Two women unafraid to work with animals and children: Angela Burdett Coutts and Catherine Smithies by Simon Strickland-Scott

WC Fields famously said ‘Never work with animals or children’.  In this essay I want to give some insight into the work of two women who were more than prepared to do just that.  In a previous article I mentioned the Burdett Coutts Memorial Sundial at St. Pancras Graveyard and mentioned that the woman who commissioned it was deserving of a blog post of her own.  Well here is half a blog post as it seems appropriate that Angela Burdett Coutts shares this article with another local woman, Catherine Smithies, who had similar interests.  Not surprisingly the two women were friends and collaborators.

Angela Burdett Coutts was born in 1814 into the excessively wealthy Coutts banking family but rather than sit on her wealth she sought to make use of it, becoming perhaps Britain’s most generous philanthropist.

Burdett Coutts provided the funds for a home for ‘fallen women’ in co-operation with Charles Dickens, ragged schools for working class children, facilities for hospitals in the Crimea (in support of Florence Nightingale) and model dwellings in London as well as several churches (she was an Anglican).

Among the monuments she commissioned, in addition to the aforementioned sundial, was the Greyfriars Bobby fountain in Edinburgh, commemorating the famous dog and, closer to home, the Burdett Coutts Drinking Fountain in Victoria Park, Hackney.  Such drinking fountains were not just a decorative feature.  At the time free clean drinking water was difficult to obtain, especially for the lower classes, so fountains provided access to a vital resource which would otherwise have been unobtainable.

The commissioning of the Greyfriars Bobby fountain gives a hint at one of Burdett Coutt’s most enduring interests; animal welfare.  As well as funding the erection of drinking fountains for dogs as well as people, she was vice-patron of the RSPCA and co-founder of the RSPCA’s Ladies Committee.  On that same committee, from the time of its foundation was Catherine Smithies who we shall meet later.  Burdett Coutts was also a founding member of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which was later expanded and renamed to become the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

The historical relationship between the RSPCA and NSPCC is worth noting here because these two interests of Burdett Coutts’ are far from coincidental.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had been founded in 1824 by, among others, William Wilberforce.  The organisation gained its royal charter to become the RSPCA in 1837.  The work of the RSPCA in Britain inspired a wealthy New Yorker called Henry Bergh to establish the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. In 1874, whilst doing his animal welfare work in his home city, Bergh was approached by Marietta ‘Etta’ Wheeler who told him of a child called Mary Ellen suffering neglect and mistreatment.  Burgh brought a successful court case which led to the child’s mother being found guilty of assault with intent to kill which released the child from her guardianship into care (she was eventually adopted by Etta Wheeler’s sister).  With Wheeler’s encouragement and the support of Elbridge Gerry, the prosecutor in the case, Burgh set up the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC) in 1875.  The form of the name deliberately mirrored that of the ASPCA. 

Meanwhile back across the Atlantic in Britain the then secretary of the RSPCA was John Colom.  Colom had played a considerable part in supporting Bergh’s efforts to establish the ASPCA and the two men continued corresponding so that Colom learnt about the Mary Ellen case and the setting up of the NYSPCC.  Whilst the idea of a society to prevent cruelty to animals had crossed the Atlantic from Britain to the United States, now the idea of a society for the prevention of cruelty to children was to cross back, from the USA to Britain.  Colom enlisted the support of Dr Barnardo and others, and eventually in 1886 a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) was formed.  The newly formed NSPCC and RSPCA initially even shared the same premises.

Burdett Coutt’s colleague on the RSPCA’s Ladies Committee Catherine Smithies had been born back in 1785 and lived in Leeds before moving to London.  In 1817, Thomas Bywater, the second of her ten children was born.  Catherine and Thomas, mother and son, would go on to form a powerful partnership supporting many campaigns as an outgrowth of their Methodist beliefs, including the anti-slavery movement.  They became active members of the Band of Hope, a temperance movement orientated towards children that had been founded in Leeds in 1847.  Members as young as eight would sign a pledge not to drink alcohol.  They would attend meetings where they sang hymns and gave talks to each other on the health effects of alcohol abuse.   The pledges varied in their precise wording (some included a promise not to swear or smoke) but the following from the Hyde Weslyan Band of Hope branch in 1907 was typical:

“By divine assistance I will abstain from all intoxicating drinks and beverages and discountenance all the causes and practises of intemperance.”

Catherine Smithies’ empathy for animals and her experience of the Band of Hope led her to form a new organisation modelled on the latter but promoting animal welfare.  This was the Band of Mercy which also had a pledge in which prospective members promised;

“I will try to be kind to all living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage.” 

Similar to the Band of Hope, activities included meetings where songs were sung and stories were told about animals.  Both organisations made use of lantern slide projections at their meetings and had their own publications and branches spread around the country.  Thomas Smithies, a publisher by trade, was responsible for producing the foremost periodicals for both organisations; the Band of Hope Review (founded 1851) and the Band of Mercy Advocate (founded 1879).   Not surprisingly both magazines had a similar eight page format and were overtly religious in their content. 

The Band of Mercy grew to be an international organisation with branches in Australia and the United States before Catherine Smithies’ death in 1877.  Her funeral featured an honour guard of uniformed RSPCA officers.   Her son, Thomas, followed her in 1883 at which point the Band of Mercy in Britain was appropriately joined to the RSPCA as the latter’s youth wing and the Band of Mercy Advocate was secularised somewhat.  

Catherine and Thomas are buried together in Abney Park Cemetery while in Wood Green stands an obelisk and drinking fountain commemorating the life of Catherine Smithies.  This was first unveiled (at a slightly different location) in 1879 by Angela Burdett Coutts and paid for by donations from Catherine’s family and friends, including the aforementioned John Colom. 

Though the original Band of Mercy withered during the inter-war period, another of its legacies surfaced in the late twentieth century, albeit one that Smithies herself would probably not have approved.  In the early 1970’s a group of hunt saboteurs, deciding to expand the remit of their activities beyond fox hunting and at the same time move to a more ‘proactive strategy’ adopted the name Band of Mercy, after Smithies organisation.  After two members were imprisoned the group was relaunched under a new name – the Animal Liberation Front! 

Angela Burdett Coutts died in 1906 and was buried at Westminster Abbey.  Her legacy remains in the many monuments she commissioned and the continuing relevance of the RSPCA.

This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It was made by New Unity and Simon Strickland-Scott. Find out more: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.