Decline
The last public competition took place in Leicester in 1912. The owner was prosecuted, fined and had to give a promise to the court that he would never again promote such entertainment. Toward the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign, a more humane attitude to the canine race gradually emerged, the queen's love of animals setting the example. Baiting sports diminished in popularity and the exhibition of dogs slowly replaced the attractions of the dog pit.
Read more about this topic: Rat-baiting
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)