HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 339 
Spectator, May 15, 1875 : Letter from Lady Burdette-Coutts, “Humanity in 
Schools — In Florence, the calculation has been made that 14,000 dogs have been 
cut up alive, exquisite, sentiment organs mangled, sometimes even deprived of 
the power of giving expression to nature’s agony ere they passed into the valley 
of death, the last list of victims including a poor little puppy.” 
London Times, August 2, 1875 : Advertisement, Society for the Abolition of 
Vivisection. “The nation is appealed to for immediate aid and subscriptions 
urgently needed to obtain evidence for the Royal Commission. Subscriptions 
may be sent to the National Provincial Bank of England.” 
Also two advertisements in this issue of Times, one for persons able to give 
testimony of the practice of dissection on living animals and the second offering 
20 pounds reward for obtaining conviction. 
March 2, 1876 : First meeting of Irish Antivivisection Society, honorary secre- 
tary, Miss A. M. Swifte. 
March 1876 : Scottish Society for Suppression of Vivisection founded. 
June 10, 1876: London Antivivisection Society inaugurated (offices, 180 
Brompton Road) . 
June 21, 1876: International Association for the Total Suppression of Vivisec- 
tion inaugurated (offices, 25 Cockspur Street). Later affiliated with Victoria 
Street Society. 
Testimony before the Second Royal Commission, July 24, 1907 : The Right Hon- 
orable Sir John Fletcher Moulton, member of the Privy Council, fellow of the 
Royal Society and lord justice of appeal testified : “I remember, and I think the 
chairman of the Commission probably remembers, how in the seventies the walls 
of London were placarded with a poster representing a rabbit in the process of 
being roasted alive. The poster was absolutely false, yet the placard was all 
over London.” 
London Times, August 10, 1876 : The following is a list of petitions presented 
to the House of Commons against vivisection during the present session up to 
August 1 ; in favor of total suppression 805, number of signatures 146,889 ; in 
favor of restriction 15 ; number of signatures 1,520. 
If further evidence of the antivivisection threat to research at that time in 
Great Britain is needed, it is found written into the British law of 1876 as fol- 
lows : “A prosecution under this act against a licensed person shall not be 
instituted except with the assent in writing of the Secretary of State.” 
The effective machinery needed to obtain legal action was, however, set into 
motion by Frances Power Cobbe through a master stroke of strategy. 
THE KEY STRATEGY 
To Frances Power Cobbe (1822 to 1907) is largely due the strategy which led 
to the appointment of the Royal Commission of 1875. Miss Cobbe, who never 
married, was a well-educated woman of means provided through an inheritance, 
supplemented by an income from her writings on various topics for several maga- 
zines and the Daily News. By meeting some of the right people, she was able to 
interest the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This was 
an old, very wealthy and powerful society, which included in its membership 
as honorary vice presidents many members of the House of Lords. Its activity 
had been directed toward such matters as obtaining legislation dealing with 
the treatment of horses and in the prevention of the use of dogs as dray animals. 
It had never concerned itself with the use of animals for research. To this 
society Miss Cobbe posed as a moderate. 
Miss Cobbe first succeeded in having this society bring suit, under existing 
law, in December 1874, in Norwich against the French scientist, Mr. Mangan, 
who gave a demonstration before the British Medical Association at their 
August meeting in Norwich of the effects of intravenous injections of alcohol and 
absinthe on two dogs. The action also included four physicians, who witnessed 
the demonstration. Mr. Mangan could not be served because he had returned to 
France, and the case against the four physicians was dismissed. The account 
of this action, however, reached the press. 
Meanwhile, Miss Cobbe prepared a memorial. It was directed not against 
suppression of vivisection but rather its restriction. With the support of the 
Countess of Minto and other influential persons, she succeeded in presenting this 
memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The 
name of Charles Darwin appeared as one of the signers of the memorial, but he is 
on record as not subscribing to it. The event, with its pomp, was duly recorded 
