The Story of Fortnum's Crackers

THE STORY OF FORTNUM'S CRACKERS

Popular legend has it that late one night, as Christmas approached, confectioner Tom Smith was sitting comfortably in his chair by the fire, mulling over ways to make himself stand out from the usual sugar-coated crowd. At that moment, a burning log gave a great crack and with a Yuletide eureka, he had it. The cracker was born.

A fine tale, for sure, but the real story is rather more prosaic. Sometime in the 1850s, Smith had bought the prototype for a cracker from Tom Brown, an experimental chemist at Brock’s Fireworks in south London. But it was woefully under-marketed, and Smith immediately saw the seasonal potential. In 1860 the very first Christmas cracker, the ‘Bang of Expectation’, hit the market. Business boomed.

Fortnum’s took to the new tradition with predictable gusto. ‘Crackers are a fetish with the firm,’ wrote the Observer in 1912 – with absolute justification. They were first featured in the Christmas catalogue of 1910, page upon page of exquisitely wrought delight. There was even an exclusive cracker department, where 45 Jermyn St. now sits.

These works of art came in three varieties...

First was the pulling cracker, which is the type we know today. They were shaped into myriad wonderful forms – turkeys, pastries, bottles of Champagne, barrels of beer, fish, fruit, Christmas cakes and even a vast slice of wedding cake. Which suggests that they were not pulled at Christmas alone. There were versions for women, and boys and girls, containing everything from dolls and small glass animals to silk handkerchiefs, indoor fireworks, musical instruments and games.

More exciting still were the standing crackers, which were actually life-size figures, as tall as six feet. One could choose from Beefeaters, guardsmen (‘Incredibly handsome,’ sighed the catalogue, ‘and ready to explode with pride and so he will, for he’s only a cracker’), gnomes, crocodiles, bulldogs, giant frogs, Father Christmas, pirates, princesses, princes, clowns and pigs. One year we sold a giant devil, with electric eyes that lit up red. There were even models of the most popular actors of stage and screen. You pulled the strings, whereupon the figure exploded and showered everyone with small crackers.