Great Humanitarian

ANGEL IN TOP HAT--Zulma Steele--Harper ($3.50).

Manhattan Socialite Henry Bergh was 50 when he began to chase droshkies. One day in 1863 a St. Petersburg droshky driver was merrily lashing his horse in the Russian manner. Suddenly a smart carriage pulled alongside and Bergh, who was First Secretary of the U.S. Legation, bellowed to his coachman: "Tell that fellow to stop!" Obediently the droshky driver dropped his whip. First Secretary Bergh nodded approval, set out in pursuit of other inhumane drivers.

Why Bergh was aroused by inhumanity so late in life is "any man's guess." But eventually he gave up his Legation post, returned to Manhattan to found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Author Steele tells the story of Bergh's fanatical humanitarianism in ample detail, successfully resurrects one of the strangest 19th-Century Americans.

In the U.S. Bergh was granted police powers by New York State authorities, soon became the terror of all horse drivers. He would go into battle in a high silk hat, waxed moustaches, gleaming gold scarf pin, yellow kid gloves, Prince Albert coat. When he pointed his accusing cane, police would drag an offending driver from his seat, haul him into court. If drivers argued, Bergh often knocked their heads together with his own well-manicured hands.

But the horse was only Bergh's first compassion. To arrest inhumane butchers, Bergh sometimes waded ankle-deep in blood through the slaughterhouses, braved barrages of pigs' feet, entrails and cows' livers. Undaunted by flying pails of swill, he invaded the dairies of uptown Manhattan, nauseated milk drinkers with his grisly descriptions of the milking (for public consumption) of ulcerous and dying cows. With police at his back, he broke up bloody dogfights, rat battles, bearbaitings. He hounded the rich who docked their horses' tails. He halted cattle vans and revolted the public with the spectacle of diseased sheep and steers on their way to the butcher shop. His daily good deed done, Henry Bergh ("unmanly as it may seem") would weep copiously in the privacy of his room.

Under Bergh's direction branches of the S.P.C.A. sprang up all over the U.S. Adored and boosted by half the press and people, reviled and hated by the other half, Bergh never relaxed his crusade. His fanatical love of animals grew so intense that he advocated terrible tortures (a whipping machine was one) for human beings who mistreated animals. But because he realized that children were as much in need of protection as animals, Bergh paused long enough in his work for the S.P.C.A. to help found another great humanitarian institution, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

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