In the Dragoon Club in England, a good friend and top breeder, Peter Davies of Yorkshire, always refers to his Dragoons as Dragons. Indeed many of the early books and publications refer to them as Dragons as a passing reference to their past. In terms of the present-day pigeon, the word best suited to the demeanour and character of this most majestic of fancy pigeons is of course the Dragoon.
The earliest recorded mention of the Dragoon pigeon appears to have been made in the 1735 book by Moore of his Columbarium and undoubtedly must have been known as a distinct breed many years before that. The book states: 'This pigeon is, beyond a doubt, a bastard strain, being bred originally from a horseman and a tumbler, and by matching their breed to the horseman, they will obtain a tolerable degree of stoutness. They are very good breeders, and good nurses and are chiefly kept as feeders for the raising of powters, Leghorn runts and, etc. . . .' There are no known illustrations of these early Dragoons and only in 1858 that we have the first drawing of one, a young blue cock by the artist Dean Wolstenholm. It shows clearly the straight outlook of the Dragoon, a characteristic which has always been one of the breed's principal features. Other points have of course been sought after - the peg-shaped wattle with distinctive furrows on each side, box beak, wedge-shaped skull etc, but the military bearing of the Dragoon has been the feature which has set it apart from other breeds.
During the 19th century there were two types of Dragoon being shown - the Birmingham type and the London fancy. The difference between the two is illustrated by Ludlow in Fulton's 'Book of Pigeons' where it will be seen that the London type carried more growth of wattle and cere and were less 'racy' than their Birmingham counterparts. The London type finally prevailed and is the basis of our present stock and the subject of the standard we use today. The National Peristeronic Society drew up the standard for the breed in 1880.
'It is to Richard Woods, a chemist of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire that most of the credit must go for really establishing through his great skill as a breeder, the modern Dragoon. >From about 1875 until his retirement in 1900, his ability to breed prize Dragoons year after year and his regular sales of his stock set the breed off on a tide of enthusiasm which resulted in the Dragoon becoming the most popular breed in Britain. The formation of the Dragoon Club in 1886 can be credited to Richard Woods, supported by S B Page of London with the great naturalist W B Tegetmeier as the Club's first president. Tegetmeier it was who first introduced the 'damson' cere, which was subsequently fixed in the breed by Woods.
