A street scene in which a dog is maltreated; a young man intervenes by offering his food to the miscreants. Engraving by William Hogarth, 1751.

The protagonist torturing the dog is Tom Nero: he wears a badge on his arm to indicate for St. Giles' Parish. The young man intervening, it has been suggested, is George William Frederick, the future George III. In the foreground, a dog mauls a cat and a man ties a bone to the tail of a dog. The boy holding the cock is participating in a sport known as "throwing at cocks"! Behind a wall another boy blinds a bird with a hot wire. Two cats have been strung up. In the distance a cat has been thrown out of a top floor window with a pair of wings attached