Battersea’s Biggleswade connection

It is probably a little known fact to many local residents, pet loving or otherwise, that the founder of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home Mary Tealby is buried in Biggleswade Churchyard alongside her brother Rev Edward Bates, its first treasurer. Last year was the home’s 150th anniversary and a clean up of the memorials started this week. Catherine Rose looks at the history of this famous local lady who has helped save thousands of stray animals.

BATTERSEA Dogs and Cats Home is possibly the most well known animal rescue centre in the world, and it was first set up by a middle aged divorcee who had links with Biggleswade.

Born in 1801, Mary Tealby was 59 when she divorced her husband, Robert Chapman Tealby who was a timber merchant from Hull, and with little financial means, she came to live in London in 1860.

She was horrified by the number of stray and starving animals she saw on the streets and took in an emaciated dog which her friend Mrs Major had found wandering in Islington. When, despite her loving care, it died, she vowed to set up a ‘canine asylum’.

She initially formed a group of like-minded individuals and with the help of her brother Rev Edward Bates, a retired clergyman, found a mews stable between the Caledonian and Holloway Roads and used it as her ‘temporary home for lost and starving dogs’.

However, her enthusiasm for helping stray animals did not curry much favour with Victorian society whose moral concerns were waking up to the plight of the city’s many poor, considered to be a far more important issue than the fate of ‘dumb and unwanted’ animals.

It was author Charles Dickens, one of these social champions and also a celebrated journalist, who helped turn public opinion in Mary’s favour. In 1862 he wrote an article for a magazine entitled All the Year Round in support of the home. Two Dog Shows played on the notion of the peculiar British love of animals and praised Mary’s initiative, comparing it with the forerunner of Crufts Dog Show. Such was Dicken’s standing in Victorian society at that time that public opinion began to turn.

The home acquired Royal patronage through Queen Victoria – Queen Elizabeth is its patron today.

At the time, Mary and Edward’s cousin Mrs Robert Weale lived with her husband at The Elms in Biggleswade (now demolished). It was a large Victorian House in extensive grounds at the corner of Dells Lane and London Road.

Robert Weale was a poor law inspector and by all accounts they lived a comfortable life with five servants and two gardeners.

By this time Mary was ill with cancer and came to Biggleswade to live at The Elms. She died in 1865 so did not survive to see the home’s move to its now famous location in Battersea in 1871.

Her grave can be found in a secluded corner of the churchyard behind the Chapter House and is inscribed ‘Mary Tealby, widow born December 30th 1801 – Died October 3rd 1865’.

In her will, she left everything to her brother.

Edward Bates was the first treasurer of Battersea Dogs Home and is buried in the same grave. He died in 1876 aged 72. By then he was living with another cousin, Mrs Elizabeth Jefferies and her daughter Eleanor in Carradale, Bedford Road, Sandy.

Battersea Dogs Home began to take in stray cats in 1883.

In 1898, a country site was opened in Surrey due to a rabies epidemic in London. It was notably used to house 100 sledge dogs in preparation for Ernest Shackleton’s second Antarctic expedition in 1914. The site closed in 1934.

Today, the home’s philosopy is never to turn away a cat or dog in need. It not only takes care of strays, but reunites lost pets with their owners, provides animal training and a public advice line. At least 10,000 animals pass through its doors every year. Something Mary would no doubt be very proud of.

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