Another historic picture from the archives.
This photograph taken in Devon, seemingly in the 1980s, is believed to show not traditional badger strangling – which involved a slightly shorter pole, and is thought to have gone entirely underground by this time – but the training of dancing badgers.
The trainer (his identity is concealed here because the activity was, strictly speaking, illegal) still tended to be known as the ‘strangler’. The occupation of strangler was a hazardous but lucrative one, because dancing badgers were still a popular sideshow at country fairs. Styles were slow to change – so much so that in the Eighties the animals were still predominantly doing the Twist, though break dancing had started to make an appearance.
Footnote: the noose which can be seen attached to the pole came into play only rarely – typically when it was necessary to make an example of one rogue animal to encourage the others.
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