Several important studies of animals in Victorian Britain have considered the ways that animals have served as surrogates for the discussion of human relationships. Historical statements about the treatment of animals are often interpreted as telling stories about issues such as class dynamics or social problems among humans.Footnote ¹ But must one always imagine animals to have been only the ostensible subject of discussion? While it is certainly important to study how historical discussions about animals have reflected and expressed opinions about sensitive, tense, or otherwise difficult relationships among humans and groups of humans, it is unreasonable to dismiss all discussion of the welfare of animals as a cover for what is really a concern about humans. Is it not just as interesting – and important – to consider the ways in which humans have identified with animals as animals? The introduction of the animal as animal into the discussion of human culture reveals a level of complexity in life and history that is all too easily overlooked.

During the nineteenth century, increased study of the natural world and of animals resulted in some radical changes in the perception of the relationship between humans and animals. The most significant breakthrough, of course, was that of evolution, theories of which developed through the first half of the nineteenth century until Charles Darwin's watershed publication On the Origin of Species explained how it happened through the process of natural and sexual selection. Humans were now animals; the theological line that had separated humanity from animals as a distinct creation was no longer tenable. The revelation of the exciting idea of the continuity between mankind and animals sparked a proliferation of study of the mind of the animal. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, Darwin attempted to use the new technology of photography to document the emotional states of humans and animals, in an attempt to sidestep the need for linguistic expression, which could be misleading even where it was available. George John Romanes, who was influenced by Darwin, is considered to have written some of the most important of nineteenth-century works about animal minds.Footnote ² However, studies that focused upon the continuity between humans and animals were soon rendered obsolete, never to be taken seriously again until the late twentieth century. In 1894, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, considered by many to have been one of the founding fathers of behaviorism, insisted that if animals were even possessed of minds (in other words, if they had feelings or judgment, or operated by any means other than instinct), this could not be proven and so could not be considered an appropriate subject for scientific inquiry. Once again, humans were designated something different from and more than all of the other animals on earth, distinguished by the possession of a mind that all other animals were assumed to lack.

Morgan stated, “in no case may we interpret an action as the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower in the psychological scale” (53). Scientists and psychologists have adhered to this “canon,” as it came to be known, for over one hundred years, and it has formed the foundation of all comparative psychology. Morgan opposed anecdotal methodology, which could not be tested or controlled, as a means of producing knowledge about animal behaviors and experiences.Footnote ³ Neither Romanes nor Darwin invented this methodology, which tended to try to understand the animal mind using the information gained by subjective human experience. This was the way that ordinary people tried to make sense of animal minds. The result was to produce a narrative from the information that was available. Anecdotal evidence really was (and is) the only evidence for animal minds, since animals lack language. That Victorian science was prepared to allow people to step beyond strict empiricism and to utilize the imagination in order to study animal minds (alongside other unprovable subjects of inquiry, like evolution)Footnote ⁴ was favorable to the development of an ethical discourse based upon empathy. This way of thinking encouraged people to try to speak not only for animals, such as working horses, but also for vulnerable humans, whose words were ignored, doubted, dismissed, or otherwise disallowed. I will now examine the attempts of a number of authors of Victorian periodical texts to communicate their understanding of the experiences of working horses in order to advance the reform of the care and treatment of such horses.

In an 1891 article entitled “The Horse World of London: The Omnibus Horse,” W. J. Gordon demonstrates how one could surmise what caused a working horse the most trouble, what made him uncomfortable, and what gave him ease by closely observing the horse's response to environmental changes: “it is not so much the paving as the change from one sort to another which is so puzzling to the horses, the sudden break from granite to asphalt, or macadam to wood, requiring an instant change in the step, to which not every horse is equal, though by some the knack is caught in a week or so” (29). It is important to notice that this author's attempt goes further than to scrutinize behavior; in fact, he says nothing about what actions he has seen horses perform, or what mistakes he has seen them make, that have led him to draw this conclusion. The point, rather, is to try to imagine the work of pulling a carriage (in this case, an omnibus), from a horse's perspective. Clearly, Gordon had witnessed horses stumbling and tripping when pavements changed, and had noticed patterns that brought him to associate this circumstance and these horses' accompanying behavior with a certain state of mind. It is easy to imagine what may have signaled to Gordon that a horse was “puzzled.” An omnibus, with its large car and many passengers, would have presented a rider with more impediments to connection with the horses pulling the vehicle than would a simple carriage or cab, but Gordon still insists that it was possible for an omnibus rider to connect the motions of the omnibus with the bearers of its burden. To do so, one had only to pay attention to the source of various jumps, shakes, wobbles, starts, and jerks about.

Another way that Victorian authors believed they could access the experience of the working horse was by touching the horse. While not practicable if the horse was not one's own, touching a horse's body would have been the most direct way to understand what a horse was feeling. Touching a horse could even provide knowledge of a horse's old wounds and scars from past experiences. The author of an 1875 Blackwood's article on “Bits and Bearing Reins” considered a quotation from Sir Francis Head of forty years earlier still to be relevant with regard to determining the damage done by bearing reins and other types of oppressive restraints:Footnote ⁵ “if the reader will pass his hand down the back sinews of one of our stage-coach or post-chaise horses, he will soon feel (though not so keenly as they do) what is the fatal consequence” (742). No doubt touching the body of a horse is a timeless way of obtaining information about his health and condition, but the horse would also feel much different depending upon what social, cultural, and economic forces had shaped his body and affected all of his experiences. These changes, especially if grossly unnatural or unhealthy, could certainly communicate those experiences and help to foster understanding. The horse's body could speak to a person in this way. Until the arrival of the automobile and other modern mechanical modes of transportation, the human hand was never far from the horse – nurturing or abusing – constraining, compelling, and ultimately, shaping. Sir Francis Head demonstrates how the human hand could read the response of a horse's body to detect the history of the changes that the hand had made to that same body. Thus, the hand could be used to understand the effects of the hand, and of many different hands.

Gordon emphasizes the humanity of exercising patience toward working horses when they display less than perfect temperament. He asks his reader to try to consider the effects of heavy toil, distress, and discomfort upon their personalities. Interestingly, he utilizes the concept of forgiveness, which, with its moral and even religious connotations, suggests a very humanlike capacity for responsibility in the horse: “Surely a little touchiness can be forgiven after a worrying trip through noisy London in rain or snow or fog, varied at all sorts of irregular intervals with sudden stops and starts on greasy asphalt, the start . . . being for a full load a pull of between three and four tons” (“Omnibus” 30). The subtle nuance of the word “touchiness” suggests that the horse has a very complex personality with many levels of emotion, and the description of a trip through London as “worrying” suggests a kind of emotion that is normally associated with humans rather than animals. A horse who can be worried, and who can be a little touchy, must have some significant capacity for a wide range of feelings. The actions of such a horse would certainly be affected by feelings in a way that would involve such things as temptation, resistance, and even self-discipline.

Gordon's assignment of moral potential to the horse was hardly new in 1891, or unusual for a nineteenth-century piece of nonfiction. In fact, the whole of the nineteenth century abounds with literature that specifically discusses the virtues and vices of horses. Curiously, it was far less common for other domestic animals to be portrayed as possessing virtues and vices in terms of making moral choices (though the virtue of the dog was very commonly extolled). This may be because of the difficulty involved in persuading such a strong animal as the horse to consistently follow human orders regarding movement and constraint of movement for many hours at a time; it is not difficult to see how the force of a horse could have been interpreted as moral will. In any case, Victorians afforded the horse the ability to make right and wrong choices and to perform right and wrong actions. Significantly, Gordon retains this moral paradigm, urging his readers not to misinterpret a horse's response to, for example, exhaustion or nervous unease (states of mind and body with which any human could relate) as the commission of a so-called bad act that should be punished. If humans deserved mercy because they were imperfect, then so did horses, who were also imperfect.

Victorians believed that even though horses could not understand human language, the animals could determine well enough what was required of them by the signals they were given in human language. Horses would have been trained to respond to different signals in different ways, of course. If a horse did not satisfactorily respond to a prompt in the manner that was expected, force was often applied to reinforce the command. Henry Curling, in his 1851 tract A Lashing for the Lashers, argues that horses felt not only the sting of the whip, but also that of a harsh tone in the voice of the driver. Far from seeing the necessity of the lash to enforce orders, Curling suggests that horses could detect changes in vocal patterns indicative of displeasure in their performance. He insists that horses, just like humans, understood when they were being scolded, and would respond with increased efforts whenever reasonable: “A hard word is as instantly and keenly felt by a horse as by a human being. The willing brute will attempt to improve an effort the instant he is spoken to” (4). Curling implies here that when cross words were unreasonably administered, they only served to hurt a horse's feelings, just as they would do to a human, bringing no positive result and certainly not inspiring any more eagerness in the horse to serve well. Despite his agreement with the conventional opinion that horses do not understand human language, Curling believes them sensitive enough to comprehend the meaning of a scolding and the difference between a kind and an unkind word, since these are largely felt rather than processed in units of words. Thus, human language could communicate feelings to a horse, as well as foster or break down relationships between horse and driver.

In addition to encouraging readers to imagine from the horse's perspective the effects of the use of hard language and physical force to coerce a horse to work harder, the authors of Victorian periodical texts also tried to get people to think about the needs and desires that horses might have when they were not working. C. Forbes, in an 1853 article in Notes and Queries, pleads with a horse's drivers or riders that after a hard day's work, they should “give him a roll.” Forbes implies that horses need refreshment as much as do humans, and cites various texts from ancient and foreign cultures that demonstrate how well horses enjoy being let loose to roll about on the ground, and how effectively this assists a horse in recovering strength and spirits after protracted exertion. It is interesting to note that although humans can certainly relate to the need for rest and reflection, Forbes has considered refreshment in terms of the horse's difference. In order to accomplish this along with the author, Forbes's readers must trawl their own interior experiences of refreshment in order to harvest a sort of template feeling upon which to reflect, while at the same time considering the reality of an experience very different than their own, and the ways such difference might be stamped upon the standard they have worked to imagine. Observation would help to fill in the blanks. Memories of personal experiences with horses would also help, as would anecdotal testimony of other humans who had witnessed what they believed to be horses refreshing themselves.

An 1875 article in Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art entitled “Horses and Their Treatment” makes a similar argument to Forbes's in Notes and Queries. This author argues that the horse should be allowed to enjoy his own faculties, as it would be wrong to deprive him of their use just because they are not always required for human service. The faculty in question is the horse's eyesight: “We have never been able to understand why horses should be tied up in a darkened apartment, within a limited allowance of space for movement, with their heads towards a dead wall. The horse loves the light. He has good eyesight, and likes to look about him. And why should he not have this simple enjoyment?” (291). It is interesting to note the claim that the horse “likes to look about him.” Although the author of this Chambers's article was not very likely to be challenged over the means by which he arrived at the knowledge of how a horse feels, or whether a horse “likes to look about him,” it is important to recognize that in the Victorian debate over vivisection, it was exactly this sort of assumption that was rigorously questioned. Here, we are fortunate to see the subtle ways in which empathy begins to become a reasonable means of speaking up for others, even if knowledge of another's interior experience can never be absolute or proven.

Henry Curling suggests, as a remedy for those drivers of cab and omnibus horses who abuse their animals, that these drivers place themselves, quite literally, in similar circumstances to those which their horses endured every day. After a disclaimer meant to preserve religious and traditional notions of discontinuity between mankind and animal, Curling goes on to follow, in practice, the trend toward continuity that was such a hallmark of Victorian science and culture:

Curling attempts to take force and coercion out of the practical equation of his proposed experiment, relegating violence to the imagination of the cab or omnibus driver, lest his suggestion portray such drivers as ones who should be enslaved and treated, (in the popular parlance) like animals. Yet what driver would agree to participate in such a trial, and which of these would have been likely to believe, beforehand, that the tasks assigned to their horses were as arduous as an activist like Curling would represent them to be? Of course, Curling's proposal is but a short step away from wholesale animalization of the cab and omnibus drivers. His readers, who were unlikely to be cabmen themselves, are meant to imagine how a driver's perspective and practice might change if he were given the opportunity (or if he were forced) to discover what it felt like to pull such a large burden up a hill, the way that horses were made to do every day.

Poor cab drivers were not the only people Victorian activists wished to expose to a horse's perspective. At an 1868 meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Earl of Romney expressed his anger at wealthy horse owners who would leave their horses to wait outside for them as they attended engagements, fully outfitted in painful bits and bearing reins. Here he is quoted by Blackwood's: “If I had the power, I should like to put these [wealthy horse owners] out in the sun half-undressed and let the flies bite them, because they would very soon be able to understand what torture they were inflicting upon those poor unfortunate animals” (“Bits” 745). Interestingly, Curling's proposed experiment reads very like an exercise in the judicial punishment of criminals, while Romney's statement sounds more like the threat of hell. Both consider the treatment of others – animals – from the moral standpoint of Christian theology, yet both expand the moral franchise (the one that instructs one to “do unto others”) to include animals as individuals entitled to consideration, whose suffering should be prevented if possible, and not wantonly ignored.

There does seem to have been an ideal concept of how travel by horse was meant to be, and of how relationships between horse and rider were meant to develop. This ideal cannot simply be described as one which corresponded to the mode of riding espoused by the upper class, for the owners of private carriages were critiqued for their treatment of horses at least as much as cabmen were. The ideal somewhat resembled the paradigm of the sportsman and his horse, but sportsmen were also known for abusing their horses, especially while caught up in the excitement of the chase. Instead, the ideal relationship between horse and rider seems to have been fostered by the circumstances of the everyday country rider on horseback. The author of “Horses and Their Treatment” describes this idyllic relationship between the horse and solitary rider, whose means of communication with the horse comprised only the gentle snaffle bit:Footnote ⁶ “by such connection, there is so great a reciprocity of feeling, that the horse and his rider become for the time a kind of united being” (290). Without the evil pomp of the bearing rein and gag bit,Footnote ⁷ and without the pesky mediation of such interlopers as cab- and coachmen, horse and rider could relate to one another perfectly. Of course, eventually economics would probably intervene, and it is likely that the horse would be sold as age depleted his value. At least when a well-cared-for horse was sold, the seller would bear no responsibility for any unnatural wear to the horse's body, nor for an ill temperament gained from rough usage and abuse, nor what was called a hard mouth, an insensitivity of a horse's mouth that could result from long-term overuse of harsh bits. Upon reflection, it is, in fact, arguable that a horse with such a perfect master would have been far slower to age than other horses. It is, however, far from a certainty that many such owners existed.

Over the course of his lifetime, a Victorian horse was likely to move through many different spheres of human society, and to make contact with people of diverse backgrounds and classes. Anna Sewell presented her character Black Beauty as moving easily from the service of one class of masters to that of others of distinctly different status, and Black Beauty's wealthier masters are not always the best or kindest. Sewell did, however, allow her famous character a level of vaguely upward mobility near the end of her novel that would have been sadly unlikely for a Victorian horse. As they aged or were injured, or as they began to display what was considered to be a bad temperament, horses lost value and were sold for less and less money to people with lower and lower standards, and they were destined to be eventually slaughtered for meat and other resources that could be gotten from their corpses. While it would not have been visibly apparent to an observer on the street that a ragged, worn-out cab- or omnibus horse had ever been anything else, he or she might well wonder whether such a horse had seen better days, particularly if the horse displayed a shapely head or other features indicative of high breeding. Though a lowborn horse would not have started his career in the service of the highest echelons of society, a well-bred horse could only lose value as it aged, and so was as likely as any to end his days in a lowly occupation. A horse was an expensive animal, and so would be kept in service for as long as possible, despite the fact that as he aged his potential for creating revenue would invariably decline until he was only fit for performing the most menial of tasks.Footnote ⁸

This bleak trajectory of a horse's life proved an inescapable, if not immediately apparent, connection between the wealthiest of Victorian horse owners and the lowliest of cabmen – for the horse that pulled the fancy private carriage would one day drag the humble cart or cab. Even under the lash of the poorest driver, such a horse would carry the scars he gained in service to wealthier masters. The most notorious of these scars, and the ones that were argued to contribute most to a decline in a horse's value and quality of life, would have been suffered through the use of the bearing rein and accompanying gag bit. The author of “Bits and Bearing Reins” directly relates the use of the bearing rein to the transfer of a horse from carriage to cab work. He argues that once the bearing rein was applied to a horse, it would only be a relatively short time “until, with temper and mouth both ruined, he passes into the hands of a bus-driver or cabman” (744). It is interesting to think of the horse's body as a space where members of diverse classes left their marks, each meant to communicate a message to or physically coerce a response from the animal. All that would be visible in the end, of course, would be the cabman's wretched old horse, and it would be easiest for an observer (or a rider) to associate the horse's suffering with the cabman. It is easy to imagine, though, that an occasional, wealthier patron of the cabman may not have felt his conscience entirely clear of blame for the condition of the horse by whom he was pulled, especially if he had sold several that had been ruined in his household into similar service.

In a letter to the Times in 1874, Edward F. Flower, who was an outspoken opponent of the use of the bearing rein for carriage horses, suggested that the use of the bearing rein was not often criticized, despite the fact that it was a common sight and recognizably cruel: “there is one most cruel and barbarous practice going on all around us, of which little or no notice is taken, possibly because the perpetrators are in the higher classes of society, which really makes it much worse, as they ought to know better. This stupid and cruel practice is the use of the gag or bearing-rein for carriage horses” (6). Flower's letter claims that because the bearing rein was mostly used by the upper classes, the RSPCA tended to be weak in their denunciation of its use and were reluctant to bring charges against people who used it, even when cruelty was painfully apparent. A response from the RSPCA, denying the accusation, was published the next day. In this response, George Fleming claims: “the use of the ‘bearing rein’ has not been unnoticed by [the RSPCA], and . . . though the perpetrators are chiefly in the higher classes of society, they have not been spared censure” (6). However, his letter also communicates a sense of helplessness and resignation:

Fleming's response to Flower implies that while coachmen were directly responsible for the pain caused to horses by the bearing rein, their employers were only indirectly responsible. Further, Fleming's letter describes the pain of a horse in bearing rein using somewhat gentle terms – indeed, while the horse was made “ridiculous and almost inefficient” by the bearing rein, it was the admirer of horses who, in observing this spectacle, experienced pain. Fleming also claims that the pain of carriage horses was much less than that of the wagon- and draught horses employed in the service of the same people. Again, the coachman is depicted as responsible, this time for setting the bad example: “Of course the waggoner or drayman only follows the example set him by my Lord's coachman, but both are ignorant of, or indifferent to, the inconvenience and pain the stupid contrivance causes the unfortunate animals intrusted to their management” (6). Fleming's letter suggests that there were so many people whose treatment of horses needed to be monitored that it was hardly surprising that the employer could not keep track. The suggestion is that if the coachman were to be regulated in his treatment of horses, the rest of the employees would follow suit.

The coachman was often reviled as a kind of upstart who would abuse the horses in his charge when left to his own devices. He would use the bearing rein not because he had been explicitly instructed to do so, but because he liked to show off: “Unfortunately, in our complex social system, [the horse] is comparatively seldom under the direct guidance of its master or proprietor; but is handed over to a servant – some ‘Master Jeames’ – whose chief concern, possibly, is to shew off in livery in an enviably splendid ‘turn-out’” (“Horses” 290). Here, the offense of his employers is downgraded from abuse to a kind of gullible neglect. The coachman, of course, would have been more readily visible to observers than were the riders in the coach, and it would have been possible to surmise that the owners riding in the coach were not wholly aware of what was happening to their horse. The coachman could act as a buffer between the outside world and his employers, and a target for blame. It is but a short step to imagine that this was even part of his duty. The outside world may have knocked at the window of the carriage to try to relay unpleasant information about the pain suffered by the horse drawing it, but the owners inside could remain safe in their ignorance.

Flower was quoted by Blackwood's in 1875 as saying that in addition to the pain inflicted upon horses with the bearing rein, “it is a severe penance to any man who loves a horse to walk along the fashionable streets or the Park, and to witness the sufferings of horses from this absurd and cruel practice” (“Bits” 744). To Flower, it must have seemed hypocritical for the elite members of a society that almost unanimously disparaged the treatment of cab horses to engage in such a practice as the use of the bearing rein – especially since the use of the bearing rein was known to wear out well-bred horses very quickly, so that they would soon be sold for lower service, such as cab work.

Flower highlights the hypocrisy of the concomitant support of animal welfare and reform by individuals of the upper class and their use of the bearing rein. He hints again at the reluctance of the RSPCA to denounce the practice of using the bearing rein for fear of offending their most important supporters: “Little does the benevolent dowager who sits absorbed in the pages of the last tract of the ‘Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,’ know of the sufferings of the two noble animals by whom she is leisurely drawn along the ‘Lady's Mile’” (“Bits” 744). Yet Flower does not accuse such people of intentional or wanton cruelty. Rather, he explains, “the pain which is thus inflicted upon their horses, proceeds almost exclusively from a want of knowledge on the part of the owners, and not from any disregard of the suffering of the animal” (“Bits” 742). It is easy to see how wealthy women especially may have been excused from the blame for such ignorance, as it could well pass for a kind of naiveté, though it urgently required remedy through education.

Flower considered that even when a woman was confronted with the spectacle of a horse suffering in bearing rein, she may have been taught by society (which prized the sight) to interpret what she saw as something other than suffering. He argues (not unconvincingly even to the twenty-first-century reader, which may suggest the pervasiveness of this interpretation) that women could be persuaded that because a horse looked more fashionable in bearing rein, he was as proud to wear the device as the owner was proud of the way the horse looked. This would provide a specious explanation for why the horse in bearing rein looked and acted differently than one who was loosed from it: “She probably fancies that the high prancing step, and the toss of the head which scatters flakes of foam at every step, are expressions of pride and satisfaction at their task, when in fact they are occasioned by pain, and a vain attempt to obtain momentary relief from their suffering” (“Bits” 744). It is interesting to wonder whether, by the 1870s, horses in this condition were imagined to look proud solely because the bearing rein made them look as if they were displaying pride like a human (with their heads held high), or if it was also because people were so accustomed to associating this condition with horses possessed by the upper classes. This would perhaps account for the association of pride with the tossing of the head and foaming at the mouth (though these actions can hardly be said to resemble any human display of pride). It seems that the bearing rein at once attempted to stamp the horse with an image of human pride in forcing the head to be held high, and also invented an image of a kind of false equine pride, which was actually associated with a horse's response to the pain of wearing the device.Footnote ⁹ It is certain that in the case of the bearing rein, practical empathy was in some way impeded by a learned interpretation of this response, but it is equally certain that this interpretation was liable to break down with any attempt at interrogation, as is proven by the many endeavors to reeducate society and thus to establish (or reestablish) a line of natural communication with the horse that was undistorted by fashion.

Though they did not own private carriages and thus did not use bearing reins, middle-class women were not exempt from the accusation of contributing to the abuse of horses through ignorance. In Gordon's article about omnibus horses, the problem again is fashion versus common sense. Rather than be seen walking, a woman might pay a small sum to ride a very short distance on an omnibus, which would cause the team of horses to frequently repeat the exercise of their most strenuous tasks, stopping and starting with their burden of several tons. Interestingly, though such a woman was assumed to be ignorant of the pain she caused the horses at the front of the omnibus, she was not granted the innocent naiveté of the upper-class woman in her carriage; rather, her ignorance was equated with a frivolous and injurious stupidity that was a veritable destructive force: “Think of it, ye exigent women, who rather than walk a yard will stop an omnibus twice in a minute, the sudden stopping and starting, so often unnecessary, taking more out of a horse than an hour's steady tramp on the level, and being the chief cause of the London horse's poor expectation of life” (29). If a carriage and coachman, placed between a passenger and a horse, tended to facilitate the passenger's ignorance of the horse's experience, though, how much more difficult would it be for one of many riders of a large omnibus to access or imagine what the horse was feeling? In order to see suffering and confront its possible causes, even in such visible creatures as horses used for transport in the streets, one would need to look for it, rather than to give in to the temptation to look away.

Despite their apparent visibility, even horses used for public transport were not so easily observable that everyone could see the extent of their use and abuse. Gordon explains that it was not even as easy to arrive at the number of London cab horses as one might assume. One needed to consider that not all horses worked in cab service all the time. Some, for example, were made to pull coal part-time, or to work in other kinds of hauling or industrial transport work (“Cab” 112). This meant that the cab horse seen on the street might have an entirely different job to do on some days, the conditions of which could be better or worse. It also meant that a cab horse might be made to last longer hours than his driver; such a horse could have another job to do before or after a cabman began or ended his shift. Such would have been the case with night cabs, as Gordon shows that the horses employed to pull them were invariably engaged in some other kind of work during the day (“Cab” 112).

Henry Curling suggests that although working horses were highly visible, people had hardened themselves to the spectacle of the suffering cab horse, believing that there was little help for it. Of the abuse inflicted daily upon horses by cabmen, Curling says that “except from the circumstance of its being by custom familiarized to the public eye, [the public] could not endure the sight of such cruelty” (9). The frequency with which cab horses were seen to be in pain was likely to overwhelm a single observer (perhaps even a policeman), who could not confront a multitude of cabmen, each behaving like the other. A certain (and, Curling would likely have argued, an unreasonable) level of suffering thus became acceptable. No doubt the feeling that one could not confront the individual actions of so many was compounded by a sense of complicity in people who used the cabs, perhaps every day.

It was not necessarily easy to see (or to touch, or to feel) the sufferings of the working horse in Victorian London, whether because of the barriers that existed as impediments to understanding, or because it was too painful to allow oneself to develop an awareness of such suffering. The experience of the horse was both persistently visible and invisible (especially as pain is invisible): seen and felt, and yet ultimately inaccessible. Empathy requires the embrace of all of these binaries in accordance with the struggle to represent the possibility of the interior life. Victorians were encouraged to try to understand what they could never really know by the movement away from a strict empiricism based exclusively upon data gathered by the senses, toward an epistemology more accepting of the role of the imagination in the production of knowledge, even (and perhaps especially) in science. Unbridled by the behaviorism that would encourage the dismissal of anecdotal evidence as sentimental folly for the greater part of the next century, Victorians took seriously the attempt to express the inexpressible as a means of encouraging others to consider what steps might be taken to ameliorate suffering.