible. Even just with his two passages listed, it is appalling that he omits to include from the allusion to Genesis 9, verses 8-17 which sets out a divine covenant made with all creation, all living creatures, (reiterated four times in the passage), and it was not just with Noah’s family (i.e. the covenant encompasses all living creatures and was not just for human benefit). Unfortunately, it is precisely these kinds of omissions that accrue in the literature on animal ethics and rights that leads many readers to infer incorrectly that both the Bible and Christianity are largely antipathetic towards animals.

*****

1.5 Popular Christian Texts

There are other kinds of books by Christian authors that deal with various aspects of animal issues in terms of ethics and practical action and are not written primarily as historical narratives. In these kinds of publications though some allusions to the past do crop up.

1.51 Tony Sargent

Tony Sargent is an English clergyman within the Evangelical tradition who is known for being a campaigner against Britain’s live export trade. His book carries an endorsement from the Evangelical theologian J. I. Packer. One might have expected that a fellow Evangelical would provide a decent sketch of Broome. However, in Sargent’s (1996) Animal Rights and Wrongs Broome is fleetingly mentioned in two sentences. Sargent (1996:188) states that Broome was the one who “took the initiative” to call the meeting together that founded the SPCA. Sargent then simply says that Broome had been influenced on animal issues by the late eighteenth century clergyman Humphry Primatt.

1.52 James Thompson

James Thompson is a controversial campaigner who is known in England as the “animal’s padre”. At times Thompson seems to be sawing off the theological limb upon which he is seated, such as in his unnecessarily negative interpretation of the apostle Paul’s theology. It is, after all, Paul who devotes great time in his writings to explaining the meaning and application of the Christ-event (death and resurrection). Paul did have a theology of the creation which included its full redemption and restoration (which encompasses animals) based on his understanding of the cosmic effect of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Leaving aside further criticism of this book for a future post, Thompson does draw positive attention to Broome. He refers to Broome as follows (1994:74):

“Meanwhile, within Britain, a group of people concerned for the plight of the animals gathered for an evening meeting in 1824. It was within a fashionable part of London’s west end. Their meeting had been convened by an unobtrusive and humble cleric who had chosen for himself to work in London’s east end! This vicar was the Reverend Arthur Broome, and the outcome of that meeting was the formation of an animal welfare society. It was later to be known worldwide as the RSPCA! Broome was to resign his post as Vicar of St. Mary’s, Bromley so as to give the whole of his life as a spokesman and fighter for the dumb creation. However, debts soon arose for which the poor fellow was thrust into prison. He may well have spent a lengthy stay in a primitive cell but for the intervention of a philanthropic Jew and a humanitarian lawyer who came to his rescue, paying his debts and securing his release.”

By way of clarification, it should be noted that Broome served at the church in Bromley-by-Bow (or Bromley-St. Leonard as it was known) in London’s east end. This church should not be confused with the district of Bromley in Kent (which also has an Anglican church) which is geographically situated to the south-east of central London.

1.53 Matthew Scully

Matthew Scully’s lay Roman Catholic call to take animal ethics seriously just lists Broome’s name in a short roll-call (2002: 15):

When did you last hear any Christian minister caution against cruelty to animals? It comes up about as often as graven images, even though animal welfare actually began, in both the United States and Britain, as the cause of nineteenth-century Christian reformers who founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and its American counterpart. Often they were the same people, such as William Wilberforce, Anglican priest Arthur Broome, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, behind the abolition of slavery and child labor.

1.54 Deborah Jones 

In her theological map-work for Roman Catholic theology about animals, Deborah Jones (2009: 118) just mentions Broome in a passing reference to the founding of the RSPCA:

“Cruelty is still prevalent, and the law needs to be monitored, so in 1824 the Anglican clergyman Arthur Broome founds a ‘Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (later to be given royal patronage by a very supportive Queen Victoria).”

1.55 Laura Hobgood-Oster

One could hope that a professor of religion and environment studies, and who is commendably very active as a Christian participant in animal rescue work might refer to Arthur Broome.

Unfortunately, Laura Hobgood-Oster (2010) passes over Broome in complete silence when writing on the establishment of the SPCA. Before she discusses the SPCA, Hobgood-Oster prefaces things with critical comments about the contribution of past Evangelical Christians to the animal protection movement (2010:77):

For a variety of complex historical reasons, Evangelicals in England contributed significantly to the discourse on the humane treatment of animals beginning in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps surprising to some Christians. The conclusions the Evangelicals drew about humanity’s relationship to animals were informed both by classism and, naturally from their perspective, a certainty that Christian culture was the only true and right way to live. As such, it would be an incomplete picture to remove issues of racism, classism, and sexism from these stages of development as a whole. Still, there are points about the situation of animals from their perspective that remain helpful in the ethical and moral consideration of blood sports.

It is unfortunate that in a book which is subtitled Unleashing Christianity’s Compassion for Animals that Hobgood-Oster introduces the contributions of past Evangelicals in a manner that is more likely to drive away today’s Evangelicals rather than endear them to her clarion call for action.

1.551 Evangelicals Caricatured?

One might honestly ask, why should it seem surprising to some Christians that Evangelicals have a heritage in the humane treatment of animals? It is very easy to type-cast the Evangelicals through current-day ideological lenses (and reacting against current media-based impressions of Evangelicals as right-wing political fanatics) without allowing the past Evangelicals to be understood on their own terms and in their own historical context. The US church historian Randall Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come is one of several publications published since the 1970s up to the present-time that offers a healthy corrective to the reductionist portrait of Evangelicals being some uniform socio-religious block of ultra-conservative supporters of the Republican Party.

The tendency to bracket Evangelicals and interpret their social action primarily in terms of class superiority and efforts to control the masses is not uncommon in the works of some historians. Of course that interpretation has all the hallmarks of Marxist thought. As might be noted in passing, Marxism owes a great debt to Christianity by borrowing and then secularising the biblical “peaceable kingdom” of Isaiah and Paul’s “redeemed creation” in its vision of the classless society. Ironically current-day Marxists like Slavoj Žižek who desperately want to revitalise and inspire the cause after the post-1989 collapse of the Iron Curtain have gone “back to the Bible” to consider the apostle Paul and his belief in the resurrection as a paradigmatic example of a revolutionary counter-cultural thinker in the Roman Empire!

Siobhan O’Sullivan’s (2007:83) doctoral dissertation carries forward in a footnote the class-theory Marxist analysis that earlier writers (e.g. Brian Harrison, Hilda Kean) have propounded:

It also seems clear that in the first half of the nineteenth century the British RSPCA was a quasi-evangelical organisation that viewed animal cruelty as the result of poor education.

While efforts to educate people to behave kindly toward animals was one aspect of the RSPCA’s early literary campaigns, it is rather simplistic and reductionist to typecast the Evangelicals along those lines. Cruelty was understood as arising not specifically from ignorance but from the broken spiritual state of humanity before God (i.e. human sin). Besides various published sermons that equated cruelty with sin, one need simply note the driving force behind the very title of Humphry Primatt’s (1776) Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals. Primatt’s book was reissued several times by Arthur Broome between 1822 and 1832. In going back to basics, sin is a spiritual problem of humans existing in fractured relationships with animals, the creation, one another and ultimately alienated from God. The essence of it is our propensity to self-centrism and to take whatever we consider the most “worthy” thing and worship it rather than lovingly worshipping God.

Cruelty to animals was thus viewed as a manifestation of this fundamentally broken spiritual state that affects all human beings.

1.5511 Evangelical Diversity

It should also be recalled that many people who gathered to listen to John Wesley and other itinerant preachers, in both large open air contexts and also in lots of smaller locales, were often socially marginalised, impoverished, mine-workers, manual labourers, and so on. Out of this itinerant preaching there came not just a revitalisation of existing congregations but actual conversions of people to faith who had life-changing experiences for the better.

Many of the nineteenth century Evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic were active in social reform movements including the abolition of slavery, child-labour, caring for orphans, addressing poverty, increasing literacy and education, prison reforms, temperance, the suffragettes, the formation of trade unions and workplace relations. Many abolitionists were deeply committed to animal issues, spanning anti-cruelty campaigns, anti-vivisection, and developing embryonic forms of animal theology.

If one imagines that today’s American Evangelicals are essentially synonymous with the political conservatism of the “tea-party movement”, that might sustain the “surprise” in the minds of some. However, what might be regarded as the real “surprise” is that so many are easily taken-in by both superficial media impressions and by such a reductionist understanding about the US Evangelical scene. US Evangelicals (and Evangelicals beyond the USA) are by no means that uniform or stereotypical with reference to politics and social ethics.

So that it is unhelpful and misleading to assume that because some Evangelicals are inclined to support the “tea-party agenda” and are unsympathetic toward animal issues, it must therefore be the case that most (if not all) Evangelicals today are like-minded. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Robert Booth Fowler, the political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, demonstrated that even before the Reagan era was in full swing that the US Evangelical world was brimming with political and ethical diversity.

During the mid-1990s, Fowler similarly demonstrated in The Greening of Protestant Thought, that a diversity of ethical stances could be discerned among Protestants and within US Evangelicals concerning the problems of ecology.

Hobgood-Oster’s clarion call to demonstratively care about animals will be lost on the part of Evangelicals who actually do have a passion about ethically relating to animals. Instead of encouraging or wooing Evangelicals to be enlisted in this ethical cause, the negative theory-laden interpretation of past Evangelicals creates an unnecessary stumbling-block.

Like Hilda Kean (see below), Hobgood-Oster is not entirely wrong about noting how some Evangelicals were enmeshed in England’s class-system in Wilberforce’s day. However, many who converted to faith after listening to Evangelical preachers came from the working classes. It is easy to find fault with the Evangelicals of the nineteenth century. However, if we were wearing their moccasins in their day, it is unlikely that any of us would have known any differently or acted very differently given the times and the circumstances.

However, it must also be said that the actions of Evangelicals in the nineteenth century cannot be explained just by noting their role in the British class-system. They do have to be comprehended on a much wider basis, which also means not neglecting the theological content that shaped their actions. Hobgood-Oster’s narrative carries forward a negative tone about them that it creates a very truncated portrait. As Shevelow (2008:219) very fairly observes:

Although they certainly were concerned with social control, the Evangelicals’ efforts against bullbaiting and other forms of cruelty also emerged from genuine concern both about the lives and souls of the poor, and about the great suffering of animals visible everywhere one went. Many Evangelicals genuinely believed in extending Christian charity to beasts for their own sake.

1.5512 Sharpe’s Advice 

Authors like Hobgood-Oster and Siobhan O’Sullivan would have much stronger and more helpful portraits of the past if they considered matters along the lines that Eric Sharpe observed in Understanding Religion.  Sharpe (1983: 16) said that “it cannot have escaped the notice of today’s educationalists that very many students no longer acknowledge the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a positive element in western society.” Sharpe recognised that all too-often people today make instant and dismissive judgments about past epochs that are little understood by those who scornfully dismiss them.

Sharpe insisted that undergraduate students must strive to genuinely understand history and religions on their own terms and in their own contexts before taking any further steps in critical analysis. He illustrated this with the reactions he often encountered among contemporary undergraduate students who had had some personal background in the Christian church:

Even the study of the Judaeo-Christian past does not absolve the student from the exercise of imaginative sympathy. When ordinary Christian students find it almost impossible to enter imaginatively into the Christianity of a hundred years ago, which they dismiss with a phrase such as ‘Victorian smugness’ or ‘imperialistic arrogance’, and decline to study more closely, is it not likely that the same difficulty will present itself magnified a thousandfold when the time comes to examine Christian origins or the Protestant reformation? One suspects in both these cases that what is being studied is less the first or the sixteenth century than the impression which each has left on the mind of the twentieth. (1983: 16-17).

1.552 Precursors to Broome and the Evangelical Animal Protection Movements of the Nineteenth Century: An Excursus

The first crucial point that Hobgood-Oster skips over in the discussion about Evangelicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is that they placed a high emphasis on the Bible’s revelatory authority. Any Evangelicals who injected themselves into animal protection causes of that era took the Bible seriously on the subject of animals.

From the Reformation onwards to the nineteenth century, there were various Protestant Christian authors (many of whom were esteemed by Evangelicals), who recognised that animals matter to God. Some looked at animals in light of the problem of evil and suffering and in light of Christ’s resurrection, others protested at the maltreatment of animals. Those who placed great emphasis on acting ethically and non-cruelly toward animals had biblical and theological reasons as the basis for it. This is just a small selection of some of the precursors to Arthur Broome.

1.5521 Reverend John Bradford (1510-1555)

Very few today seem to recall that the Anglican martyr Reverend John Bradford (1510-1555) upon being informed that he had been condemned to death, wrote to a Christian lady what he called his “swan-song”. Bradford perished along with others under the brief reign of Mary Tudor, and each time one of his cell-mates was hustled away to be burned at the stake he muttered, “there but for the grace of God goes John Bradford.”

Plenty of present-day Christians when observing the lapses and sinful dispositions of others murmur with a sigh “there but for the grace of God go I” without realising the original remark came from Bradford in the context of martyrdom.

A short time before Bradford was condemned to execution, he had been visited in prison by a Christian lady. When she visited she asked Bradford to explain what the apostle meant in Romans 8:19-22. This passage speaks of the entire creation groaning as it awaits the liberation and final redemption of both humans and of the  creation itself. Bradford now realised as he took up pen and ink that he had not properly explained himself to this lady when she had recently visited.

Bradford composed a letter (thirteen pages in its published form) explaining Paul’s teaching in this passage. He began the letter with greetings, and obliquely mentioned that he had been told some disturbing news. He stated that the letter is his swan-song. His message to the lady was along these lines: when God raises humanity from the dead he will also renew the whole creation and resurrect animals from the dead. As the resurrection is Christianity’s theological lynchpin that impacts all aspects of life and thought then what Bradford is doing in his letter is elevating animals to a very high level of importance in his theological reflections.

If, as the common secular chorus goes, Christian thought is largely inimicable to the status of animals, then Bradford’s swan-song clearly contradicts the stereotype. What an amazing letter to write when you’ve just been told that you will be burned at the stake! Just a few years after his martyrdom Bradford was honourably mentioned in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and that book was much beloved among Evangelicals of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bradford’s own writings were collected and republished in different editions during the nineteenth century.

If the present-day negative profile that some animal advocates espouse of Christians (past and present) as being speciesist and anthropocentric is accepted at face-value, with the concomitant implication that Christians are not really interested in animals, then what are we to make of John Bradford’s letter written immediately after he is told that he has been sentenced to death? Why would Bradford spend time writing his “swan-song” by expositing the meaning of Romans 8:19-22 and emphasise that animals are included in God’s redemption of the earth?

1.55211 Sir Richard Hill MP (1733-1808)

It is this very same passage in Romans 8 (specifically verse 22) that Bradford reflected on just prior to his martyrdom that would be used two hundred and forty-five years hence when the Evangelical reformer Sir Richard Hill MP (1733-1808) (1800:18) argued in favour of a Bill for the banning of bull-baiting.

While a few historians have taken notice of Hill’s formal speech supporting the Bill in parliament, not many have taken into account Hill’s small book which he published pseudonymously (as an “Old Member of Parliament”). It was an open letter addressed to William Windham MP (the chief naysayer of the anti-bull-baiting Bill).

Besides his appeal to Romans 8:22, Hill (1800:12-13) also appealed to “Solomon’s wisdom” as per Proverbs 12:10:

“I believe it is the first time that ever bull-baiting was recommended in the great assembly of the nation as a suitable recreation after the fatigue of reading a chapter in the Bible, for fear we should become righteous overmuch. But I think any one who has just cast his eye only upon this one single text, ‘the merciful man is merciful to his beast,’ would readily have concluded that Solomon was no great friend to bull-baiting.” (Emphasis is Hill’s)

At the time of the parliamentary debates there were wider social discourses surrounding bull-baiting. Hill’s “forgotten” publication included as an appendix letters from various Christians expressing revulsion at the inhumane treatment of bulls. Hill and his supporters clearly contradict the generalised stereotype that Evangelical Christians uphold speciesism.

1.5522 Reverend Thomas Hodges

It was the text of Proverbs 12:10 that most frequently, if not repetitively, served as the sermonic springboard for ethical reflection: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel” (KJV). This text was appealed to in a variety of publications in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus Reverend Thomas Hodges’ twin sermons of 1675 emphasised the goodness of God’s creative work in animals based on the doctrine of creation. He developed some moral boundaries about the humane treatment of animals based on Proverbs 12:10. Hodges also exposited on the resurrection of animals in these sermons. An eschatological perspective about animals clearly has some bearing on present-day human behaviour, and this kind of stream of thought which we saw in Bradford’s swan-song letter is also quite apparent in Hodges‘ sermons.

For additional thoughts on the resurrection and eschatology and the redeemed creation see my co-written The Cross Is Not Enough.

1.5523 Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676)

Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) was one of England’s significant figures in the history of jurisprudence. He served as a barrister, then judge, and as Lord Chief Justice of the King’s bench. He lived and worked during a tumultuous time in the seventeenth century spanning the reign of Charles I, Cromwell’s commonwealth, and the reign of Charles II.

In his young adult life Hale was exposed to Puritan teachings, and something of their morality remained with him throughout his life. In his mature and declining years, Hale held to a theological stance that had strong affinities with the Latitudinarian theology of certain Anglicans.

Hale wrote various works in both jurisprudence and theology. He wrote in an era when English law was understood as having theological roots. Hale is sometimes remembered in animal rights literature as being a benevolent voice concerning animals. This has a lot to do with his paper “The Great Audit, with the account of the Good Steward”.

Hale (1711 [1676]:223) said in the opening section of this essay:

“The Great Lord of the World hath placed the Children of men in this Earth as his Stewards; and according to the parable in Matthew 25. He delivers to every Person, his Talents, a Stock of Advantages or Opportunities: to some he commits more, to some less, to all some. This Stock is committed to every Person under a Trust or Charge.”

Further on Hale (1711:242) describes his attitude towards animals:

“I have always esteemed it as part of my duty, and it hath always been my practice to be merciful to beasts, Prov. 12.10. And upon the same account I have ever esteemed it a breach of trust, and have accordingly declined any cruelty to any of thy creatures, and as much as I might, prevented it in others, as a tyranny, inconsistent with the trust and stewardship that thou hast committed to me.”

Nobody seems to have bothered to reflect on Hale’s choice of vocabulary even though this passage has been cited by numerous authors. Hale’s choice of vocabulary concerning a “trust” should ring special bells for people who understand the legal concept of trusteeship (such as lawyers writing about animal rights). The notion of a trust in the English common law harkens back to the medieval “Statute of Uses”, which in turn came under legal restraint under Henry VIII. It also harkens back to Papal consent granted for the “use” of land by the order of Franciscans who like their founder St. Francis of Assisi had taken vows of poverty (which included no ownership of property like land). Lands assigned for monastic use by the Franciscans involved a form of trusteeship: the land was not theirs by right of ownership but merely there to use on behalf of others. After the reign of Henry VIII trusteeship and equity continued to evolve as aspects of law and much of modern-day economic life and estate-planning in probate revolves around the central concept of trusts and trusteeship.

The basic non-technical point to note here is that in trusteeship a trustee acts without self-interest and in good faith on behalf of another.

As Hale picks up both the words “trust” and “steward”, his understanding about the treatment of animals is firmly placed not just in legal thought but also in the legal metaphors that undergird biblical revelation. The Genesis narratives about creation and “human dominion” are framed in the notion of acting as trustees on behalf of God. Humans must act not in self-interest toward animals but rather in a role of good faith with an ultimate accounting to God for what we have done. Also as Hale’s essay begins with Jesus’ parable about the “Good Steward”, the whole concept of how one is to regard the creation and animals is thoroughly Christocentric. In other words, Christians are called into the path of their Saviour in humble servanthood and not as masters who wield power abusively and lord it over others.

What Hale takes as being the Genesis mandate to tend the earth in “dominion” is not what Peter Singer and Lynn White and animal rights advocates have construed to mean, as if it is carte blanche for humans to do as they please. Hale’s thought about humans as stewards of the earth was not an innovation in the history of Christian thought. It is easily traced back to the Eastern Orthodox father John Chrysostom.

However, Hale’s linking of theology with the legal concept of trusteeship and evoking the old and defunct office of the “steward” who served directly under the King of England does convey notions of moral responsibility and duties. Thus when speaking of stewardship and a moral trust concerning animals Hale is making a very important point in the history of ideas. It is not inconsistent with a tradition of biblical scholarship that interprets Genesis 1 precisely along the lines of a moral trust.

Philip Almond (1999: 34, 35) remarks:

“Sir Matthew Hale saw man as not only viceroy, the viceregent of almight God, but also as steward, bailiff, and farmer of the lower world … Matthew Hale was one seventeenth-century voice which counts against the influential view of Lynn White that the current ecological crisis is, at least in the main, the consequence of Western Christianity’s understanding of the creation, and more specifically ‘that no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes.'”

Much more needs to be said about Hale’s view but the above is sufficient for the present purpose of pointing to him as a precursor to Arthur Broome.

1.55231 Lord Erskine and Trusteeship

Hale’s juridical-theological vocabulary about humans looking after animals as trustees and stewards, was echoed in 1809 by Lord Erskine in the House of Lords. Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) was one of England’s most accomplished jurists, served as an MP for Portsmouth, and then held the highest office in England’s legal profession, that of Lord Chancellor.

Erskine was an eccentric animal lover as Hostettler (2010: 204) records:

“The first, a large Newfoundland dog called Phoss, was taught to sit upon a chair in Chambers with his paws placed before him on the table. Erskine would put an open book before him, a wig upon his head and one of his advocate’s bands around his neck. What his clients thought of this exhibition we do not know … He also had a pet goose which followed him about in his grounds, a macaw and a great many other dumb friends. He even had two special leeches which he believed had saved his life when he was ill and which he called his ‘bottle conjurors’. These he kept in a glass and, he said, he gave them fresh water every day and had formed a friendship with them.”

After the failure of the anti-bull-baiting bill of 1800, Erskine worked toward introducing a bill against animal cruelty in the House of Lords. Erskine’s speech in the House of Lords entailed appealing to the Bible as a source of authority on treating animals kindly and mercifully. Erskine’s speech was reproduced as one of the SPCA’s early pamphlets and also appeared in full as an appendix to David Mushet’s 1839 book. Hostettler notes (2010: 197):

“Yet man’s dominion over them was not given by God for their torture but as a moral trust.”

Once again the technical juridical language of trusteeship and equity crops up, and it is infused with a theological framework: humans have a moral trust to care and are held accountable for their actions before God. This is an aspect of legal history concerning animals that few animal rights lawyers today have bothered to recognise or to probe in light of the thought of such legal luminaries as Hale, Blackstone and Erskine. Nor have they realised its strong connection to a positive theology about animals.

1.5524 Bishop Joseph Butler

The Anglican bishop and apologist for faith Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) is well remembered for his apologetic writing against Deism in The Analogy of Religion. It is within that tome that Butler discussed the miracle of the resurrection of Christ, and challenged the scepticism of Deists. As the Deists were open to “natural theology”, Butler sought to engage their thinking about God’s revelation in nature. Like many early church fathers, Butler pointed to analogies from nature about the resurrection (like the caterpillar “dies” and is resurrected as the butterfly). His work involved much more than finding analogies from non-human creation, but also pondered the transformation of the human embryo into an adult. Butler also went beyond symbols and analogies in the case of animals, and did not hesitate to tout their resurrection in the future as an effect of Christ’s resurrection. Given the centrality of Christ’s resurrection it does make a difference then that theologians like Butler understood that animals will be reconciled to God and restored to life on a transformed earth (also see my co-written book The Cross Is Not Enough and the book-blog for more on the theology and practical effects of the resurrection on life in the here and now).

1.5525 James Granger and Charles Daubeny 

During the eighteenth century Anglican clergymen such as James Granger (1772), and Charles Daubeny (1799) published sermons denouncing cruelty to animals. Both Granger and Daubeny used Proverbs 12:10 as the biblical text on which their respective sermons hinged.

Granger expressed his disgust at the degree of abuse of animals in England in terms that are often repeated by later historians but without crediting Granger as the source. Granger (1772:15-16):

“It hath been observed, that there is no country upon the face of the whole earth, that is not totally sunk in barbarism, where this beast is so ill treated, as it is in our own hence England is proverbially called, ‘The Hell of Horses.’ Our humanity hath also, with great appearance of reason, been called into question by foreigners, on account of our barbarous customs of baiting and worrying animals, and especially that cruel and infamous sport still practised among us on Shrove-Tuesday.”

Granger is sometimes remembered in the annals of animal protection literature because his sermon was treated scornfully by parishioners. Granger indicated this in a two-page postscript to the book. It is very fair to critically assess Granger’s sermon as containing class-based rhetoric. He identified brutality toward animals among the lower classes and turned a blind-eye on the fox-hunting recreation of English aristocrats. Nevertheless, Granger’s work did put animal cruelty on the agenda as an ethical blight and despite the scorn heaped upon him by parishioners in two congregations where the sermon was preached, his book enjoyed the luxury of being republished in a second edition in 1772, and a third edition in 1774.

Charles Daubeny was an Anglican cleric who disagreed with the theological beliefs of Sir Richard Hill MP (mentioned above). Nevertheless, they set aside those differences and united in common cause over opposing cruelty to animals. Hill (1800:10) in his open letter to Windham drew attention to Daubeny’s sermon of 1799.

In Daubeny’s estimation unChristian attitudes about the abuse of animals were becoming a lamentable hallmark of the nation. Daubeny (1799:12) considered cruelty to animals to be “a growing evil” that had to be “counteracted.”  Daubeny (1799:12) remarked:

“Indeed a stronger proof of the low state to which Christianity is reduced in any country, cannot be drawn, than from the cruel disposition of its inhabitants. The spiritual man knows and feels this. He considers that all creatures, from man the appointed lord here below down to the meanest reptile that crawleth upon the earth, derive their existence from the same Fountain of Life and that the mercy of the Creator is over all his works. Grateful to his heavenly Father for the comforts, conveniences, and privileges, which fallen man is permitted to enjoy in this world; he considers the government of the creatures that has been committed to him, as a Trust, of which an account must one day be given.”

Daubeny in this passage reminds his audience that humans are fallen (suffer from the power, penalty and presence of sin in their lives). He insists that all life comes from God, which implies that humans do have moral duties to observe in relationship to animals. Daubeny amplifies this by specifically referring to the relationship that humans have with animals as being one of a “Trust” (which picks up a legal analogy that was used over a century beforehand by the jurist Sir Matthew Hale, and would be re-echoed a few years hence in the House of Lords by the jurist Lord Erskine; see the section above on both Hale and Erskine).

Daubeny links our duties as “trustees” to the divine Last Judgment where all humans will render an account to God for their lives and actions. Secular animal advocates might think this is all “ho-hum”. However Daubeny was actually elevating the issue about the human maltreatment of animals to a very high level of theology. By linking trusteeship to the Last Judgment whereby humans are held accountable for what they have done to God’s creatures, and by harking back to the doctrine of creation where all life is God’s good creative handiwork, Daubeny is delivering in essence a punchline similar to that of this blog: animals matter to God.

1.5526 Richard Dean

In his two volume work, Richard Dean (1767) was concerned with the twin theological problems of animal suffering and the problem of evil (theodicy), and with the resurrection of animals.

1.5527 Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778)

The Calvinist-Anglican preacher and hymnist Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778)  (author of the hymn “Rock of Ages”), also wrote about animals in several contexts. He wrote at length about the marvellous truths that we can learn from observing animals and the natural world. He also wrote an essay on original sin where he inferred from the book of Genesis that we must never maltreat animals. In another setting, Toplady was invited to a pub to participate in a public debate about cruelty to animals. He called a spade a spade: brutality to animals is sin and we must repent of it. We will face the Last Judgement where God will call us to account for such cruelty. He also asserted that God will raise animals from the dead.

1.5528 John Wesley

It is curious that Hobgood-Oster locates the Evangelical contribution to the humane treatment of animals as arising in the nineteenth century. Historians have customarily identified the trans-national movement of Evangelicals coinciding with revival movements and the “Great Awakening” of the eighteenth century with figures such as George Whitfield, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. There is sufficient evidence to show that some eighteenth century Evangelicals were concerned about animals (including the influential bible commentator Matthew Henry).

John Wesley, who was a vegetarian in his diet, was one spearhead figure in tackling the problems associated with animal cruelty and in holding to a theology about animals. His sermon “The Great Deliverance” exposited Romans 8, emphasising the resurrection of animals. Wesley also exposited on the new creation of Revelation 21:5 in which he expected the whole creation to be restored. Wesley also paid attention in his journal to the writings of John Hildrop (1682-1756) who also believed in the resurrection of animals and wrote in 1742 Free Thoughts Upon the Brute Creation.

*****

1.6 Biographies on Richard Martin/Official RSPCA Histories

 One of Broome’s confederates in the founding of the SPCA was the Irish-born lawyer-politician Richard Martin (alias “Humanity Dick”). Martin (1754-1834) was the framer and mover of the 1822 anti-cruelty to cattle Bill that passed into English law, and eventually that law would be amended in later decades as the sphere of concern widened to cover more species. Martin’s life and career has been the subject of two biographies in recent decades: Shevawn Lynam (1989) and Peter Phillips (2003). Lynam mentions Broome four times, and Phillips just twice. A much older and popular biographical account of Martin’s life was written by Wellesley Pain (1925), and Broome is mentioned five times.

Understandably, Broome receives somewhat better recognition in the three books that officially chronicle the history of England’s RSPCA: Arthur Moss’ (1961) Valiant Crusade, Edward Fairholme and Wellesley Pain (1934) A Century of Work for Animals, and Antony Brown’s (1974) Who Cares For Animals? Yet even these authors have overlooked information that was available to them had they taken the time to delve more deeply.

In his journalistic style Brown (1974:21) attempts to honour Broome by speaking of “his self-effacing efforts” to bring into existence “the first animal protection society in the world.” Brown (1974:17) correctly describes Broome as “the moving spirit among the founders” of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Here Brown echoes the exact words of E. Douglas Hume (1939: 34) who thirty-five years earlier had described Broome as “the moving spirit.”

“Sister” organisations of England’s RSPCA in New Zealand, the state of South Australia, and the state of Victoria, give passing recognition to Arthur Broome in their respective chronicles about how the RSPCA came to be established. Veronika Thornburrow’s (1993) The Compassionate Years writes the prelude to the history of New Zealand’s RSPCA by referring to its English “ancestor”. Thornburrow (1993:12) briefly mentions Broome’s aborted effort in 1822 to establish an SPCA organisation, and then again of his appointment in 1824 as the first secretary of the SPCA.

Wallace Budd’s (1988) Hear The Other Side chronicles the story of the RSPCA in South Australia. He correctly mentions Broome’s aborted efforts in 1822 to start the SPCA, and then of his success in establishing the SPCA in 1824. Budd (1988:13) describes Broome in very warm terms as being “persistent”, and that he was “well known as an active worker for social reform”, and was also “the most energetic of the founders.”

Barbara Pertzel’s (2006) For All Creatures chronicles in a somewhat tendentious manner the story of the RSPCA in the state of Victoria. In the book’s Introduction (2006:3) she refers to Richard Martin’s 1822 Act, and mentions the founding of the charity in 1824 that is known today as the RSPCA. Yet in referring to the foundation of the organisation in London she never mentions any of the founding figures, and that of course means that Arthur Broome receives no credit from her. This omission, however, might be partly “excused” on the grounds that in the foreword to the book Hugh Wirth does mention Wilberforce, Martin and Broome (2006: v). I have indicated elsewhere that some of Wirth’s paragraphs in the book’s foreword show close literary dependence on Antony Brown’s Who Cares For Animals?

*****

1.6 Academic Writings

Among the scholarly tomes and academic journal essays about the history of animal protection, it is curious that Broome is only twice referred to in Harriet Ritvo’s (1987) very valuable and important historical study The Animal Estate. Chien Hui-Li’s (2000) sympathetic discussion about the Christian tradition and its role in animal defence movements only mentions Broome in a single sentence.

It is very curious that in his important journal essay in the English Historical Review about the RSPCA that the historian Brian Harrison (1973) never once mentioned Broome.

On the other hand, Richard Ryder (1989) devotes three paragraphs to Broome in describing the formation and early years of the RSPCA. Ryder (1989: 90) positively says that Broome “became so important in the SPCA’s history.”

Hilda Kean (1998) only refers to Broome once in the main body of her book, although she does footnote his SPCA Founding Statement several times. Kean’s study was concerned, in part, with analysing the class-system motives behind some of the early animal reformers.

In her discussion of the founding of the SPCA she begins by mentioning that the founders’ meeting convened at Old Slaughter’s Coffee House but states incorrectly (1998:35):

 “The meeting was called by Thomas Fowell Buxton, MP for Weymouth in Dorset. Buxton, who married into the Quaker Gurney family, was a philanthropist who combined religious impulses with those of parliamentary reform.”

Buxton was certainly a founder member and was indeed an MP who was married into the Gurney family. He was a philanthropist, reformer, and an abolitionist. His book that exposed the slave-trade in Africa directly influenced David Livingstone to become a missionary. His sister-in-law was Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney) who is remembered for her reforming work in prisons.

However, Kean is wrong when she says that Buxton called for the meeting to create the SPCA. It was Arthur Broome who called for the meeting. Buxton was the chairman at the founders’ meeting, and continued to serve as chairman throughout subsequent meetings during 1824 (Fairholme & Pain, 1934: 54-57, 301).

Kean simply says of Broome (1998:36): “Constituting themselves as the new organization’s committee, the group went on to elect the Reverend Arthur Broome, an Anglican clergyman, as its first honorary secretary.”

Clifford Sherry (2009: 84) never mentions Broome at all in his brief paragraph describing the origins of the RSPCA.

Kathryn Shevelow (2008) refers to Broome on several pages in what must be regarded as a very readable and excellent study on the rise of the animal protection movement during the nineteenth century. Shevelow (2008: 268, 281) has given due credit to Broome noting that he “was a hopeful and determined man” and that his “self-sacrificing leadership” in establishing and supervising the embryonic SPCA is inspiring.

1.7 Andrew Linzey

I believe that among contemporary living authors that Andrew Linzey has endeavoured the most in various books and articles to accord Broome something of the recognition that is rightfully his due. In 1990 Linzey was clearly hoping to provide Broome with a suitable and lasting honour as Drew De Silver (1990: 60) makes clear:

“When Linzey is asked about his life’s ambition, he reaches once again into his briefcase and pulls out a prospectus for the Arthur Broome Centre for the Study of Christianity and Animals, a theological research center. Broome, he explains, was an Anglican clergyman who gave up his job as vicar of a London church to become the first–unpaid–secretary of the RSPCA. Broome ended up going to prison for the society’s debts and dying in obscurity. Linzey often refers to Broome to demonstrate that the attitude of Christianity toward animals is not all that bad. It is clear that he feels a certain kinship with the 19th-century priest.”

The institute that Linzey envisaged has come into being albeit with a somewhat different emphasis than just Christianity and Animals, and it is not named after Broome. Instead, it is named The Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

Linzey (1998) contributed a brief biographical article in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Elsewhere Linzey mentions Broome’s role in books such as Animal Theology, Animal Gospel, After Noah, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, and Why Animal Suffering Matters.

In Animal Gospel (1998:85) Linzey crisply says of Broome:

We are the descendants not only of a dream but also of a dreamer. It was a Christian minister,  Arthur Broome, who founded the RSPCA. He became its first Secretary. He gave up his London church to work full-time unpaid for the Society. He was the first person to instigate the system of anti-cruelty inspectors — paid for out of his own pocket. He was the first person who went to prison for the Society’s debts. We do well to recognise the value of dreams and the courage of dreamers.

Linzey (1998: 96), in his short biographical article on Broome, is correct in saying that at the very end of his life Broome “died in obscurity”. He died almost out of sight and out of mind, and was not officially remembered by the RSPCA in its minutes of meetings at the time of his death.

2. RAISING THE CURTAIN ON FORGOTTEN FACTS

I want to point to some details that I have hunted down and that have simply been overlooked in the literature about the history of animal protection where Broome is concerned. Four main points concern: (a) his service as a cleric, (b) his writings, (c) his marriage/family (including money), and (d) the “cold case” concerning Broome’s death.

2.1 Broome’s Clerical career

If one is to have a full-orbed understanding of the man, then Broome’s worldview and his career as a cleric must be explored. Kramer (2004) sketches the following details about Broome’s clerical career:

“Broome was a deacon in 1802 and a priest the following year by the bishop of London. Between 1812 and 1815 he held the curacy at the Kent parishes of Brook and Hinxhill and, from 1816 to 1818, at Cliffe-at-Hoo. In June 1820 he was appointed vicar of St Mary’s-Bromley-St Leonard in Middlesex (later Bromley by Bow), but resigned in 1824, presumably to concentrate on his duties as secretary of the newly formed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).”

Kramer unfortunately did not indicate which parish Broome was first appointed to serve as a minister of word and sacrament (it was in Roydon, Essex see below).

2.11 Origins of Broome’s Ethical Passion for Animals

Kramer (2004) also remarks, “It is not known how Broome developed his concern for the treatment of animals.” After stating this Kramer does go on to refer to the SPCA’s first prospectus that Broome wrote in 1824, and also to his annotated version of Humphry Primatt’s book as she attempts to describe Broome’s views about animals. However, her introductory sentence about not knowing how Broome “developed his concern” is a tad weak.

My excursus above citing examples (which are by no means exhaustive) concerning Christian writings about animals spanning the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries must be taken into consideration. The material provides a theological backdrop and historical context through which one can better appreciate Broome’s own contributions.

Most of the theological and moral discourses of Anglican clergy, the contributions of Puritans, the literary flourishes in the periodical The Idler by Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) the Christian lexicographer opposing vivisection, the reflections of the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) on opposing cruelty and teaching children at a young age not to be brutal, and the preachment of Evangelists such as John Wesley formed a stream of thought that circulated long before Broome’s student days at Balliol College. In other words, concerns about the abuse of animals, opposition to cock-fights, bull-baiting and so forth, were debated among educated Englishmen both prior to Broome’s life and then during his formative years as a child and adolescent.

[Image source: Bodleian Library

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bodleian20040124CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg]

It is possible that Broome may have observed acts of cruelty, possibly fox-hunts, stag-hunts and so on, during his childhood years which were spent living in Devon. At some point before the end of the eighteenth century, probably during his student-days at Balliol College, Broome started to develop a theologically-informed ethical conscience about the status and abuse of animals. He was a student from 1798 until his graduation in 1801. As a student he had access to the Bodleian library at Oxford University, which includes a substantial collection of theological literature.

It may also be the case that while studying at Balliol College that Broome picked up a nickname which somehow became identified as his “middle” name: Eugenius (“well-born”). Although Broome is described in his social status as being a “gentleman” in the records of Balliol, he was not an aristocrat and so not exactly “well-born” according to the English class-system. If it was his given name at birth or at christening it is remotely possible that the name could evoke Flavius Eugenius who was a Christian usurper of the Emperor Theodosius, the seventh-century Catholic bishop Eugenius I, or even various Popes named Eugenius/Eugene. Or, possibly he shone among his class-mates and in a word-play they dubbed and nicknamed him “you genius’ (Eugenius).

Broome may very well have come across some of the theological literature concerning animals at Oxford, such as Humphry Primatt’s Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty.

It must be recalled that it was in Oxfordshire that James Granger preached his reviled sermon opposing cruelty to animals in 1772. A century earlier Reverend Thomas Hodges had preached at Oxford University in 1675 on animals as being part of God’s good creation and Proverbs 12:10 demarcates as sin brutality to animals. Let it be recalled that Reverend Charles Daubeny’s sermon opposing cruelty to animals was preached and published in Bath in 1799. Perhaps Broome was also familiar with Daubeny’s sermon.

The end-of-the-century year of 1800 witnessed the first parliamentary debates over opposing bull-baiting. The effort to push through a Bill preventing bull-baiting was not restricted to a few political speeches in the House of Commons. Richard Hill’s (1800:22) open letter to Windham mentions signed petitions from the public supporting the anti-bull-baiting Bill.

The highly public discourses from both sides over bull-baiting could scarcely have escaped Broome’s attention, especially as both newspapers and periodicals carried articles and correspondence on the topic.

2.12 Broome’s First Animal Sermon

Broome’s first published foray into the ethical arena on behalf of animals occurred in 1801 with the anonymous publication of his short sermon, Unjustifiableness of Cruelty to the Brute Creation. It is highly probable that Broome produced his sermon in the wake of the failed anti-bull-baiting Bill.

Broome expanded and re-release the sermon in 1824 (for the later version click here). The text of the 1801 version of the sermon reads:

The wise man calls upon us to “open our mouths.”  The “dumb,” in whose cause we are required to do this, are the unhappy victims of their lawless cruelty and oppression; wretches, who have no kind advocate to plead in behalf of their invaded rights; no helping hand to procure for them redress from their furious assailants; no friend to truth, ready, or willing, to expose the cunning devices wherewith they have been entrapped.—Well may they be called “dumb,” since their tongues can be of no avail to them, when silenced by the imperiousness of wealth, the dread of irritating, by a vain appeal to justice, those under whose hands they have already groaned, to still further acts of violence, and their utter inability to baffle the false gloss with which the vile schemes of their adversaries have deluded them.

What they have it not in their power to utter for themselves, justice is ever ready to proclaim for them. By acts of cruelty, or an unfeeling inattention to the relief of their wants and distresses, we violate that branch of it which is distinguished by the endearing title of Mercy and Compassion; we debase our nature by betraying a savageness of disposition, that sinks us below a level with the placid and gentle race over which we unwarrantably tyrannise.

But, can we conceive it to be allowable for us wantonly to sacrifice quiet and harmless reptiles, merely because the shape and figure which it has pleased the God of Nature to stamp upon them, are loathsome in our eyes? The “bloated toad,” the “slimy snail,” and “unsightly beetle,” have not all these, their feelings, as we have ours? Are they not the work of the same Almighty hand by which we likewise were framed? And are not their lives entitled to preservation, and freedom from misery, equally with our own?

Let us “open our mouths” for those “dumb,” but significant and friendly clients: let us make up, by every plea which we can urge in their favour, what their own tongues are unable to express: let the wailings and moans, with which they implore our assistance, operate as the strongest arguments on our feeling, commiserating minds. Oh! let us not be “dumb” ourselves, but loud in their defence.

2.121 Theology of the Sermon

The sermon contains some interesting kernels of theology for a newly graduated student aged about twenty-two. As is to be expected in a sermon, the launching point is the Bible. Broome begins by drawing on Proverbs 31:8 which in the KJV reads, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.”  As the biblical text refers to those who are unable to speak on their own behalf, Broome makes the link from the text to the pressing ethical need in his day to speak up on behalf of animals who obviously cannot plead their own cause.

Broome sees the maltreatment of animals ensuing as a matter beyond the control of the legal system. In other words, there was no legal remedy or restraints on such unbridled behaviour. As the doctrine of creation meant that humans were to be living in harmonious interdependent relationships and not autonomous without God or one another, acts of brutality toward animals represents a spiritual perversion of truth and is a manifestation of sin and alienation from God, each other and from the whole creation.

It is interesting that Broome saw fit to circumvent criticisms about caring for even seemingly insignificant creatures that might appear anything but physically winsome. Broome cuts out the ground underneath the attitude that would disregard creatures that seem ugly by stressing in his rhetorical questions that even these creatures are sentient and just like us are the handiwork of the one God: “Are they not the work of the same Almighty hand by which we likewise were framed? And are not their lives entitled to preservation, and freedom from misery, equally with our own?” For Broome the doctrine of creation provides solidarity for animals and humans to co-exist, and the “rights” of both the Creator and the creature trump any notion that one is free to whimsically rid the world of insignificant or ugly looking creatures.

Humans who relish in brutality in effect become in the economy of Broome’s theology less-than-human: “we debase our nature by betraying a savageness of disposition.” Broome also sees the loss of mercy and compassion in thoughtless acts of neglect (such as attending to an animal’s needs, presumably water, food and rest). The very notions of mercy and compassion are rooted in the very nature and character of God, and exemplified in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Thus to be bereft of mercy and compassion a human ceases to resemble the very Creator who gave life to all.

Notice that Broome also refers to animals as being bereft of any “advocate” who will speak up on their behalf. He appeals therefore for people to rise up and speak out as advocates for animals. There is a double-allusion here in Broome’s chosen vocabulary. A lawyer in court is an advocate or pleader on behalf of the defendant, and so Broome is using a legal analogy to appeal to Christians to become advocates on behalf of animals. What is also alluded to here is an important biblical reminder for Christians who heard or read Broome’s sermon: namely that Jesus Christ as Saviour of the world is also our “advocate” before God: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1 KJV).

2.122 Theology and Rights

Broome carries forward the legal analogy of the advocate by saying that the animals have no “advocate to plead in behalf of their invaded rights“. Here Broome use the vocabulary of “rights” and specifically links acts of cruelty to a human disregard for the animal’s “rights”. It might be thought by some that Broome’s use of the vocabulary of “rights” must necessarily reflect dependence upon secular political thinking of the sceptic Thomas Paine, the philosophes of the French Revolution of 1789, and of the utilitarian lawyer Jeremy Bentham. While the vocabulary of “rights” was assuredly in common currency by the end of the eighteenth century, the notion of rights preceded these secular thinkers.

2.1221 Natural Rights/Natural Law Tradition

There is the “natural rights” tradition which was expressed by Stoics such as the Roman lawyer Cicero. The Justinian Code, which took shape in the sixth century, gave some expression to the natural law tradition and reframed within a Christianised ethos. The scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas saw the natural law as grounded in the creation, and to a limited extent both Luther and Calvin acknowledged there were some universal principles of morality written on the human heart. (It might be noted in passing that Jeremy Bentham rejected natural rights and supplanted that with the idea of rights conferred by the state. Bentham of course mistakenly assumed that his own conservative English social values correlated to rights and to what could be calculated as utilitarian “good”).

2.12211 Magna Carta and Theology

The notion of civil rights in the English and Commonwealth common-law system harkens back to the Magna Carta of 1215. John C. H. Wu (1959: 69-70), who once served as the chief justice in Shanghai, remarked about the theological influence on the Magna Carta:

“I cannot dismiss the Magna Carta without mention of Cardinal Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was actually the soul of the whole movement. To me it is not without significance that the father of the Magna Carta was also the author of the magnificent hymn to the Holy Ghost, Veni Sancte Spiritus. The same Spirit that inspired that hymn motivated and energeised on a lower plane, the movement which was crowned by the Magna Carta; and I think that the same Spirit has enlivened the common law by breathing into it the liberalizing influence of natural justice and equity.”

2.12111 John Locke 

Another source for thinking about rights within a theological framework is the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Locke was raised by Puritan parents in the seventeenth century and thus had a strong grounding in biblical thought. He took three degrees at Oxford (one was in medicine), and is well remembered for his philosophical work on social contract theory, philosophy of limited government, empiricist epistemology, and the theory of mind.

Locke also wrote a work of apologetics as the Deist controversy began to rumble, The Reasonableness of Christianity. His understanding of the doctrine of Christ did shift from a strictly orthodox position during his later life. Nevertheless, his thinking was profoundly shaped by theology as much as by being an empirical philosopher. His work on inalienable rights represents an outworking of his faith.

John Locke spoke of inalienable rights to “life, liberty and property”, which would metamorphose a century later in the American Declaration of Independence to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Locke’s understanding of limited government and of inalienable rights grows out of a theological cradle.

Although Locke (1889 [1693]: 100-101) did not speak about “animal rights”, however in his view of the theory of education he did remark about cruelty and compassion:

One thing I have frequently observed in Children, that when they have got Possession of any poor Creature, they are apt to use it ill: They often torment and treat very roughly young Birds, Butterflies, and such other poor Animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of Pleasure. This, I think, should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such Cruelty, they should be taught the contray Usage. For the Custom of tormenting and killing of Beasts, will, by Degrees,  harden their Minds even towards Men; and they who delight in the Suffering and Destruction of inferior Creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our Practice takes notice of this in the Exclusion of Butchers from Juries of Life and Death.  Children should from the beginning be bred up in an Abhorrence of killing or tormenting  any living Creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy anything, unless it be for the Preservation or Advantage of some other that is nobler. (Emphasis is Locke’s).

2.121111 Blackstone on Wild Animals’ “Rights” To “Property”

Most law-students and lawyers will nod their heads when the name Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) is mentioned. However, apart from occasional quoted excerpts found in secondary sources, there are very few today who seem to have read his book Commentaries on the Laws of England. In that work Blackstone sought to correlate the common law tradition with biblical foundations.

Some animal rights advocates will more likely to have read about Blackstone on the grape-vine, most probably as filtered through the unsympathetic lens of Peter Singer’s books, the legal textbooks of American lawyers Steven Wise and Gary Francione, or via Jeremy Bentham’s critique of Blackstone.

As Dorothy Sayers once remarked in another context, “any stigma will do to beat a dogma.” (Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? and other Essays in Popular Theology, London: Religious Book Club, 1947, p 21). It is possible then that something in Blackstone has been overlooked by his later critics.

While I am not here to defend every word of Blackstone, there is room for calling into question the overly negative view that abounds about him by those who haven’t even read his book. As animals are regarded in the common law (and in other legal systems worldwide) as property, Blackstone’s arguments about property rights and human dominion over the earth are seen as the ideological entrenchment for the oppression of animals. The first passage which slips off the radar screen concerns Blackstone’s (1851 Book 2: 3) analogy of how ancient humans made claims to owning a space that they inhabited by looking at the behaviour of undomesticated animals:

In the case of habitations in particular, it was natural to observe, that even the brute creation, to whom everything else was in common, maintained a kind of permanent property in their dwellings, especially for the protection of their young; that the birds of the air had nests, and the beasts of the field had caverns, the invasion of which they esteemed a very flagrant injustice, and would sacrifice their lives to preserve them.

In this passage Blackstone intimates that undomesticated animals have a vested ownership in habitats, which if he had reflected on further had intriguing possibilities for the common law tradition to have acknowledged that animals have “rights” to “own property” and that their vested interests in sharing in the use of natural resources is something that could be codified in statutes to compel humans to respect those interests or “rights”.

The other passage is where Blackstone (337) describes the role of stewards as being a “species of servants, if they may be so called, being rather in a superior, a ministerial, capacity.” A steward stands in the place of another person without seeking personal gain or privilege but serves another. It is this notion of a steward who exercises a form of trusteeship that is found in Sir Matthew Hale’s writings and echoed by Lord Erskine. This very notion of stewardship is grounded in the notion of Christ as servant, and correlates to the trust vested in humans in the Book of Genesis to tend the creation and to look after animals. It also echoes Jesus’ parable about the “Good Steward”.

These notions that undomesticated creatures might have “natural rights” over a habitation, and the notion of a steward or Christ-like servant stand in the theological background in which Broome lived and thought.

2.2 Broome as Parish Priest

In 1801, Broome was not yet officially ordained to the Anglican ministry but would have been in the processes of being reviewed as a candidate for ordination. Nevertheless he published a sermon that he must have delivered before being ordained as a deacon. His attention to the animal cause would have been further invigorated later that decade in 1809-1810 with the legislative efforts of Lord Erskine to pass an anti-cruelty Bill.

Broome was ordained as a deacon by the Bishop of London Beilby Porteous on 21 November 1802. This coincided with his first official parish appointment at St Peter’s church in the village of Roydon in Essex. He was then ordained as a priest on 18 December 1803 again by Bishop Porteous. It is not altogether clear how long Broome served as a priest in Roydon. However, living there he would doubtless have been cognisant of the fact that stag-hunting was an aristocratic past-time (see Styles 1839: 36-37 for his excerpt of an account from 1832 about “Essex Stag Hounds”. Notice also here that Styles’ prize-winning book pointed the finger at aristocrats on hunting).

While Broome obviously thought deeply about a theological ethic for animals, he was also a shepherd of human souls in the parishes in which he served.

[St. Peter’s church Roydon Essex. Image source:http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/172065]

The next trace of Broome serving in a parish takes us to the year 1812. For a period of three years Broome served as the curate at St. Mary’s church in the village of Brook, Kent and also at St. Mary’s church in the hamlet of Hinxhill, Kent. It is possibly during this period that he studied for his MA (or possibly that happened in between his time at Roydon and then in Kent).

On 6 March 1816 he was appointed as curate at Cliffe at Hoo in Kent on a stipend of one hundred pounds per annum. At this time William Howley was the Bishop of London. Broome served as the curate at St. Helen’s church, Cliffe-at-Hoo, Kent until 1818.

On 23 April 1819 Broome was initially appointed as a stipendiary curate at Bromley-St Leonard on just eighty pounds. Broome was then was appointed perpetual curate of that church on 6 June 1820. At this church, situated in what is London’s east end, Broome evidently worked very hard to serve the parishioners. This brought him into contact with the warehouse workers employed by the East India Company. Margaret Makepeace (2010:75), the archivist for the India Office Records at the British Library, has noted:

“The Reverend Arthur Broome of the parish of Bromley St Leonard, Middlesex wrote to the Court in December 1822 asking for help in funding a third divine service on Sundays. An extra service was needed because of an increase in the local population which included many Company labourers. The Court expressed interest in this ‘laudable’ plan, believing that it would be of benefit to a considerable number of Company warehouse employees.”

When Makepeace refers to the “court” she means the court of directors of the company. The need to have a third parish service sponsored surely speaks of Broome as an assiduous priest dedicated to being a shepherd of souls, particularly those in the working classes where he was situated.

[Image source: http://www.kingsleyhall.co.uk/bromleybybow.htm]

2.3 Broome as Author

Nothing seems to have been said about his book (1815; 2d ed 1817) concerning two controversial Anglican churchmen of the seventeenth century Thomas Fuller and Robert South. Nor has anyone joined the dots from that book over to the fellow founding figure of the SPCA Basil Montagu. As an author Basil Montagu also wrote about Thomas Fuller. Thus Broome and Montagu shared parallel interests in aspects of English church history, as well as being fellow-travellers in establishing the SPCA in 1824.

Although the website Animal Rights History has reproduced the text of Broome’s 1801 short sermon about opposing animal cruelty nobody seems to have bothered to discuss it, or in its subsequent reprinted version in 1824.

2.4 Broome’s Marriage in 1817

I have yet to come across any discussion of the fact that Broome was married, and was the father of a daughter. Nobody appears to have taken notice of the fact that Broome’s wife was Anna Barne Trollope, a direct descendant of the third baronet Trollope and thus an older cousin to England’s famous novelist Anthony Trollope.

Authors have not only forgotten to do their genealogical homework but have also neglected to investigate probate cases that involved Anna Barne Broome (nee Trollope) after her husband’s death. Within the wider Trollope family there were several men who had served as clergy, including Anna Barne Broome’s grandfather the Rev. John Trollope, and the London-based curate Rev. Arthur Trollope who served in Cheapside and died 12 September 1848 (Cheapside is where SPCA co-founder Reverend George Avery Hatch served). One might reasonably infer that Arthur Broome and his wife Anna would have had social contact with the wider Trollope family.

There appears to be an uncharted trail waiting for an historian to track through, particularly to see if within the wider networks of descendants of the Trollopes there are any relevant documents or anecdotes concerning Broome and his wife and daughter.

2.5 “Cold Case” About Broome’s Death in 1837

There is something akin to a “cold case” surrounding Broome’s death. The “cold case” is not in terms of an unsolved crime a la CSI: Miami. However some mystery surrounds the circumstances in which Broome found himself at the time of his death.

Excerpt from Broome’s Death Certificate

It does appear that at the time of his death, that Broome’s wife and daughter were not living with him. The name of the informant of Broome’s death was Thomas Suffolk of 44 Bull Street, Birmingham (occupation: Victualler).

There are probably two major reasons why they were not by his side. The immediate problem was that his health was impaired by what was then an incurable and contagious disease: tuberculosis (or as his death certificate states, “consumption”). When Broome was alive approximately one in four people died in England from “consumption”. It would have affected his respiration, involved weight-loss, considerable aggravated coughing, night-sweats, chills and fever. How long he suffered from tuberculosis before he died is not known but it probably lasted for several months (or possibly longer).

The other major factor is that through a chain of events spanning the last thirteen years of his life, Arthur Broome went from being a clergyman to becoming the first secretary of the SPCA in 1824, and then by 1826 was a debtor incarcerated in the King’s Bench prison (as he was the guarantor of the SPCA’s unpaid debts). There is clearly an untold story here spanning the years from 1826-1837, which ends with his death as a pauper.

As will be noted below, Broome’s zealous commitment to the ethical cause on behalf of animals inadvertently brought severe financial burdens on himself and his family that eventually led to his dire circumstances of poverty. In some respects then it seems that Broome may have been estranged from his wife and daughter. Broome’s wife outlived him and sadly monies due to her from the estate of her deceased father and mother were forfeited to creditors.

Thus, Arthur Broome was very probably alone on 16 July 1837 when he succumbed to tuberculosis. It was exactly thirteen years and one month to the day when his brain-child the SPCA had been founded. Broome was living in such reduced circumstances that he was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in the church grounds of Birmingham Cathedral. Kraemer’s biographical article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does helpfully indicate that she checked the church’s parish records concerning his burial.

2.51 Why was Broome in Birmingham?

However, there are further lines of inquiry that should be pursued. The first line of inquiry concerns “why” Broome was living in Birmingham in 1837 when he died. Besides the medical problem of Broome’s tuberculosis which may have necessitated his moving away from large urban centres like London, there may be other factors at work.

Broome may have sought some solace and assistance from people in Birmingham who knew him. By this time some of the founder members of the SPCA had predeceased him: Richard Martin (6 January 1834), Sir James Mackintosh (30 May 1832), William Wilberforce (29 July 1833), and Reverend George Avery Hatch (15 June 1837). It appears that after 1832 until his death in 1837 that the memory of Broome was receding among those who carried on the work of the SPCA.

One immediate and unanswered question is this: What kinds of impediments may have prevented Broome from resuming full-time pastoral duties as a stipendiary or perpetual curate after he ceased being the SPCA secretary in February 1828?

2.511 Did Broome Know the Cadburys?

So, perhaps Broome knew people in the Anglican churches near Birmingham? Given Broome’s career as a cleric and animal campaigner, and that among the co-founders of the SPCA was Thomas Fowell Buxton, it is remotely possible that Broome may also have been known to the Cadbury family (or other Quakers) of Birmingham.

Buxton, it will be recalled, had married into the Gurney family and they were Quakers. The Cadbury family of chocolate-making fame were Quakers (the Rowntree family of York and the Fry family of Bristol were also Quakers and chocolate-making entrepreneurs). The Cadbury’s some years after Broome’s life set up the village of Bourneville (nowadays part of the city of Birmingham) where their employees lived and where their factory was developed. Quakers such as the Cadburys, Rowntrees and Fry families were prominent in a range of social reforms, were noted for their involvement in the abolitionist cause, temperance movement, and in animal issues. It is by no means certain but there is a possibility that Broome may have had some contact with the Cadbury family in Birmingham.

2.52 Mystery of the Burial Certificate

Broome’s death had some bearing on later legal proceedings, which adds to the aura of mystery of it being like a “cold case” for researchers today. Nobody has bothered to explore where the following advertisment leads to in terms of any cases in probate. This notice appeared in The Law Times on 26 December 1848:

“Certificate of Burial of Rev. Arthur Broome, who died in July 1838, in the country, and who, a few months before his death was a minister to a chapel of ease, in some parish, probably distant from London. A Reward.”

Although this notice gives the wrong year for Broome’s death (1838, should be 1837), it leaves a few clues. According to this notice Broome was believed to be providing some pastoral care in a chapel of ease. A “chapel of ease” refers to a place where people could gather for a church service which was located in a parish but was not an actual church building. Such a chapel could serve people living in scattered hamlets or villages where access to the main parish church was not convenient. If Broome was indeed involved in some kind of pastoral ministry along those lines, he would not have had a stipend. He possibly subsisted day-by-day via donations from parishioners in return for his pastoral services. This suggests that further lines of inquiry ought to be pursued through the Church of England’s archives regarding any records about non-stipendiary clergy serving in chapels of ease during the 1830s.

The above advertisement specifically sought a burial certificate, which suggests that formal proof of both his interrment and death were required in a matter of probate. The offer of a reward for the certificate is also intriguing, possibly having something to do with creditors seeking disbursements for unpaid debts. It may have arisen directly out of deliberations made in the High Court of Chancery in November 1847 in the case of Trollope v. Routledge. Among the parties involved in this case was Anna Barne Broome (nee Trollope) the widow of Arthur Broome, Anna’s daughter, and Anna’s unmarried sister Frances Trollope (who subsequently died in Caen, France on 29 February 1872).

2.6 Simple Reflection about Research

I have been able to pinpoint some of these forgotten or omitted details without travelling 10,000 miles from Australia to England to investigate various library archives. I am surprised that authors, who have the tremendous advantage over me of living in England where archival materials are almost at their fingertips, have just not bothered to look and see if anything more can be said about Broome’s life and career.

3.  OMISSIONS LEAD TO INCOMPLETE PORTRAITS

As I have noted above from some selected publications, Broome is not completely forgotten. He is mentioned in passing because of his role as the founder and first Secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the RSPCA). Broome’s imprisonment for unpaid debts in 1826 is also usually noted.

3.1 E. Douglas Hume

E. Douglas Hume (1939: 34) spoke of Broome in terms of being “the moving spirit” at the meeting which brought the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals into existence. He seems, however, to be a bit on thin ice when he says that in order for the Society to operate that “Arthur Broome found himself forced to resign his living and consecrate his life to humane work” (1939: 34).

The chronological details indicate that on 13 February 1824 that Broome formally resigned as the “perpetual curate” at St. Mary’s church Bromley by Bow, and vacated the church on 27 February 1824. In the absence of any surviving correspondence from Broome to his diocesan bishop notifying and/or explaining his resignation, and likewise in the absence of any diaries or other family papers, it is an inference on Hume’s part that Broome was “forced to resign” by circumstances.

Now, when Broome resigned in February 1824, he had already started organising on an informal basis for an inspector to check out instances of animal cruelty at the nearby abbatoir. It is known, for example, that Broome paid a man out of his own purse to act as an inspector before the SPCA came into existence.

However, there is insufficient direct evidence to show that Broome “found himself forced to resign his living.” It was four months after his formal resignation as a curate that the meeting in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House convened on 16 June 1824 to create the SPCA.

3.2 James Turner

The American historian James Turner (1980:40) indicates that the efforts to organise the Society came from “the guiding hand of an obscure Anglican clergyman named Arthur Broome.” Turner notes that Broome became the Society’s first “honorary secretary”. However as Turner threads together a short narrative of events he describes Broome in critical and less than unflattering terms that (1980:40-41):

“the optimistic Broome resigned his living to devote full time to the work. This was not to be the last exhibition of his financial ineptitude; by early 1826 the Society was hopelessly in debt. In May the governing Committee eased Broome out.”

As with E. Douglas Hume’s comments so also with Turner, the chronology surrounding Broome’s resignation as a curate and the formation of the SPCA need to be kept in clear view. It may well be true that Broome let his heart runaway from his head in terms of the SPCA’s income and liabilities from June 1824 until early 1826. However, there are two facts about Broome and money that both Hume and Turner have evidently not been unaware of or not taken into consideration.

The first point concerns Broome’s edited and reissued version of Humphry Primatt’s book The Duty of Mercy. Primatt’s book was originally released in 1776. In 1822 Broome issued an abridged and annotated edition of Primatt’s book. It was indicated in the front-matter of this edition that proceeds of sales would go towards supporting an SPCA (even though the organisation had not been formally established). It will be recalled that 1822 is the year when Martin’s anti-cruelty to cattle Bill was passed in Parliament. There was also an abortive attempt on Broome’s part in 1822 to create the SPCA. Broome’s annotated version of Primatt’s book would go through several reprints in the 1820s and early 1830s. While book sales alone would have hardly justified Broome resigning as a curate, there must have been some income flowing through which Broome used for SPCA activities.

The second point is that Broome and his wife Anna had entered into a formal written agreement concerning funds that Anna was entitled to from the deceased estate of her father Thomas Trollope. On 1 October 1819 Ann Trollope (the widow of Thomas and the mother of Anna) signed an indenture of appointment that involved both “the Rev. Arthur Eugenius Broome and Anna Barne Broome, his wife” (De Gex and Smale, 1849: 662). Under this indenture, “Ann Trollope, being desirous of making some provision for her daughter, Anna Barne Broome, had, at the request of Arthur Eugenius Broome and Anna Barne Broome, determined and agreed, in exercise and execution of the power and authority to her given by the settlement, to give and appoint the sum of 1184l. 3s. 4d.” (De Gex and Smale, 1849: 663).

From a case heard in the High Court of Chancery Trollope v. Routledge 1847, it is evident that the above sum of money amounting to just over 1,184 pounds was set aside for Anna Barne Broome and Arthur Broome. It is evident from the court report of this case that although the funds were available, the Broomes did not take the funds out of the account where they were held. These funds that derived from the estate of Thomas Trollope and to which Anna was entitled were later applied to creditors in 1847.

Arthur Broome  had a fixed income as a curate in the Bromley-by-Bow parish some five months before he and his wife entered into the legal arrangement over the monies in Thomas Trollope’s estate. At the very least, Arthur Broome and his wife had access to over one thousand pounds from October 1819 onwards. The need for these funds early on in their marriage may have coincided with (a) the birth of their daughter and (b) the reduction in his stipend at Bromley (just 80 pounds per annum as compared to 100 pounds per annum in his curacy in Kent). It is possible that Broome may have intended to draw on the income generated by these invested funds to help support the work of the SPCA. This is surely a factor that Turner was unaware of when he made the critical comment that Broome had exhibited “financial ineptitude” upon resigning as a curate.

3.3. Moss, Fairholme and Pain

According to Arthur Moss (1961: 33) “Although the Rev. Arthur Broome was the founder of the Society, we know regrettably little about him. All that we have of him that is authentic is his very beautiful handwriting in the Minutes.”

Moss echoes the same point about limited sources that was made decades earlier by Edward Fairholme and Wellesley Pain (1934:50) in their centenary history of the RSPCA:

“Unfortunately, little but the bare records of his life can be discovered.”

In both the books by Moss and Fairholme and Pain, there is an outline of the “bare bones” of his interest in campaigning against cruelty to animals. However not much else is said about his career, his books or the fact that he was married and had a daughter.

However, after comparing the various short accounts of Arthur Broome’s life, I have found that there are discrepancies, and also some very curious omissions of detail. What has been overlooked by previous writers needs to be incorporated into a much broader and deeper understanding of the life and career of Arthur Broome, particularly when contemplating the question “why” he took a theological and ethical interest in animals. In effect, his Christian worldview cannot be divorced from any account of his advocacy for the ethical cause on behalf of animals.

4. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION 

According to Kramer (2004) Arthur Broome was born on 18 February 1779. He was the son of Thomas and Frances Broom, and at the age of six was christened on 28 August 1785 in Sidbury, Devon.

Foster (1888:169) carries an entry for Arthur Broom, son of Thomas, of Sidmouth, Devon, gentleman. Balliol College, matriculated 31 March 1798, aged 18; BA 1801. His age at matriculation suggests the year 1780 as his birth year but minor discrepancies like these concerning dates are not uncommon.His death certificate in July 1837 indicates that he was aged 58, which would tally with 1779 as the year of his birth.

Similarly the discrepancy between “Broome” and “Broom” is not an uncommon feature in these kinds of records.

It appears from the entry immediately following Arthur Broom, that he had an older brother named Thomas who was a graduate of Wadham College in 1799 aged 34.

During the second decade of the nineteenth century, Arthur Broome also obtained a Master of Arts degree. According to the Clergy of the Church of England Database  Broome held the MA at the time he was appointed (23 April 1819) as a Stipendiary Curate at Bromley by Bow St. Mary’s church in London’s East End district. However this database does not record from which University Broome graduated nor the year his degree was awarded.

Another confirmation of his degree is found in The Royal Kalendar: and Court and City Register for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies for the year 1822 (page 268).

4.1 Broome on Thomas Fuller & Robert South

There is a strong possibility that Arthur Broome obtained his master’s degree around 1815, and he may have been awarded the degree from Balliol College, Oxford.

The reason why he may have obtained the master’s degree at this time is that Broome had a book published in 1815: Selections from the Writings of Fuller and South, with Life and Character of Fuller (London 1815).

The book may very well have been based on a written dissertation for the master’s degree. A further clue to support this point comes from the description of the author as “Rev. Arthur Broome, late of Balliol College, Oxford.”

Broome’s book was concerned with two seventeenth century clergymen: Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) and Robert South (1634-1716).

Broome’s book evidently sold out and was of sufficient interest to warrant a revised and expanded edition being published two years later. As Broome was to be married in mid-1817, any income generated by the book’s re-release would have been an added boon.

The second edition bore the title, Selections from the Works of Fuller and South, with some account of the Lives and Writings of those Eminent Divines (London: Lackington & Co, 1817). It is one of the little curiosities of history that on the very day that Broome was married, the periodical New Monthly Magazine (Vol. VII, no. 40, May 1 , 1817, page 347) carried a brief notice about his book:

“Wit and wisdom, humour and piety, were never more happily united than in the genius and writings of the two great ornaments of the Church of England, whose works have contributed to the formation of this excellent manual. The ‘Holy State’ by Fuller, is a scarce folio, and the Sermons of South are not only very voluminous, but unequal in merit; we therefore think that the editor has acted judiciously in extracting from those valuable productions the principal beauties both for entertainment and edification. the selection is made with taste and judgment; and the biographical sketches prefixed have great merit.”

Similarly, the Gentleman’s Magazine (Vol. 87, May 1817, pages 436-437) also carried a review of Broome’s book. The reviewer stated that, “these ‘Selections’ from the Works of Fuller and South are well calculated to instruct by sound precept, and convince by powerful argument–at the same time that they amuse and delight by continual sallies of humour and wit.”

4.2 Lapses in Present-day Research Standards 

It is curious that both historians of the RSPCA and of animal issues of the Nineteenth century, as well as authors of biographical sketches on Broome never draw attention to the fact that he held an MA or that he was the author of the aforementioned book.

The text is specifically mentioned in bibliographical reference works such as William Thomas Lowndes, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature (London: William Pickering, 1834; page 757), and in S. Austin Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, and British and American Authors Living and Deceased from the earliest accounts to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (Vol. 1; Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 1858).

It is one of the problems associated with present-day information retrieval standards among many (not all) authors writing about animal ethics and animals in history that the classic bibliographical tools (the librarian’s tools of trade) are forgotten. As there is an over-reliance by non-academics in surfing Google (and the “belief” that “everything exists on the worldwide web”), it is not surprising that bibliographical research standards are far from lofty in the genre of popular works about animals.

5. MARRIAGE (The Trollope Family)

One peculiarity of several of the short biographical sketches about Arthur Broome is the absence of any mention of his wife. For example, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Kraemer (2004) states “He died, probably unmarried.” Kraemer’s statement about Broome’s marital status is incorrect.

I established via a search of the database England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1940, [available to subscribers at Ancestry.com], that on 1 May 1817 Arthur Broome married Anna Barne Trollope at St. Margaret’s Church of England, Rochester, Kent. [Also refer to the International Genealogical Index M165123]. One assumes that Broome met Anna Trollope in some social and/or pastoral context in Kent.

This detail receives further confirmation from an entry announcing marriages in The Monthly Magazine; or British Register, Volume 43 (Part 1, 1817), June 1, 1817 listing marriages (page 479):

At Rochester, the Rev. Arthur Broome to Miss Anna Barne Trollope.

The surname of Broome’s spouse “Trollope” ought to ring bells loud and clear. It points in the direction of further research horizons where, perhaps, more information might be uncovered concerning Arthur Broome’s family life.

5.1 Who Was Anna Barne Trollope?

Anna Barne Trollope was the daughter of Thomas Trollope (1757-1805) and Anna Steel (1771-1845). She was born on 6 August 1790 and christened on 23 September 1790 according to the parish registers for All Saints and St. John’s Church in Huntingdon. (England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906, available to subscribers at Ancestry.com).

She was the eldest child out of eight born in that marriage, and aside from her sister Frances Trollope (1791-1872) most of the others perished before attaining adulthood.

5.2 Baronet Trollope

Anna Barne Trollope is a descendant of the third baronet Trollope.

Around 1641 a Baronetcy was created in Casewick in the county of Lincoln with the first Baron being named Sir Thomas Trollope (1595-c.1655). The third Baronet of Casewick was Sir Thomas Trollope (1667-1729) and with his wife Susannah Trollope (nee Clobery) there were four children of the marriage:

• Anne Trollope
• Elizabeth Trollope
• Sir Thomas Trollope 4th baronet (1691-1784)
• Henry Trollope (1693-1763)

Henry Trollope (1693-1763) married Elizabeth Barne (1694-1761). One of their children was Reverend John Trollope (1728-1794) and he married Anne Guyon (died 1759). John and Anne had a son named Thomas Trollope (1757-1805). Thomas married Ann Steel and their first child was Anna Barne Trollope.

5.3 Cousin of Anthony Trollope

In light of the above notes about her ancestry, it is interesting to note that Anna Barne Trollope was a cousin of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) the novelist (Chronicles of Barsetshire, Phineas Finn etc). Anthony Trollope was the son of Thomas Anthony Trollope (1774-1835) and Frances Milton. Thomas Anthony Trollope was the son of Reverend Anthony Trollope (1737-1806). Reverend Trollope was the son of Sir Thomas Trollope the fourth baronet.

5.4 Anna Barne Trollope’s Father

Anna’s father Thomas Trollope (1757-1805) served in the Royal Marines. At the time of her birth he held the rank of Captain, and by the time of his death he had attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

On 29 September 1790 Thomas Trollope made his Last Will and Testament (available from the Public Record Office, The National Archives, reference: prob 11/1437). Notice that he made his Will six days after his daughter Anna was christened.

In the Will, Trollope made provision for his wife and for any children of his living at the time of his death (probate granted to his wife Ann Trollope [nee Steel] on 10 January 1806 at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury). The provision for a life estate for his wife with the remainder being disbursed between any adult children is part of the untold story involving Arthur Broome. When Broome’s mother-in-law died in 1845 she was a resident in St. Dinan France, which was a small town that many English people found amenable to settle in. It is quite likely that Anna Broome’s unmarried sister Frances Trollope may have joined her mother in France. When Frances Trollope died in 1872 she was a resident in Caen in Normandy.

It is also worth noting in passing that Thomas Adolphus Trollope (the older brother of the novelist Anthony Trollope) wrote a memoir-travelogue called A Summer in Brittany, which was published in 1840, and which includes a chapter about his stay in the town of Dinan which he described as an “English colony”. One may conjecture (although the book itself is silent) that he had contact with his cousin by marriage  Ann Trollope (nee Steel) the widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Trollope [the parents of Anna Barne Broome (nee Trollope)].

There is more to be said about Broome, which will be reserved and held over for Part Two.