Liam O’Brien profiles one of Ireland’s earliest environmentalists and founder of the first movement for the protection of animals

 

Richard Martin was born in Ballynatinch, County Galway, in 1754. His family were one of the ‘Tribes of Galway’, fourteen merchant families who ruled Galway for over three hundred years. Although both his parents were born to Catholics, Richard was raised a Protestant and educated in England. However, as member for Lanesborough in the Irish House of Commons in 1798, he was a great supporter of the movement for Catholic Emmancipation.

Although widely known as ‘Humanity Martin’ or ‘Humanity Dick’, a nickname bestowed on him by King George IV, he also had other nicknames. His contribution to the debates on the exclusion of clergymen from the government earned him the label of ‘the Irreverend Gentleman’ and because of the many duels he fought, including one with the famous ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’, a Mayo landowner, over the shooting of a friend’s dog, he became known as ‘Hair trigger Dick’.

Martin is best known for his work and campaigning against animal cruelty. It was a difficult task because at this time no laws existed to protect any animals and it wasn’t uncommon for cats to be skinned alive, dogs used to pull carriages, wild birds to be imprisoned in cages and where horses were often beaten to death.

In fact, this was the animal treated worse than any other as coachmen and drivers would often boast about the amount of goods they had carried and the speed at which they had travelled. Not surprisingly, pulling overloaded carts and being overdriven by unscrupulous carters meant that horses frequently dropped dead in the streets.

And these would have been the ‘lucky’ ones because continental butchers paid well for horse flesh and any live animal would often have to suffer a nightmarish crossing to the continent to add to their sufferings.

Any attempt to alleviate the suffering of animals was met with both abuse and ridicule. When one clergyman based his sermon on this topic his congregation declared it was “a prostitution to the dignity of the pulpit and certain proof that the Vicar was mad.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own