The London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which later became the NSPCC, was founded on this date. One of its prime movers was the secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
John Colam, a bricklayer's son from Louth in Lincolnshire, ran the RSPCA from 1860 to 1905, transforming its fortunes, but he wasn't just a talented administrator: he once put a stop to a bullfight in London by jumping into the bullring - an action followed, not surprisingly, by an enforced period of bed rest.
In its nascent days, the NSPCC was heavily reliant on the RSPCA's premises, staff and supporters. The two crusades were a natural fit, of course, using similar strategies and tactics against horrors arising from similar causes, especially poverty and ignorance. But the story of how they first became formally entwined is an extraordinary one.
Henry Bergh (1813-88) was a US diplomat, who encountered the RSPCA during a visit to Britain, and decided to devote the rest of his life to its cause. Back in his native New York he founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, and from the stories told about him, it's clear that Bergh, like Colam, was a courageous man, not afraid to put himself in the way of physical or legal harm.
In 1874, Bergh was contacted by a Methodist missionary in New York, who had been alerted to the terrible mistreatment of a ten-year-old girl whose foster mother regularly beat, burned, slaved and starved her. Unable to rouse any authority into action to save the child, the social worker, Etta Angell Wheeler, turned for help to Henry Bergh - supposedly on the grounds that humans are, after all, animals, but more likely because of his reputation for humaneness and a willingness to challenge bureaucracy.
Because of his involvement, a myth arose which survives to this day: that children were not protected by NY cruelty laws but animals were, and therefore Mary Ellen Wilson could only be rescued by classifying her as an animal. In fact, she was eventually removed from her abuser under the Habeas Corpus Act, and Bergh only ever acted for her in a personal capacity, not as an officer of the ASPCA.
Even so, Bergh's unrivalled contacts in the press ensured that the case of Mary Ellen (1864-1956) became famous; Wheeler described her years later as having "Started the child saving crusade throughout the world." The following year, after a flood of child abuse allegations sent to him as a result of the publicity from Mary Ellen's case, Bergh was a founder of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
A little later, a British philanthropist on a visit to New York was so impressed by the work of the society that on his return home he immediately set up what eventually became the NSPCC, with the help of friends from the RSPCA. And so the torch is ever handed back and forth as well as onwards; it's worth noting that one of the attendees at the original meeting to establish what became the RSPCA was William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner.
Incidentally, people often ask "Why is it the Royal Society for animals, and only the National Society for children?" to which the answer is - it isn't. Queen Victoria gave the NSPCC its royal charter in 1895, but the society chose not to use the word royal in its name because its identity as the National Society was already so firmly established in the public mind. (And while we're at it - no, despite what you've been told, there has never been a year since records began when UK animal charities have received more money than human charities.)
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Sources:
https://www.animallaw.info/article/history-rspca
Animal Life, Autumn 2014
https://tinyurl.com/224ce977
https://tinyurl.com/yv9sthk2
www.project-chance.org/mary-ellen-wilson.html
https://tinyurl.com/224ce977
https://tinyurl.com/yv9sthk2
This is an important topic, and one which is dear to my heart.