Hannah Furness
Fri, November 19, 2021
The Duchess of Cornwall during a visit to Brooke Veterinary Hospital in Cairo, Egypt on the last day of her tour of the Middle East with the Prince of Wales. - Joe Giddens/PA
In 1931, the wife of an Army officer was so horrified to find Britain's loyal war horses working into old age on the streets of Egypt that she wrote to The Telegraph pleading with its readers for help.
The result was £20,000 in donations and a refuge for 5,000 of those horses saved from suffering and ending their lives in peace.
Today, the Duchess of Cornwall has visited the site of that sanctuary, now a modern veterinary hospital for injured donkeys and horses brought in from the streets of Cairo.
The Duchess was shown around the stables, stroking the animals' noses and asking after their welfare. She was introduced to an injured horse painted by henna and brought in by his owner, and patted two nervous donkeys recuperating in the hay.
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, visits the Brooke Veterinary Hospital in Cairo
The visit took place on the last day of her tour of the Middle East with the Prince of Wales - Joe Giddens/PA
Escorted by Sherif Foda, chairman of Brooke Egypt, the Duchess first cut a ribbon to officially open the refurbished hospital which contained row upon row of stables containing animals being treated by the charity’s vets.
"I can’t believe how clean they are, so impressive," she said. "They really are spotless."
Head of animal welfare Dr Emad Nouam, who has worked there for 32 years, gave the Duchess bardeen, a type of clover, to feed them.
She stroked one and asked what he happened to it and was told that it had been hit by a car.
"You poor thing, well you are in good hands," she said.
Dorothy Brooke, whose name and picture are still on the wall, was the wife of a Major General in the British Army who arrived in Egypt in 1930 and found the ageing war horses "dragging out wretched days of toil in the ownership of masters too poor to feed them – too inured to hardship themselves to appreciate, in the faintest degree, the sufferings of animals in their hands".
The Duchess was given bardeen, a type of clover, to feed the animals
The following year, having established the problem stretched to thousands of elderly horses once used to transport British troops in the region during the First World War, she wrote to the Morning Post, which is now The Telegraph.
"They are all over twenty years of age by now, and to say that the majority of them have fallen on hard times is to express it very mildly," she wrote.
"These old horses were, many of them, born and bred in the green fields of England – how many years since they have seen a field, heard a stream of water, or a kind word in English?"
Saying "many are blind - all are skeletons", she told readers she was setting up a fund to buy the horses, restore any she could back to health and bring a "merciful end" for the rest.
She told them: "If those who truly love horses – who realise what it can mean to be very old, very hungry and thirsty, and very tired, in a country where hard, ceaseless work has to be done in great heat – will send contributions to help in giving a merciful end to our poor old war heroes, we shall be extremely grateful; and we venture to think that, in many ways, this may be as fitting (though unspectacular) part of a War Memorial as any other that could be devised."
Newspaper readers sent the modern equivalent of £20,000, allowing Mrs Brooke to buy 5,000 ex-war horses. Most were "old, exhausted, and had to be humanely put down", the charity said.
In 1934, she set up the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital in Cairo. Four years later, the charity put shade shelter and water troughs for animals in the city, and brought in its first motorised ambulance.
It now has four hospitals and 28 mobile vet units in Egypt, provides free care for around 160,000 injured and sick donkeys and horses, most of which are brought in by owners who cannot afford to treat them.
The Duchess of Cornwall during a visit to Brooke Veterinary Hospital in Cairo, Egypt on the last day of her tour of the Middle East with the Prince of Wales. - Joe Giddens/PA
They also run education programmes about animals welfare.
It is now a multi-national charity with centres throughout Egypt and in the UK. Donations to the Cairo branch are now negligible, staff said.
The Brooke, as it is known in England, has recently put out an appeal after being hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. In Egypt, it ran a feeding programme for 1,700 horses whose owners worked in tourism and could no longer afford to keep them well.
The visit from the Duchess of Cornwall came on the final day of the royal tour to Jordan and Egypt. The Prince attended a meeting of his Sustainable Markets Initiative.
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