Let Them Eat Cakes

How a lightning rod salesman invented a movement

This article belongs to the Hundred-Word Histories series.

It was sometime near 1860 when American lightning rod salesman James Spratt watched a pack of stray dogs devour long-life sea biscuits on the docks of Liverpool, England. Humans had been feeding dogs table scraps for centuries, but soon gentlemen all over the English countryside were buying Spratt’s Patented Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes for their sporting dogs, and eventually everyone was. Spratt’s mounted the first billboard in London and splashed advertisements all over the world. Now the world moves $75 billion worth of pet food every year, and it all began with a pack of strays on a Liverpool dock.