UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies

How did one little dog cause so much trouble?

Cain, Joe. 2013. The Brown Dog in Battersea Park (London Euston Grove Press), 32p. ISBN 978-1-906267-35-9. Order: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

In 1906, anti-vivisection campaigners unveiled a memorial in Battersea, London, as a new weapon in their long-running propaganda war. A celebrated libel trial focused attention on the plight of one brown terrier dog, the subject of physiological experiments and classroom demonstrations at University College London. Immortalised in bronze, that dog provoked passions for and against. Insulted, pro-science groups attacked the statue itself, marched in protest, and fought back with symbols of their own. Passions ran so high that electric alarms and 24-hour police guards were needed to prevent the statue’s destruction. In 1910, the memorial was removed in the middle of the night, and it never was seen in public again.

In 1985, anti-vivisection groups sponsored a replacement, a re-interpretation, and secured its position in a prominent spot of Battersea Park. But this, too, caused protest, and was quietly moved to an inconspicuous nook elsewhere in the park. It stands there today.