Abstract
The 1876 British Cruelty to Animals Act introduced an unprecedented administrative system to supervise any experiment “calculated to give pain” to a living animal. The act, which was in force for a hundred years, established a tight system of control over animal experimentation, including a small, but vigorous, inspectorate. This article explores the relations between bureaucracy and the production of knowledge through the correspondences, memos, and notes taken by two principal inspectors under the act. The inspectors belonged to the worlds of both law and science. Coming from within the scientific profession, their close ties to medical social circles not only evoked critique but also helped them fulfill their tasks and gain access to research laboratories. Archival records examined here for the first time show that, although the inspectors downplayed animals’ pain in physiological laboratories, the inspectorate played an important role in shaping the experimental space and practice, thus facilitating the production of “ethical scientific facts.” The inspectors’ work modeled the new legal regime of animal experimentation regulation, making them indispensable agents in the act’s coproduction of knowledge and public order.
Highlights
On one October morning in 1895, George V
Poore and the director went together into the animal room to watch the cat, where once again the animal seemed to Poore to be “unconscious of its condition.”65 When it was taken out of its cage, the cat wandered around the room purring and rubbing up against Poore, “affording no evidence whatever of discomfort.”66 Poore emphasized in his notes that the cat was in good condition, he reported the infringement of the act relating to the certificates to the Home Secretary
When British inspectors under the Vivisection Act 1876 entered late nineteenthcentury physiology laboratories, they guided the experimenters on how to produce knowledge lawfully and in line with contemporary humanitarian sensibilities to animal pain—that is, with the ostensibly minimal infliction of pain necessary to achieve the objects of the experiments
Summary
The 1876 British Cruelty to Animals Act introduced an unprecedented administrative system to supervise any experiment “calculated to give pain” to a living animal. The act, which was in force for a hundred years, established a tight system of control over animal experimentation, including a small, but vigorous, inspectorate. This article explores the relations between bureaucracy and the production of knowledge through the correspondences, memos, and notes taken by two principal inspectors under the act. Coming from within the scientific profession, their close ties to medical social circles evoked critique and helped them fulfill their tasks and gain access to research laboratories. Archival records examined here for the first time show that, the inspectors downplayed animals’ pain in physiological laboratories, the inspectorate played an important role in shaping the experimental space and practice, facilitating the production of “ethical scientific facts.”. The inspectors’ work modeled the new legal regime of animal experimentation regulation, making them indispensable agents in the act’s coproduction of knowledge and public order Archival records examined here for the first time show that, the inspectors downplayed animals’ pain in physiological laboratories, the inspectorate played an important role in shaping the experimental space and practice, facilitating the production of “ethical scientific facts.” The inspectors’ work modeled the new legal regime of animal experimentation regulation, making them indispensable agents in the act’s coproduction of knowledge and public order
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