200 Years of Care for Animals

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in London in 1822, and soon added an R to the SPCA when Queen Victoria made it a royal society. Today the Society helps rehome over 100 pets every day in England and Wales. It has campaigned to introduce many laws to protect animals and make their lives better, whether they are pets, wildlife or farm animals.

Britain is known as a nation of animal-lovers but in the nineteenth century animals were mainly considered as means of income and used in transport and agriculture. On 16 June 1824, the SPCA was founded in the ironically named Old Slaughter Coffee Shop in London by anti-slavery campaigners and MPs William Wilberforce and Richard Martin, and clergyman Arthur Broome. Martin had been instrumental in getting Cattle Act of 1822 passed into law. It was the first legislation in the world to that set out to protect animals, making it an offence to “beat or abuse” horses, cattle, sheep or other farm animals.”

Fighting to change legislation became a feature of the SPCA. But it was all very well making it illegal to abuse animals if no one was enforcing the law. In the 1840s there wasn’t even a national police force in the U.K. So the RSPCA trained inspectors, initially volunteers, to investigate claims of abuse.

Today, the Society employs more than 350 inspectors and animal rescue officers across England and Wales, aided by more than 16,000 volunteers. As well as trying to stop people abusing animals (they investigated more than 50,000 complaints in 2021), the society also tries to help those who are struggling to look after their pets. In recent years it has established a Pet Food Bank Partnership and providing 1.5 million pet meals.

But the RSPCA is acutely conscious that there is more to do. Launching the RSPCA 200 campaign, Chris Sherwood, Chief Executive, said:

“Animals are arguably facing some of the biggest challenges of the past two centuries as climate change, loss of wildlife, cost of living and the pandemic take their toll. The growth of industrial farming presents one of the most pressing threats to animals, with the scale of suffering of meat chickens, who live often unbearable, short lives, presenting the single biggest animal welfare issue in this country and around the world.”