Abstract

With the aim of recovering some of their lived experiences, this chapter describes the lives of small horses who were forced to work in British coal mines. It does this from a critical perspective and looks at why and how thousands came to be transported and used, their loss of liberty, the difficult and dangerous labour forced upon them, the conditions under which they lived and the likely traumatic effects on the bodies and minds of these sentient and sensitive beings. It suggests that if it was not for the prevailaing anthropocentric legal system, this would be understood as a crime of immense proportions perpetuated against those with no power to resist.