Why Is That Monkey Boiling a Cat, or "Pleasant Pictures"

I recently came across an antique children’s book called “Pleasant Pictures”, published in 1896 by Donohue, Henneberry & Co..  There is no author attributed to the book.  Many of the illustrations are signed by Harrision Wier, a famous British illustrator and cat breeder of some repute. Other illustrators are also represented in this book, but I can’t identify who they are.

The illustrations in this book cover a variety of themes, and they all either contain animals or children.  However, some of the pictures seem very strange, even disturbing, especially considering this is a children’s book.

Here are some examples:

Poor Puss is in bad luck.  The monkey has taken a notion that Puss ought to have a bath, and so while the cook is out of the kitchen, Mr. Monkey douses Miss Puss into a kettle of water that has just been placed over the fire.  

The  poor little puppy is dead and its mamma has dug it a little grave in the garden as is going to bury it.  See how sad the poor mother look sad she stops in her work to gaze for the last time on her dearly loved and lost little pup.  This is one of the Harrison Wier illustrations in the book.

Pussy is moving to another town from that where she and her kittens have been living.  She is carrying her kittens one at a time, and will be tired enough by the time she has her whole family moved.  She has moved all the kittens but one, and that one seems not to like being left along very much. This is another Harrision Wier illustration.

The back cover has an illustration of two little girls sitting on the floor consoling each other. A cat sits on a chair above them.  On the floor behind the Girls is a bird cage, and scattered around them are bird parts.

Perhaps the readers of this book were expected to be closer to the possibility of death. It seems that today we want nothing more than to protect our children from anything bad and evil.  Perhaps that was true in 1896 as well.  Maybe death wasn’t considered bad and evil by the writer and illustrators of this book, but the way of the world, that even a child had to live with on a daily basis.   Did the publishers of this book want to indoctrinate their young readers into the world that included death as a matter-of-fact event, or were they simply telling young readers about reality as they saw it?