I'm pleased that Helen Cowie covered the work of the RSPCA across 200 years (April). She explained that “pets had initially been excluded from the RSPCA's operations'’. But MP Joseph Pease secured the protection of dogs and “other domestic animals” in 1835, and by 1849 the Cruelty to Animals Prevention Act included cats as well as dogs.
While the state provided these basic legal protections to domestic animals, we know from contemporary sources that it wasn't only constables who acted to uphold the new laws. Cases of domestic animal cruelty found their way into the courts at
