Queen Charlotte arrived in London with two Pomeranians in tow, Phoebe and Mercury, in 1761 at age 17. She would accumulate more dogs and also gift them to people close to her.
The portrait to the right was painted by Benjamin West in 1779. The presence of her Pomeranian shows that her dogs were embedded into royal life.
Dogs were certainly a part of life at court, and the relationships the royal family have to their dogs has continued to feature in the press to this day.
The artist Thomas Gainsborough painted this portrait of Queen Charlotte in 1781. She would have been 37 years old, and in addition to her bearing, clothing and surroundings, her pet helped define who she was.
Why mention dogs? There is a particularly naughty court Pomeranian who has an illicit liaison in The Earl’s Revelation, leading to some hijinks in the story of the Earl of Nesswick and the mysterious Violet Fontaine.
The character of Cleo (short for Cleopatra) is a result of her wayward mother’s tryst with a working dog, an English Foxhound. She is loosely based on my own dog, Mindy (seen here), who seems to believe she is the centre of a royal household!
Foxhounds were bred to hunt by scent, which explains how Cleo is able to help solve a conundrum the human characters face.
Dr Philip Howell, of the University of Cambridge, posits that dogs became pets in the Victorian era, however they were certainly living amongst Georgians before then.
Some dogs found their way into households as pets, however, this would have been a luxury afforded only by those who could afford an extra mouth to feed. Working dogs helped by herding, hunting, controlling pests, and protecting carriage occupants, houses and barns.
Domestic dogs were in sufficient numbers, and of sufficient value to be kidnapped and stolen, and by ‘1837, an estimated 141 dog stealers were operating in London,’ (University of Cambridge, 2015), suggesting that there were plenty of families who lived with their working dogs or pets, and this would have occurred, albeit in smaller numbers, throughout Regency times.
A clue as to how the dogs were regarded, comes from Dr. Chris Pearson, who tells us that, “House-breaking was a major problem in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Parish watchmen and constables, thief-takers, and from 1753, the ‘Bow Street Runners’ prevented many crimes but Londoners could not rely on them. Householders and businesses invested in locks and bolts to protect their property, but their greatest ally was a house or yard dog.” (Pearson, 2017). Country dogs would have had similar roles.
Dogs have changed in appearance since the early 19th Century. Apparently, Pomeranians weighed as much as seven times the weight of our present-day dogs but I imagine their owners loved them just as much. One thing that hasn’t changed: our dogs still help in protecting us; our home insurance is cheaper because of Mindy, and her loud and enthusiastic bark when strangers appear is one of the many ways she adds value to the family.
References:
- Jennifer. (2025, January 21). Unbelievable History of Pomeranians (Plus Amazing Pictures). Spinning Pom. https://spinningpom.com/origins-and-history-of-pomeranians/
- Pearson, C. (2017, May 08). The Watch Dogs of Georgian London. Sniffing the Past. https://sniffingthepast.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/the-watch-dogs-of-georgian-london/
- University of Cambridge (2015, May 15). How the dog found a place in the family home – from the Victorian age to ours. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-the-dog-found-a-place-in-the-family-home-from-the-victorian-age-to-ours
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