Prior to the invention and widespread use of firearms how did one dispatch a lame or otherwise doomed horse? Assuming if you could afford a horse, you might be fond of it and wouldn’t want the animal to suffer needlessly. There had to be safe and quick methods of slaughtering cattle for millennia. A sword or spear through the heart?
Quickest and least traumatic method would be to cut the animal’s throat. In 19th century slaughterhouses, before the invention of the humane killer the usual method was to render the beast unconsious with a sledgehammer blow to the head, then hoist it by the back legs and cut the throat. I seem to recall reading of the use of morphine to euthanize horses at one time, but cannot offer a cite for that.
SS
You’re discussing a period when humane methods of killing were not necessarily at top of mind for society. Capital punishment was fairly varied and deviously wicked and that’s for the fellow man. Most lame horses were left to die of starvation.
I seem to remember a National Geographic article about an archaeological dig of an ancient warrior tomb (Viking? Mongol?) full of all the things one would want and need in the afterlife…including his horses.
the illustration depicted a horse “blindfolded” with a throw rug or something…
…and some guy ready to drive a pickaxe through the animals forehead.
A blindfold would make things much safer, ditto a big hammer or pick axe. I was picturing myself with a sword facing a lame horse. In every scenario I lost.
Hitting a horse over the head with a sledge hammer is not a sure fire way to nock him out unless you are very experienced with the sledgehammer method. I have heard quite a few stories of failed sledge hammer hits on cattle.
A well trained tame horse doesn’t know a sword or knife from a stick. In fact, in pre-firearms days they’d probably be very used to seeing knives and swords. There are also ways of restraining an animal that may not be kind by our standards, but they are effective.
So yes, a fast, hard slash to the throat and jump back, and the deed is done.
That was a time when kindness to animals, not wanting to cause pain or fear, was not generally considered necessary. For a long time people didn’t believe that animals even felt pain the way we do. Euthanasia for kindness sake wouldn’t be on the radar. Slaughter for food would be though, and throat cutting (or decapitation for small critters) is the fastest thus safest method.
Napoleonic Farriers, and also perhaps Sappers/Pioneers — the chaps with beards and aprons — were detailed to execute wounded horses with their axes. The French army ones would be the most iconic, but probably all armies then had them, and armies earlier and later.
I doubt all soldiers or people were automatically callous to animal suffering, many memours from the 17th century on have indicate how people loved their horses; nor that they wouldn’t recognise animals were in pain. Even rabbits can scream.
For that matter until a few decades ago some Australian slaughterers used to drive a pole through a spinal cord to kill an animal.
Nonsense!
At a time when people were starving? Or the Baron’s kennel of hunting dogs needed to be fed?
Lame horses went to the butcher’s.
I was wondering if the butcher might be involved. It’d be in his best interest to get it done quickly & safely.
The old methods are the best. http://www.skydive.ru/uploads/posts/2012-01/1326801258_house-120.jpg
Cutting the major blood vessels of the throat would be the fastest way to put down an animal without modern weaponry. Also the safest - you do NOT want a pissed-off horse turning on you, even one that’s been lamed. Speed was desirable not out of mercy but because the butcher didn’t want to get hurt himself.
A dead or dying horse would go to the knacker.
At the end of Some Do…, the first in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End series, our hero is waiting with an injured horse, although he’s hoping the horse can be saved. The horse was wounded after an encounter with an auto. (Theme to remember for the exam: “Conflict between the traditional & the modern.”) The last sentence in the book is.
The first volume took place a few years before the Great War–a possible future war was discussed. By the second volume, the war is in full swing…
My horse got shot, so I had to break its leg.