Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty: ‘[T]o Reform Some Reigning Vices Peculiar to the Lower Class of People’

Abstract

This chapter is the first analysis of any length of what by moral philosophers, animal rights theorists and others has been said to be an important mid-eighteenth-century marker against the abuse of animals, namely, Hogarth’s depictions in The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751). The deciphering of Hogarth’s numerous intentions in these four prints is aided by a content analysis of literary texts and newspapers in the decade or so before their publication and dissemination. Using a new form of mass printed communication, Hogarth the artist, nationalist and social reformer, expresses not only his detestation of animal cruelty in The Four Stages but also his numerous insecurities about crime, dangerous neighbourhoods, the negotiation of urban space, the abuse of professional authority and anatomical dissection.