CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4579, 7 September 1883, Page 2

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star). . Sic, —I was at the railway works, Short* land, this morning, and witnessed the drawing of a track of filling from the place '" the trucks are left by the engine to the mangrove swamp, where it is deposited, ■ and daring that one operation the horse, which has to pull the fall track at a run all the distance, received from the driver with the handle of a whip over the back and side 37 blows as hard as he could strike the poor horse as he rau along by jts side. Now, sir, that horse drags ove? that space during the day 48 or even a greater number of filled, tracks, and receives at the hand of the driver the same punishment each time—equal to 1776 blows daily ou its side and back, —and this cruelty goes on day after day, and week after week. I have been several times, and always the same cruelty is going on. Last week I saw him get a fresh stick out of the swamp each time ho came to the tip head, and break it over the horse in beating it each truck load it carried along. On remonstrating with the driver todayho said he could beat the horse as much as he liked, so that he did not hit it over the head. I called the attention of Constable Stapleton to this cruelty last week, with a view to the police preventing it, but nothing has been done, and nothings ever is done on the Thames by the police to lessen the cruelty to animals that is constantly being practiced here If a publican has his light blown out by the wind after nightfall, the police can always see that and proceed against him, but who ever saw the police bring to justice a man working horses with sores under their collars, or packsaddles, so severe that the poor animal can only work in torture, yet r such is to be seen e?ery day at the Thain&s, and i in other places would-ifc bjjj allowed?* .Ms[,^J. i^own- opiniojv-^j.^hat^hib rfrorso ig-notj <* - sufficiently strong for tha work, and ought* not to be used for such work* Jbut'if it is, • ' itiis certainly the duty of th*e polio* to < prevent such gross cruett^jur i% practiced / upon that poor little pony af ffie JUilway '• * Works, Shortland.—l am, <fee, F.C.Deas.