PROTEST AT "PAGAN RITE” BY LEAGUE AGAINST CRUELTY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28180, 19 January 1957, Page 11

PROTEST AT "PAGAN RITE” BY LEAGUE AGAINST CRUELTY

<Rec. 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 17

The League Against Cruel Sports today protested against a horn being blown at a huntsman’s funeral and a fox’s tail being thrown into his grave.

The British Field Sports Society hit back with a statement which said: “Putting a fox’s brush on a huntsman’s coffin is no more pagan than firing a volley at an army burial.”

And while these protests were being exchanged, the Queen's children. Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were attending the start of a hunt.

The league sent its protest to the Bishop of Southwell over the incident at the funeral of Captain T D. Readett-Bayley.

The man was killed in a road accident, and at the funeral, members of the South Nottinghamshire

Hunt stood at the graveside in their pink coats. While one blew the horn, another tossed the severed tail of a fox on to the coffin.

The league asked the Bishop why a practice “reminiscent of a beastly pagan rite of a bygone age” had been allowed at a Church of England burial.

Hearing of the protest, the Field Sports Society said that the implied criticisms of the Bishop and the intrusion into the death of a respected farmer, and national hunt rider, were in the worst taste.

The Royal children, knowing nothing of this controversy, were driven from Sandringham, where they are staying, to the hunt. They spent some time patting the hounds, and when one got stuck on the wrong side of a fence. Prince Charles lifted him back. When the hunt moved off,, they went back to their station waggon.