Camberley Kate

How One Person Made a Difference

Although her name was Kate Ward, everyone knew her as Camberley Kate. She was born in Middlesborough, northeast England, in 1895. As both her parents died before she was 10, she was raised by a strictly religious aunt in what she described as an atmosphere of disapproval. At 19 she left home to go into domestic service in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

You never had any time for that sort of thing [rescuing dogs] as a domestic servant in those days.

Kate moved to Camberley possibly to work in service at the RMA Sandhurst during the Second World War. She bought a small Victorian working-class cottage on the London Road in nearby York Town for £600. Kate’s first experience with rescuing a dog was in 1943. She took home a lame greyhound she found sitting on the doorstep of the local veterinarian’s office. The dog was to be euthanized.

For the remainder of her life, she rescued and cared for hundreds of stray dogs, pushing the green cart to and from her modest home to Camberley’s town centre, a round trip of some five miles. The local police even recommended a route so that she and her canine entourage could leave and arrive home safely.

No dog was ever turned away. As Kate’s activities became known, people increasingly left dogs on her doorstep, sometimes in shopping bags or tied to her front doorknob. Some dogs were left with her just for a week, but no one returned to claim them. Other people left their dogs with her permanently because they could no longer look after them. The police also brought her dogs. Mysteriously and miraculously, some dogs found their way to her. Kate’s meagre state pension didn’t adequately meet the costs of feeding and caring for so many dogs. She began to receive donations as she became known.

Here’s a BBC film from YouTube about Camberley Kate made in 1975.

Television film crews often reported on Camberley Kate. Even Lord Snowden, Princess Margaret’s husband who later became an acclaimed photographer, made a film about her. Although she became famous, her dogs always came first. Kate also spoke of a gentleman who helped to pay her expenses. She deposited into a trust any unused donations as she did not want to personally benefit from the dogs in her care. A local veterinarian, Geoffrey Craddock, regularly visited Kate from 1954 until her death in 1979 aged 84.

All the dogs were incredibly healthy, and they lived to a ripe old age. She had great humour, great character, and great determination. I shall miss her very much indeed.

Camberley’s Baptist minister, Reverend Christopher Russell, told the local newspaper, The Camberley News, on Kate’s death that she

was an incredibly generous person on the quiet—she just gave and gave and gave to hospitals, charities, and churches.

Despite rumours to the contrary, Kate was not a wealthy woman. “She just gave away every penny she had,” said Reverend Russell. She left her home and bank account to her remaining seven dogs who lived in nearby kennels at the time of her death.

Camberley Kate had her detractors. They complained about the number of dogs she cared for and how she lived. Her eccentric behaviour didn’t help. She reportedly confronted people taking her photograph because she had her own postcards to sell. There were also allegations of her ramming the wooden cart into cars that blocked her way.

I was born in a council house and raised in Camberley, Surrey. My parents always let me and my sister, Wendy, watch Camberley Kate and her dogs make their way against the one-way traffic along the High Street. I don’t recall them saying very much about her. But she made an enduring impression. Why would someone devote their life to others, particularly dogs, I wondered. We were always encouraged to be kind to animals. Mother wanted to work with animals but never had the opportunity. Father brought home, Tinkerbell, a small grey kitten quite soon after I was born. Her passing was my first exposure to life’s play with death.

All these years later, Camberley Kate shows how one person makes a difference. Let’s all be like her in our own way.