English White Terrier

Did You Know?

• Rawdon Briggs Lee described the breed as 'the most fragile and delicate of all our terriers' and noted it 'is particularly subject to total or partial deafness.'
• In Britain, the English White Terrier was crossbred with the Old English Bulldog to give rise to the Boston Terrier and Bull and Terriers.

Breed history

Small bred working terriers have existed in Great Britain since at least the late 18th century. These dogs have always been variable in size and shape, with dogs ranging in size from 10 to 15 inches, and with both drop ears and prick ears, smooth, broken, and rough coats. With the rise of dog shows in the 1860s, breed-fancy enthusiasts raced to name and 'improve' every type of dog they could find, and terriers were at the very top of their list. From the long-extant white-bodied working terriers came the Fox terrier, the Jack Russell terrier, the Parson Russell terrier, and the Sealyham terrier.

In the 1860s and 1870s, a small group of dog show enthusiasts tried to claim that prick-eared versions of white working terriers were an entirely different breed from those same dogs with dropped ears. The problems with this claim were legion: prick and drop-eared dogs were often found in the same litter, while entirely white dogs had a propensity for deafness and were therefore nearly useless in the field. In 1894, Rawdon Briggs Lee wondered in his book Modern Dogs about the relatively recent origin of the 'English White Terrier' and noted that 'It has been surmised that the original English White Terrier had been a fox terrier crossed with a white Italian greyhound' (i.e. a toy breed).

Lee noted that at the London dog shows where the breed first appeared in 1863–1864, the dogs were presented in two classes: 'one being for dogs and bitches under six or seven pounds weight, as the case may be; the other for dogs and bitches over that standard.' By 1894, about the time that English White Terriers finally disappeared from the Kennel Club scene, Lee noted that 'The most recent London-bred specimens I have seen have been comparative toys, under 10lb. in weight, and with a rounded skull, or so-called 'apple head,' which so persists in making its appearance in lilliputian specimens of the dog – an effect of inbreeding.'

Appearance

From Modern Dogs by Rawdon Briggs Lee (1894): The description of the white English terrier is drawn up by the club as follows: COAT: Close, hard, short, and glossy. COLOUR: Pure white, coloured marking to disqualify. CONDITION: Flesh and muscles to be hard and firm. WEIGHT: From 12 lb. to 20 lb. A prime specimen named Silvio, owned by Alfred Benjamin and born in 1876, weighed nineteen pounds and won conformation shows at Bath, Royal Agricultural Hall, Darlington, Alexandra Palace in 1877 and at Wolverhampton in 1878.