Animals: Starved Scotties

Noticing a “For Rent” sign on a vacant farmhouse near Chicago’s suburban Deerfield, a passerby stopped in to look around. In the backyard he heard feeble whimpers coming from a little shack, smashed a window. Braving a nauseous stench, he crawled inside, found six Scotch terriers huddled in a corner. Obviously near death from stifling and starvation, the six little dogs were rotting bags of bones, their teeth and gums infected, their bodies covered with shiny black spots where their hair had fallen off.

Hard by the farm was Mrs. Irene Castle McLaughlin’s dog haven, “Orphans of the Storm,” where the famed pre-War dancer and style-setter yearly spends some $16,000 sheltering thousands of sick and homeless dogs. Thither hurried the passerby with the six sick Scotties. A veterinarian pronounced them too far gone for recovery, advised merciful death. But first it was necessary to get the permission of the owner, one Dorothy Whittle.

Fat Mrs. Whittle, it developed, had been so busy tending a tavern she had just opened in nearby Half Day that for a fortnight she had had no time to tend her dogs. Great was her indignation when she was served with a warrant sworn by Mrs. McLaughlin charging cruelty to animals. “This,” cried Mrs. McLaughlin to a Deerfield Justice of the Peace last week, “is the most inhumane case that ever came to my attention.”

“I didn’t starve them,” wept Mrs. Whittle. “They got a pound of meat a day. They are old, that’s all. Just old and sick. I could nurse them back to health.”

Since Illinois law gives a court no right to take an animal from its owner, the justice gave Mrs. Whittle her choice of paying a $200 fine and keeping her dogs, or paying $1 and turning them over to Mrs. McLaughlin. At this verdict, Mrs. Whittle collapsed. Mrs. McLaughlin and her lawyer tried to soothe her (see cut), but she would not be comforted until she had clasped each little Scottie to her breast in fond farewell.

The dogs were drugged to death. Recovering her composure, bereft Mrs. Whittle cried: “I’ll sue, and sue for plenty! The person who broke into my home and carried off my dogs will pay!”