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.
Two weeks after the body of an unidentified woman was discovered in a Connecticut mill pond, a cat helped police find the murder weapon in the East 40th Street apartment where the woman had been killed.
The story had everything a news editor could want for writing eye-catching headlines: murder, sex, mystery, gore, and some colorful characters, including a prostitute named Grace Carbone, a beautiful teenage girl named Turiddi, and a suspicious male boarder who may or may not have been the young girl’s lover.
Oh yes, there was also a cat named Tipsy, who had a reputation as being an expert mouser; the man she helped nab was called Salvatore “the mouse” Geracci (aka Monkey Face Suciciada). You can’t make this stuff up.
The Unidentified Body
On Saturday, November 9, the body of a woman was found in the Gilbert & Bennett mill pond in Georgetown, Connecticut. The body was wrapped in a tablecloth and a sheet, which was marked with the initials “CG” and bound in wire. There were four holes in the skull.
The body was discovered when it surfaced in the pond at the Gilbert & Bennett wire mill site in Georgetown, Connecticut (Fairfield County).
Because of the initials on the sheet, police first thought it was the body of Grace Carbone, a Connecticut prostitute who had gone missing about four weeks earlier. Grace and her friend Genevieve Cavalieri had both been scheduled to serve as witnesses at a trial of “white slavers” who operated in New Haven and Bridgeport. Police thought the woman had been killed to prevent her testimony. (The news reporters went overboard with this theory.)
Grace Carbone was also known as Nellie Carmelia and Antoinette, so the “initial theory” was just one hunch, and a weak one at that. The other hunch was that the woman had been killed somewhere near the pond. To that end, the Connecticut State Police explored every inch of ground around the pond looking for evidence of a struggle. They also canvassed the neighborhood to inquire about anyone with the initials “CG.”
The Mysterious Trunk
Things got a bit more complicated when a Ridgefield, Connecticut carpenter named Lester Olmstead found the remains of a burned trunk about a quarter mile from the Branchville train station while he was hunting in the woods. A little yellow house on a hill was just west of the discovery site. A stream that entered into the mill pond was also nearby.
All that remained of the trunk was its zinc lining and some fragments of wood. Among the cinders were a woman’s shoe, three buttons, a safety pin, some wire, and a six-inch piece of rope that matched the rope used to tie the sheet around the woman’s body. The dirt around site appeared as if someone had tried to dig a large hole and had then given up.
The carpenter found the remains of the burned trunk about a quarter mile from the Branchville railroad station.
One report in The New York Times said the trunk had been shipped by express service from New York City to the Branchville train station (on today’s Metro-North’s New Haven Line). Several witnesses told police they had seen two men and a young woman wheeling the trunk on a hand cart to a little yellow house on the hill.
With this potential new evidence, Deputy Police Commissioner George Samuel Dougherty changed direction and ordered detectives to begin tracing the trunk’s point of origin. NYPD Detectives Clinton W. Wood and Ralph Mitelli from police headquarters were assigned to assist the Connecticut State Police in the investigation.
According a boarder in the yellow house, a man named Salvatore “the mouse” Geracci and two other men had carried the trunk to the house and left it in the rear yard. The man told the detectives that Salvatore had also been a boarder at the house earlier that year while he was temporarily employed as a laborer on the railroad.
George Samuel Dougherty served as Second Deputy Police Commissioner and head of the Detectives Bureau from 1911-1913. He was responsible for the capture of many notorious criminals of his time, and he also introduced the modern-day fingerprinting to the NYPD.
Police also found the second-hand shop owner who had sold the trunk to Salvatore. They soon discovered that the trunk had begun its journey to Connecticut at 315 East 40th Street in New York City.
Deputy Police Commissioner Dougherty changed direction again, and sent his men to the five-story brick tenement building on East 40th Street.
The Focus Turns to East 40th Street
According to the New York Tribune, when the detectives interviewed Mrs. John Preston, the housekeeper for 315 East 40th Street, she confirmed that a newlywed Italian woman named Carmelina Geracci had disappeared two weeks earlier.
Carmelina (aka Grace Scibetta) was a 40-year-old seamstress who had lived in the first-floor apartment with her 54-year-old husband; Salvatore Geracci; two male boarders (Guiseppe and Salvatore Lombardi); and a “markedly beautiful” 15-year-old girl named Turiddi Geracci (Salvatore’s daughter). Neighbors told police that the girl had also gone missing, and expressed concerns that the girl had been killed a day after her mother’s murder.
Mrs. M. Lynch, a tenant who lived across the hall from Carmelina’s flat, told police that she had heard a woman scream at 10:30 on the night before Election Day on November 5. Mrs. Francis, another tenant, concurred with that story.
At this point, police were now convinced that the murder had been committed in the New York City apartment, and not near the pond in Connecticut. They were also convinced that the unidentified body was that of Carmelina Geracci. But they still didn’t have a murder weapon.
Based on all the information they had gathered, detectives began canvassing the East 40th Street neighborhood for Salvatore and two other Italian men reportedly involved with the trunk. Apparently, some furniture from the apartment had been moved out at night and without the assistance of a moving van, so the police believed that at least one of the men was hiding nearby. To that end, the detectives focused on cheap Italian restaurants and also on the Italian ships leaving the ports.
The murder took place in the first-floor apartment at 315 East 40th Street, a small, five-story brick tenement building between 1st and 2nd Avenues, as shown on this 1899 map.
Although the main person of interest was Salvatore Geracci, the detectives also focused on a potential co-conspirator named Salvatore Lombardi, one of the boarders in the Geracci apartment.
Police also focused intently on the apartment itself, which, according to The London Observer, showed “evidences of great disorder and hasty flight.”
The detectives found stains as would be made by silver nitrate on a blood-stained mattress in the bedroom (the stains matched those on the sheet used to wrap the body). They also found dust on the sill of a rear window that was outlined in blood or some chemical, and also two clearly defined fingerprints on the edge of a closet. There were also bloodstained wire nails scattered throughout the apartment, which matched the size of the four holes in Carmelina’s skull.
Despite all this evidence, the detectives had not yet found the actual murder weapon. That discovery, it appears, would take some additional curiosity.
Meow: The Murder Weapon
On November 18, a cat meandered into the open apartment door at 315 East 40th Street to satisfy her curiosity. The cat’s name was Tipsy, and she was reportedly the resident “expert mouser” who made her headquarters at the apartment building.
According to The Sun, Tipsy snooped around for a while and then settled down in a dark corner under the kitchen sink. Detectives tried to coax her out, but–surprise, surprise–she refused to budge. When they reached in to grab her, they discovered that she was lying next to a short-handled bludgeon.
This bludgeon is what I imagine the murder weapon looked like.
Upon examining the bludgeon, police found blood stains on the instrument. Sharp carpet tacks had been driven into the tool and had obviously been used to cause more damage and pain while striking Carmelina. Neighbors testified that Salvatore was in the habit of beating his wife, so it made sense for him to choose this type of weapon to kill her.
In addition to the fingerprints and bludgeon, police also found some charred pieces of wood in the apartment, which led them to believe that the men may have tried to burn the body before shipping it to the mill pond in Connecticut.
Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, November 16, 1912
After Tipsy found the murder weapon, Mrs. Preston, the janitress, said she was planning on moving because she was afraid that Salvatore or his accomplices would try to blow up the building with dynamite. She said her husband, who worked in a nearby livery stable, was frightened for his family, which included eight children.
The Motive
Based on the evidence found by humans and cat, the detectives concluded that the woman’s killer used the bludgeon to drive the nails into her skull as she lay bound and gagged on the bed. But until Salvatore, their prime suspect, was caught and brought to trial, the motive remained a mystery.
One far-fetched theory was that Carmelina was killed because she threatened to share her husband’s alleged white slavery secrets, and had rejected to having Turiddi sold into the sex slave market. Another was that Salvatore had killed her in a fit of jealousy.
Buffalo Times, March 28, 1913
On or about March 25, 1913, police in Buffalo, New York, tracked down and arrested Salvatore Geracci (the shop owner who had sold the trunk to Salvatore also identified him). NYPD Detective-Sergeant Vincent De Guide traveled to Buffalo to interrogate the suspected murderer and have him extradited to Manhattan.
During a three-hour grilling, Salvatore eventually confessed to the murder (at first he denied knowing that his wife had disappeared, or that he knew that the dead woman reported in the newspapers was his wife). Finally, as one newspaper described it, “Geracci fumbled in the bosom of his soiled gray shirt. Then he drew out a little crucifix, dangling from a dirty ribbon, and pressed it to his lips.” He said, “As I kiss this cross, so will I tell the truth.”
His wife, he said, had been living the life of a prostitute and had been taunting him with her “profession.” He, his daughter, and Salvatore Lombardi held a meeting at which they all decided that she must die. So one night, after she had come home late and kicked him out of bed, Salvatore drove the nails into his wife’s brain while she slept.
“It is our law,” Salvatore told the horrified listeners at his court hearing. “I have done right.” He also said that he had wanted to go to the police and confess his crime right away, but his daughter and Lombardi convinced him to dispose of the body in the mill pond.
On Sunday, March 23, Salvatore’s daughter and Salvatore Lombardi reportedly left the apartment in Buffalo that they had been sharing with Geracci. Geracci told police that he did not know where they had gone, although police established that they had all said good-bye to each other. The New York City coroner issued warrants for their arrests.
Shortly thereafter, the Italian police arrested Salvatore Lombardi at his home in Sicily. He promptly confessed and charged that Salvatore Geracci had killed his wife.
Salvatore Geracci was held without bail until his hearing in May. He pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree and was sentenced to no less than 20 years in prison.
I do not know the fate of Turiddi, Lombardi, or Tipsy the cat. I do know that by 1929, the building at 315 East 40th Street was gone; it was demolished to make way for the large Tudor City housing complex that stands there now.
By the time this photo was taken in 1929, the building at 315 East 40th Street had already been demolished to make way for the Tudor City development. The closet remaining building in this photo is #313, so #315 would have sat atop the basement seen in the empty lot on the right. (The building going up in the background is the Daily News building on East 42nd Street.) Today, 2 Tudor City Place and a parking garage stand on this site. New York Public Library Digital Collections
Here’s another view of East 40th Street looking east between Second and First Avenues. All of the buildings from 315 to 329 have been cleared at this point for the Tudor City housing complex, which was developed by Fred F. French. NYPL Digital Collections
Don’t mess with Isaac the bank cat. And don’t even think about coming in and stealing his territory–or the cash, for that matter.
That was the message a “gaunt hobo cat” received when he sauntered into the Louis Scharlach & Co. bank at 362 Grand Street on the Lower East Side on November 14, 1900.
According to an article in the New York Sun, the feline interloper walked into the bank during business hours and somehow managed to sneak by all the human clerks without notice. He crawled under a safe and settled in for a warm nap. As the reporter noted, what happened next “caused more excitement…then there had been on the Lower East Side since election night.”
Warning to my readers: This story about a tragic event at New York City’s SPCA Shelter for Animals is not a happy one. It is, in fact, incredibly disturbing. And it was very hard to write.
It involves injury and cruelty and death–both human and feline. But it is an important story to tell, because it is part of mankind’s history. It is also a major part of the ASPCA’s 150-year history in New York.
This sad tale opens our eyes to the historical treatment of animals, and shows us how much progress we’ve made when it comes to treating cats, dogs, and all animals with dignity and compassion. We still have a long way to go, especially when it comes to ensuring that every shelter is a no-kill shelter. We cannot let this history ever repeat itself.
