By the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain, many of the gentry and the middle class were devoting their time to helping the poor, especially in the capital, London. There were church connected organisations such as the ‘Salvation Army’ that became widely known and still operate today, yet some of the work being done was on a very haphazard and personal basis, with individuals and small groups of people ‘doing what they can’ to help those who could not help themselves.
One of these people, a married woman and daughter of a Free Church Preacher was Maria Dickin, who had given much of her life over to voluntary work helping the sick and the poor. By the time she was in her mid 40s she had noticed that, quite obviously, if people were too poor to buy themselves proper food and medicines, they were also unable to spend on the animals in their lives if and when they needed attention or operations. This led to sickly animals living in close quarters with humans. Backstreet animal operations, or just a trip to the local ‘knackers yard.’ were often the harsh end to an animal’s story. Maria noticed two things, one being that this was not helping with the health situation of the average slum home, and two, that the psychological health of the owners was affected by any extra financial worry added to the anguish caused by a sick animal. She chose to try and help in a different way than usual and using her, what turned out to be, considerable skills of persuasion, (probably learned from days listening to her father’s sermons,) managed to beg, borrow and purloin enough backing to open, on the seventeenth of November in 1917, her first “People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor’.
It was an instant success, drawing large crowds from the first day to the basement clinic in Whitechapel. People brought dogs, cats, birds and other animals to have them checked out, given medicines and treated for free.
One of the main concerns for Maria was that many of the animals were being kept by families in their own homes, and they had little or no knowledge of how to care for them properly. So, she decided that everyone who brought an animal to her for help, was expected to learn about the animal, and how to care for it. This education was also given freely, but was on the condition that the owners learned and used the information. Manned mainly by volunteers who were amateur animal lovers, with little training, the charity managed to grow each year with new sites being opened, and then later on, even a mobile service working from a horse drawn carriage. This would visit animal owners at their own homes in any of the boroughs of London too far away from the PDSAotP locations.
Today, the PDSA operates 17 clinics in the UK, and still has places in Europe and further abroad where they give welfare and veterinary support. Overall, they care for an average of 4,700 pets every single day.
Maria was always fundraising and even managed to fund a complete Animal Sanitorium in Essex, offering rest and recovery for horses and donkeys, a fully equipped animal hospital and later even had training facilities for PDSA staff to further their knowledge and for veterinary students to practice. There was a bit of bad press when the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons opposed the hiring of non-graduate practitioners by PDSA, but Maria, as ever looking for a problem to solve promptly took them to court, and won! Her bustling disposition put the onus back on to the RCoVS and insisted that they were the problem for not doing enough of what we now know as ‘Pro-Bono’ work. In later years the RCoVS and the newly renamed PDSA, (having dropped the words “of the Poor“) would go on to work much more closely together, bringing wider knowledge and healing to the public.
During WW2, the work that the PDSA were taking on became more and more war related, with animals suffering from bombings, gunshots, over-fatigue, post-traumatic-stress and others. She realised that many animals were working tirelessly alongside humans and contributing much to the war effort. Working with The War office, Maria put the idea forward and then presented the ‘PDSA Dickin Medal for animal bravery‘. This commemorated any animal thought to have given “..conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty..”. 75 medals have been given out over the years, to horses, a cat, birds and dogs, and the moniker “The Animal’s Victoria Cross” has been generally accepted by the public.
Maria carried on her lifelong project until she was 81, continuously fundraising and finding ways to help the animals and the people who cared for them. She was awarded a CBE in 1929. She died in 1951.
Maria Dickin was one of the women who helped bring about changes in a Britain which was already changing due to two world wars and the aftermath of social and cultural upheaval. That Britain nowadays is known as a nation of animal lovers is part of her legacy and her influence is still felt across the country.
Read more about Maria at www.english-heritage.org.uk
The PDSA receives no official central funding, relying as at its beginning on donations from members of the public. You can read more about their story and also donate, at; www.pdsa.org.uk
