THE STAFFORDSHIRE BULL TERRIER

One of our most beloved of pet breeds, the “Staffie” was bred and born of blood lust! Let me explain. The present configuration of the breed (at least in terms of the physical characteristics of a well-bred specimen) was engineered in the 1800s by men who were interested in producing a fighting dog. That is, a dog who could be pitted against other dogs in the “pit”. The impetus for the development of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier came some time after 1835. It was in that year that the Cruelty To Animals Act effectively criminalised many of the traditional blood-sports which had kept the English amused for many centuries. In the early nineteenth century bull-baiting was still popular (theory was, apart from the sadistic pleasure of watching, that this torture of the bull prior to slaughter “got its blood up” and in the process improved the quality of the meat.) With the passing of the Act such overt displays of cruelty became impractical (bear baiting had already gone out of fashion because of the prohibitive expense of importing bears.) Thus “sporting” men turned their attention to the more easily concealable pastimes of dog-fighting and cock-fighting, both of which get a mention in Black Hearts And Blue Devils, although only a passing one in the case of cock-fighting.

After the 1835 Act, serious attention was given to the breeding of specialist fighting dogs: dogs began to be bred to converging standards for their fighting qualities (both in terms of physique and temperament). It would appear that nowhere was this breeding and consequent standardisation process more pronounced than in South Staffordshire, in the Black Country: with Cradley Heath having as good a claim as any to producing the type which later came to be recognised by the Kennel Club as the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Why “Bull Terrier”? Well, most authorities agree that the breed was the result of crossing the traditional bull dog (and the nineteenth century version remember was a different kettle of fish from the overbred little squash-nosed barrels you might see today: they themselves had been bred with a generous dose of mastiff in them, the big fighting dog which the Romans introduced to these isles). The perfect fighting dog had to be courageous and aggressive to order, but amenable to handling by humans even in the middle of a bout. Hence the staffie.

In Black Hearts And Blue Devils, there is an illegal dog-fight held at the Bell public house on Gorsty Hill, Rowley Regis (called the Bell and Bear these days it has been mentioned in a previous post). At the fight, one of the villains of the piece (one of those “Black Hearts” of the title) meets with the instigator of the dog-fighting event. This latter character I have called Solomon Mallen who you could interpret as a sort of fictional progenitor of the well-known breeder Joe Mallen of Cradley Heath (who was born in 1890, 2 or 3 years after the events in Black Hearts). By his own admission, Joe bred dogs for fighting, an activity strictly illegal. He got his first bull terrier type dog from a chap named Jack Challoner – he too has a precursive echo in Black Hearts in the character of Major Challoner who is acting as a more or less reluctant go-between between Jack Cutler and Solomon Mallen…

But in the days of our story the Staffordshire Bull Terrier was not yet known as such. In those times the dogs would have been known by many names, depending on your neck of the woods, or on the particular known provenance or appearance of your dog. Because it wasn’t just about Cradley Heath: Smethwick, for instance, also a part of South Staffordshire in those days, boasted its own formidable champions: a challenge issued in Smethwick in 1893 stated that the dog Blue Jack, owned by a Walter Slim of that town, “was open to fight anything in the world from 50 to 500 lbs.” It was in 1935 that the first official “Staffordshire Bull Terrier” show took place at the Conservative club in, yes that’s right, Cradley Heath. In the same year the breed gained Kennel Club recognition, and in 1939 one of Joe’s dogs, Gentleman Jim, became first ever SBT supreme champion at Crufts. But he didn’t just have the looks. Dead game he was.

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