Historical Tidbits: Animals as Pets

Daily Diary, May 26, 2022: Day 634:

Esther couldn’t recall if the subject of having a pet for Georgie had ever come up with Hetty. When her children were young, they had a series of cats, a couple of rabbits, and Adela had even kept a pair of canaries for several years. Soon after the Steins moved to San Francisco, her oldest son, Gustav brought a stray dog home. Max had been some sort of spaniel, with curly brown hair, floppy ears, long sad face, and enormous patience with her children. He appeared to be a mature dog, certainly not a puppy, but he lived eight more years, bringing the whole family joy.—Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime

This week when I started to write the above paragraph, it occurred to me that I hadn’t looked into the question of pets in the Victorian era since I was writing Dandy Detects, my first short story that featured the black and white terrier, and doing research for Uneasy Spirits, the second book in the series where Dandy played an important role in one of the scenes. (See my collection of stories featuring Dandy in Dandy’s Daring Deeds.)

At that time, I had found that among the residents in San Francisco, like many other nineteenth-century urban dwellers, there was a good deal of ambivalence about dogs in the city. Most Americans had been living in rural areas where animals were bred for practical economic reasons (aids in hunting or herding). The top ten breeds in the 1880s, according to the American Kennel Club, were all sporting or working dogs. (English Setters, Irish Setters, Pointers, Irish Water Spaniels, Gordon Setters, Beagles, Collies, Fox Terriers, Dachshunds, and Mastiffs.)

However, there was a growing concern that the packs of wild dogs that roamed city streets were a threat to public welfare. This was a legitimate fear, given there wasn’t a vaccine for rabies yet and occasionally dogs that were bred for fighting attacked children. As a response, in 1862, San Francisco passed a city ordinance that required that dogs be on a leash or muzzle. The city hired dog catchers to round up stray dogs and put them in the City Pound until the owner paid a fine. Dogs not redeemed were executed.

On the other hand, as more Americans moved away from rural areas, they began to adopt a new positive attitude towards dogs as pets. This helps explain the popularity of two stray dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, who many San Franciscans took to their hearts in the early 1860s. These two canines were made famous by the local newspapers that stressed their loyalty and bravery. This favorable attitude towards dogs was reflected in the formation of a local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1868.

Recent research on Victorian attitudes towards pets found the middle classes at the forefront of a trend that had previously been associated with the elite. One researcher, Jane Hamlett states that “Writers and artists in the 19th century assigned a new ‘moral value’ to pets, and consequently saw keeping them as beneficial for children. Pet ownership began to be seen as character building, particularly for boys, because it taught children to be caring and responsible. Pets were also thought to enhance the domesticity of a home for a potentially valuable social purpose. The Victorians were very interested in the home and domestic life, and bringing up children was seen as very important for creating the right kind of morality in society…And one of the things that children could do to develop morality was to keep a pet – so you get quite a lot of advice manuals from the mid-19th century onwards suggesting that children should keep pets to improve themselves and their moral qualities.” 

Dogs weren’t the only animals to be kept as pets in the Victorian era. Rabbits and birds were popular, as well as cats. However, I will leave my research into the role of cats as pets in the 19th century for a later post.

For those interested in reading more on the topic of Victorian pets, check out the following links:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/companion-and-commodity-the-victorian-dog/

https://victorianweb.org/history/animals/pets.html

https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1124&context=english_etds

https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/november/the-history-of-animal-protection-in-the-united-states/