Fur, sometimes from cats, has long been used in clothing, both for warmth and decoration. Well into the 20th Century it wasn’t unusual to wear fur stoles that still had the head, legs and tails attached. The fashion for using kittens’ heads to trim the elaborate hats of the late 19th century evolved from the “feather fashion” trend of the mid 1800s.

THE PLUME BOOM

Fur coats and fur trim from many farmed and trapped mammals were widely used at the time and cat skins could be passed off as other species in coats and wraps, but to understand how kittens’ heads became fashion accessories, we need to look at a fashion trend of the time - hats. Skins, plumes, wings and gaudy feathers of exotic birds had been widely traded for decorative use since the 1860s. London became the centre of trade for these exotic feathers, while Paris and New York were the manufacturing centres for feather trimmings for hat ornamentation. In addition to feather cockades, it sometimes looked as though a bird had alighted and roosted on a woman’s already elaborate hairstyle; sometimes there appeared to be a tableau of small birds such as hummingbirds.

The American hat craze was in full swing in the 1880s – extravagant hats sported a variety of animal parts: feathers, quills, whole small birds, birds’ wings, fur, whole mice and whole small reptiles in addition to fruit, flowers, ribbons and lace. The height of exotic feather fashion in Britain, particularly London, was 1901 to 1910. This was the “plume boom” and it used native species as well as exotic birds. Hats were big business. In 1889 in London and Paris, over 8,000 women were employed in the millinery trade. In 1900 in New York, some 83,000 people – mostly women – were employed in the trade.

Murderous Millinery – The New York Times Saturday Review, July 31, 1898: A woman in Paris or London may discover that the tail of a bird “sets her off.” She walks forth, and lo! Tails are the rage, and millions of birds have been slaughtered for the mere gratification of tender-hearted woman. It is not an exaggeration to say that in whatever part of the world beautiful birds are found there will be found also the agents of the draper and the milliner. The part they play is that of supplying the demand. Woman wants. The striking expression “murderous millinery” is current in speeches and writing on the subject. “Feather-headed women,” as indeed they are in more ways than one, is a term which might be used more frequently than it is with much advantage. Surely they invite some such public stigma by exhibiting themselves as they do in the relics of murdered innocence.

In the late 1890s, bird protection groups, known as Audubon Societies, were founded across the USA to combat the feather trade and to protect birds. Between 1905 and 1918, various laws were passed in the USA to curtail, and finally ban, the killing of birds for their feathers and the import of plumes. Only feathers from domestic poultry could be used for ornamentation. The well-to-do abandoned feather fashion and as demand dropped, so did prices. Middle- and lower-class women were now able to afford feather fashion. In Britain, where the height of the feather fashion fad was 1901 to 1910, the Plumage Bill was passed in 1920.

Although the enthusiasm for bird-trimmed bonnets waned, the end of the extravagant hat fad was not due to conservation awareness, but to a change in hair fashion. In 1913, short hairstyles became the rage and these could not support the heavy, elaborate hats that required hat pins to keep them in place. Lighter, plainer hats came into fashion.

KITTEN-HEAD HATS

Paris was considered to be the trendsetter, but one particular millinery trend did not appear to cross the English Channel or the Atlantic Ocean – the 1880s fashion for using kittens’ heads and baby squirrels’ head on hats. Dead furry faces now peeped out of feathers or foliage. While there was always a surplus of kittens in that era, the look became so popular that kittens were apparently specially bred to meet the demand of milliners and their fashionable customers. Kittens’ heads were also used on muffs (hand warmers) and purses.

NEW PARISIAN COSTUMES - THE MODISTES BUSY - KITTENS' HEADS AS MUFF ORNAMENTS (The New York Times, October 4, 1883; The St. Andrews Bay Pilot, Oct 18, 1883):

PARIS, Oct 3. - Paris is very animated in the Bois, at the Salon trienniel, the Hippodrome, the Cirque, the Porte St. Martin - where "Frou Frou" is drawing crowds - at the grand bazaars, where their exhibitions of silks, velvets, and nouveautes d'hiver, in the fashionable restaurants - and above all, in the environs of the Rue de la paix. Elegant mondaines and demi-mondaines are visible daily in full force, and the salons of the great couturiers are invaded by fair ladies in quest of new toilets - costumes de chateau, costumes for hunting, shooting, and 5 o'clock tea. Here are three new hats that were noted at the Salon yesterday. A toque of black tulle, embroidered with Pompadour sprigs of bright flowers in front; a large loosely looped rosette of Rose Dubarry ribbons, and in the midst of that a richly jeweled owl's head. A Henri IV hat of yellowish, long pile beaver, the brim flat and narrow, on one side a nest of mice, forming a bow. A blue soft felt hat, on one side a bow of blue velvet and satin, on which is placed a bird with open wings, and from under the bow emerges a kitten's head. The demand for kittens' heads has become so important that cat breeding has become a regular business. Pigeons' wings and cock's heads are also much worn, and the muff of the season will be velvet or plush, to match the dresses, with a kitten or hirondelle de mer on the front.

Fort Wayne Sunday Gazette (Indiana), Sunday, October 28, 1883; The Indiana Herald, 26 December 1883; The Herald-Despatch, 19 January 1884 (all apparently picked up from the Chicago Herald): Fashion, omnipotent fashion, promises to do what centuries of bootjacks, fire shovels, cuspidors, and other utensils convertible into missiles of distinction have failed to accomplish. For countless ages' such household articles have been aimed at howling midnight cats by victims whose sleep was banished by caterwaulings. Cats have been hit and the breath has temporarily left their bodies, but it is not on record that midnight cat meetings have ever been broken up through denuding a bed-chamber of utensils that might be hurled at the feline foes of slumber. The next night the cats invariably reassembled as if by request. But, unless fashion should suddenly change her mind, relief would appear to be at hand. Kittens' heads are extensively used by fashionable milliners in Paris for the trimming of ladies' hats and bonnets. So large has become the demand that Paris backyards are nightly invaded by cat-hunters, and the breeding of kittens for their heads has become regular business. Paris sets the fashions, and this demand for kittens' heads must extend all over the world. The cat with a litter of young ones will be unable to send then out into the world to imitate her own dissipated career. They will have their little heads chopped off, and the self-same little heads will be used to adorn the millinery of the fashionable lady. - If this fashion should hold out a year or two, nocturnal caterwaulings will be heard no more, and a single boot-jack may last a man a lifetime.

“Gleanings,” Honesdale (PA) Wayne County Herald; an issue from 1883 noted: “Kittens’ heads are to take the place of birds’ heads on the coming bonnets.”

FASHION NOTES by Jenny Wren in the Observer, 7 February 1885: “The very latest addition to bonnet adornments are twigs - little faggots really tied up, or the pieces stuck in separately. We have had mushrooms, birds and their nests, even "kittens' heads, and dear little woolly ducklings, but we are to have twigs varnished or gilt out of all reason, with birds perched upon them - such are the vagaries of fashion.”

Would British or American women have adopted the kittens’ head hat craze? Possibly as this Christmas fancy goods advert from the Fort Wayne Sentinel, December 20, 1886 suggests: “Purses made out of cats' or kittens' heads are the newest for change. Although reputed "from Paris," they are made in New York, for purses go to GEORGE DEWALD CO”

There was a reference to the fashion in the children’s section of The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (New South Wales), Saturday 7 July 1888. MERCURY JUNIOR: A SEVERE LESSON. CHAPTER II.

"I never see any myself, but I don't doubt it. People given over to fashion will go to most any length.”

Luckily fashion changes quickly, albeit not quickly enough to save millions of small animals and birds from become hat decorations, and the fur-and-feather hat fad died out. While most readers will have been aware of the “plume boom”, few will have been aware that, for a while, hats were accessorised with kittens.

. . . AND OTHER USES OF STUFFED KITTENS IN THE 1800s

Before females cats could be safely spayed, they produced litter after litter of kittens, far more than it was possible to find homes for. These were routinely destroyed by the owner. Owners were advise to keep only a favourite kitten – preferably male- perhaps the prettiest one. The most famous user of surplus kittens is probably Walter Potter (1835 – 1918) whose famous tableaux were exhibited at various museums and the Jamaica Inn before the collection was broken up and sold to different buyers. He was an amateur taxidermist and the animals were presented in an anthropomorphic style. His dioramas included a “Kittens’ Tea Party” and the “Kittens’ Wedding”

A NEW LOCAL INDUSTRY. Birmingham Mail, 5th October 1886
We pursue to-day the thornier path of commercial development and industrial enterprise. The immediate cause of this disciplinary penance is an advertisement in our miscellaneous column for 10,000 kittens, for which the advertiser is prepared give 2d. apiece. A casual sight of this at once suggested the introduction of a new local industry. What that industry might be was doubtful. The advertisement did not at a first glance set at rest the wild conjectures which floated through the mind. One naturally thought, when the eye rested on the words “10,000 kittens wanted,” that the revival which is beginning to be felt in some branches of business had extended itself to the mutton-pie trade, or that tenders had been invited for some tons of sausages of exceptionally mild flavour. But these appetising speculations were rudely dispelled when we noted further that the kittens must be between 9 and 12 days old, and reflected that for culinary purposes they would, at that age, be decidedly dear at twopence apiece. No disqualification was mentioned as to sex or colour, except that black ones were not wanted. This pointed exclusion of black at once got rid of the conjecture that perhaps a company of peculating lodging-house keepers were about to start in business, and required kittens of a wax-like and receptive intelligence which they might train in the art of smoking the lodgers’ cavendish, and drinking the lodgers’ bottled stout. For a life of vicarious dishonesty a black cat would be as good as a white, or tabby, or a tortoise-shell one. The mutton pie theory and the lodging-house theory having both failed to satisfy the spirit of investigation, we bethought us of taking the unprofessionally direct course of referring further to the advertisement itself. This led to the discovery that it was a taxidermist who wants the 10,000 kittens, and the inference to be drawn is that the innocent little things are required for stuffing purposes, to be used hereafter ad drawing-room ornaments.

The advertiser, with a touch of mingled thrift and pathos, clenches the monetary inducement of twopence with an appeal to heads of households not to drown their kittens. From a humanitarian point of view the advice is admirable, although pussy's fecundity necessitates a ruthless massacre of the innocents at very early stage of their existence, and one cannot very well, with the fear of a stern nuisance-inspector before one’s eyes, encourage the unchecked operation of the natural laws which govern the growth of feline populations. Malthus, we are sure, having regard to the possible exhaustion of the mouse supply, would not preach such heretical doctrine as “do not drown your kittens.” But the immediate question for consideration is whether it is nicer, from the kitten point of view, to be drowned when a day old, or be consigned to the taxidermist after its eyes have opened to the wonders the earth, and its dawning instinct has begun to appreciate the cares of maternal solicitude. Possibly the taxidermist would say that the prolongation of life for a few days is a distinct gain for puss, and that it is a much more glorious thing to be preserved in life-like semblance for ornamental purposes than to be thrown into a pond and left to disappear by the gradual, and not very nice, processes of nature. The kitten, however, might quite careless of the honour of post-mortem distinction, and equally indifferent to the advantages of an artistic sort of perpetuity. When, therefore, we are implored not to drown our kittens, but to turn them to profitable account, we are tempted to vary the old nursery ditty, and begin it in this strain:-

I love little pussy, her coat is so nice,
And If I don't drown her she'll fetch a good price;
I’ll not treat her badly, nor banish her hence,
But sell her for stuffing for two pretty pence.

The tempting character of the advertisement will no doubt act like a charm in these times of depression. The advertiser’s premises are likely to be thronged from morning to night by people, with baskets, bags, satchels, bulging pockets, bundles - everything, in fact, which will serve to hold one or more nine-day old kittens. The street, will be musical with mews. Throughout the live-long day pretty baby cats, of all sorts and colours, will be carried across the threshold never to go, back again alive. There, in the dim recesses of some mysterious apartment, the grim work of wholesale slaughter will go on, the skins will be stripped from the lifeless little bodies, the 10,000' carcases - well, goodness only knows what will become of them! –and the pretty creatures that had just begun to play with their own tails will be given an interior of wadding and a pair of glass eyes and fixed in an attitude of rigid playfulness on the frame of a portrait or the surface of a penwiper! And in thousands of homes there will be the clinking of easily-earned twopences, and in thousands homes, too, will be heard the mourning voices of feline Rachels, mewing for their kittens, and refusing to comforted, because they are not.

Many scientific considerations obtrude themselves in connection with this spirited Herodian policy. Of course, in the struggle for existence, so far as cats are concerned, it is not always the fittest that survive; but one cannot help speculating on the possibility of many an undeveloped “mouser” being thus prematurely cut off - many an embryo prize-winner at the cat show robbed of his chances - many a grimalkin condemned to a reluctant innocence of spring chicken’s or pet canary’s blood. Then we are prompted to ask what will be the consequences of sparing only the black kittens. Darwinian students will, no doubt, tell us that if all the other varieties are killed off, in time we shall have nothing but black cate left. Now black cats probably as good any other sort for vermicidal purposes, and have quite as high an appreciation of cream, and are supposed to be abnormally charged with electricity; but there is something a little unpleasant about their history and associations. One always associates them with witchcraft and demonology. A black cat was the favourite shape of the “familiar” of the dark ages. Superstitious people, even now, won’t have these sable beauties in their houses. And yet we are threatened, if the insatiable yearning for stuffed cats continues, with a possible extinction of all other kinds. Our great-great grandchildren will wonder enquiringly what a “tabby” was like, and will search in the British Museum for a coloured picture of a “tortoiseshell.” But other than scientific considerations have forced themselves upon us in connection with this advertisement. Where is the crusade against the kittens going to end? Is the limit of twelve days’ age likely to be observed if the rage for stuffed kittens warrants a solicitation for 10,000 - just a sample order, a little lot be going on with - what little girl’s favourite kitten will be safe from the predatory urchin eager to earn twopence? And why should these poor animals be killed in such a wholesale fashion simply for trade purposes? A great outcry was made not long ago about the wickedness of slaughtering birds of beautiful plumage for use as articles of dress. Is there very much difference between shooting a humming-bird for a lady’s hat and poisoning, or otherwise killing, a kitten to make a table ornament? Some kittens must be disposed of, of course - we should be overrun with cats if they were all allowed to live, and, goodness knows, the tiles are lively enough at night as it is - but this unique mixture of trade interests with the obligations of necessity, - this “twopenny” arrangement which succours little puss from drowning only to hand her over to the hands of the taxidermist - strikes us as being capable of abuse on the part of cruel and unscrupulous persons who may come across the advertisement. The fondness of children for kittens is a pretty quality deserving of encouragement, for it engenders kindness for the dumb creation and developes a tender nature; and when, therefore, we hear that 10,000 kittens are to be taken off, like Macduff’s offspring, “all at one fell swoop,” we cannot help thinking that enterprise is treading upon perilous ground, and that it is not altogether a ridiculous sentimentalism to invite the advertiser to be a little more moderate in his demands.

THE CAT TRADE IN BIRMINGHAM. A CHAT WITH ITS ORIGINATOR. Birmingham Mail, 10th May 1888
Ordinarily squeamish readers need in no way hesitate to look down this article. It is no chapter in the class of uninviting reading, usually described as “revelations.” Our reporters have not lighted upon a hitherto unheard of local horror. However suspiciously ambiguous the title “The Cat Trade in Birmingham,” may be, and whatever adverse opinion may be aroused by the really innocent pun involved in the two first nouns of the two head-lines, our readers may rest assured that on this occasion, at least, the intention is far from us to throw, for instance, the slightest shadow of a doubt, either on the methods, the materials, or the general integrity of the borough and neighbourhood's sausage makers and meat purveyors. The cat trade in Birmingham is, indeed, a quite respectable one, altogether fair and above board, and lacking almost every element of "sensation.” That the trade is not well-known is not a very serious fault to find with it, and this much may be said, that it is not one which the offender may be expected much longer to plead guilty. If the cat trade is not already ranked by gazetteer-makers among the multifarious and heterogeneous industries of the Midland metropolis, there is every probability that the addition will very soon be warranted, for nothing is more certain than that both the extent of it and the interest in it are steadily increasing. The cat trade is of genuinely local origin. Its beginnings were first announced in the ‘Mail,’ and in a day or two later the new industry was duly credited to Birmingham by one of the London dailies. The cat trade's originator is a Birmingham taxidermist; and further particulars as to the character of the trade than the clue which the occupation of Mr. E. F. Spicer, of Suffolk Street, furnishes, may be found in the following report of an interview which a representative has just had with him.

"Tell me, Mr. Spicer, how and why it was you first thought of profitably utilising the thousands and thousands of kittens which have hitherto been annually wasted “

"You have just told me that you calculate that there are in the kingdom as many as seven millions of cats, and that no fewer than 9,000,000 kittens are born yearly, the most of which are destroyed. Now, while about two years ago I hadn’t these precise figures, I was well aware that it is the rarest thing in the world for a family kittens to be reared entire, and that being the case, multitudes of kittens are within every twelve months regularly drowned, poisoned, or otherwise done away with. That seemed to me a great and unnecessary waste, to say the least of it. When to this added the fact that the great majority of the kittens which are destroyed are more or less tortured - unwittingly, no doubt, in many cases - it is seen that there is room for a reformation somewhere.”

“And you tried to start a reformation?"
“Just so. Recognising the due importance of the facts that I have mentioned, the waste and the cruelty, I set to work to see what could be done towards the profitable utilisation of the kittens. I had tried to make a group of a dog snarling at a frightened cat, but the difficulty which frequently comes in when comparatively large subjects are handled intervened, and I cast the work aside. Then I thought of arranging a puppy and a kitten instead. I set to work, and the result was so successful that I sent it to a Derbyshire exhibition, where it got a prize. Soon after my cat had kittens, and these I poisoned when they had grown a little, and instead of burying them, as usual, I stuffed them, and did my best to arrange them in all the playful positions in which they had shown themselves in life. The result of the second experiment being as successful as the first. I went ahead, and then, why, shortly after you saw my advertisement in the Mail for several thousand nine or ten days old kittens, for which I offered 2d. apiece, provided they were any colour under the sun except black, white being, of course, reckoned a colour.”

"But from two arrangements in kittens to a couple of thousands of the little stuffed quadrupeds is a big jump. How did you utilise the great quantities you subsequently asked for?”

“Mounted them mainly as penwipers. Others I fastened on photograph frames. Others I arranged in groups playing either among themselves or hanging over gold fish bowls."

“However did the market open for a new and unadvertised industry?”

"Well, you see, the Bingley Hall Exhibition had just commenced, I had a stall there. As soon as the novel trade was discovered my goods began go like hot cakes. The committee of the Exhibition had an agreement with me which stipulated that I should go through the kitten-stuffing process before the public so many hours each day."

“How many kittens did you sell from Bingley Hill?”

“Well, the exhibition was open 13 weeks. As I commenced with 300 finished ones, and subsequently stuffed in the exhibition not less than ten a day, and had cleared out my whole stock by closing day, you may see I got through a large number. Then I took several orders, including one for 10,000 for America, the goods having to be the States in time for the Christmas-present buying season. True, I did not manage to get them all off in the time, but I was so near doing it that my customers let me off the agreed-upon penalty.”

“And after Christmas how went the cat trade?"

“Steadily and successfully. On May 6th of last year the Saltaire Exhibition opened, and the committee, having heard of the new industry, offered me a good stall if I would transfer my headquarters there till the show's close. I agreed, and went to Saltaire with results, as far as cat stuffing went, that put Birmingham quite into the shade. I took six hundred partially-stuffed kittens with me, and, while at Saltaire, bought and stuffed quite 10,000 more. I know as to the figures, because I paid away for kittens in Yorkshire as much as £80 in twopences. The total sale at the Exhibition was 10,600. I hadn't a single one to bring home. Although I say it, too, I lots of people, including Mr. Titus Salt, told me that my stall was the leading one in the Exhibition; and the Princess Beatrice, when she visited the show, made from the only purchase she made in the place, her order being for a selection of the different varieties of the kittens.”

“Since Saltaire?”

“I have done another order for America, 5,000 this time, and attended to various others. But the regular work of my business was so much in arrears that I had to decline a lot of orders, including several orders of hundreds. I have still some these orders, which have been renewed, on hand. There was one order, however, which I found time to do shortly after Saltaire. That was an order for the Isle of Man.”

“Of course you sent Manx kittens?”

“Certainly. I sent 200, and as they were curled up so that you couldn’t see the full shape of the body, and they had no tails, I defy anyone to have have discovered they were not to the manner born but they really were full-tailed cats from in and around Birmingham. I always turn the skin outside in in the course of preparation, when these 200 were in this state, I just snipped off their tails, tied the skin on the inside, and there they were.”

“Which is the most popular form in stuffed kittens?”

“Of course the penwiper. That is the quickest done and the lowest priced. After the penwiper come in popularity the photograph frames and then the groups. The groups don't go to any large amount, for they are necessarily more or less expensive.”

“You say the kitten as a penwiper is the quickest done. Have you timed yourself?”

“Yes. When I was working at the Bingley Hall my very quickest time was 45 minutes, but now I can turn out the penwiper kittens at the rate of one every twenty minutes, working steadily all day. That rate means starting with the recently dead kittens and finishing with the penwiper ready for sale. Of course one hand doesn’t all the work. The kittens are passed on from one to another."

“How is the trade going now?”

“Quite as well as I can keep up with. I cannot neglect my ordinary work, and I don’t care to get any other hands to do the kittens than my four children and myself. In addition to merchants’ orders, I have lately been doing a number of small local orders for bazaars and various charitable purposes. Kittens are brought to my shop at an average rate of perhaps twenty a day. I poison them with prussic acid syringe as soon they come in, and having roughly stuffed and wired them, put them in the sawdust box I showed you, where they will keep practically any length of time."

“But would it not pay you to develop your kitten trade?“

“Oh, it would pay well enough. I could, in fact, profitably do away with my regular trade and go in for kitten mounting alone; but it is monotonous work, and as my family are regularly at work kitten stuffing and do nothing else, with some of the men helping them elementarily occasionally, that is about enough. L am sure I could get lots of big orders if I cared to execute them; but it is no good opening a market if you are not prepared to keep up the supply. I think the demand for the stuffed kittens Is strong as ever.”

“When there is a demand which you are not supplying, are not other local taxidermists snapping up the trade?”

“No; you see I have got a good pull in allowing only my family to do the work, and in finishing off practically every kitten myself. The kitten is perhaps one of the most difficult subjects to operate on. It small, and it not easy to stuff; then, after it is decently arranged, which is not an easy thing to do, everything depends upon the expression. There is a pleasing, graceful expression on a kitten’s countenance which takes lot of observation and practice to imitate. And then everybody has seen young kittens, and so everybody is your very severe critic. As I have had so many hundreds and thousands through my hands, I flatter myself I can give the subjects just touch they want. but I cannot yet trust the work to men, however good taxidermists they may be. The few stuffed kittens I have seen outside my shop were perfect frights. I once sent a group of stuffed kittens resting in a hamper of straw to a cat show, and lots of people were deceived into believing that the animals were really live exhibits. You see I construct the artificial kitten right from the beginning. The only thing I utilise is the skin. I put away everything else, even the skull; so you see it is all artificial.”

“The prussic acid syringe you think to be the quickest way kill the kittens?”

“Yes, undoubtedly. When the kittens come in, as I syringe them I drop them into a box, and by the time I have finished with the last one and open the drawer of the box at the bottom for a kitten, they are all dead enough. I use this big bottle, a shillingsworth, of prussic acid a month in killing kittens alone. I hear that some good people, having seen an account work the papers, have asked the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals whether they were sure I was killing the kittens painlessly. Their local inspector dropped in lately and told me so. I asked him to pounce in some day without making an appointment, and see what we are doing. He is going to.”

“Of course you don’t think your new industry has had any effect upon the feline population?”

“Certainly not. I believe there are quite as many cats in Birmingham as ever there were. If I hadn’t taken the kittens they would have been drowned, or poisoned, or set straying to be worried by dogs. I have not only utilised the waste, but saved the animals much suffering. People still keep their favourite kittens.”

“Where do you kittens mostly come from?”

“Birmingham almost exclusively. I get them, however, from the suburbs – King’s Heath, Hockley, Handsworth, and Small Heath, for instance.”

“Now here is a really useful and interesting question, Mr. Spicer. What kind of cat is most common?”

“I think people like tortoise-shell and tabby cats best, ad will usually keep one of that kind in preference to the other kittens in a cat’s family. As far as the cats run that I get here, I should think that tabbies are the most numerous. They are followed by the tabby and white colour, and that again by black. The come yellow, white, and tortoise-shell.”

“I though you didn’t take black cats? Why do you not?”

“No, I don’t reckon to take them, but people bring the black ones with the others and ask us to keep them and poison them without the twopences. But I scarcely ever use them afterwards, though I may kill them for them. Why? Well a black cat has nothing like as good a skin as other cats have; it is neither of as good quality nor of as good lasting power. It won’t keep black; it gets brown. Then, you know, there is a prejudice amongst many people against black cats, and they do’t sell as well as the others.”

“You must have used up a lot of wire and glass eyes in your work? Can you give me some information on this point as a last question?”

“When I first began I used a lot of broken-eyed needles, but now I used wire almost altogether. A needle will not bend or conform to a graceful shape. The spoilt needles used to cost me 6d. per lb. For the pen wipers the kittens are represented curled up half asleep. As their eyes are only partially open, I use black eyes. They are only 1s. a gross. When the kittens are mounted playing, as on the photograph frames, the eyes must have some expression, and in these cases the glass eyes are specially made for me. They are dusky blue, and cost me 6s. a gross.”

And bidding Mr. Spicer good afternoon, our representative left the kitten stuffing manufactory, passing on his way to the street a large tinful of several hundred grouse feet soaking, preparatory to mounting as pins, to be sold at the approaching Glasgow Exhibition.

THE CAT TRADE IN BIRMINGHAM Birmingham Mail, 14th May 1888
To the Editor of the Birmingham Daily Mail,
Sir, - My attention has just been directed to an article under the above heading in the ‘Mail’ of the 10th inst. The article is so full of exaggerations that at a first glance it might be dismissed with a smile, but some of the replies cast such serious reflections upon te trade generally that they cannot be passed over without protest. As to the “originator” of the trade in stuffed kittens, the interviewed person is well aware that a taxidermist in Birmingham exhibited in his window and caused quite a sensation with groups of stuffed kittens in frolicsome play, as long back as 12 or 14 years, these groups having been seen repeatedly and even handled by this “originator.” The interviewed is also perfectly well aware that his own cousin, who trades in Leamington, has made a speciality of kitten pen-wipers for something like 15 or 20 years. The writer of this letter was waited upon by the manager of a wholesale fancy trade firm, four years back, with a view to supplying kittens for photograph frames, the gentleman observing that the kittens had sold fairly well the PREVIOUS SEASON and might “go” for another. The commission was declined. So much for originality. The assertions that skilled taxidermists cannot properly turn out these little monstrosities is so grossly absurd that on cannot but marvel at the unscrupulous audacity of the person who uttered the words, the real fact being that the other taxidermists in the town are too well patronised by the general public to trouble themselves with such slop work as kitten pen-wipers. – One of the Other Taxidermists, May 12th, 1888.

Leamington Spa Courier, 22nd December 1888
The appearance of Mr Peter Spicer's windows was charming in the extreme. One was devoted to the display of jewelry, and in the other was a pretty arrangement of stuffed kittens, of the smallest size, which were artistically fixed to photo frames, &c.