On this day in history, the Alexander Avenue police station (former 37th Precinct) in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx acquired a new mascot. It was a “half-starved, black and white kitten not more than four or five inches long.” According to the Evening World, if Policeman Bill O’Malley hadn’t been a sailor in his previous life, the kitten “would have met a terrible fate, instead of lapping up cream from a saucer.”
The feline saga began when Mrs. Solomon Erickson of 576 East 135th Street came into the police station to report some wicked boys abusing a cat near her home. In between sobs, she told Captain Joe Post that she could see the boys through her kitchen window. Her window overlooked what was then Southern Boulevard, between Brook and St. Ann’s Avenue.
“It was a shame, Captain, an outrage” she said. “You must send your men right away and have it stopped.” Her tears reportedly flowed so heavily that the captain could barely make sense of her words.
“Calm yourself, madam, and speak slowly, and I will help you,” he told her. Mrs. Erickson told him about the little kitten on top of a telephone pole, where it had perched since the day before.
“Wicked boys are throwing pieces of ice and sticks at it,” she said in between sobs. “If you don’t send your men right away to stop them I will climb the pole myself and bring down that kitten if it breaks my neck.”
Captain Post called for Policeman O’Malley, knowing he had once been a sailor. “You’re always bragging how you used to be a sailorman and loved to lay aloft in a howling gale,” the captain said. “Now, here’s your chance. If you can climb like you say you can, go with this lady and shin up that pole and save that kitten.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” O’Malley said, while leading Mrs. Erickson out the door.
This photo is from 1931 Brooklyn, but I imagine the scene was very similar in 1909 Mott Haven.
When O’Malley and Mrs. Erickson reached the pole, a large group of boys scattered in all directions. Without removing his coat or cap, the stout policeman (the newspaper used this word, noting that he had put on weight since his sailing days) shinned up the pole with hardly any effort.
In two minutes, he reached the top and came face-to-face with the kitten. She arched her back, swelled her tail, and spat at him.
“Don’t mind that, she can’t hurt you,” Mrs. Erickson reassured him from the street below.
O’Malley seized the clawing and scratching kitten, tucked her under his arm, and slowly made his way down the pole in three minutes time. When he reached the ground, the crowd gathered around the pole began to cheer.
Mrs. Erickson asked the policeman if he wanted to keep the kitten. “You saved her and you deserve her.” O’Malley replied, “Lord bless you, I’ve got two cats of my own and no room for any more. But I’ll take her to the station and we’ll make a mascot of her.”
When the kitten and her cat-man hero returned to the station, Captain Post immediately adopted her as station mascot.
In 1896, the city created a new 37th Precinct in Mott Haven for territory previously covered by the 33rd Precinct, which was headquartered in the old Morrisania Town Hall building (shown here). The new station was constructed at the corner of Alexander Avenue and 138th Street, on land leased to the city by William H. Payne at a rate of $3,500 per year.
Today, the Alexander Avenue police station is the 40th Precinct (aka, the 4-0). Construction is underway on a modern new station for the precinct.
If you enjoyed this story, you may enjoy reading this cat story from 1901, about the cats that took over a Bronx tenement–which, incidentally, was just around the corner from Mrs. Erickson’s house.
On January 24, 1899, a cat reportedly named Eurita sprang out of a mail pouch after the pouch had been unlocked at Branch Post Office H on Lexington Avenue and 44th Street. The unexpected contents gave the postal employees quite a startle, to say the least.
According to The New York Times, there were no postage stamps on the cat, and no tags indicating ownership or providing any explanation for its presence in the mail bag. The only clue was that the bag had been collected from a postal sub-station in F.W. Schoonmaker’s drug store on 42nd Street and Park Avenue (the new Grand Central Terminal had not yet been built on this site).
In 1899, Branch Post Office H was located on the first floor of the Grand Central Palace on Lexington Avenue and 44th Street. Incidentally, the Empire Poultry Show, featuring cats from the Empire Cat Club, took place here n the early 1900s. New York Public Library Digital Collections
The mail clerks soon learned that the cat was named Eurita. She belonged to Mr. Schoonmaker, and had full run of the drug store.
The mail at this particular sub-station was sent down a chute in front of the drug store, where it then dropped into an open mail pouch at the bottom of the chute in the store’s basement. The mail clerks thought that the curious cat must have jumped into the pouch to investigate the items falling into it. Once in the bag, the cat could not get out.
Postal clerks receive mail at the General Post Office at City Hall Park in 1905. New York Public Library Digital Collections
It was further surmised that Eurita had fallen asleep, and was thus taking a cat nap when the pouch was locked up and delivered. According to the Times, “The animal was in the bag only a few hours and did not appear any the worse for its experience.”
If you enjoyed this cat story, you may also like this story about a cat that was mailed through the pneumatic mail tubes in 1897, or this story about a cat and rabbits that were mailed to the Brooklyn Post Office in 1926.
Edward Reinhardt relaxing with a cigar and two of his three cats the night before his execution by hanging at the Richmond County Jail on Staten Island on November 14, 1881.
The Pregnant Woman
On September 15, 1878, three boys tending to their cows near Silver Lake Park on Staten Island found a barrel buried in a patch of soft dirt near a wagon track called Little Serpentine Road. Inside the barrel was the decomposing body of a naked woman with long, dark, braided hair. She appeared to have been pregnant.
The boys ran to New Brighton and told Sheriff Connor they had found a woman stuffed inside a barrel. The news spread quickly through the village, and soon a large crowd had gathered near the lake to watch the sheriff and his deputies remove the barrel from the shallow grave.
Dr. William C. Walser, who conducted the initial examination, discovered that the woman had been about eight months pregnant when her death occurred. Although the woman’s skull was also fractured, the doctor thought she had died in the throes of childbirth–probably from internal hemorrhaging, and possibly during a botched abortion.
Silver Lake Park—once known as Fresh Pond—is located on Staten Island’s north shore, bounded by Forest Avenue and Victory Boulevard. During the 19th century, the area featured a casino and saloon; several companies also harvested ice from the lake. Residents used the lake for boating, picnicking, fishing, and ice skating; later, a golf course, tennis courts, ball fields, and playground were added.
At first, everyone assumed the body was that of Ellen Murphy, a woman who had been described as being “unlawfully intimate” with a Staten Island man named Louis Reige of Clifton. It didn’t take long for the rumors to begin flying that Ellen had probably been the victim of a female abortionist who lived just 300 hundred yards from the burial site.
However, Ellen’s landlady said no such thing had happened. According to her, Ellen had quit her job, packed a trunk, and left her house in August to visit family in Ireland for a few months.
The Potter’s Field at the Richmond County Poor House, where the unidentified remains of the woman were originally placed after the boys discovered her body at Silver Lake.
A Witness Identifies the Killer
Many families came forward to claim the body during the next few days, but all leads came to a dead end (no pun intended). On September 18, the coroner ordered her remains be buried in the Potter’s Field.
Edward Reinhardt, aka The Silver Lake Murderer and the Dandy Dutchman
Authorities finally caught a break, however, when Mr. Gustave “August” Keymer came forward with an important tip. August told Coroner Daniel Dempsey he had encountered a man digging a hole near the lake about six weeks earlier. When he asked the man what he was doing, the man said he was burying a Newfoundland dog that was inside a barrel.
August suggested the man take the dead dog somewhere else so the smell would not offend those using the lake. The man put the barrel in a wheelbarrow and wheeled it down to the ravine, where the woman’s body was later found. (This man was obviously not very bright.)
New York Daily Herald, October 8, 1878
With August’s tip and additional evidence left at the crime scene, the sheriff and his deputies were finally able to identify the mystery barrel man. As additional pieces began to fall into place, they soon were convinced that the “canine undertaker” was also the Silver Lake killer.
The suspect was Edward Reinhardt, 25, who had operated a candy and tobacco store on Gore Street (now Broad Street) in Stapleton for a short time while he lived there.
According to his landlady, Mrs. Josephine Herborn, Reinhardt was married to a woman named Annie (later determined to be Mary Anne Degnan of Newark, NJ). Annie had told Mrs. Herborn that she was pregnant and worried because her husband was abusing her.
During the trial, Mrs. Herborn testified that Reinhardt had moved out of her home on July 19, 1878. Before he left, he told her that he had to deliver a heavy barrel full of crockery to his sister’s house. She did not see Annie that day, although she did hear Reinhardt call out her name the morning he left.
Rhinehardt was last seen wheeling the beer barrel up the Richmond Road (now Van Duzer Street). Annie was never seen again.
The beer barrel was traced to the George Bechtel Brewery in Stapleton, which was less than a half mile from Mrs. Herborn’s home. The brewery, founded in 1853, was the largest brewery on the island. Old stables on Van Duzer Street are all that remain of the brewery, which closed in 1907.
Edward Reinhardt lived in a home on what was then still called Gore Street, somewhere very close to the George Bechtel Brewing Company. Today this is the intersection of Broad and Van Duzer Streets. New York Public Library, 1884 map.
So Where Do the Cats Come In?
By the time the authorities caught up with Reinhardt, he was living at 132 Broome Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with his new wife, Pauline Ditmar, whom he had reportedly married on July 13–just six days before killing his wife. He was employed at a marble shop at 125 Attorney Street.
It was August Keymer who broke the case by identifying Reinhardt as the man he saw digging the hole. Following further investigations, Reinhardt was arrested and sent to trial for murder.
There is a lot more to this story, but in the end, Reinhardt was eventually sentenced to hang for the murder of Mary Anne Degnan Reinhardt. He was sent to the Richmond County Jail, where–when he wasn’t trying to escape–he spent his time making miniature ship models out of wood and barrel beads, painting murals on his cell wall, and conversing with three cats who shared his cell with him.
According to The New York Times, Reinhardt had raised the cats since they were kittens. For more than two years, as Reinhardt awaited his final destiny, the cats lived with him in his jail cell.
Edward Reinhardt gets some attention from one of the three cats that shared his cell as he paints a mural on the wall.
On the last night of his life, Reinhardt spent the night in the jail corridor. The “death watch” assigned to stay with him comprised sheriff deputies John G. Vaughan, John J. Warner, and C. Rutan, and police officers Fitzpatrick and Clarins.
After smoking a few cigars and tearing up a letter from his second wife telling him about their young child, Reinhardt asked Officer Fitzpatrick to take care of two of his prison cats. He requested Deputy Rutan to take charge of the third cat. I hope his final requests were granted.
The Public Execution
On January 13, 1881, the gallows from New York City’s Tombs prison were transported to the Richmond County Jail courtyard, where a temporary fence had been installed to provide some privacy. Numerous arrangements were made throughout the village to accommodate the hundreds of people expected to turn out for Staten Island’s first execution in more than 100 years.
On the morning of January 14, Reinhardt was led into the courtyard and stationed under the rope with his back to the crowd. The sheriff drew a black cap down Reinhardt’s face and gave the signal for the hangman to drop the weight at 10:04 a.m.
The attending physician pronounced Reinhardt dead at 10:17–a very long 13 minutes after the weight had dropped. Reinhardt was buried at the Silver Mount Cemetery, not far from Silver Lake.
Richmond County Courthouse (left) and Jail in New Dorp, where Reinhardt was executed.
The Last of the Executions by Hanging
This device, called a gibbet, was probably like those used in executions at The Tombs and at Edward Reinhardt’s hanging. It was operated by releasing a counter weight, which, if set up properly, caused a rope and noose to lift up with such sudden force as to break the person’s neck.
The last legal execution by hanging in New York City at The Tombs took place on December 5, 1889: that of Henry “Handsome Harry” Carlton, 27, who had killed a police officer on October 28, 1888. The last legal execution by hanging in New York State took place just one day later at Brooklyn’s Raymond Street Jail. John Greenwall, 30, a tailor, was hung for being found guilty of a burglary-murder.
On January 1, 1889, a new law went into effect that required the state—rather than the county—to carry out death sentences using electricity, which was considered to be a more humane method to take someone’s life. However, individual counties continued to conduct executions by hanging until August 6, 1890, when the world’s first electrical execution took place in Auburn Penitentiary for ax-murderer William Kemmler.
If you enjoyed this tale of murder and feline friendship, check out this story about Tipsy, a midtown mouser who helped solve another gruesome murder in 1912. h
This is not Angelic Schuyler Reed, but I imagine she may have looked like the woman in this vintage photo.
In November 1908, a “well born and well bred” woman was forced to move out of her old Yorkville mansion at 122 East 83rd Street. The woman, Mrs. Angelica Schuyler Reed, was described as a “tall, gaunt, gray woman” who had been a “childless widow for 15 years.”
According to the New York Evening World, she was also a member of Old New York’s most aristocratic families, the Schuylers.
For seven years, Mrs. Reed had lived in the Yorkville home with numerous cats and dogs. Although she had originally leased the home from the Presbyterian Synod, she said the property changed hands following a lawsuit in 1906, and she no longer knew who her landlord was.
For several weeks leading to that fateful day in November, Mrs. Reed had been sharing her rapidly dwindling resources with her cats and dogs. Neighbors said she had been destitute for about a month, and would go searching through ash barrels for bits of food to feed her pets.
Although the animals seemed to be doing fairly well, Mrs. Reed was starving herself to death. Her condition was finally brought to the attention of the Health Department via a report on the condition of her home from the Bide-a-Wee Society for animals.
Angelica Schuyler Reed was a descendant of Philip Schuyler, a general during the Revolutionary War and a US Senator.
Founded by John Wanamaker, Wanamaker’s was one of the first department stores in the United States. Although its flagship store was in Philadelphia, Wanamaker’s also had a large store bounded by Broadway and 4th Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets, in the old “Iron Palace” constructed in 1862 (the former home to A.T. Stewart & Co.) New York Public Library Digital Collections
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s sad that we celebrate the holiday season with so many big-ticket holiday gifts like smart phones, huge flat-screen TVs, cars, and other electronic devices. Sure, I use and depend on many of these items, but for me, electronics don’t throw off seasonal vibes of love or warmth or happiness. In fact, I’d rather step back in time to the late 19th century (just for a day or two), when one could purchase one of the hottest gifts for upscale families at Wanamaker’s department store.
Angora cats were a popular gift item in the late 19th century.
If I could take a time machine back to December 1897, I’d stop at Wanamaker’s dry goods store on Broadway and East 9th Street, where there was a fine display of ribbon-bedecked “Angora” cats that sold for $10 to $40 each. I’ll take a beautiful live cat over of a cold electronic device on any day, let alone Christmas day.
Wanamaker’s called the event a “bargain day for cats.” Its main purpose was not to find good homes for the felines, but to lure in large crowds in order to boost sales throughout the department store. (Sadly, commercialism was in full force even back then.)
An advertisement for Wanamaker’s in December 1897 (New York Tribune). That year, the cat display and sale took place on the third floor. (The event originated at the Philadelphia store; 1897 was the inaugural Angora cat show for the New York store.)
According to an article in the Buffalo Evening News, each cat had a pet name tagged onto his or her cage, such as Peggy, Tammany, Romeo, Hamlet, Juliet, Maggy, Jack and Jill, and Fedora. Above the cats’ wire cages hung smaller cages filled with singing birds. A cat doctor was in constant attendance to ensure their well-being.
“What is the price of Tammany?” one news reporter asked the cat clerk. “Tammany’s sold,” the clerk replied. “He brought $20, and we can’t keep supplied with Tammany cats.”
Rush on Christmas cats. Buffalo Evening News, December 22, 1897
The clerk continued, “Here’s Peggy. She’s marked $10, but if you want her I will let her go for $9.99. Jack and Jill together are worth $30, but as an inducement we will sell them for $29.99.”
The cat clerk had a sense of humor. The news reporter had $29.99, which he gave the clerk to purchase Jack and Jill.
As fast as the cages were filled with Angora cats, they were sold to people of wealth who had seized upon this new Christmas gift fad.
One customer who stood by and watched the Angora cats fly off the shelves said she was going to start raising cats for the department stores the following year. “There’s money in it,” she said.
“By and by there’ll be bargain day goats and dogs” the woman continued. “It’s a great scheme, this cat scheme, to draw trade, and if you can raise such a crowd as this to buy cats, why not have bargain day goats?”
Although Wanamaker’s claimed that all of the cats were Angoras raised in Maine, the reporter for the Buffalo Evening News reported:
Some of the cats did not resemble Angoras. They looked more like the everyday suspicious Bohemian cat which had been chased out of alleyways by bricks and dogs. But they sold like hot cakes just the same. There is more profit in the cat sales than in any department of the store.”
Not all of the ribbon-bedecked cats at Wanamaker’s department store were Angoras, but they sold like hotcakes just the same.
That year, many other stores had gimmicks such as orchestras and hot coffee to lure people into their stores, but none of the “less fashionable notion stores” could compete with the bargain cat day at Wanamaker’s.
In response to the high-society Angora cat sales, one establishment even placed a placard outside saying this:
“After seeing Wanamaker’s fashionable Broadway cats, come in and see our Bowery cats. Prices five cents up. You don’t have to feed them. Just turn them loose and they feed themselves.”
According to an article about the inaugural cat event in The Sun, a black Angora cat and a yellow and white Angora cat were sold to the Central Park Zoo. The zoo reportedly planned to breed the pair, with hopes that the kittens would have “a much desired hue of coat.”
The Bargain Cat Day Tradition
I’m not sure how long Wanamaker’s continued selling Angora cats at Christmas, but the event received a lot of press in 1899, when about 25 cats were placed on display in a large, sunny room on the fifth floor of the store. There were no more mentions of Christmas cats in the newspapers after this year.
The Angora cat tradition continued through at least 1899.
Although most of the cats stayed in cages, one cat named Wizard had full run of the room in 1899. When he wasn’t walking around the room checking things out, he would doze in a silk-lined wicker basket “with a dignity befitting his price–$50.”
His closest competition was Cromwell, who had perfect coloring and was also priced at $50.
I have a feeling the cats were on display in a large, sunny room under the skylight, shown here on this map created in 1904. NYPL Digital Collections
All of the cats sold at Wanamaker’s in 1899 were reportedly raised on the Walnut Ridge cat breeding farm in Maine, and they could all boast a long ancestry of prized Angoras. For those who had never owned an Angora cat, Wanamaker’s hired staff who could teach perspective owners how to groom and care for their new Christmas pet.
Incidentally, in 1899 Wanamaker’s also had another crowd-pleasing display in its basement–500 canary birds, all raised by peasants in the Hartz Mountains of Hanover, Germany. Miss Virginia Pope, a bird specialist, was also on hand to give advice on caring for the birds. I wonder if anyone ever bought an Angora cat and a canary at the same time?
Wanamaker’s opened in the former A.T. Stewart building on November 16, 1896. In 1903, construction began on an annex for Wanamaker’s, just across the street at 770 Broadway. The two buildings were connected by a sky bridge over East 9th Street, called the “Bridge of Progress,” as well as by a tunnel that ran under 9th Street. In 1928, this section of the street was renamed Wanamaker Place. NYPL Digital Collections
Another view of the ornate Wanamaker walkway in 1924. NYPL Digital Collections
In 1954, due to a continuing northward migration of the city’s shopping district, Wanamaker’s closed its Manhattan store. The northern lot with the old A.T. Stewart building was sold in 1955; a five-alarm fire gutted this building while it was under demolition in July 1956. In 1960, a large residential building called Stewart House was constructed on the site.
The annex at 770 Broadway survived, and was turned into office space for Chemical Bank and other tenants. Today a Kmart occupies the lower levels and offices occupy the top floors. You can probably find a few electronic gifts at Kmart, but good luck finding any Angora cats there.
The five-alarm fire that started on July 14, 1956, gutted the old A.T. Stewart/Wanamaker’s building and severely damaged the Astor Place subway station, which had an entrance into the basement of the former store.
