Horse theft

Horse theft was a well-known crime in medieval and early modern times and was severely prosecuted in many areas. While many crimes were punished through ritualized shaming or banishment, horse theft often brought severe punishment, including branding, torture, exile and even death.[2] According to one 18th century treatise, the use of death as a punishment for horse theft stretches back as far as the first century AD, when the Germanic Chauci tribe would sentence horse thieves to death, while murderers would be sentenced to a fine. This practice derived from the wealth of the populace being in the form of livestock which ranged over large areas, meaning that the theft of animals could only be prevented through fear of the harsh punishment that would result.[3]

Horse theft was harshly punished in the French Bordeaux region in the 15th–18th centuries. Punishments ranged from whipping to a lifetime sentence of service on a galley ship. This latter punishment was also given to perpetrators of incest, homicide and poisoning, showing the severity with which horse theft was viewed by the judiciary.[4]

In 19th-century Russia, the theft of livestock (including horses) made up approximately 16 percent of thefts of peasant property; however, there were no reported thefts of horses from estate property. The offense of stealing a horse was the most severely punished of any theft on Russian estates, due to the importance of horses in day-to-day living. Flogging was the usual punishment for horse thieves, combined with the shaving of heads and beards, and fines of up to three times the value of the horse if the animal had been sold.[5]

Since Henry VIII's reign, horse theft was considered a serious crime in England.[6] It was made a non-clergyable crime in 1597-98 and 1601.[7] For the rural English county of Berkshire in the 18th century, horse theft was considered a major property crime, along with stealing from dwellings or warehouses, sheep theft, highway robbery and other major thefts.[8] In Essex in the 18th century, some assize judges decided to execute every horse thief convicted to deter the crime.[6] From around the 1750s until 1818, between 13% and 14% of persons convicted of horse theft in Home, Norfolk, and Western circuits were executed.[9] The punishment of death for stealing horses was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1832, upon the passage of a bill sponsored by William Ewart; the legislation, which passed over the strong objections of Peel in the Commons and Lord Wynford in the Lords, also abolished the death penalty in Britain for the theft of sheep and cattle, and for larceny in a dwelling house; the Parliament had abolished the death sentence for most larcenies in a separate bill the same year.[10] By the time of its abolition, actual executions for horse theft had been rare or nonexistent for 50 years.[11]

Alfred Jacob Miller's Snake Indian Pursuing "Crow" Horse Thief, c.1859.

The term horse thief came into great popularity in the United States during the 19th century. During that time the Great Plains states, Texas, and other western states were sparsely populated and largely unpoliced. As farmers tilled the land and migrants headed west through the Great Plains, their horses became subject to theft. Since these farmers and migrants depended on their horses, horse thieves garnered a particularly pernicious reputation because they left their victims helpless or greatly handicapped by the loss of their horses. The victims needed their horses for transportation and farming. Such depredation led to the use of the term horse thief as an insult, one that conveys the impression of the insulted person as one lacking any shred of moral decency.[12]

In the United States, the Anti Horse Thief Association, first organized in 1854 in Clark County, Missouri, was an organization developed for the purposes of protecting property, especially horses and other livestock, from theft, and recovering such property if and when it was stolen. Originally conceived by farmers living in the area where Missouri, Illinois and Iowa intersect, it soon spread, with the first charter organization in Oklahoma Territory being created in 1894. By 1916 the associated numbered over 40,000 members in nine central and western US states, and a drop in horse thefts had been noted.

Bentonville Anti-horse Thief Society historical marker in Ohio

Between 1899 and 1909, members of the Oklahoma branch of the AHTA recovered $83,000 worth of livestock and saw the conviction of over 250 thieves.[13] A similar group, which operated mainly in Ohio, was the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society. Men suspected of being thieves would be pursued by members of the organization, and often hanged without trial.[14] The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves was a third such organization that operated in the United States, this one in Dedham, Massachusetts. It is today "the oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States, and one of Dedham’s most venerable social organizations."[15] Most of these clubs became defunct or developed into social clubs with the decline of horse theft in the US.[16]