The quotation in last week's Spectator from The Spectator of
a hundred years ago, on the charge against a Mr. Simpson and M. and Mme.• Poitevin of cruelty to horses, which were carried aloft suspended from balloons, has apparently aroused some interest and a desire to know how the case ended. It ended in an acquittal, the magistrate holding that in a strict legal sense (however much the action was to be deprecated on general grounds) there-was no actual cruelty. But when, encouraged by this Mme. Poiteven, in the guise of Europa, ascended from Cremome Gardens on the back of a heifer slung under a balloon, and the animal after a descent at Ilford was found so exhausted that it had to be destroyed, all three defendants were fined O. If that had happened in the first case the life of a heifer might have been saved—temporarily.
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