April 26 was National Help a Horse Day, which recalled city living in the age of horse transportation.
These days most of our relationships with animals are limited to dogs or cats. But in the 19th century, everybody had a relationship with horses, whether they owned one or not. The “circulatory system of commerce” depended on horses[i] (New England Quarterly June 2001). All transportation depended on them. Horses were the engines of the day—so much so that still today we measure engines in terms of “horsepower.”
Today a stroll down Mass Ave can be noisy: cars, buses, sirens, horns honking, etc. But is it that much worse than in the horse drawn era? Horses neighing, hooves and wagon wheels clattering on crushed stone paving, the Horse Railroad screeching over tracks, teamsters shouting, whips cracking and so on. What follows is a light survey of horse related facts in Cambridge back in the day.
HORSES BY THE NUMBERS
HOW MANY?
The mayor’s address of 1896 states that taxes were paid on 4,711 horses in the city that year. This number, of course, did not include all the horses owned by the city. The City Stables held at least 55 horses. In addition, each department (Fire, Police, Public Health, etc.) had two to eight horses each. So, the total was probably closer to 4,800.
HOW MANY BUSINESS STABLES?
The 1896 City Directory listed 33 Boarding, Livery, Sale, or Hack stables. Historically, several were clustered in and around Harvard Square: on Church, Brattle, Bennett, Palmer, and Dunster streets. Also in the neighborhood were many ancillary businesses: blacksmiths, harness makers, carriage makers, etc. In 1886, the Cambridge R.R. Co. stables took up an entire block of Bennett Street (the current location of the Charles Hotel). By 1894, this stable had been taken over by the West End Street Railway which also had stables on Dunster Street.
On Brattle Street, there was Gwynne’s University Stable (whose name is misspelled in the advertisement here).
Two stables on Church Street, owned by J. (Joel) S. and James Pike, were often confused:
In 1876, James Pike had purchased the old police station on Church Street for his stables. [ii] By 1878, he felt compelled to take out an ad in the Cambridge Chronicle (March 30, 1878), stating, “Mr. James Pike desires to inform the public who have confounded his name with Mr. J. S. Pike, that the latter gentleman is an entirely different person, and that Mr. James Pike has no connection with the stable of Mr. J. S. Pike on Church Street.” James Pike later decamped from Church Street to his stable at 565½ Main Street.
The J .S. Pike’s stable next passed into the hands of Irving Blake. Blake’s obituary in 1901 described the premises: “The stable of Irving Blake, 35, 36, 37 and 38 Church Street, which is one of the oldest and best equipped establishments of its kind in New England, is a good example of the modern public stable. [Note: The street numbers were changed around 1900.] The fact that about 17 employees are kept busy looking after approximately 100 horses and carriages will show even the casual reader that the business is one of considerable magnitude.” (Cambridge Chronicle September 7, 1901).
Cambridge Coach Co. photo, ca. 1905
In 1902, a Harvard graduate and investor, Samuel Chew, purchased these properties, and the Cambridge Coach Company moved in.
Horse-related business in the area included:
The Nelson Carriage Co. (below) succeeded J. H. Prescott & Son, which had succeeded J. P. Nutting & Co. at the same location on Palmer Street.
The farrier James Bolger, a 22-year-old native of Newfoundland, first established his business in 1867 at the corner of Church and Palmer streets and worked on the site until his death in 1896.
Speaking of horseshoers, we can’t resist this article from 1849 about the horse with five legs:
HORSE-RELATED OCCUPATIONS
There were hundreds: harness, tack, and saddle makers, horseshoers, cart and carriage makers, horse breeders, manure collectors, feed dealers, hay storage, hack drivers, horse trainers, etc. The 1896 City Directory lists:
890 teamsters (astonishing!)
155 hostlers
34 hack drivers
20 horseshoers
19 stable foremen
53 harness makers/ cleaners
3 trainers
7 horse dealers
27 carriage or wagon makers
14 feed, grain, and hay dealers
10 veterinary surgeons (two of whom worked on Church and Palmer streets)
and
200 blacksmiths.
Blacksmiths did many things besides horseshoeing and making carriage wheels. A smith also fashioned boot scrapers—a necessary product in the age of horses (see below).
THE MANURE PROBLEM
Remember those 4,711+ horses? The Pennsylvania State Extension School informs us that, on average, a 1,000-pound horse produces about 30 pounds of manure a day. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the magnitude of the problem. Addressing the issue thus brought to their attention, the Cambridge Board of Aldermen reported:
In 1888, the Board of Health came out with the following regulations:
“The owners and occupants of livery and other stables within the city shall … shall keep their stables and yards clean and not allow large quantities of manure to accumulate or remain in or near the same, at any one time between the first day of May and the first day of November, and no manure shall be allowed to accumulate or remain uncovered outside of the stable building.”
Regulations of the Board of Health, Cambridge Press October 27, 1888
Thankfully, there were a few businessmen who bought and sold manure. But, somewhat mysteriously, there is little information to be found in the newspapers or town reports about how manure sanitation was managed on the streets. General street cleaning for all streets was about once every three months, and for heavily trafficked streets about once every three weeks. Still…
THE LIFE OF A HORSE
The average horse can live 25 to 30 years. Horserookie.com tells us that “horses need to consume about 2% of their body weight in forage per day.” That equals about 20 pounds of hay per day.
Oats are also on the menu.
Two particularly deadly infectious diseases affecting horses are horse influenza (referred to variously as horse distemper or horse meningitis) and Glanders. In 1872, a major epidemic of horse flu spread down from Canada in much the same way that human diseases such as cholera or typhoid do—through heavy population density, crowded living circumstances, and poor sanitation. The economic effect was to put a big dent in trade—all of which depended on horse-delivery systems. Though cities were hit the worst, Cambridge appears to have emerged relatively unscathed compared to Boston. Glanders, an infection of the respiratory system, spread in similar ways, and was so highly contagious that horses found to have it were killed.
All aspects regarding the health of horses led to the appointment of City Veterinary Surgeon Dr. William Ferguson in 1890. By 1893, Dr. Ferguson had established a Veterinary Hospital on Bay Street. Since his practice was primarily for horses, he seems compelled to mention that he also treated dogs:
THE INEVITABLE
THE DEMISE OF HORSE-DRAWN TRANSPORTATION
It is interesting that the 1906 City Directory devoted, for the first time, about five pages to listing horse owners by name, address, and number of horses owned, which totaled in the thousands. The same was done for car owners, which only totaled approximately 160.
Naturally, as the use of electric trolleys and motorized vehicles increased (not to mention the new subway), the use of horses declined. The transition was gradual: the 1910 Census for Livestock states that Cambridge still had 4,294 horses! It took another 10 to 20 years for motorized vehicles to completely take over from horses on city streets in America.
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.
SOURCES
Cambridge Historical Commission
Cambridge Library digitized Cambridge Newspapers
Genealogybank.com
“The Great Epizootic of 1872-73: Networks of Animal Disease in North American Urban
Environments” by Sean Kheraj
HorseRookie.com
New England Quarterly June 2001, Gilded Age Boston, Clay McShane
Newspapers.com
Penn State Extension: https://extension.psu.edu/horse-stable-manure-management
Wikipedia
[i] New England Quarterly June 2001
[ii] Cambridge Chronicle June 17, 1876