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Horse theft

January 20, 2023

Horse theft is the crime of stealing horses. A person engaged in stealing horses is known as a horse thief. Historically, punishments were often severe for horse theft, with several cultures pronouncing the sentence of death upon actual or presumed thieves. Several societies were formed in the United States to prevent horse theft and apprehend horse thieves. However, horse theft continues to occur throughout the world, as horses are stolen for their meat, for ransom, or in disputes between their owners and other persons. Horse theft today is comparable to automobile theft, a crime punishable by felony jail time. Both horses and cars are valuable commodities.

Oregon cowboys circa 1900 dramatizing the fate of a horse thief[1]

History

Europe

Horse theft was a well-known crime in medieval and early modern times and was severely prosecuted in many areas. While many crimes were punished through ritualized shaming or banishment, horse theft often brought severe punishment, including branding, torture, exile and even death.[2] According to one 18th century treatise, the use of death as a punishment for horse theft stretches back as far as the first century AD, when the Germanic Chauci tribe would sentence horse thieves to death, while murderers would be sentenced to a fine. This practice derived from the wealth of the populace being in the form of livestock which ranged over large areas, meaning that the theft of animals could only be prevented through fear of the harsh punishment that would result.[3]

Horse theft was harshly punished in the French Bordeaux region in the 15th–18th centuries. Punishments ranged from whipping to a lifetime sentence of service on a galley ship. This latter punishment was also given to perpetrators of incest, homicide and poisoning, showing the severity with which horse theft was viewed by the judiciary.[4]

In 19th-century Russia, the theft of livestock (including horses) made up approximately 16 percent of thefts of peasant property; however, there were no reported thefts of horses from estate property. The offense of stealing a horse was the most severely punished of any theft on Russian estates, due to the importance of horses in day-to-day living. Flogging was the usual punishment for horse thieves, combined with the shaving of heads and beards, and fines of up to three times the value of the horse if the animal had been sold.[5]

Since Henry VIII's reign, horse theft was considered a serious crime in England.[6] It was made a non-clergyable crime in 1597-98 and 1601.[7] For the rural English county of Berkshire in the 18th century, horse theft was considered a major property crime, along with stealing from dwellings or warehouses, sheep theft, highway robbery and other major thefts.[8] In Essex in the 18th century, some assize judges decided to execute every horse thief convicted to deter the crime.[6] From around the 1750s until 1818, between 13% and 14% of persons convicted of horse theft in Home, Norfolk, and Western circuits were executed.[9] The punishment of death for stealing horses was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1832, upon the passage of a bill sponsored by William Ewart; the legislation, which passed over the strong objections of Peel in the Commons and Lord Wynford in the Lords, also abolished the death penalty in Britain for the theft of sheep and cattle, and for larceny in a dwelling house; the Parliament had abolished the death sentence for most larcenies in a separate bill the same year.[10] By the time of its abolition, actual executions for horse theft had been rare or nonexistent for 50 years.[11]

United States

 
Alfred Jacob Miller's Snake Indian Pursuing "Crow" Horse Thief, c.1859.

The term horse thief came into great popularity in the United States during the 19th century. During that time the Great Plains states, Texas, and other western states were sparsely populated and largely unpoliced. As farmers tilled the land and migrants headed west through the Great Plains, their horses became subject to theft. Since these farmers and migrants depended on their horses, horse thieves garnered a particularly pernicious reputation because they left their victims helpless or greatly handicapped by the loss of their horses. The victims needed their horses for transportation and farming. Such depredation led to the use of the term horse thief as an insult, one that conveys the impression of the person who perpetrated the insult as one lacking any shred of moral decency.[12]

In Pennsylvania, the "An Act to Increase the Punishments of Horse Stealing" law was passed in 1780 and repealed in 1860, which stated people guilty of such a crime should be branded. The law ran as follows; "the first offense [the convicted] shall stand in the pillory for one hour, and shall be publicly whipped on his, her or their [bare] backs with thirty-nine lashes, well laid on, and at the same time shall have his, her or their ears cut off and nailed to the pillory, and for the second offense shall be whipped and pilloried in like manner and be branded on the forehead in a plain and visible manner with the letters H. T."[13]

This punishment was referenced in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian as the character Toadvine is branded with the letters H. T. on his forehead. H stands for Horse, T for Thief and F for Felon; "On his forehead were burned the letters H T and lower and almost between the eyes the letter F and these markings were splayed and garish as if the iron had been left too long. When he turned to look at the kid the kid could see that he had no ears." [14]

In the United States, the Anti Horse Thief Association, first organized in 1854 in Clark County, Missouri, was an organization developed for the purposes of protecting property, especially horses and other livestock, from theft, and recovering such property if and when it was stolen. Originally conceived by farmers living in the area where Missouri, Illinois and Iowa intersect, it soon spread, with the first charter organization in Oklahoma Territory being created in 1894. By 1916 the associated numbered over 40,000 members in nine central and western US states, and a drop in horse thefts had been noted.

 
Bentonville Anti-horse Thief Society historical marker in Ohio

Between 1899 and 1909, members of the Oklahoma branch of the AHTA recovered $83,000 worth of livestock and saw the conviction of over 250 thieves.[15] A similar group, which operated mainly in Ohio, was the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society. Men suspected of being thieves would be pursued by members of the organization, and often hanged without trial.[16] The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves was a third such organization that operated in the United States, this one in Dedham, Massachusetts. It is today "the oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States, and one of Dedham’s most venerable social organizations."[17] Most of these clubs became defunct or developed into social clubs with the decline of horse theft in the US.[18]

Present day

 
The trial of a horse thief chromolithograph in 1877
 
Tree in Horse Thief Canyon, where a number of horse thieves were hanged taken in 1913

Horse theft is still relatively common, with an estimated 40,000 horses a year being taken from their lawful owners by strangers or opponents in civil or legal disputes. Stolen Horse International is one modern-day organization in the US that works to reconnect stolen horses with their owners.[19] Horses are sometimes stolen for their meat,[20] or sometimes for ransom.[21] Punishment for horse theft can still be severe, as one woman in Arkansas was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 2011 theft of five horses and equestrian equipment; one of the horses was later found dead, while the others were recovered.[22] Horse thefts today can in some cases be solved through the use of microchips, which is required in the European Union on horses born after 2009 and also often seen in other countries.[20]

Stolen racehorses

  • Fanfreluche, a Canadian Thoroughred stolen in June 1977 and recovered in December
  • Ocean Bay, a Venezuelan racehorse stolen and killed in 2020, possibly for food, as Venezuela was in economic chaos
  • Shergar, stolen for ransom by the IRA on 8 February 1983, allegedly killed after injuring its leg

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ [1] Geo. C. Blakely, photographer, “Thirteen Snapshots of Life in the Untrammeled Bunch Grass County: Execution After the Verdict,” The Oregon Native Son, volume 2, page 520 (May 1900)
  2. ^ Rachel Ginnis Fuchs (2005). Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth Century Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 97. ISBN 052162102X.
  3. ^ Gilbert Stuart (1782). A view of society in Europe in its progress from rudeness to refinement. J. Murray. p. 163.
  4. ^ Louis A. Knafla (2003). Crime, Punishment and Reform in Europe. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 17. ISBN 0313310149.
  5. ^ Steven L. Hoch (1989). Serfdom and Social Control in Russia. University of Chicago Press. p. 169. ISBN 0226345858.
  6. ^ a b Drew D. Gray, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 (Bloomsbury: 2016), p. 130.
  7. ^ Steve Hindle The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640 (Palgrave, 2000), pp. 61-62.
  8. ^ Knafla, p. 201
  9. ^ Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 (2013), p. 271, table 10.3.
  10. ^ Peter King, "Changing Attitudes to Post-execution Punishment 1752–1834" in Punishing the Criminal Corpse, 1700-1840 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 113-182; see also Punishment of Death, Hansard Deb 25 June 1832 vol 13 cc982-1000.
  11. ^ Carolyn A. Conley, The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 45.
  12. ^ Luckett, Matthew S (2014). Honor among Thieves: Horse Stealing, State-Building, and Culture in Lincoln County, Nebraska, 1860 - 1890 (Ph.D.). University of California Los Angeles.
  13. ^ Pennsylvania; Dallas, Alexander James (1797). Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: From the Fourteenth Day of October, One Thousand Seven Hundred, to the [twenty-seventh Day of February, One Thousand Eight Hundred and One] ... Hall and Sellers.
  14. ^ McCarthy, Cormac (2010). Blood meridian, or, The evening redness in the west. London: Picador. ISBN 978-0-330-51094-3. OCLC 540398528.
  15. ^ Keen, Patrick. "Anti-Horse Thief Association". Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  16. ^ "Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society". Ohio History Central. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  17. ^ "The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves". Retrieved June 15, 2015.
  18. ^ "Historical Sketch". The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  19. ^ Pat Raia (June 1, 2012). "Thwarting Horse Thieves". The Horse. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  20. ^ a b Christa Lesté-Lasserre (April 22, 2013). "French Horses Allegedly Stolen for Meat". The Horse. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  21. ^ Michael Walsh (September 16, 2013). "Miniature pony stolen from Italian horse show". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  22. ^ Carolyn Roy (July 15, 2013). "Cox gets 60 years in SAU horse theft trial". KSLA News. Retrieved 2013-12-06.

January 20, 2023
horse, theft, examples, perspective, this, article, deal, primarily, with, europe, united, states, represent, worldwide, view, subject, improve, this, article, discuss, issue, talk, page, create, article, appropriate, march, 2021, learn, when, remove, this, te. The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Europe and the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject You may improve this article discuss the issue on the talk page or create a new article as appropriate March 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Horse theft is the crime of stealing horses A person engaged in stealing horses is known as a horse thief Historically punishments were often severe for horse theft with several cultures pronouncing the sentence of death upon actual or presumed thieves Several societies were formed in the United States to prevent horse theft and apprehend horse thieves However horse theft continues to occur throughout the world as horses are stolen for their meat for ransom or in disputes between their owners and other persons Horse theft today is comparable to automobile theft a crime punishable by felony jail time Both horses and cars are valuable commodities Oregon cowboys circa 1900 dramatizing the fate of a horse thief 1 Contents 1 History 1 1 Europe 1 2 United States 2 Present day 3 Stolen racehorses 4 See also 5 FootnotesHistory EditEurope Edit Horse theft was a well known crime in medieval and early modern times and was severely prosecuted in many areas While many crimes were punished through ritualized shaming or banishment horse theft often brought severe punishment including branding torture exile and even death 2 According to one 18th century treatise the use of death as a punishment for horse theft stretches back as far as the first century AD when the Germanic Chauci tribe would sentence horse thieves to death while murderers would be sentenced to a fine This practice derived from the wealth of the populace being in the form of livestock which ranged over large areas meaning that the theft of animals could only be prevented through fear of the harsh punishment that would result 3 Horse theft was harshly punished in the French Bordeaux region in the 15th 18th centuries Punishments ranged from whipping to a lifetime sentence of service on a galley ship This latter punishment was also given to perpetrators of incest homicide and poisoning showing the severity with which horse theft was viewed by the judiciary 4 In 19th century Russia the theft of livestock including horses made up approximately 16 percent of thefts of peasant property however there were no reported thefts of horses from estate property The offense of stealing a horse was the most severely punished of any theft on Russian estates due to the importance of horses in day to day living Flogging was the usual punishment for horse thieves combined with the shaving of heads and beards and fines of up to three times the value of the horse if the animal had been sold 5 Since Henry VIII s reign horse theft was considered a serious crime in England 6 It was made a non clergyable crime in 1597 98 and 1601 7 For the rural English county of Berkshire in the 18th century horse theft was considered a major property crime along with stealing from dwellings or warehouses sheep theft highway robbery and other major thefts 8 In Essex in the 18th century some assize judges decided to execute every horse thief convicted to deter the crime 6 From around the 1750s until 1818 between 13 and 14 of persons convicted of horse theft in Home Norfolk and Western circuits were executed 9 The punishment of death for stealing horses was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1832 upon the passage of a bill sponsored by William Ewart the legislation which passed over the strong objections of Peel in the Commons and Lord Wynford in the Lords also abolished the death penalty in Britain for the theft of sheep and cattle and for larceny in a dwelling house the Parliament had abolished the death sentence for most larcenies in a separate bill the same year 10 By the time of its abolition actual executions for horse theft had been rare or nonexistent for 50 years 11 United States Edit Alfred Jacob Miller s Snake Indian Pursuing Crow Horse Thief c 1859 The term horse thief came into great popularity in the United States during the 19th century During that time the Great Plains states Texas and other western states were sparsely populated and largely unpoliced As farmers tilled the land and migrants headed west through the Great Plains their horses became subject to theft Since these farmers and migrants depended on their horses horse thieves garnered a particularly pernicious reputation because they left their victims helpless or greatly handicapped by the loss of their horses The victims needed their horses for transportation and farming Such depredation led to the use of the term horse thief as an insult one that conveys the impression of the person who perpetrated the insult as one lacking any shred of moral decency 12 In Pennsylvania the An Act to Increase the Punishments of Horse Stealing law was passed in 1780 and repealed in 1860 which stated people guilty of such a crime should be branded The law ran as follows the first offense the convicted shall stand in the pillory for one hour and shall be publicly whipped on his her or their bare backs with thirty nine lashes well laid on and at the same time shall have his her or their ears cut off and nailed to the pillory and for the second offense shall be whipped and pilloried in like manner and be branded on the forehead in a plain and visible manner with the letters H T 13 This punishment was referenced in Cormac McCarthy s novel Blood Meridian as the character Toadvine is branded with the letters H T on his forehead H stands for Horse T for Thief and F for Felon On his forehead were burned the letters H T and lower and almost between the eyes the letter F and these markings were splayed and garish as if the iron had been left too long When he turned to look at the kid the kid could see that he had no ears 14 In the United States the Anti Horse Thief Association first organized in 1854 in Clark County Missouri was an organization developed for the purposes of protecting property especially horses and other livestock from theft and recovering such property if and when it was stolen Originally conceived by farmers living in the area where Missouri Illinois and Iowa intersect it soon spread with the first charter organization in Oklahoma Territory being created in 1894 By 1916 the associated numbered over 40 000 members in nine central and western US states and a drop in horse thefts had been noted Bentonville Anti horse Thief Society historical marker in Ohio Between 1899 and 1909 members of the Oklahoma branch of the AHTA recovered 83 000 worth of livestock and saw the conviction of over 250 thieves 15 A similar group which operated mainly in Ohio was the Bentonville Anti Horse Thief Society Men suspected of being thieves would be pursued by members of the organization and often hanged without trial 16 The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves was a third such organization that operated in the United States this one in Dedham Massachusetts It is today the oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States and one of Dedham s most venerable social organizations 17 Most of these clubs became defunct or developed into social clubs with the decline of horse theft in the US 18 Present day Edit The trial of a horse thief chromolithograph in 1877 Tree in Horse Thief Canyon where a number of horse thieves were hanged taken in 1913 Horse theft is still relatively common with an estimated 40 000 horses a year being taken from their lawful owners by strangers or opponents in civil or legal disputes Stolen Horse International is one modern day organization in the US that works to reconnect stolen horses with their owners 19 Horses are sometimes stolen for their meat 20 or sometimes for ransom 21 Punishment for horse theft can still be severe as one woman in Arkansas was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 2011 theft of five horses and equestrian equipment one of the horses was later found dead while the others were recovered 22 Horse thefts today can in some cases be solved through the use of microchips which is required in the European Union on horses born after 2009 and also often seen in other countries 20 Stolen racehorses EditFanfreluche a Canadian Thoroughred stolen in June 1977 and recovered in December Ocean Bay a Venezuelan racehorse stolen and killed in 2020 possibly for food as Venezuela was in economic chaos Shergar stolen for ransom by the IRA on 8 February 1983 allegedly killed after injuring its legSee also Edit Horse Thief by George Caleb Bingham 1852Cattle raidingFootnotes Edit 1 Geo C Blakely photographer Thirteen Snapshots of Life in the Untrammeled Bunch Grass County Execution After the Verdict The Oregon Native Son volume 2 page 520 May 1900 Rachel Ginnis Fuchs 2005 Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth Century Europe Cambridge University Press p 97 ISBN 052162102X Gilbert Stuart 1782 A view of society in Europe in its progress from rudeness to refinement J Murray p 163 Louis A Knafla 2003 Crime Punishment and Reform in Europe Greenwood Publishing Group p 17 ISBN 0313310149 Steven L Hoch 1989 Serfdom and Social Control in Russia University of Chicago Press p 169 ISBN 0226345858 a b Drew D Gray Crime Policing and Punishment in England 1660 1914 Bloomsbury 2016 p 130 Steve Hindle The State and Social Change in Early Modern England 1550 1640 Palgrave 2000 pp 61 62 Knafla p 201 Clive Emsley Crime and Society in England 1750 1900 2013 p 271 table 10 3 Peter King Changing Attitudes to Post execution Punishment 1752 1834 in Punishing the Criminal Corpse 1700 1840 Palgrave Macmillan 2017 pp 113 182 see also Punishment of Death Hansard Deb 25 June 1832 vol 13 cc982 1000 Carolyn A Conley The Unwritten Law Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent Oxford University Press 1991 p 45 Luckett Matthew S 2014 Honor among Thieves Horse Stealing State Building and Culture in Lincoln County Nebraska 1860 1890 Ph D University of California Los Angeles Pennsylvania Dallas Alexander James 1797 Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania From the Fourteenth Day of October One Thousand Seven Hundred to the twenty seventh Day of February One Thousand Eight Hundred and One Hall and Sellers McCarthy Cormac 2010 Blood meridian or The evening redness in the west London Picador ISBN 978 0 330 51094 3 OCLC 540398528 Keen Patrick Anti Horse Thief Association Oklahoma Historical Society Retrieved 2013 12 06 Bentonville Anti Horse Thief Society Ohio History Central Retrieved 2013 12 06 The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves Retrieved June 15 2015 Historical Sketch The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves Retrieved 2013 12 06 Pat Raia June 1 2012 Thwarting Horse Thieves The Horse Retrieved 2013 12 06 a b Christa Leste Lasserre April 22 2013 French Horses Allegedly Stolen for Meat The Horse Retrieved 2013 12 06 Michael Walsh September 16 2013 Miniature pony stolen from Italian horse show New York Daily News Retrieved 2013 12 06 Carolyn Roy July 15 2013 Cox gets 60 years in SAU horse theft trial KSLA News Retrieved 2013 12 06 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Horse theft amp oldid 1127692305, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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