‘When Paris removed stray dogs’: What happened in the French capital in the 1880s?

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the immediate removal of stray dogs from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) has sparked a huge debate in the country. It has pitted public safety advocates against dog lovers who see the order as “cruel”.

The directive has garnered reactions from various quarters, including politicians. While some have hailed the top court’s directive, others found it “inhumane”. Former Union minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi has described the order as “impractical”, “financially unviable” and “potentially harmful” to the region’s ecological balance.

She also brought up the example of Paris, which she said faced a rat problem after getting rid of the canines from its streets in the 1880s.

Let’s take a closer look.

Supreme Court’s stray dogs order

The Supreme Court on Monday (August 11) ordered the Delhi government , civic bodies and authorities of Noida, Gurgaon, and Ghaziabad to start picking up stray dogs and relocate them to shelters.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan said that dog shelters have to be set up to accommodate around 5,000 stray dogs, which should be sterilised and immunised.

The apex court gave authorities eight weeks to create the facilities and install CCTV monitoring to ensure no animals are released back onto the streets.

It also warned that any person or organisation that obstructs the move will face strict action. The bench also refused to consider petitions from dog lovers or any other party on the issue.

The order came amid a rise in dog bites and cases of rabies. However, it has divided the country, with many animal lovers criticising the ruling.

Both Gandhi families have spoken against the Supreme Court’s directive to remove the stray dogs.

“The SC’s directive to remove all stray dogs from Delhi-NCR is a step back from decades of humane, science-backed policy. These voiceless souls are not “problems” to be erased. Shelters, sterilisation, vaccination & community care can keep streets safe - without cruelty. Blanket removals are cruel, shortsighted, and strip us of compassion,” Congress MP Rahul Gandhi wrote in a post on X.

He added, “We can ensure public safety and animal welfare go hand in hand.”

Animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi warned that removing stray dogs from the streets will create new problems.

“Within 48 hours, three lakh dogs will come from Ghaziabad, Faridabad, because there’s food here in Delhi. And once you remove the dogs, monkeys will come on the ground… I’ve seen this happen at my own house,” she reportedly said.

Referring to 1880s Paris, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader stated, “When they removed dogs and cats, the city was overrun with rats.” She said dogs were “rodent control animals”.

What happened in the 1800s Paris?

In the 1800s, stray dogs were frowned upon in Paris, seen as transmitters of rabies, fleas, and dirt.

Paris had a large number of strays at the time, with the administration considering them a threat to cleanliness, health, and safety.

According to a research paper titled Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris, shared by The University of Liverpool Repository, in 1883, pharmacist Emile Capron backed the removal of stray dogs from the streets of Paris, claiming that “the infinite number of these awful mutts” spread rabies. She also blamed them for scaring horses and pedestrians, which resulted in traffic accidents.

“As Capron’s remarks suggest, many commentators treated strays as dangerously mobile nuisances that hindered the movement, and threatened the health, of the city’s productive human and nonhuman inhabitants. Strays contributed to the sense that Paris was a pathological city plagued by crime, filth, and insecurity, and elite commentators treated them as members of the city’s criminal, dirty and uprooted “dangerous classes,”" Chris Pearson wrote in the paper.

To ensure “public safety”, many stray dogs were allegedly culled. As Paris moved towards becoming modern, “Parisian public hygienists and authorities turned strays into a problem that they would solve to make the city safe, clean and modern,” Pearson wrote.

As per some accounts, the killing of strays led to a surge in the population of rats in the French city.

ALSO READ: With nearly 10 lakh stray dogs, how will Delhi implement the Supreme Court order?

When Parisians ate dogs, cats, rats

During the Siege of Paris (the Franco-Prussian War between 1870-1871), the allied German forces surrounded Paris and cut off most of the food shipments to the French capital.

Amid food shortages, Parisians resorted to eating rats, cats, dogs, and even horses.

On November 12, 1870, a stall on the Rue Rochechouart street sold several animals. “On the right side of the stall was several large dogs, neatly dressed … next to these are several large cats, also very neatly dressed … On the left of the stall there is a dozen or more of rats stretched upon a tray, and a young woman, half veiled, is timidly approaching them with a little girl at her side. She wishes to inquire the price of the rats, and, if she has money enough, to purchase one,” Robert Lowry Sibbet, an American doctor who was trapped in Paris during the siege, wrote in the book The Siege of Paris by an American Eye-Witness, published in 1892.

With inputs from agencies