WOULD KILL TWO ELEPHANTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 451, 5 September 1928, Page 10

WOULD KILL TWO ELEPHANTS

JUICE FROM THE SADDLE A battery to give a shock of 800 volts, causing pain a thousand times more severe than spurs or whips, was used on the racehorse Halloween. When the electric battery was found concealed in the saddle used on the mare Halloween at Richmond, Melbourne. pony racecourse on July 23, the stipendiary stewards disqualified for life the mare, the owner, Sidney

Kelly, and the jockey, John Hook. Last week, at Richmond Court, Hook was also fined £lO, the maximum penalty, for cruelty to the horse. Ronald Roy Ray McKay, an electrical engineering instructor at the Working-Men’s College, said that In the saddle he found a three-volt dry cell connected with a bell push switch, and two wires through an ignition coil which would give a shock of approximately 800 volts. Extent of Pain

Hector Kendall, veterinary surgeon, said the pain caused by the shock would b© a thousand times more severe than that inflicted by spurs or whip.

Although he declared he did not know that the battery was secreted in the saddle, the owner, Kelly, said that a shock of 800 volts would kill two el.ephants.

Imposing sentence, Mr. J. H. Brown, P.M., said to Hook: “Yours was a particularly mean and contemptible offence, and one which would cause intense pain to such a sensitive animal as a racehorse.”