Railway collecting dogs and our Henry

Regular visitors to Woody Bay may have seen Henry the railway collecting dog and his owner John Bond, you might have even put some money in his donation box. Henry, a Golden Retriever, is continuing a long tradition of dogs collecting for worthy causes at British railway stations and there's a very special link between our Henry of today and his predecessors.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it became popular for larger railway companies to employ collecting dogs to help finance an orphanage managed by the railway or some other charitable cause. One such company, the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), established a railway orphanage in Clapham in 1885 which relocated to new accommodation in Woking in 1909. In the years before the Great War, the LSWR employed twenty-two railway collecting dogs all doing their part to raise funds for the orphanage.

From 1895, Waterloo Station was served by five generations of Black Retriever dogs which were all known as London Jack followed by an appropriate number. London Jack I was always popular with the travelling public, but following his dramatoc theft in 1899, newspaper and public interest ireached new heights with headlines of “Where is London Jack?" Scotland Yard assigned Detective Sergeant Clark the task of finding Jack. Eventually he was recovered from a gang of professional dog thieves but Jack was in a very poor condition having been ill-treated along with over sixty other stolen canines.

Each generation of London Jack picked up the collecting mantle over time as the LSWR became the Southern Railway. Newspapers continued to report on their collecting prowess, attendance at social events, such as Royal Ascot, and their summer holidays, much to the delight of the public. After London Jack V retired in 1930, interest in railway collecting dogs began to wane although they remained part of the railway scene until the 1950’s in the early days of the nationalised British Railways..

In the summer of 2024, a seven year old Golden Retriever named Henry stepped up to continue the 130 year old tradition of LSWR Railway Collecting Dogs at Woody Bay station, itself of Southern Railway heritage. Henry makes regular appearances at Woody Bay Station dressed as London Jack V, complete with coat, medals (denoting his collection achievements) and a reproduction Southern Railway collecting box. Henry’s donations are divided equally between the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Trust and Woking Homes, the successor to the railway orphanage, which now provides care for former railway employees.  

You can see Henry most Tuesdays and Saturdays at Woody Bay during the operational season and the full story of the London Jacks, and Henry, is now available as a book from the Woody Bay station shop. You can also see some collecting dogs artefacts in our mini-museum in the Woody Station café inclduing a London Jack plaque, a booklet from Woking Homes and photographs, all kindly donated by Barry Coom.

We love Henry and all he and John do for the L&BR and Woking Homes!