II
“BLOODING”
The Blooding of Children.
Of all practices connected with “sport” none are more loathsome than those known as “blooding,” whether it be the “blooding” of children, which consists in a sort of gruesome parody of the rite of baptism, or the “blooding” of hounds—viz., the turning out of some decrepit animal to be pulled down by the pack, by way of stimulating their blood-lust. Here are a few examples:
On January 4, 1910, the Daily Mirror published an account of the “blooding” of the Marquis of Worcester, the ten-year-old son of the Duke of Beaufort. In a front-page illustration the child was shown with blood-bedaubed cheeks, holding up a dead hare for the hounds, while a number of ladies and gentlemen were smiling approval in the rear.
Here, again, is an extract from the Cheltenham Examiner of March 25, 1909, in reference to the “eviction” and butchery of a fox which had taken refuge in a drain.
“Captain Elwes’s two children being present at the death of a fox on their father’s preserves, the old hunting custom of ‘blooding’ was duly performed by Charlie Beacham, who, after dipping the brush of the fox in his own [sic] blood, sprinkled the foreheads of both children, hoping they would be aspirants to the ‘sport of kings.’”
Presumably the blood in which the brush was dipped was that of the fox, not of Mr. Charles Beacham. But what a ceremony in a civilised age! One would have thought that twentieth-century sportsmen, even if they would not spare the fox, might spare their own children!
The following paragraph also appeared in a London paper in 1909:
“A pretty little girl on a chestnut cob, with masses of fair curls falling over her navy-blue habit, was the chief centre of attraction at a meet of the West Norfolk Fox-Hounds at Necton. The pretty little girl was Princess Mary of Wales, and the day will be a memorable one in her life. She motored back to Sandringham carrying her first brush.… Princess Mary was ‘blooded’ by the huntsmen, and was presented with the brush, which was hung on her saddle.”