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returns for 1888, due to the Muzzling Order, nearly all of the
dogs having been brought in by the police, who, since the passing
of the Metropolitan Streets Act of 1867, have been empowered to
seize all stray dogs, and to cause unclaimed dogs to be destroyed.
Only 30 of the dogs were found to be rabid, and not one of
these came into contact with any other dog at the Home.
Upwards of 20,500 homeless, diseased, and worthless dogs
were mercifully despatched in the lethal chamber, their carcases
being disposed of in the crematorium on the premises. The
value of such an institution, in the interests of public health,
must be obvious, and yet, strange to say, the Home receives no
pecuniary support from the rates.
Prior to the passing of the Rabies Order, 1886, the duty
of preventing the spread of Rabies devolved upon the police; but
the Order devolved the duty upon the "local authority," under
the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878—the local authority
for London now being the County Council, in succession to the
Metropolitan Board of Works, whose limited staff of Inspectors
would have had, in addition to other multifarious duties, to see
to the carrying out of such regulations as the Board might
have framed for the muzzling of dogs, or for keeping them
under proper control, and for the seizure and disposal of dogs
not muzzled or under proper control. The Board, however, did
not frame any regulations, and the County Council, after setting
the Privy Council in motion, refused to discharge the duties
cast upon them by the Order, which was issued under the
provisions of an amending Act passed in 1886, and which placed
rabies as a "contagious disease," in the same category with
pleuro-pneumonia in cattle, and glanders in horses, etc., the
definition "animal" having been extended so as to include any
kind of four-footed beast.
The Council appeared to feel aggrieved that their advice
as to the issue of a Muzzling Order to apply to the entire
kingdom was not acted on; but the grounds alleged, in a