Cozey Bell was the beloved Skye terrier of Mrs. Mary A. Bell (this is not actually Cozey). His much publicized burial at Woodlawn Cemetery resulted in tremendous public outcry.
On September 26, 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation giving non-for-profit cemeteries the option to honor the last wishes of New Yorkers who want to be buried with their pets. The law allows pet owners to inter the cremated remains of their pets alongside them—provided they obtain the cemetery’s written consent (religious cemeteries are exempt). The legislation also gives New York residents an alternative to pet cemeteries or backyard burial grounds.
No Proper Burial Options for Pets
Now step back in time to the 19th century and earlier, when the only option for New York City pet owners without the means to pay for a country burial was to toss their deceased pets into the rivers or street gutters. Horse-cart drivers employed with the New York Rendering Company would take the dead animals to the city’s offal dock on the Hudson River at the foot of 38th Street.
There, along with the carcasses of horses, cows, hogs, and other livestock, pet dogs and cats would be skinned and boiled into minced meat and fertilizer, or simply carted off with the city refuse to Barren Island.
Dead animals were taken to the city’s offal dock, at the foot of West 38th Street. The dock was located at Pier 78 of the Pennsylvania Railroad, pictured here in 1931 with a flock of sheep. New York Public Library Digital Collections
For those New Yorkers who owned country estates outside of the city confines, private backyard burials were common. Some prominent residents also buried the family pet in the family plot, much to the dismay of the other plot owners.
For example, Gypsie, a black and white Newfoundland owned by Brooklyn artist Lemuel Wilmarth, was buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in 1879. Fannie, a pure-bred Pug of nondescript color owned by Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine (no, it wasn’t Singer), was also interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in 1881.
Fannie Howe’s monument at Green-Wood Cemetery is engraved with a few lines of the poem Flight, written by Miss M.A. Collins, a 19th-century author and tobacco plantation owner from Tennessee. The poem first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post around 1876.
Then there was Mary A. Lawrence Bell, who tried to bury Cozey Bell, a female Skye terrier, at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx in 1888. This is their story.
Fanny Jane McAdam–aka Jane McAdam, Mary Jane McAdam, and Henrietta Snowden–had a reputation on the Lower East Side. Her neighbors in the three-story brick boarding house at 101 East Broadway called her a witch for her angry outbursts and physical attacks on them. The police knew the slender, tall lady (she was over six feet tall) as a problematic woman with a long rap sheet for disorderly conduct.
Her two dogs—Spitz and Flora—and nine cats knew her as the lady who took care of them and bejeweled them with coin-laden leather collars. They trusted her to feed them and provide water every day. That’s why she was determined to ensure their care when she was sentenced to prison for six months in February 1879.
Jane McAdam’s neighbors at 101 East Broadway called her a witch for her long, dirty nails and jet-black hair; her angry outbursts; and her physical assaults against anyone who disagreed with her or tried to harm her pets. New York Times, February 27, 1879 Read the rest of this entry »
The Ansonia Apartment Hotel, 1905. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Erected between 1899 and 1903, on what was then still considered pioneer country at Broadway and Seventy-Third Street, the $6 million (give or take a million) Ansonia Hotel spared no expense. The luxury eighteen-story residential hotel included all the latest amenities–and then some.
July 1926 ad for the Ansonia at 2109 Broadway.
The steel-frame structure featured air conditioning (in the form of frozen brine pumped through flues hidden in the walls), pneumatic tubing for sending and receiving messages, Turkish baths for women, the world’s largest swimming pool in the basement, and full suites equipped with electric stoves and freezers.
Oh yeah, there were also goldfish in a metal tank in the dining room, live baby seals in the lobby fountain, a farm with chickens and other animals on the roof, large elevators that could (and did) accommodate the residents’ horses, and a black cat that haunted the 16th floor.
In 1891, Broadway actress Julia Marlowe boarded her cat Princeton at the new “Home for Friendless Domestic Animals” in Washington Heights. Julia reportedly paid 50 cents a week for Princeton to stay at the home while she was out of town touring with various theater groups throughout the country.
I don’t know where Julia was living at this time, but she may have read about the home for cats in the newspapers and taken the Tenth Avenue cable car, which stopped at 187th Street and allowed passengers to take cats and dogs to the home on designated days of the week.
The Tenth Avenue cable road from 125th to 187th opened on December 1, 1886. Passengers paid 25 cents to ride on the open parlor cars on this route, like the “E” car shown here. In 1890, Superintendent Edward Lyon made plans to allow passengers to take unwanted cats and dogs on the cable cars on designated days of the week, so that they could bring them to the Home for Friendless Domestic Animals.
The home, on the east side of Amsterdam Avenue near West 187th Street, was operated by the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals. The society was founded by Mrs. Sarah J. Edwards and Mrs. Grace Georgia Devide. Other members included Mrs. Sarah Jennie Edwards, Mrs. Emma Charlton, Mrs. Mary Hans, and Mrs. Mary Wilson.
In 1891, Miss Marlowe was still four years away from making her successful debut on Broadway, which would establish her as a leading American actress of Shakespeare. So I imagine she did not have a lot of money at this time, and therefore, had no other affordable option for boarding her cherished cat (just an assumption). She may have also believed that Pumpkin would be happy being with other cats in a country setting.
As one New York paper reported, the old farmhouse was “on the verge of dissolution” and its surroundings were “of the most dismal description.” A signboard outside the door was painted in white letters: “We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Home for friendless domestic animals. Compassion.” There were also holes cut in the door so the animals could come and go.
You see, the home for friendless animals comprised a dilapidated, two-story frame farmhouse and two barns on the former Barney and Rosannah Bowers farm, which the society rented for $50 a month. The paint had all but worn off the house, and many of the windows were broken, but it did have some features that I’m sure the cats and dogs enjoyed. Here’s how Grace Devide described the home to a reporter:
“We’ve got the finest place in the world for the poor cats… It’s got a couple of barns upon it, which we’ll fix up for the cats to sleep in, you know. I’ll live in the house, and Mrs. Edwards’ niece, who loves cats just as much as I do, will be there with me, and help care for the poor maltreated things.
Oh, we’re going to have a regular little heaven for the cats up there, you know. We’ll have the place all fenced in with wire, so they can’t get out, and they will have the run of the house during the day.”
The ladies of the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals rented an old farmhouse and two stables on the Bowers farm, possibly the three yellow structures circled here near 187th Street, which had not yet been cut through. Click here for a more detailed look at Washington Heights in 1891.
When the home first opened in October 1890, the women welcomed their first four-legged customers, which included 14 cats and 7 dogs (the dogs were let in through a separate side door). Some of the original feline boarders included Malta, Lady Hardy, and Cash. The fencing had not yet been installed, but the women said they planned on creating four fenced-in areas on the six-acre property to keep all the male and female cats and dogs separated.
By April 1891, there were 125 cats and 10 dogs at the house, including a few boarders whose transient owners, like Julia Marlowe, paid for their pet’s stay while they were out of town.
Sadly, the home was shut down in 1893, and the cat women got in trouble with the law for killing hundreds of cats, which was reported by Nellie Bly. I wrote about this morbid turn of events a while back in The Crazy New York Cat Ladies and the Murderous Band of Mercy.
The Home for Friendless Cats was on six acres of land along Amsterdam Avenue overlooking the Harlem River. Today the site is occupied by brick tenements and a residence hall and other buildings that are part of Yeshiva University.
Julia Marlowe Moves to the Catskills
In 1899, Julia and her husband, actor Robert Taber, constructed a country home in the western part of the Catskill Mountains which they called Highmount. The estate featured a large colonial home on 400 acres, of which only a small amount was laid out in lawn, garden, and driveways.
Julia loved the outdoors, especially going for long walks and playing golf. She also lived to go “automobiling,” which could do on the driveway leading to her country estate.
Although Julia and Robert divorced in 1900 after only six years of marriage, Julia continued to reside at Highmount during her off-season, which ran from the end of May through September. Hopefully Pumpkin was able to stay with her in this beautiful home while she was there.
Today the home of Julia Marlowe, on Route 28, is part of a proposed Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, adjacent to the Belleayre Ski Center.
The Beresford Cat Club
In 1899, the same year Julia built her new home in the Catskills, Mrs. Clinton Locke of Chicago founded the Beresford Cat Club. The club was named in honor of Lady Marcus Beresford of England, who had founded The Cat Club of England in 1898.
When Mrs. Locke founded the Beresford Cat Club in 1899, two Siamese cats were listed in the club book, which proves that Siamese cats were owned in America at least one year prior to 1900.
Julia Marlowe was reportedly a very active member of the Beresford Cat Club. According to an article in the Inter Ocean in October 1902, she had several valuable show cats, some of which may have been Siamese.
Fiametta, the Critical Cat
In 1907, while staying at the Royal Palace Hotel in London, Julia was presented with a cat that had been found on the Island of Malta. Ms. Marlowe named her Fiametta, after a play in which she had appeared in New York.
One time, about a year later, Julia received a manuscript for a new play from a theatrical agent in London. While she was away at breakfast, Fiametta sunk her claws into the papers and destroyed them. When Julia returned to her drawing room, she found the cat buried under a pile of the shredded, typewritten pages.
Apparently Fiametta did not think highly of the new play. In fact, according to a small article about the incident in the Altoona Times (Altoona, Pennsylvania), “Julia’s pet cat tore up the manuscript of the play simply because the sagacious animal deemed it worthless.”
Julia Marlowe’s Final Years
Several years after the death of her second husband, actor Edward H. Sothern, in 1933, Julia donated her entire collection of costumes and books to the Museum of the City of New York. She moved into a small suite at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park, which comprised a living room, a small pantry, and two small bedrooms.
Julia Marlowe died at the Plaza on November 12, 1950, at the age of 85. The newspapers noted that she never had any children; there was no mention of her cats.
Brooklyn cigar manufacturer Charles J. Nielsen had a shop cat named Luck who brought him everything but good luck.
In August 1904, Charles J. Nielsen, one of the most prominent cigar manufacturers in Brooklyn, acquired a black cat for his Bushwick cigar shop at 1369 Broadway, on the southeast corner of Gates Avenue.
I don’t know why Charles added a feline employee to his cigar store. I also don’t know where he got the cat. What I do know is that he named the cat Luck — which, sadly, turned out to be an appropriate name.
