So the eminent persons did come to trial on 29 August 1942 before a special court at Canterbury on charges of ‘contravening the Feeding Stuffs (Rationing) Order’. All except one pleaded guilty while claiming ignorance of their servants’ actions. Lord Burghley said he had no knowledge of the matter.
‘The customers of Albion Thorpe [the grain dealer] before the Court were all of the highest respectability,’ The Times reported, ‘and the prosecution had come to the conclusion that in no case did they really know or realize they were receiving excess over their coupons. They were the victims of the distributing dealers, who acted very badly.’ Fines were nominal. That Lord Burghley was feeding stolen grain to his Foxhounds was not mentioned. Nor would it be. Within six months he was appointed Governor of Bermuda.
Publicising Lord Burghley’s offence was just a little too sensitive in the circumstances of summer 1942. Biscuits (for humans) were put on points rationing at the beginning of August. ‘Dog policy’ became a renewed priority for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food’s (MAFF) Food Utilisation Committee. An anguished political balance sheet was drafted. Cat and dog lovers might claim their pets make a valuable contribution to wartime morale but on the other hand: ‘Goods have to be imported at great risk to our sailors and every ton of freight space must be freed to make room for essential supplies food and munitions.’ And it was noted that the waste of food order was still untested in the matter of feeding milk to cats, but it could be. Cats might act as deterrents to mice, but if the infestation is a heavy one ‘they are no longer of real use’.
The Ministry faced a conundrum – should it stir up anti-canine sentiment by revealing how much dogs were actually eating? The Minister pointed out the political perils of setting non-dog owners against dog owners. Would it really help the war effort? Educative propaganda should be considered, one dog per household be urged, maybe an increase in dog licence from 7s. 6d. to £1.
A proposal to prohibit dog shows was considered. It was pointed out that the only shows permitted were local ones, ‘harmless amusement for war workers’. A conclusion was reached – ‘It is not the intention of the Government to take any of the drastic repressive measures, beloved of the enemy, they prefer to leave the matter to the good sense of each man and woman who owns a cat or dog.’
But good sense could be manipulated. ‘We might cause it to be known unofficially how much dogs do eat with a view to preparing the public mind for restriction,’ minuted the Ministry’s public relations expert, Howard Marshall, on 3 March 1942.
Mr Arthur Croxton Smith, chairman of the Kennel Club, told the Ministry on 6 August that they would co-operate fully in reducing of the number of dogs, but he was opposed to any policy that involved the destruction of dogs, ‘other than strays’.
The Club was fully aware, he said, ‘of the political implications of interfering with existing companion dogs’. They formed ‘ by far the largest part of the existing canine population and no doubt consume much larger quantities of biscuit food than the show kennels do’. He was right about that.
Croxton Smith suggested a meeting of Masters of Fox Hounds, greyhound breeders and national coursing clubs to discuss the issue but it was ‘not desirable that NARPAC or the animal welfare charities’ should be involved. There were anti-dog plots everywhere.
Pets could not even look for spiritual comfort. That summer, Mr Leonard Noble, vice chairman of the RSPCA, wrote to William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to ask that Anglican clergy consider including a prayer for animals in their services. ‘We hear of a trainload of Russian horses sent crashing into a ravine rather than let them fall into German hands,’ he wrote. ‘Also, we hear of thousands of lost strays and injured dogs and cats in the bombed areas.’
The Archbishop however was concerned that such a prayer might be over-sentimental and provoke ridicule. After a story appeared in The Animal World, the wife of a Society Inspector in Leeds sent in something suitable with a patriotic twist.
And for those also, O Lord, the humble beasts, who with us bear the burden and heat of the day, and whose guileless lives are offered for the well-being of their countries we supplicate,
Thy great tenderness of heart for Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast and great is Thy loving kindness, O Master, Saviour of the world.
But the Archbishop of York intervened to say it was theologically inaccurate to pray for animals, although it might be correct to pray that their treatment by humans be merciful. This particular prayer had surfaced before in 1917, supposedly from a Russian litany, but was really invented by some animal welfare society as the only way in which they could induce the clergy to pray for animals. The view prevailed. Once again wartime animals would go un-prayed for.
The Ministry of Food’s clandestine anti-pet propaganda campaign began to pay off. A rash of letters to newspapers appeared. The Ministry carefully monitored them. Councillor A. R. Edwards of Moss Side, Manchester, complained about ‘millions of useless cats and dogs’. London dogs alone gobbled down 180 tons of food a week, so readers of The Times letters page were informed on 18 June. ‘Humanely exterminate all puppies and kittens at birth,’ Mr A. M. Cardell of Newquay unkindly suggested on 18 July.
Mr J. Hunt Croxley, a compliant Daily Herald columnist, urged: ‘One Dog per family! Where a husband has gone into the services, no one would begrudge the waiting woman a dog for protection and solace, but too many dog owners have too many dogs.
‘And cats! No more than one cat per household should be allowed,’ he continued. ‘Too many cats are in the wrong places, and too many are overfed.They get milk and portions of meat and fish which to a man would be the equivalent of a three-pound joint of meat every lunchtime.’
The announcement that summer that the number of domestic backyard fowls would be restricted to one per member of the family brought a rash of letters to the Ministry about ‘dogs getting biscuits that would keep my hens alive’. Canines were ‘all consuming parasites’.
‘Nero’, a dog ‘the size of a horse’ – an attraction advertised at the Endcliffe Park Fair in Sheffield – caused apoplexy. ‘I bet he has an appetite like one,’ said a local poultry keeper, who sent a cutting about the otherwise harmless St Bernard to the Ministry. ‘People are disgusted with a government that permits such abuses.’ Poor Nero had no say in the matter. He was probably feeling quite hungry.
Meanwhile the RSPCA reported that they had expected to see a rise in ‘deficiency diseases’ in domestic animals from poor diet. In fact the opposite turned out to be the case: the variation in diet for both dogs and cats was proving healthier all round. Busy war-workers, however, had insufficient time to exercise dogs – a general concern.
In a pro-dog propaganda counterblast, the NCDL chairman, Mr Charles R. Johns, publicised the results of a rat-catching competition won by a dog living in a large town that ‘scored 960 authentic kills’. The price of working Terriers had doubled, it was reported, because of the rural plague of rats – ‘while sporting dogs were sought by harassed gamekeepers for estates overrun with foxes and badgers’.
The redoubtable duo of the Duchess of Hamilton and Louise Lind-af-Hageby weighed in against the ‘silly attacks in the press on dogs as luxury pets’. They proclaimed:
The value of dogs cannot be measured merely in terms of utility. They are friends of the soldiers, they are protectors of the lonely, comfort for the weary, joy to the children, often the only remaining link with past days of family happiness.
The dog lover versus dog hater scrap rumbled on; played out in saloon-bar arguments and newspaper letters columns. ‘The numbers of special dogs which are doing something useful are negligible,’ wrote ‘Night Worker’, styling himself ‘a lover of clean pavements and disliker of persistent, discordant barking’.
It all reached a head in genteel Cheltenham when the owner of Lassie, ‘the collecting dog’, pointed out the ‘many useful purposes of our dogs’, including guiding the blind such as himself. ‘To say nothing of the
many good dogs who guard important places and also lonely women whose husbands are on war-work or active service.’
‘Certainly no dog should be fed on food suitable for human consumption,’ said ‘Owner of Lassie’. ‘Such crimes as raiding the pig-bins should be severely dealt with.’ As to felines: ‘If cat-haters had their way and destroyed this useful animal, how would they solve the problem of excessive vermin? May our cats and dogs be kept safe from the clutches of people who do not appreciate them.’
The Cat noted a remark made by the Minister of Agriculture, Robert Hudson, when he was heckled during a meeting. ‘This town has too many poodles and too many Persian cats. What about all the food they consume?’ shouted ‘Disgusted of Leamington Spa’.
Mr Hudson had replied, ‘We are a nation fighting for freedom. I have spent a good deal of my political life trying to prevent the issue of rules and regulations.’ But the feeders of animals were beginning to feel the force of the law. Ministry of Food enforcement officers were called to London Zoo in May after complaints that a woman fed, ‘cake, Canadian apples and orange segments’ to a chimp. Watching children were described as being far more in awe of what was going through the bars than the antics of those inside.
On 29 October a Mrs Isabelle Thornton, of Maidstone, Kent, was fined £15 for feeding fifty-one tins of pink salmon to cats and dogs. She claimed it was ‘off’ and one feels somehow certain that it was.
In Bristol, with the onset of winter, a Miss Mary O’Sullivan was fined £10 for permitting bread to be wasted. ‘Her servant was twice seen throwing bread to birds in the garden,’ and when Miss O’Sullivan was interviewed she admitted that bread was put out every day. ‘I cannot see the birds starve,’ she told the court.
And that October four company directors (one of them a serving RAF officer) were tried at the Old Bailey and sent to prison for a punitive eighteen months for ‘using flour in the form of sausage rusks in the manufacture of dog food’.
London Divisional Food Office Inspector, Jane Blom, had first taken an interest in November 1941 in Messrs Shaw’s Veterinary Products, the manufacturers of ‘Dogjoy’ and ‘Livabrex’ dog food.33 Both lines were made to the same recipe – cornflake waste, fishmeal, dried liver and ‘anything that they can get according to supplies’ she was told. Apparently they were the same (Dogjoy was the cheaper brand sold in Woolworths). They contained no flour, so the company secretary insisted. But Inspector Blom found large quantities of mysterious sausage rusk in the Harrow Road premises plus two tons of cheese.
Dogjoy’s makers’ crime was to use human-intended flour in the shape of the sausage rusk. Messrs Chappell Bros of Slough meanwhile were doing fine by Ministry inspectors who investigated their product, ‘Chappie’. It was made of condemned meat, knackers’ meat, potatoes and ‘cereals unfit for human consumption’. Seventy per cent of it was water. That was alright by the Ministry – for now.
The year of living dangerously for Britain’s cats and dogs was drawing to an end. The reconstituted NARPAC still promoted its registration scheme while drawing up baroque plans for the evacuation of coastal towns, should the threat of invasion somehow re-emerge. Clearly it had little better to do. At the evacuation end, firm instructions for the ‘disposal of pets’ would be issued – that no animals other than small creatures such as lapdogs would be allowed on evacuation trains.
If small animals got through to the reception end, there was no guarantee they would be allowed in billets, therefore Animal Guards ‘responsible for their destruction’ should operate. The Army would put down stray dogs and this time the RSPCA would be obliged to co-operate. Stray cats ‘of a suitable type’ able to fend for themselves would be spared and indeed would prove useful as a means of keeping down rats and mice in the empty towns. The Germans had no intentions of invading.
NARPAC had gratefully said goodbye to its rural scheme in June, the better to concentrate on pets. Economic animals were now to be the responsibility of the ‘Farm Livestock Emergency Service’, with the Duke of Beaufort, England’s premier huntsman and owner of half of Gloucestershire, as its chairman. Fox hunting had a champion at court – Ministry officials addressed him as ‘Master’.
Our Dumb Friends’ League published its end-of-year report. It regretted the abandonment of NARPAC by all the animal welfare societies except itself and the PDSA as it had seen the brave Animal Guards as a ‘forerunner of closer cooperation between them’. That ambition had been a little too brave.
It could report that 582 dogs and 803 cats belonging to members of HM Forces were being looked after by the League, ‘in spite of those few members of the public who consider that dogs have no practical value’.
There was ‘Glen’, for example: ‘Every month a letter is sent to his master telling him how Glen is getting on and he visits on leave.’ Fifteen dogs belonging to the Fighting French brought out of France were still in their care. Meanwhile a Frenchman and his wife who had set off (with their dog) in a small boat from the Breton coast to join the Free French were picked up by a destroyer. The Setter was now happily accommodated at the Blue Cross kennels.
The perils of the Blitz were largely over. Stories of animal heroism were now of a different kind. Medals were being awarded to humans who had rescued animals (and the other way round). ‘Billy’, for example – a ten-month-old dog whose persistent barking woke his owners, Mr and Mrs Yerby of Kentish Town, when their house was on fire. And ‘Teeny Weeny’, a very brave cat who fluffed himself up to enormous size and scared off an intruder.
And to ‘Jim’, a 19-year-old cat in New Malden who slept downstairs but woke Mr and Mrs Coffey when he himself was woken ‘apparently by smoke’. Mr Pungenti of the Old Kent Road who fell out of a tree and was killed trying to rescue a cat was specially commended (the coroner said unkindly that it was entirely his fault). The League successfully persuaded Messrs Searle’s furniture shop to cancel the hire purchase agreement with the bereaved Mrs Pungenti.
The League in its end-of-1942 round-up expressed its gratitude to the Ministry of Food, ‘for so readily understanding that cats are a national asset’ and allocating powdered milk to the League itself for those cats it was keeping. It was concerned however that the Ministry of Agriculture had done nothing about the large amount of ‘wild birds, rooks, plovers, larks, sea birds and other English wild fowl, pheasants, even swans for sale in shops and markets’.
The League was annoyed about stories that the Red Army was using dogs with explosives to destroy enemy tanks. In London, the Soviet Embassy said it was Nazi propaganda.34
The League was concerned too by reports of cat stealing. It talked of spasmodic but organized outbreaks of animals being stolen for their fur or even as food – as ‘cat in pie or stew can taste like rabbit’. The matter was raised in the Commons but the cat pie urban myth never went away.
There were plenty of stories of unlikely animal friendships. For example, the mongrel puppy taken into a home in Weston-super-Mare, where a jealous parrot ‘did its best to make the pup’s life a misery’. ‘But it suddenly decided to change its tune, became much friendlier and whenever the puppy was about, said: ”Good morning, come right in”.’
The Superintendent of the Tottenham Shelter had taken to visiting ‘the local swill bins and refuse dumps’ because she had found that when it was quiet, ‘many stray animals congregated there’.
The League’s Newport, Wales branch report had an extraordinary tale of a German aircraft brought down in Monmouthshire with a tabby cat aboard. There had been several instances of enemy pets captured at sea35 but this was the first airborne arrival. Along with the crew it was taken prisoner. The League, in an exemplary humane gesture, offered to quarantine the tabby PoW.
‘“Tiger”, on arrival at the shelter, showed several characteristics of the Hun,’ said the report, ‘but after living under the care of the League he has become a docile, well mannered and well behaved animal.’
Nazi cats in Wales were unusual. But if Alsatians could write
history, another pet-related event of 1942 would stand out. The human authority is Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Propaganda Minister, who wrote in his diary on 30 May: ‘He [Hitler] has bought himself a young German Shepherd dog called “Blondi” which is the apple of his eye. He bought the dog from a minor official in the post office in Ingolstadt [in Bavaria].36‘ Goebbels continued:
It is very nice to watch the Führer with his dog. At the moment the dog is the only living thing that is constantly with him. At night it sleeps at the foot of his bed, it is allowed into his sleeping compartment in the special train and enjoys a number of privileges that no human would ever dare to claim.
There were many humans in National Socialist Germany who had no privileges whatsoever. The oft-quoted diaries of Viktor Klemperer, a Jewish journalist and academic in Dresden, published in 1998, moved many readers – especially with the account of the fate of his tomcat, ‘Muschel’.
Klemperer was told that as Jews, he and his wife, Eva, could no longer make donations to the Reichsverband für das deutsche Katzenwesen (the Reich League for German cats). Its swastika-bedecked magazine, Das deutsche Katzenwesen, was filled with articles exalting the authentic German cat over lesser breeds. Although it was stressed in the animal journals that pets had the right to live even in times of war when feeding was difficult, this apparently did not include the pets of Jews.
In May 1942 all Jews in the Reich, and all those married to them, were told that they must surrender all pets. Dogs, cats and birds could live only in pure Aryan homes. About Muschel, Klemperer wrote:
I feel very bitter for Eva’s sake. We have so often said to each other: The tomcat’s raised tail is our flag, we shall not strike it and at the victory celebrations Muschel will get a ‘schnitzel from Kamm’s’ (the fanciest butcher here) [they had fed him on their meat rations].
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