The Blooding of Children
OF all practices connected with "sport" none are more loathsome than those known as "blooding," whether it be the "blooding" of children, which consists in a sort of gruesome parody of the rite of baptism, or the "blooding" of hounds—viz., the turning out of some decrepit animal to be pulled down by the pack, by way of stimulating their blood-lust. Here are a few examples:
On January 4, 1910, the Daily Mirror published an account of the "blooding" of the Marquis of Worcester, the ten-year-old son of the Duke of Beaufort. In a front-page illustration the child was shown with blood-bedaubed cheeks, holding up a dead hare for the hounds, while a number of ladies and gentlemen were smiling approval in the rear.
Here, again, is an extract from the Cheltenham Examiner of March 25, 1909, in reference to the "eviction" and butchery of a fox which had taken refuse in a drain.
"Captain Elwe’s two children being present at the death of a fox on their father’s preserves, the old hunting custom of ‘blooding’ was duly performed by Charlie Beacham, who, after dipping the brush of the fox in his own [sic] blood, sprinkled the foreheads of both children, hoping they would be aspirants to the ‘sport of kings.’ "