Mark, I don't know...
Considering the profile of both Kitty and Crab's owners, I think that they were probably unaware of Darwin's theory and unfamiliar to any scientific approach to this subject.
Old Crab's owner was a carpenter and kept a public house in Manchester and Kitty's last owner (Mr. J. Kershaw) kept a public house in Halifax named "Bishop Blaise".
So they were both publicans, of questionable educational background, whose main concern seemed to be to make a quick profit, as was the case with most publicans at the time.
Public houses were pubs that also had some other events for entertainment purposes including rat baiting, bull baiting and other blood sports of the time and also...
dog "exhibitions". Unorganized of course, but this is how it all started...
According to many sources, the first
organized dog Show took place at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1859.
History of the Kennel Club ? The Kennel Club
Prior that time the exhibiting of dogs took place at local public houses. Records of such dog exhibitions go back to 1844.
An example was the famous "BLUE ANCHOR", kept by Jemmy Shaw.
Artillery Arms | Londonist
In Joan Gordon's book "
The New Complete Yorkshire Terrier" there is an advertisement of a 1849 show :
Quote:
"The Toy Dog Club holds their meeting every Thursday evening at Mr. J. Shaw's, Blue Anchor Tavern, Dunhill Row, Finsbury, London.
Grand Show next Sunday evening May 27th, Terriers, Spaniels, and Small Toy Dogs, when nearly every fancier in London, as well as several provincials now in town, will attend with their little beauties"
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In the same public house rat baiting contests were also held.
The photo is from the London Museum and it reads :
Quote:
" Rat-Catching at the Blue Anchor Tavern, Bunhill Row, Finsbury. A Manchester terrier called Tiny the Wonder is shown attempting to kill 200 rats in under an hour at a tavern in Bunhill Row, Finsbury. He achieved this feat twice, on 28 March 1848 and 27 March 1849, "having on both occasions time to spare". Jimmy Shaw, owner of Tiny and the Blue Anchor Tavern, could store up to 2000 rats at his establishment.
Artist/Photographer/Maker
British School
Date
1850 AD - 1852 AD" |
Rat-Catching at the Blue Anchor Tavern, Bunhill Row, Finsbury: 19th century by British School at Museum of London
An interesting approach about Yorkshire breeders and what they desired to achieve, is this of Robert Leighton in his book "
The complete book of the Dog" written in 1922.
https://archive.org/stream/completeb...e/310/mode/2up Quote:
The most devout lover of this little terrier would fail if he were to attempt to claim for him the distinction of descent from antiquity. Bradford, and not Babylon, was his earliest home, and he must be candidly acknowledged to be a very modern manufactured variety of the dog.
Yet it is important to remember that it was in Yorkshire that he was made. Yorkshire, where live the cleverest breeders of dogs that the world has known. What the Yorkshiremen of fifty years ago desired to make for themselves was a pygmy, prick-eared pet dog with a long, silky, silvery grey and tan coat. They already possessed the foundation in the old black-and-tan wire-haired terrier. To lengthen the coat of this working breed they might very well have had recourse to a cross with the Clydesdale, which was then assuming a fixed type. The original broken-haired Yorkshire Terrier was often called a Scotch Terrier, or even a Skye, and there are many persons who still confound the diminutive toy with the Clydesdale, whom he somewhat closely resembles.
At the present time he is classified as a toy dog, and exhibited solely as such. The terrier character has been bred out of him, and while he still retains a little of his former liveliness, yet most of his dogginess has been sacrificed to the desire of his breeders for diminutive size and inordinate length of coat.
Perhaps it would be an error to blame the breeders of Yorkshire Terriers for this departure from the original type as it appeared, say, about 1870. It is necessary to take into consideration the probability that what is now called the oldfashioned working variety was never regarded by the Yorkshiremen who made him as a complete and finished achievement.
It was possibly their idea at the very beginning to produce just such a diminutive dog as is now to be seen in its perfection at exhibitions, glorying in its flowing tresses of steel blue silk and ruddy gold ; and one must give them full credit for the patience and care with which during the past fifty years they have been steadily working to the fixed design of producing a dwarfed breed which should excel all other breeds in the length and silkiness of its robe. The extreme of cultivation in this particular quality was reached some years ago by Mrs. Troughcar, whose little dog Conqueror, weighing 5.5 lb., had a beautiful enveloping mantle of the uniform length of four-and-twenty inches !
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