HELEN JONES, COFOUNDED HSUS AND STARTED ISAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Helen Jones, 73, died of carbon monoxide
poisoning during a morning fire on August 14 at her
home in Abington Township, Pennsylvania. Arriving
for work, her hospice care nurse Debbie Moore,
Moore’s husband Raymond, and a police officer they
summoned saw the fire and pulled Jones from her
burning bedroom, but too late to save her.
Cofounding the Humane Society of the U.S.
in 1954, to more vigorously oppose vivisection and
hunting than the existing national animal advocacy
groups, Jones became disenchanted, and left to form
the National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare in
January 1959. On July 10, 1966, Jones led the first
protest for animals at the White House, opposing the
then-pending Laboratory Animal Protection Act––
against the views of all other major animal protection
groups––because she believed it did more to legitimize
vivisection than to save animals. Jones moved
NCSAW from Washington D.C. to New York City in
1974, and retitled it the International Society for
Animal Rights, as the first national advocacy group to
embrace an explicitly “animal rights” philosophy.

Relocating again, to Clarks Summit,
Pennsylvania, Jones and her older sisters Ruth and
Margaret started the Lackawanna County SPCA and
“established the area’s first clinic for neutering animals,”
according to newspaper accounts. Jones’ last
triumph was starting Homeless Animals Day in 1992,
now marked by humane societies all over the world.
Both ISAR and the Lackawanna County
SPCA slid into decline after Margaret Jones’ health
failed in the mid-1980s. She was removed from her
position as shelter manager over Helen Jones’ objections,
and died in May 1990.
Allegations that Helen and Ruth Jones were
keeping large numbers of cats and dogs in unhealthy
conditions first reached the editor of ANIMAL PEOP
L E in November 1991. After extensive investigation,
ANIMAL PEOPLE exposed the situation in
October 1995. In December 1995 the ISAR board
forced Jones’ retirement. A lawsuit charging Jones
with misuse of ISAR assets was settled out of court.
Ruth Jones died in September 1997.