One hundred years ago, in the fall of 1907, the Gazette ran the following article:
“A horse and dog hospital and a horse ambulance are new things promised for York. The York Rendering Works, of which E. A. Dempwolf is manager, is trying to interest local members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and others in the matter of raising a fund for the purchase of an ambulance which can be used to haul sick horses to a hospital which will be established in this city.”
The proposal goes on to say that as the horses recuperate,
“...they will be removed to another hospital to be established near the York Rendering Works, out by the Black Bridge, where there are forty acres of ground on which the horses can be housed, exercised and have a veritable playground.” Dogs could also recover there.
The plan doesn’t seem to have come to fruition. The SPCA of York County wasn’t formed until 1926. Earnest A. Dempwolf evidently left town in 1908 and became an engineer involved in construction of naval yards at Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Brooklyn.
The connections between the proposed horse hospital and the York Rendering Works seem a bit ironic, considering the business of rendering is recycling of dead animals.
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