The Sham Bull Fights at Atlanta (1895)

AUTHOR: Lovell, Mary Frances

KEYWORDS: animal welfare, blood  sports, bull fighting

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Lovell denounces the planned reenactment of a typical Spanish bull fight at the Atlanta Exposition, the Cotton States and International Exposition held in Atlanta in September 1895. Even though the organizers ensure that “the horns of the bulls are to be padded, and no blood will be shed,” Lovell vocally objects to the event. Quoting an article from the Boston Herald, she lists the following objections: bull fights are “a reproach to modern civilization,” “a relic of that Barbarism which preceded the Christian era”; the bull fight is “demoralizing and degrading in its effects,” whether real or merely reenacted; if the planned entertainment actually succeeds in entertaining, the “moral natures” of those entertained will be “debased and prepared for indifference to real suffering”; the animals involved will suffer from “fright and apprehension” as “[t]hey cannot know that they are not actually to be gored to death”; and it cannot be ensured that “those engaged in the work will be tender-hearted enough to really avoid the infliction of suffering.” Hence Lovell urges her readers to write to the “exposition authorities,” protesting the reenactment of “a reality of which the features are so disgusting, so crfuel and so demoralizing.”