The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals marks April as National Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month, timed to its own founding month. The ASPCA was founded on April 10, 1866, in New York City by Henry Bergh, the first humane society in North America, and within days secured New York's first effective anti-cruelty law. The April observance is a later awareness campaign, and its exact designation year is not firmly documented in the ASPCA's own records.
CHAPTER 01
The charter and the law that followed
The ASPCA was incorporated by a special act of the New York State Legislature on April 10, 1866, the first humane society in North America. Bergh did not wait for the public to come around. He went looking for the next step in Albany.
Nine days later, on April 19, 1866, New York passed an act for the more effectual prevention of cruelty to animals, drafted by Bergh. The statute criminalized over-driving, over-loading, and tormenting animals, and it gave the ASPCA the power to investigate and make arrests.
With that authority, Bergh did not delegate the work. He walked the streets of New York and stopped cart drivers under the law he had just written, making arrests himself. In the society's first year its agents brought 119 prosecutions, and they won most of them.
