Horse thieves

Horse theft is the crime of stealing horses. A person engaged in stealing horses is known as a horse thief. Horse theft was very common throughout the world prior to widespread car ownership. Punishments were often severe for horse theft, with several cultures pronouncing the sentence of death upon actual or presumed thieves. Several societies were formed in the US to prevent horse theft and apprehend horse thieves. However, horse theft continues to occur throughout the world, as horses are stolen for their meat, for ransom, or in disputes between their owners and other persons. Horse theft today is comparable to Automobile theft; a crime punishable by felony jail time. Both horse and car are valuable commodities.

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. This latter punishment was also given to perpetrators of incest, homicide and poisoning, showing the severity with which horse theft was viewed by the judiciary. 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 19th-century Russia, horse theft 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.

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