Europe 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. 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. 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, a severe punishment shared by perpetrators of
incest, homicide and poisoning. 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. Since
Henry VIII's reign, horse theft was considered a serious crime in England. It was made a
non-clergyable crime in 1597–1598 and 1601. 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. In
Essex in the 18th century, some
assize judges decided to execute every horse thief convicted to deter the crime. 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; Parliament had abolished the death sentence for most larcenies in a
separate bill the same year. By the time of its abolition, actual executions for horse theft had been rare or nonexistent for 50 years.
United States 's
Snake Indian Pursuing "Crow" Horse Thief, ,
The trial of a horse thief 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 person who perpetrated the insult as one lacking any shred of
moral decency. In Pennsylvania, the "An Act to Increase the Punishments of Horse Stealing" law was passed in 1780 and repealed in 1860, which stated people guilty of such a crime should be
branded. The law ran as follows;
"the first offense [the convicted] shall stand in the pillory for one hour, and shall be publicly whipped on his, her or their [bare] backs with thirty-nine lashes, well laid on, and at the same time shall have his, her or their ears cut off and nailed to the pillory, and for the second offense shall be whipped and pilloried in like manner and be branded on the forehead in a plain and visible manner with the letters H. T." This punishment was referenced in
Cormac McCarthy's novel
Blood Meridian as the character Toadvine is branded with the letters H. T. on his forehead. H stands for Horse, T for Thief and F for Felon;
"On his forehead were burned the letters H T and lower and almost between the eyes the letter F and these markings were splayed and garish as if the iron had been left too long. When he turned to look at the kid the kid could see that he had no ears." 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. 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. 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.
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." Most of these clubs became defunct or developed into social clubs with the decline of horse theft in the US. ==Present day==