British pet massacre

The British pet massacre was an event in 1939 in the United Kingdom where over 750,000 pets were killed in preparation for food shortages during World War II referred to as the September Holocaust. In London alone, during the first week of the Second World War around 400,000 companion animals, about 26% of all cats and dogs were killed, equivalent to more than six times the number of civilian deaths on the Home Front caused by enemy bombing during the entire war across the whole country. No bombs were to fall on the UK mainland until April 1940.

Similar events happen in Europe, for example, the killing of millions of farm animals in Denmark due to the lack of imported fodder for them.

Background

Advice to animal owners

A similar wave of panic had happened during the Munich Crisis in September 1938, prompting the commissioner of Metropolitan Police to urging the Home Office to establish rural homes for the voluntary accommodation of cats and dogs, the major animal charities of the day having be rebuffed by the government. The Home Office declined to do so, despite the societies' offer to cover cost, and companion animals were refused access to communal air-raid shelters.

In 1939, the British government formed the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee (NARPAC) to decide what to do with pets before the war broke out. The committee was worried that when the government would need to ration food, owners would decide to split their rations with their pets or leave the animals to starve. In response to that fear, NARPAC published a pamphlet titled "Advice to Animal Owners."

The pamphlet suggested moving pets from the big cities and into the countryside. It concluded with the statement that "If you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed." The pamphlet also contained an advertisement for a captive bolt pistol that could be used to humanely kill the animals. However, neither NARPAC nor the government made directives for it to happen, & the former NARPAC argued explicitly against the routine killing of animals.

Incident

When war was declared in 1939, many pet owners flocked to pet surgery clinics and animal homes to kill their pets. Many veterinarian groups such as the PDSA and the RSPCA were against these drastic measures, but their hospitals were still flooded with pet owners in the first few days. PDSA founder Maria Dickin reported: "Our technical officers called upon to perform this unhappy duty will never forget the tragedy of those days."

When London was bombed in September 1940, even more pet owners rushed to kill their pets. "People were worried about the threat of bombing and food shortages and felt it inappropriate to have the 'luxury' of a pet during wartime".

Opposition

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, against the trend, managed to feed and care for 145,000 dogs during the course of the war and provided a field in Ilford as a pet cemetery, "where about 500,000 animals were buried, many from the first week of the war". A famous opponent of pet culling was Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, a cat lover, who campaigned against the killing and created her own sanctuary in a heated hangar at Ferne.

Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, a leading figure in the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, broadcast on radio that animals could be brought to Animal Defence House in St James's off Piccadilly, London so that they could be taken to a sanctuary created at Ferne House, in Dorest. She went on to describe the animals as being like children to their owners, and declared that,

‘We should be horrified if this had happened abroad. How can we explain such a thing to our foreign friends in this so-called animal-loving England.’

Rupert Bruce-Mitford, also a dog breeder & author, rebuffed arguments about the lack of food or shelter as horseflesh was available and gas-proof kennels were on the market, and kennels existed in safety zones where pets could be evacuated to, in The Times describing the slaughter as motivated by the inconvenience to keep them alive, "which, of course, is no reason at all".

Aftermath

Estimates say that over 750,000 pets were killed over the course of the event. Many pet owners, after getting over the fear of bombings and lack of food, regretted killing their pets and blamed the government for starting the hysteria.

By the middle of September the authorities started begging people to keep their pets, if possible because of the threat of vermin in cities, and by 1942 the BBC defined cats as "doing work of national importance" and spoke against doing so. For many, keeping & protecting their animal companions, as a form of self-sacrifice to show the depth of their own emotions in comparison to those who killed them out of convenience, and as a way of maintaining normal life. The National Canine Defence League declared,

Do not have your pet destroyed . . . At the beginning of the war a certain number of people did this; they have regretted it ever since. To destroy a faithful friend when there is not need to do so, is yet another way of letting war creep into your home.

In 1941 Mass-Observation, began to study the relationship between humans and their companion animals, and despite the 'Waste of Food Order 1940' obliging animal keepers to act ‘reasonably’, pets were still be fed by the sharing of the same food between humans and animals when rationing of food became widespread. Such studies found that positive animal–human relationships would not be willingly breached by the public due to any state directive and, to the contrary, they were deliberately opposed. It was also seen as counter-productive to criticise the around 280,000 tons of food per annum that dogs were eating, because of the resentment and unrest it might inspire within society.

In 2017, author Hilda Kean published a book, The Great Cat and Dog Massacre, telling the story from a historical perspective and concluding that the deaths inflicted on companion dogs and cats was not so much part of a war but "part of normative human behaviour towards animals otherwise seen as companions", and that the assacre challenges the British people's perception of itself during the war on the Home Front, both in the past and present.

Remembrance

The bodies of the pets were buried in a meadow that has since become part of the Ilford PDSA's cemetery, a task requiring forty tons of lime, and additional labour and transport.

There is no mention of nor memorial to them there, nor at the Animals in War Memorial, in Hyde Park, London.

Sources

• Campbell, Claire (2013). Bonzo's War: Animals Under Fire 1939–1945. Glasgow, Scotland: Little, Brown Book Group.
• Kean, Hilda (2017). The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two’s Unknown Tragedy. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press.