John Howard Moore (1862–1916) was born in Missouri, the son of a farmer. After receiving a A.B. degree he taught and lectured in zoology and ethics at Crane Training High School in Chicago. In 1899 he married Jennie Darrow (sister of the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow). In June 1916, Moore committed suicide in Jackson Park, Chicago.
As Author
Moore first came to Henry Salt’s attention when he wrote a notice for a book of his, Better-World Philosophy in 1899. Moore’s The Universal Kinship was first published in 1906.
Writing in his autobiography The Company I Have Kept, Salt wrote, “I have long thought that Moore’s chief book, The Universal Kinship, the gist of which is clearly expressed in the title, is the best ever written in the humanitarian cause.”
Salt and Moore corresponded regularly; four of Moore’s letters to Salt are included in the Appendix of Centaur’s 1992 edition of Moore’s The Universal Kinship, which was introduced and edited by Charles Magel.
In 1923 Henry Salt dedicated his The Story of My Cousins “To the memory of my friend, Howard Moore, author of ‘The Universal Kinship.'”
In The Company I Have Kept Salt paid the following tribute to Moore, “I have a theory that we judge best of the reality of friendships in absence; and if this be true, I cannot have been mistaken as to the warmth of my feelings for Howard Moore, for I never saw him in person, though we corresponded regularly for years, and I have still a big packet of his letters which show him to have been no less lovable as a man than he was brilliant as a writer.”
For more information on J. Howard Moore visit Through The Hourglass and Animal Rights: A History.