"Charles Cruft"

There can be no one in the world, or even beyond, who has not heard of Mr Charles Cruft, founder of our largest and best known dog show in the worldCharles Cruft was born in 1852, and was the son of a jeweller. Leaving Birbeck College in 1876 he was first employed by James Spratt, starting out as an apprentice office boy and quickly followed by sales traveller in "dog cakes". The position entailed visiting most of the English Counties selling Spratts dog cakes to large estates where packs of hounds were bred and kept for hunting. While he was in Paris in 1878 the French breeders asked if he would organise a canine exhibition for them at the famous Paris Exhibition, which he did with tremendous success. Si it was not surprising that when he returned to England he was asked by British breeders if he would do likewise. He did so and these shows too were very successful. Shortly afterwards he decided to organise his own shows being the born showman that he was. His first show was held for the Allied Terrier Club show held at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, in 1886. In 1891 he hired the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington for the first of his long and successful series of Cruft's Dog Shows. In 1886 Charles Cruft realised and appreciated how much the general public were interested in rare breeds and set about obtaining these to entice the public to his shows. He soon started calling his shows "Cruft's Shows". These shows went on from strength to strength and in 1936 the famous Jubilee Show had an all time record for those days with an entry of 10,650 and 4397 dogs. In 1938 Charles Cruft died and in the next year his widow organised one more "Cruft's Show", but the project became too much for her so in 1942 she decided to hand over the show to the Kennel Club so that they could continue his shows and perpetuate his name. The Kennel Club accepted gladly and held their first Cruft's Show at Olympia in 1948. [This information from this brief article was obtained from the book. "Showing & Judging Dogs" by Hilary Harmer, published by John Gifford in London.]