By Jeremy Schwab

In 1842, the British novelist and social observer Charles Dickens toured America, recording for the British public his accounts of daily life in American cities. New York City in particular fascinated him. He was at times amazed, amused, and horrified by the colorful dress of the wealthy, the filth of New York’s working-class Five Points neighborhood, and the free-ranging sows and “gentlemen hogs” who walked Broadway and ate the city’s garbage. 

These last observations, of the city’s animal population, were what most interested CAS Assistant Professor of History Andrew Robichaud, and they are the reason he includes the anecdote in his recent book, Animal City: The Domestication of America (Harvard University Press). In Animal City, Robichaud chronicles the evolving role of animals in 19th-century American cities. He takes readers on a journey through the daily life of cities bustling with both human and animal inhabitants, then describes the growing push to banish livestock and livestock businesses to the fringes of urban areas. He shows how, by the end of the 19th century, most city residents’ relationships with animals were more similar to what they are today. The production of meat was out of sight and out of mind, the keeping of pets had become widespread, and a proliferation of zoos allowed the public to interact with animals in idealized settings. 

In the early 19th century, the raising (and slaughtering) of livestock happened near the heart of industrializing cities. City inhabitants sometimes kept chickens and cows, grazing the latter in shared spaces such as the Boston Common. Slaughterhouses, hog farms, and rendering establishments rubbed shoulders with other downtown businesses, and cattle drives were common hazards on city streets.

But as the century wore on, a growing chorus of city residents and leaders wanted to reform the noisy, smelly, and sometimes violent animal world at their doorsteps. 

“There is a push in the 19th century to cleanse cities of human-animal interactions that are unpleasant or seen as demoralizing or degrading in some way,” said Robichaud. “That could mean seeing an animal beaten in the streets or seeing attractions that show animals that are deformed or freakish. Reformers were concerned that you would have children witnessing this in their daily lives.”

There were other reasons, too, to rid downtown areas of animals (besides horses, of course, which were essential for transportation). Fear of disease drove some of the most forceful regulations in 19th-century animal life. In 1849 a devastating cholera epidemic hit Boston, New York, and other U.S. cities. It was widely thought at the time that animals, and their odors, carried or caused disease. It was the wake of this and other health crises that prompted greater public health action on the issue of livestock and slaughterhouses in cities.

In Boston, New York, San Francisco and other American cities, city planners and officials tried to create manageable pollution zones on the outskirts of town where the animal trades would be carried out. In San Francisco, slaughterhouses were built on piers so the waste would fall into the San Francisco Bay. In Boston, parts of Brighton were designated for the animal trades, and the city government established strict rules for cleaning and processing animal waste. 

Railroads not only made this separation of activities possible (because city residents could still get fresh meat by train), but eventually helped Chicago become such a hub of the meat industry that it put many local meat packers and slaughterhouses out of business.

At first, animal-welfare reformers tried to improve the conditions that animals lived under in these new managed zones.

“Many of the early animal-welfare reformers did want to transform or reform what they would call the inhumane practices of slaughterhouses and livestock industries,” said Robichaud. “But they were highly limited in their ability to do that, and one of the reasons was this new geography. It’s hard to enforce laws on railroad cars that are carrying animals hundreds of miles. It’s really hard to enforce laws in slaughterhouse districts that are farther away from city centers.”

Over time, the animal-industries districts became polluted and attracted other “dirty industries.” They became places where lower-income people lived because they worked there or they could not afford to live elsewhere, breathing the nearby industries’ polluted air. Meanwhile, reformers came to focus most of their energy on what they could better control: the portrayal and treatment of animals, such as pets or zoo animals, that remained in the city center.

Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCA’s) and humane societies sprouted up, the precursors of today’s animal-rights organizations. As Robichaud describes it, reformers who emphasized treating animals humanely aimed not just to reduce visible displays of violence or cruelty to animals but also to improve human relations. Advocates for improved public morality believed that if children could learn to care for a pet, or for animals in general, they could learn values such as cooperation and respect for others. There was a proliferation of children’s books in the late 19th century teaching children morality through interaction with animals—a common theme in children’s books to this day.

Our society’s relationships with animals are very much a legacy of this historical moment in the late nineteenth century, according to Robichaud.

“There are deep contradictions in the ways we treat animals as a society,” he said. “On the one hand, we have this massive culture of pet ownership and treating animals almost like people. And then we have this very invisible world in which animals on factory farms have these abysmal lives.”

Robichaud teaches a seminar at CAS on animals in America and incorporates his learning for the book into his courses on urban history and Boston history. He says he was motivated to write the book because it dealt with an under-explored but intriguing area of U.S. history. 

“I was fascinated with it on a lived experience level,” he said. “What was it like to live in a city where you had pigs roaming around, you had cattle drives, where your neighbor was slaughtering animals? And this was also an area that was underdeveloped in the scholarship.”

What’s next for Robichaud? He is currently researching a history of the ice industry in America. Before mechanical refrigeration, ice was harvested from ponds on a mass scale and shipped around the country (even to the Caribbean) for use in cooling homes and preserving food. Another topic opening a window onto a way of life that is now gone from the American landscape, and another book to look out for.

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