Dog history

Dogs are not only subjects of veterinary care, they are also subjects of cultural history. An interesting example may be found in an essay about the history of bloodhounds around 1900 by Neil Pemberton.

I copy the summary, and, as an appetizer, the introduction of the article. Pemberton makes extensive use of newspaper articles.

The bloodhound's nose knows? dogs and detection in Anglo-American culture

Neil Pemberton,  Endeavour 37, 196–208

Summary

The figure of the English bloodhound is often portrayed both positively and negatively as an efficient man-hunter. This article traces the cultural, social and forensic functions of the first attempts to use bloodhounds for police investigation, and argues that the analysis of these developments, which took place at the turn of the twentieth century, further our understanding of the diverse practices and cultures of fin de siècle forensics. Arguing that their dogs could trail tracks of human scent, English pedigree bloodhound breeders promoted and imagined novel ways of detecting and thinking forensically, with which they made claims to social authority in matters of crime and detection. Yet, English bloodhounds were unstable carriers of forensic meaning making their use for tracking criminals deeply problematic: for example, the name of the breed itself invoked a long-line of social and cultural associations. In showing this, we can see how the practices of canine forensics had their roots in a complex history, involving genteel leisure, changing cultural understandings of scent, and shifting dog-keeping mores.

Introduction: a murder mystery at Gorse Hall

From the late 1880s onwards stories of the pursuit of criminals with bloodhounds, whether successful or unsuccessful, made dramatic copy for a penny press on both sides of the Atlantic, eager to fill their pages with narratives that thrilled, shocked and horrified readers. One such article was published in the popular illustrated London weekly the Daily Sketch on the 3 November 1909, in which the bloodhound was characterised as possessing an insatiable curiosity – a dog that pursues even the faintest of scent traces with all the zest of a born detective. The day before, a Lancashire mill owner, George Starres, was found dead at his mansion, Gorse Hall near Stalybridge; he had been shot. Unable to find any actionable crime scene evidence or witnesses to the murder, the police investigators called upon the services of the renowned private dog breeder and trainer, Colonel E.H. Richardson.

In the Daily Sketch's coverage of the investigation, Richardson's sleuthing was much applauded: he was praised as a knowledgeable and trustworthy hunter, who practised the art of detection in a fundamentally different way from other police detectives, whose essential approach to crime solving relied on relating physical evidence to oral testimony. Richardson instead solved criminal mysteries through the recovery of invisible traces of a criminal's scent, employing the reputedly sensitive nose of an English bloodhound. Tracing scent by working with a hound enabled him to reconstruct the genus and movements of human quarry through space. After a long drive in the rain from his London residence, Richardson had arrived at Gorse Hall with two of his bloodhounds, who on arrival had been presented with the murder weapon found at the scene of the crime, in the hope that the dogs would detect the culprit's scent and locate a trail.

In this case however Richardson and his bloodhounds failed to find the culprit for the murder at Gorse Hall. Although the dogs picked up a scent trail at the crime scene, they lost the trail on the surrounding moors, due in large part to the rain, which apparently dispersed what had been a traceable trail. As in the Sherlock Holmes story, in which he demonstrates the forensic productivity of being attuned to canine abilities and behaviour, sometimes the most significant thing is that the dog did not bark. Thus, taking my lead from Holmes's acute attentiveness to canine behaviour, this historical account of using dogs to solve crime avoids documenting either the historical successes or the failures or shortcomings in a specific period, thereby resisting a straightforward listing of criminal cases in which canines ‘barked,’ or not.