Short Stuff: Camberley Kate

Camberley Kate was the nickname for the first independent animal rescuer in England, rescuing hundreds of dogs and cats over her lifetime. Come get acquainted with a great lady! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's us, but we're joined by a third person today in spirit. Her name is Camberley Kate and she seems like a pretty boss person.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, she sure was. If you found yourself in Camberley, England, which is about 35 miles southwest of London.

• 1:32Josh Clark?

  In Surrey.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  That's right. If you found yourself there in, let's say the mid 1970s, you might have seen, causing a traffic jam in town, a beret, wearing gray haired senior citizen with a handmade push cart with Ward stray dogs painted on the side of it. And then some dogs in that cart riding along and maybe another, I don't know, 15 or 20 dogs, some on leashes, some not on leashes, but very good boys and girls, walking along with this, you know, for lack of a better word, crazy dog lady in the best way.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, crazy dog lady. Your name is Kate Ward. And the reason she was a crazy dog lady, in addition to walking all these dogs around, is that all of these dogs were hers. She wasn't like helping out a friend by taking these dogs on a walk. She had taken in all of these dogs because they were all strays. They were about to be put down. They had been abandoned and she took them in as her own. And what what's really cool about this too, is she took really good care of them. This wasn't like a situation where she was just collecting dogs and you know,

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  whatever happened to them, happened to them. Like she took excellent care of each one of these dogs. And over the course of her lifetime, actually over the course of just something like 50 years, I think, she rescued hundreds of dogs and kept them in great health and gave them great lives.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's amazing. Uh, it was more like, like 30 something years.

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's a lot of dogs. And apparently here's the, you know, the little secret is apparently there were hundreds of cats. I couldn't find a lot of evidence of that, but I did read a couple of articles where they said, you know, that no one ever talks about the cats, but there were just as many cats over the years. Uh, so, you know, one of England's first, um, probably the first en masse dog rescue person, um, you know, from what I read, people would, of course, take in a stray here and there and that kind of thing, but there weren't these big dog rescue organizations. People would like either abandon a pet, it's very sadly, or just drop it off at the vet or drop it off at the front door of the police station.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  And that's where she sourced them. She got dogs and cats from, uh, from police stations, from veterinarians, um, out on the streets just randomly. And, uh, it all started with this greyhound at the very beginning, I think in 1943. Um, she had bought a cottage. It was her first house and then uh, she said, went up the road and on the doorstep of the vet, someone had abandoned this little lame, uh, skinny greyhound that was set to be put to sleep. And she was like, no, no, no, that's coming with me.

• 4:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the, the vet I heard is very dramatic. The vet had the ax in the air in mid swing when she stopped him and said, no, no, I'll take this little greyhound in. Uh, that became, from what I can tell, her first dog, uh, at the very least of her adult life. And she and the dog, I, did you see the little doggy's name? I couldn't find it anywhere.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  No, I couldn't find the greyhound's name.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Okay, but this is her first dog. We'll call him Primo. And she and Primo were inseparable for eight, over eight years. Like they were just the best of friends. And then sadly, as things happened, Primo died. She gave him an extra eight plus years of great life. He had a new best friend. So his passing was sad in and of itself, but it wasn't as sad as if he'd been put down for being lame eight years earlier.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And she said, and you know, a lot of this comes from this great BBC interview from the mid 70s that you can watch on YouTube if you want to hear Kate in her cantankerous ways kind of spill this story out. But she said that at the time, everyone kind of thought like, well, that's it. You know, no one's gonna like this woman isn't going to get another dog. And she was like, that was just the start. And at this point, it was 500 dogs by the time of this interview. And then I think four years later, that had grown to 600 by the end.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  It's nuts, man. It's so great, too. I say we take a little break and come back and talk a little more about Kimberly Kate and her saga.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 5:58Speaker 04

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• 7:30Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so some point back there you had said that she sourced her dogs from different places and I couldn't help in my mind think that it sounded like she was running a farm-to-table operation out of her house.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  That's not at all what she was doing. She was doing the opposite of that. She was not eating dogs. She was taking really good care of them, as we said. And one of the really crazy things about this, or neat things about this is she could rattle off the names of all the dogs she'd ever taken care of.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:57Josh Clark?

  She's being interviewed at age 80 and she's not only rattling off their names like Patch and Daddy, she's also talking about where she got each one or how she found each one too. So it's quite obvious that each one of these dogs that she took in and had, would have dozens at a time, meant something very important to her, each one.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, just to be able to remember 600 things at that age is pretty remarkable.

• 8:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  You know, and you know, she couldn't do this without help. It seems like there were townspeople who would donate money for food, although one of them was keen to point out that like she never took anything for herself, even when people tried to help her out. She didn't have a whole lot of money, but she did have the help of a local vet, a guy named Jeffrey Craddock, who did pro bono care for her dogs and he's interviewed and basically was like, "These are some of the healthiest dogs I've come across." He said, "They seem to live a little longer than most, an average of about 16 years and they're..." In better shape than the average dog. She feeds them well, he said, but like not too much. He said, none of them are overweight and they're all very well behaved because, you know, as you see on these dog walks, like a lot of them even aren't on leash.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  And in fact, she battled a leash law that came around at one point that I don't think was necessarily targeting her, but would have affected her.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  No, that's the other reason why people remember her. In addition to being mentioned in Sir Arthur Bryant's personal history of 20th century England called The Lion and the Unicorn. He gave her that nickname in the book. One of the reasons she became kind of a legend, in addition to being the first, like basically solo animal rescue person.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:37Josh Clark?

  Was that she had quite a personality in and of itself. Like she was known to be rather vocal and defensive and anytime somebody threatened her dogs with putting them on a leash or taking them away from her or something, she'd let them know in no uncertain terms that they were not going to do that.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's interesting, like she didn't seem personality plus, but kind of in a lovable way. Because she's like, don't screw with my dogs.

• 10:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Apparently she would, you know, the cars would honk at her and stuff because she would cause like, you know, a bit of a traffic jam at times when she has all these dogs on these walks and she would ram that cart into the cars and not be too nice sometimes and was not nice to the city council, like I said, with that leash law. It's not like she went in there with hat in hand. She even petitioned the royal family at times, right?

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, apparently she would regularly write to them. And I don't know that they ever wrote back, but there was an incident where a teacher said publicly that they saw Kate beating one of her dogs with a stick. And she got so incensed about this and was so concerned, I guess, about what people thought of how she was taking care of her dogs. She wrote to King George VI, Queen Elizabeth's father, and said like, that did not happen. Unequivocally, that didn't happen, nor would it ever happen. So she would appeal to them too, if the city council wasn't behaving. And I don't know what effect it has, but it's definitely worth mentioning.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, apparently she even sent Queen Elizabeth when she got married, well, before she's queen, I guess, in November 1947. And it says that one of the dogs sent a wedding gift, a dog leash, to those corgis that Queen Elizabeth loved. So that's pretty cute. You know, she lived on a pension. Not a lot is known about her early life. I think I found that she was, sadly, both of her parents had died when she was a young age and was raised by her aunt and kind of worked as a, when she became a teenager, worked as a housemaid at various places and institutions. And apparently it was pretty religious because she did say that, you know, capital H him, these animals

• 11:48Speaker 03

  belong to him, and that I'm just sort of caring for them, you know, the best I can.

• 11:52Josh Clark?

  I'm just cleaning up their poop.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  She, yeah, you mentioned, and I think it's worth pointing out again, she was not wealthy. She was living off a pension from the government, from what I can tell. Like you said, she'd been a housemaid here or there, and I don't know that she was occupied much after that, once she bought her house for 600 pounds, by the way. But there's a, this is from a House of Works article, and there is a person named Heather Driscoll Woodford, who curates a Facebook page to Camberley Kate, and has a lot of information about her, but basically points out that Kate was like the forerunner to the people who are rescuing dogs today. And like you said before, like, this just did not happen.

• 12:39Josh Clark?

  People just abandoned dogs. Maybe you would take a stray, and like you said, I think, but she just came out of nowhere and made such an impact and became so memorable that she inspired other people to do the same. Not nearly to the degree that she did. Like, there's very few animal rescue people with a couple dozen dogs at any given time, but, or let alone not just fostering them, keeping them for the rest of their lives. But she definitely inspired people in that respect, for sure.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Very sadly, she passed. I guess she was about 84, because this was in 1979. She had a series of strokes. And the BBC, she was 80 in 75. So, a nice full life, saved a lot of dogs and cats. So, we salute Camberley Kate.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Yes. We take our berets off to her. And short stuff is that.

• 13:32Speaker 00

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• 13:48Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.