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THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS

Smithfield Collie

   Also known as the Smithfield Sheepdog and The Drovers' Dog, this was a dog of renowned sagacity; a livestock drover gentle with fowl, yet firm with cattle.  It could catch the occasional rabbit for the pot and when mated to a greyhound it would produce that most legendary of all beasts, the Norfolk Lurcher a dog that in turn would provide meat aplenty for its owner, working gate nets and long nets almost instinctively, coursing hare and killing foxes with aplomb and would generally denude the countryside of all fur and feather.

  Descriptions from a couple of centuries ago tend to describe a dog that could be a less hairy Old English Sheepdog.  Casual viewers may see an artwork containing the Smithfield Collie and again the first instinct is to suggest a less hirsute OES.  Yet there is another choice.  Writing in the 1980s cynologist Brian Plummer mentioned an example of a shepherd named Logan who maintained that it was not unusual for Bearded Collies to be occasionally outcrossed to Deerhounds to "produce leggy, reachy dogs capable of facing the hills".  Tall working Beardies do occur in Scotland from time to time, not authentic, bona fide Show Beardies perhaps (as the 'show' beardies maximum height is 22"), but genuine Working Bearded Collies so it's at least possible, if not probable, that the Smithfield Collie was actually a strain of rangy working Bearded Collie.  Hubbard writing in the mid-1940s observed that "a few Bearded Collies can be found with difficulty in Peeblesshire, Scotland, but these are mostly owned by old drovers who remember the variety in its better times, and find the dogs excellent workers".  Then there is this from the Morning Chronicle circa 1850. It comes to us via the The Empire (Sydney, NSW: 1850 - 1875).  There is no author attributed  but the date, November 21, the subject and the newspaper would suggest that the reporter involved was Henry Mayhew author of "London Labour and the London Poor".  A night drover, a very good-looking young man, gave me the following statement. He had just left the market when I saw him, and wore a thick corduroy jacket, a strong leather apron, and very coarse heavy shoes :  " I am a night drover," he said, " and have all my life been a drover.   I don't remember my parents. They died when I was young. I'm l8 now, and I've got a living in Smithfield with nobody to help me and have helped a younger brother these 10 years. My name's______. My Christian name, sir?  I don't know what you mean.  I don't know what a Christian name is.  No, I don't understand anything what Christianity is.  I used first to mark the sheep what was sold in Smithfield with ochre.  I've sometimes made 2s. 6d. on a very good market day.  The ochre cost me 6d. I drove a little, as a boy, and for five years had neither badge nor stamped stick, nor anything of that sort ; but here's my badge now."  (The man here showed me his stick with the prope r mark, but without a goad.  The day drover also showed me a new one he had made and was going to get stamped, but it had a very sharp goad.  Neither man had ever been "up" for cruelty; if they had been convicted of it, they said, their licenses would not have been renewed.) "Yes, sir," continued the night drover,  I can do as well without a goad, I think, as with one.  I never uses no cruelty.  Any drover'll tell you that people's far more particler than they was. Our dogs is very useful.  They're Scotch collies mostly.  A real Smithfield-bred dog of a year or two old is worth 25s. to 30s. I sold mine the other day-he was a middling dog-for 15s. I'm training another now. They're not so very easy to train. I break off a bit of their longest teeth, and file a bit off the sharpest of the others but that isn't always wanted. That's done to take a sheep by the ear without tearing it. I don't try them with my finger to see if their teeth is too sharp or not. I have tried them on an old book-back that was of no use. I puts him in a string and pulls him along the sheep's backs, and snubs him if he barks then. A good dog only barks when he's driving. I can't either read or write. I'm not married. I have 1s. a score for driving sheep from Islington market, penning them, and minding them at Smithfield : 2s. 6d. from Tottenham ; and 2s 7d. from Chalk Farm.  I have made 10s. on a Sunday night, and half that on a Thursday; but that's the top of it. I think I make 10s. a week the year through, for I'm young and strong, and can do a great deal of work. It's very seldom any night-drover has to drive from anywhere but the lairs.   Beasts is generally driven by the job.  Beast driving is just about the same money as sheep.   I don't know of no regular charges. It's a bargain. My best times, I think, is the middle of summer and the middle of winter."

   Certainly goat-haired collies were not unknown in rural districts all over Britain until fairly recently.  Once the droves disappeared in the nineteenth century the isolated pockets of these 'goat-haired' dogs scattered around the country gradually disappeared too; or were assimilated into the all-conquering Border Collie that swiftly swept the nation.
   It's quite noticeable that most modern 'Norfolk Lurcher' types claim working Bearded Collie somewhere in their immediate ancestry (where their breeding can be authenticated).  The now-extinct Smithfield may have looked something like a leggy beardie hybrid.

Dogs in Britain by Clifford L. B. Hubbard.

Macmillan and Co., Limited

St. Martin's Street, London

D. Brian Plummer.

See Bearded Collie

See Cur Dog

See Lurcher

See Proto-terriers

See Old Welsh Grey 

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