The success of early-nineteenth-century reform movements inspired the animal welfare movement by reframing animal cruelty as social injustice, laying the foundation for activists to move beyond pity and demand legal protections for animals.
Henry Bergh and the Formation of the ASPCA:
The Meddling Man Who Revolutionized Animal Rights
Urbanization and Animals
Reform as Inspiration
"Most social movements borrow and build on the successful tactics of their predecessors and contemporaries. Animal advocacy did just that, and since many humanitarians participated in several social movements, the activists did not have to look far for ideas. To achieve their wide-ranging goals, they borrowed and reworked the strategies of their abolitionist, feminist, environmental, and civil rights counterparts."
Beers, For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States, 2006
Meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention, Pictorial Times, 1843
Dorothea Dix, an early 19th-century activist who transformed care for the mentally ill, National Portrait Gallery, 1868
Stress of Urbanization
"New York was in the process of intensive urbanization, and the municipal government had a hard time keeping up. Not only were there more people around to own animals, but those people were also creating more garbage that, left uncollected on the streets, fed a burgeoning, free-roaming animal population."
McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City, 2014
New York City was a microcosm of the changing United States in the 1860s, as the city was in flux amid urban growth and commercial interests, leading to the overlooking of widespread animal suffering. The few laws during the nineteenth century still viewed animals as personal property; animal protection efforts lacked institutional support.
New York City – The Municipal War on Dogs – Scenes and Incidents of the Summer Canine Campaign, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1877
Trolley Ride Through New York City, Archive Films, 1890