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Author Bibliography (in progress)

Bergh, Henry (1813-1888)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

640px-Appletons'_Bergh_Henry.jpg

Henry Bergh was born in New York City on 29 August 1813 to a wealthy shipbuilding family. During his European travels, and as secretary of the U.S. legation to Russia, he witnessed extensive cruelty towards animals but also the work of the English Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (established 1824). Bergh is best remembered as the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866 and for being among those who established the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874 - not least because he found that children were being used as substitutes for difficult and cruel work that was previously performed by animals. He is mentioned in Canto 4 of Flora Trueblood Bennett Neff’s long poem Along Life’s Pathways (1911), which describes the moment when he demanded that the owners of a mansion rip down a wall into which a cat had been enclosed by the builders.

Among the animal welfare issues for which Bergh advocated were  improved conditions in slaughterhouses and in the treatment of animals in transit to slaughterhouses, the care of working horses, the elimination of vivisection, and the banning of blood sports. In his varied writings Bergh argues against animal cruelty on a number of fronts: economic, religious or spiritual, and creative. Bergh emphasizes nonhuman intelligence, rationality, sentience, capacity for suffering, love, mourning, teaching, and enjoying life. Henry Bergh died in New York City on 12 March 1888.
IMAGE: Jacques Reich, Portrait drawing of animal rights activist Henry Burgh.
Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, v. 1, 1900, p. 244. Public Domain.

 

PUBLICATIONS

“An Address.”［"Delivered in the Great Hall of the Putnam County Agricultural Society on the occasion of the late fair, held at Carmel, on the 19th of September 1867."］New York: Lange, Hillman & Lange, 1868.
 
“An Anthropozoonet.” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture Vol. XLI no. 42 (15 Jul 1882): 4 (col. 7)
https://archive.org/details/sim_massachusetts-ploughman-new-england-journal-agriculture_1882-07-15_41_42/page/n3/mode/2up

 

“The Cost of Cruelty.” The North American Review  Vol. 133 (1 July 1881): 75-81.
 
 
“Fashionable Slaughter: A Protest.” Friends’ Intelligencer and Journal  Vol. XLIII no. 12 (20 March 1886): 191-192.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah6ll8&seq=203
 
 
Married Off. New York: Carleton, 1862.
 
“New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture Vol. XXVII no. 25 (21 March 1868): 1 (col. 4).
https://archive.org/details/sim_massachusetts-ploughman-new-england-journal-agriculture_1868-03-21_27_25/mode/2up
 
“Pigeon Shooting.” Our Dumb Animals Vol. IV, no. 8 (1 Jan. 1872): 167 (col. 2).
American Historical Periodicals database. Subscription access.
 
“Pigeon-Shooting: Letter from Henry Bergh to James Gordon Bennett.” New York Clipper Vol. XXIII no. 31 (30 Oct. 1875): 244 (col. 5).
American Historical Periodicals database. Subscription access.
 
“President Bergh on Vivisection.” Christian Advocate Vol. XXXI no. 31 (29 July 1880): 482.
ProQuest. American Periodicals. Subscription access.
 
“Vivisection.” Our Dumb Animals  Vol. XXII no. 8 (January 1880): 61 (col. 1-3).
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnqb2l&view=1up&seq=355
 

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