Murdering Animals by Piers Beirne

Author:Piers Beirne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Jones’ statement claims, then, that there exists both a ‘real trial’ of a dog and also a facetious parody of it. According to Jones, the real trial occurred in Chichester in 1771; in the parody, apparently penned by a lawyer named Long, the defendant was the dog Porter and, in some as-yet-undetermined capacity, the four human participants were Butler (‘J. Bottle’), Aldridge (‘A. Noodle’), Challen (Mat o’ the Mill,’) and Bridger (‘Osmyn Ponser’).

Despite the complete absence of confirming evidence in judicial records and newspaper reportage, it must be said that Jones’ account above of the trial of Farmer Carter’s Dog has some ring of credence because the last names of the parties alleged to have participated in the alleged trial do actually imply a local connection.83 The surnames Butler, Bridger, Challen and Aldridge were quite common in the area around Chichester in the eighteenth century and people with these surnames are listed as landowners in several West Sussex parishes in the land tax records for 1785 (published by the Sussex Record Society). Perhaps there are other records of various sorts—newspapers, letters, diaries and so on—still waiting to be uncovered.

Moreover, in what now appears as a dizzying backwards spiral, Jones also claims that the authorship of the case of Farmer Carter’s dog Porter can be traced to William Hone’s Every-day Book and Table-book; or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Hone does indeed state that ‘[t]his humorous “Trial” … was written … [in consequence of] a real event which actually took place, in 1771, near Chichester’ and which was tried at a High Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery.84 According to Hone’s nomenclature in ‘The Trial’, he referred to the case as Game Act (Plaintiff) versus Porter (Defendant).85 Its human participants (‘Just-asses and Associates’), he recorded, included J. Bottle and others. In Hone’s account, Porter pleaded not guilty to a charge of killing a hare. Despite his lawyer’s submission that no witness had seen the hare or seen Porter murder the animal, the dog was nevertheless sentenced to be hanged from a beam in the corner of the courthouse (ibid.) (Fig. 4.5).

Fig. 4.5 Farmer Carter’s Dog Porter on Trial for Murder, charcoal drawing, William Hone 1827 (Source: Hone 1827, 2: 100)

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