Cats in the Mews: March 10, 1873
When a Maltese cat owned by New York City Police Superintendent James Jackson Kelso was reportedly stolen from his home at 110 East 55th Street, the cat burglary made the headlines in several newspapers across the country.
According to The New York Times, the cat, who was “of remarkably dignified appearance,” was Superintendent Kelso’s favorite cat. He valued the cat at $200.
Sometime during the week, “some daring young vagabonds of the Nineteenth Precinct, not having the fear of the Central Office detectives before their eyes,” broke into the superintendent’s four-story brick row house and stole the cat. A general alarm was issued to all the precincts in the city, cautioning the 1,800 police officers on active duty to be on the lookout (BOLO) and to arrest and detain all Maltese cats fitting the description of Kelso’s beloved pet.
The superintendent also offered a $50 reward for the cat’s safe and sound return. (Why do I have a feeling that hundreds of women and children armed with gray cats turned up at Kelso’s home? Keep reading…)
The news of the missing cat gave several newspapers the opportunity to poke fun at the city’s police department. The New York Evening Mail asked, “If the resources of our police department are not sufficient to hunt up that cat, what is it good for? Where is the boasted keenness of scent of our detectives?”
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans also had some fun with Kelso’s tragic loss: “The police hunt was futile, but the dollars woke up the cats. Since that advertisement appeared, a procession of Maltese cats enough to stock all the Mediterranean Islands has appeared at police headquarters… If anybody wants cats, let him visit New Orleans; for intensity of ‘wauling,’ vivacity of movement, soprano, contralto, basso and now and then pianissimo combinations on moonlight nights, they are a credit to the musical reputation of this city.”
The Indianapolis News also got in on the story. “Superintendent of Police Kelso of New York has his force hunting high and low for his two hundred dollar Maltese cat, which some fearless wretch stole.”
And even a newspaper in Leavenworth, Kansas, reported the cat burglary and the rush at police headquarters: “From the moment the [reward] offer was made public, there has been a procession of persons at police headquarters with more varieties of Maltese cats than the world was supposed to contain, each person insisting that his was the particular mouser that had been stolen from the Superintendent. There hasn’t been such a bull movement in the cat market for years as that which has resulted from Mr. Keslo’s promised reward which, however, he has repented and withdrawn.”
I searched the newspaper archives for a happy ending to this Maltese cat tale, but sadly, I did not find any good news.
Although Superintendent Kelso’s home on East 55th Street was fairly new in 1873, the neighborhood was still very rural. There were large areas of rocky outcroppings and even a shanty village diagonally across from his home, as the photo below taken in 1871 shows. So hopefully, the thieves sold the cat to someone who gave it a good home. A domesticated cat set loose in this neighborhood would probably not have much of a fighting chance to survive.
