‘A General Refinement of Manners’

The suppression of blood sports, and animal cruelty more generally, took place in a time of social upheaval endured by the mass of humanity and consequently could be seen as a distraction from more immediate concerns for the human condition. Technological, scientific, agricultural and industrial developments were driving a revolution at a pace many found unnerving. Economic changes had created an emergent middle-class, those with ‘Bourgeois sentiments’, who were situated between extremes of wealth on one hand and abject poverty on the other; aspiring to the former, distancing themselves from the latter. This class feared the lower orders whose customs and practices did not conform to the norms of the new moral order. Among the many complex problems faced by the urban middle classes were fears of intemperance, immorality and criminality, many of which could be alleviated if a solution could be found to ‘the problem of working-class leisure’. This was allied to the need for discipline in the workplace.