Tom Smith 1823–1869

Meet the king of crackers who helped our ancestors’ Christmases go with a bang

Thomas ‘Tom’ Smith was born in Newington, then in Surrey, in 1823. At the age of just seven, Smith began work as an apprentice in a bakery and ornamental confectioner’s shop in London. His years in the shop enabled him to learn the skills that would make him both a master confectioner and a household name.

By the 1840s, Smith had opened his own shop in Clerkenwell producing wedding cakes and confectionery, but also experimented and designed new ideas in his spare time. Smith travelled to Paris in 1847, bringing the French ‘bonbon’ – a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of paper – back to British shores, which gradually developed over the years into the familiar Christmas cracker we know today.

Smith died in 1869, aged 46, at his home in Central London, passing the running of his confectionery business to his three sons. A fountain commemorating the family still stands in Finsbury Square, while the Archive of Art and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South-West London holds illustrated Tom Smith’s catalogues dating back to 1877.