OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Diana, Princess of Wales, 36,
killed August 30 with her companion Emad
Mohamed al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul in a
Paris car crash, was recalled by fine arts portrateur
Elaine Livesay-Fassell as “The first
person in the British royal family who would
not hunt, shoot, or wear fur, the first who
spoke out about kindness to animals” since
Queen Victoria endorsed the Royal SPCA
and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
at request of Prince Albert in the 19th century.
“It was unfortunately not mentioned in
all the tributes to Diana,” Best Friends
Animal Sanctuary cofounder Michael
Mountain told the 1997 No Kill Conference
in his plenary address, “that the very first of
the rifts in the royal family that led to her
divorce came when she refused to hunt, and
did not want her sons to hunt.” Diana was
reputedly a vegetarian by inclination, with
frequent lapses, and PETA published a note
from Buckingham Palace affirming her opposition
to fur as part of an anti-fur ad, but
ANIMAL PEOPLE was unable to find documentation
of any specific statements she
might have made about animals, nor of her
direct participation in animal causes. “Diana
was widely rumored to dissapprove of bloodsports,”
said Kevin Saunders, chair of the
League Against Cruel Sports, “and it was
thought she was unhappy with Prince Charles
for introducing their sons to all known legal
forms of blood sport, but it was never more
than a rumor. Diana, to the best of my
knowledge, never involved herself in any
animal welfare work, not even with the
Royal SPCA,” as the RSPCA confirmed.

Pilu Dady, secretary of Beauty
Without Cruelty (India) since helping to
found it in 1974, died May 20. “She lived
the ideals of BWC long before the organization
came into being,” recalled her niece,
Diana Ratnagar, who organized BWC (India)
after corresponding with the late Muriel, the
Lady Dowding. Remembered Ratnagar,
“Pilu Dady sowed the first seed of BWC in
my mind. I must have been in my early teens
when she told me that perfumes contain substances
for which animals like the gentle
musk deer were killed. She, who had been
using the world’s best perfumes, had decided
to completely stop using them for this reason.
Since then, every day when I used expensive
perfumes, I felt guilty. It was only years
later than I gave up their use.” Pilu Dady
supported a wide variety of other charities, as
well, Ratnagar wrote, “especially those
which helped animals, women, and trees.”

Marie Carosello, 67, (above, as
child) died August 19 in San Francisco of a
self-inflicted gunshot wound after suffering
for some time with sarcoidosis, a degenerative
lung disease. Discovering the use and
abuse of laboratory animals in 1977 while
doing clerical work at the University of
California Medical Center, Carosello spent
the next six years, $42,000 of her own
money, and $15,000 from the New England
Anti-Vivisection Society in producing the
antivivisection documentary Tools for
R e s e a r c h. A 1982 rough cut, prematurely
released by NEAVS and the National AntiVivisection
Society, included unauthorized
footage of maternal deprivation experiments
on primates done by the late Harry Harlow at
the University of Wisconsin, and landed
Carosello in litigation against both NEAVS
and NAVS for allegedly violating her copyright.
The final version, released in 1983
without the Harlow material, won nine film
awards in the next two years, and was considered
influential in winning passage of the
1985 amendments to the Animal Welfare Act
which mandate provisions for the psychological
needs of dogs and primates in lab housing.

Kelly L. Skeen, 31, and her
boyfriend Daniel P. Cottrell, 36, were
killed on August 17 when Cottrell’s motorcycle
hit wet pavement and skidded in front of
an oncoming pickup truck during a benefit
ride for the Muscular Dystrophy Association
in Massillon, Ohio. Daughter of the late
Ohio state representative Cliff Skeen, who
died in 1993, and a legal secretary for
Lammert and Towne in Akron, Kelly Skeen
was best remembered for winning a precedent-setting
criminal mischief conviction last
year against her landlord, Bill E. Thomas,
when Thomas entered her apartment without
permission and took her cat Couch Potato to a
pound to be killed. Cottrell was also fond of
cats; local papers listed two toms, names not
mentioned, among his survivors.