Richard Martin, MP for Galway, earned the nickname “Humanity Dick” for his efforts against the abuse of animals in the early 19th century. In 1822 he brought a donkey into court to display the scars of a beating, winning the world’s first conviction for animal cruelty.

Sadly, his cause was still being fought 80 years later, when the “brown dog affair” divided Edwardian England. A London physiologist had allegedly dissected a conscious terrier before 60 medical students. The physiologist won a suit for libel, but his opponents commissioned a bronze statue with a damning inscription:

In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903, after having endured Vivisection extending over more than two months and having been handed from one Vivisector to another till Death came to his Release. Also in Memory of the 232 dogs vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and Women of England, how long shall these things be?

The statue occasioned four years of riots, vandalism, and controversy. Battersea Council finally had it melted down — but a replacement was erected in 1985.