An afternoon interrupted by a cat

The weather was fine, and nurses had brought children outside. Then a cat ran from a house near 20th Street, scattering the group and sending the afternoon into confusion. The World described the scene with all the drama its headline promised.

The animal reached a balcony, then the areaway at the former Harper residence, No. 4. Mary McCormick, a servant watching through a partly open window, shut it and caught the cat’s leg. Two officers intervened; the cat was shot.

Reading past the headline

The paper called the animal “mad,” but supplied no confirmed diagnosis. It also stated plainly that nobody in the Gramercy incident was even scratched. A child’s bite and treatment at the Pasteur Institute belonged to a separate episode in Harlem, reported below the Gramercy story in the same clipping.

For neighborhood history, the article’s most useful details are the ordinary ones surrounding the commotion: nurses accompanying children, servants looking out from lower windows, and policemen moving through streets where the household and the public sidewalk were closely connected.

The final Gramercy paragraph returns to a child’s view. Asked how big the cat had been, a little boy compared it to a lion. His excitement is a reminder that a newspaper report can preserve the scale of an experience as well as a sequence of events.

Two Mad Cats at Large

The World, March 22, 1896, p. 2.

“Mad” is the newspaper’s description, not a confirmed medical finding. No one was reported bitten or scratched in the Gramercy incident. The scan includes a separate Harlem story in which a child was bitten. The transcript below covers the Gramercy portion only.

Read the Gramercy portion

Paragraph breaks and line-end hyphenation have been adjusted for reading. Original wording and period language are retained; editorial additions appear in square brackets.

[Gramercy Park portion of “Two Mad Cats at Large.” The separate Harlem report follows it in the original scan.]

A big cat that showed every evidence of being mad terrorized Gramercy Park for a short time yesterday. Many children from that aristocratic neighborhood had narrow escapes from being bitten. The nurses had taken advantage of the fine weather to let their charges enjoy an outing, and the walks in and around the park were thronged.

Suddenly from one of the houses fronting on the park near Twentieth street there dashed a big cat. He hesitated a moment and then charged at a group of children, spitting and clawing at them viciously.

Terror-stricken, the children scattered in every direction, while the nurses grabbed up their smaller charges in their arms and hurried them to places of safety.

“Oh! it’s going to bite us. It’s mad,” shrieked one white-aproned nurse. A chorus of childish treble drowned her words. The cat turned and, gaining the balcony of a house fronting on Gramercy Park West, crept along, knocking its head against the railing.

Then it jumped down into the areaway of the residence of ex-Mayor James Harper, at No. 4, and leaped at Mary McCormick, a servant, who stood watching at the half-open window.

“Murther,” she shrieked, closing the window, and catching the cat by the leg.

“Let it out!” yelled Policeman Carr, of the East Twenty-second street station, running up with drawn revolver. The cat freed itself from the window’s grip, leaped out on the sidewalk and made a dash for liberty. Policeman Baker headed it off at the corner of Twentieth street, and held the feline with his foot while Policeman Carr killed it with three shots from his revolver. Its body was then thrown into a handy ash-barrel.

Although the cat started from the house of Gen. Wager Swayne, at No. 13 Gramercy Park West, the servants there indignantly repudiate its ownership. At the residence of Mr. E. Suydam Grant, next door, it was said they had no cat. Mrs. H. D. Woodward, of No. 6, said the animal didn’t belong to her.

“Oh, it was only some stray ‘Tom’ that went mad from hunger,” declared Policeman Carr.

Happily no one was even scratched by the animal, but it dug its claws into Policeman Baker’s shoes. The servant in ex-Mayor Harper’s house who caught the cat between the window and the casing was nearly prostrated from fright.

Nurses and children came out again in the afternoon after the cat had been killed. One little fellow, when asked how big the cat was, could not restrain his excitement.

“He wath as big as a lion,” he lisped. “And he spit at me juss like my tabby when I pull hith tail.”

Source & image credits

“Two Mad Cats at Large.” The World, March 22, 1896, p. 2. Newspaper clipping supplied to the GPBA research collection. The source scan is reproduced without changes to its contents.