Sporting Ancestors E-Book

Keith Gregson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Sport, in its many forms, is an important part of British heritage and our family histories are littered with amateur and professional sporting references. As people moved from country to town, sport became fashionable and organised, and our ancestors left us with records of their sporting deeds. Newspaper reports, minute books, club histories, team photographs and even cartoons are all available to the family historian. Discover which sports were played when, where and why. Read example case studies, find out how to begin your own research and learn what resources are available to help you progress. From Victorian prizefighters to Edwardian ladies' archery, from inter-war football teams to the shin-kicking contests of the Cotswold Olimpicks – Sporting Ancestors is the essential guide for those wanting to explore what part sport has played in their national and family history.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

How to Use this Book

British Sporting History: an Introduction

The Professionals

The Amateurs

How to Research Sporting Ancestors

Case Studies

How and Where to Find Resources

The author in 1950s Manchester United football kit. (Author’s collection)

PREFACE

With the onward march of modern technology it has now become much easier to ‘unearth the skeletons’ of direct ancestors and their siblings from Victorian times onwards. But skeletons are not enough. We all want to know what these ancestors were like, what they thought and what made them ‘tick’. If the nineteenth-century French medieval historian Michelet is right then we really are ‘the sum of our ancestors’ – and there can be no more rewarding aspect of family history than putting flesh onto ancestral bones.

Should this argument be accepted then a book about the role of sport in ancestral life will be of considerable interest and use to family historians. Most families have some form of connection with sport, usually at amateur level, but some might discover that an ancestor was a local champion runner or cricketer. These ancestors were not necessarily full time or professional but such has been the impact of sport on British life over the last century and a half that it has left an indelible impact. It has also left records and the everlasting popularity of sport means that these records stretch from accounts of mighty cricket test matches to ones relating to the humblest of games on the village green. Press coverage also extends from cup finals at Wembley to local league meetings between the Co-op and Post Office in Barrow-in-Furness on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

Medals, trophies, photographs, newspaper cuttings – many survive to be handed down in families. National, regional and local research centres have relevant archives and many sports clubs have managed to keep hold of archives naming literally hundreds of ordinary folk who have played sport both for profit and for fun.

During a televised broadcast of the 2010 Wimbledon tennis championship, a camera panning the audience came to rest on an older couple. The commentator noted that they were the parents of one of the current players – the mother had been a top swimmer and the father an international canoeist. ‘Sport must be in the genes,’ the commentator noted. What follows may help to prove this statement to be true.

My birth certificate bears the legend ‘Wembley’, which is a good start. Sport plays a part in my own family history. I played cricket, football and rugby (badly) in my youth and coached mini rugby and ran a rugby club mini section in the 1990s. I completed the London Marathon on three occasions and the Great North Run on nineteen. I am a season ticket holder at Sunderland AFC and a supporter of hometown Carlisle United. One son (now in his 30s) is a competition-winning golfer. A second son (retired through injury) captained a county rugby side containing members of the current England First XV and coached. A third represented Great Britain at American football, played rugby for Sunderland First XV and is now seriously involved in mixed martial arts.

I have written extensively on the history of sport for some thirty years, starting in the 1970s with an article on the story behind the hunting song ‘John Peel’ and progressing through a whole range of articles and a BBC local history series on professional boat racing in Victorian times. This interest in boat racing is ongoing, as witnessed by a lead feature on this topic in Ancestors magazine in the early twenty-first century. More recently I have written a rugby club history.

In the last few years I have worked closely with the award-winning sports historian Professor Mike Huggins (now retired from the University of Cumbria). We developed an unusual research area in using song as a source for sporting history. This has led to lectures in Aarhus (Denmark), Budapest, Stirling and Leeds, and to numerous joint publications in peer-reviewed journals. In other words, though not much of sportsman myself, I am ‘sport mad’ and hope that what follows will be of use to others of a similar bent who are interested in researching their family trees.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The terms ‘Victorian ‘and ‘Edwardian’ appear frequently in the book. These are used strictly as Victorian (1837–1901) and Edwardian (1901–10). The Victorian era has been subdivided. The early Victorian period covers the years from 1837 to the middle of the 1850s, with the mid-Victorian period running from there to 1880 and the late Victorian period then taking us up to 1901. There are also occasional references to the period just after the Napoleonic Wars, which came to an end in 1815. The years from 1910 to 1914 are described as ‘just before the First World War’; the war itself covering the years from 1914 to 1918. The inter-war years stretch from 1918 to 1939.

The book concentrates mainly on the discovery of sporting ancestors in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place, these are important periods in the development of British sport as the Industrial Revolution took a grip and the balance of population moved from countryside to town. Though for many living in towns and cities leisure time was at a premium, it was often used for sport and the gregarious nature of town life naturally led to the development of team games and competition. At the same time, these were periods during which the recording of personal and sporting information was on the increase, and ancestors become easier to discover and monitor than they were previously. Although this particular review of ancestral sport is carried on in some cases beyond the First World War, it doesn’t go much further into what might be regarded as ‘living memory’. In general, living memory may now start at the Second World War or even later but, as explained in the chapter on sources, at least we have the advantage over earlier periods in having first-hand recordings (spoken and visual) from much of the post-First World War period. This was rarely the case for earlier times.

In terms of pure geography, the sporting ancestry covered in this book extends across the British Isles and there are references throughout to areas now in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. However, there is a leaning towards the English experience, partly because of the relative size of the English population and partly because of the author’s own research background and experience. Within England too there is a tendency to use more examples from the north than from other regions despite conscious efforts to find a balance. As these examples can generally be used to aid research carried out elsewhere in the British Isles this ‘bias’ may be excused. There is also little space to deal with the British abroad, i.e. those playing or spreading sport beyond our shores.

A conscious decision has also been made to divide ancestral sporting experience into two categories: amateur and professional. This does not always work. Sometimes it is difficult to prove that those who played ‘for amusement alone’ were not benefiting financially from their involvement in sport. This benefit could range from a few pennies in a boot for transport coverage to a complete professional ‘shamateurism’. In cricket in particular it was claimed that the cunning amateur, wealthy as he might be, could make more out of the game from ‘perks’ than the relatively impoverished professional. All this noted, the headings are convenient and generally work – and where they don’t every effort has been made to point this out.

Finally, as far as these notes are concerned, a warning as to the problems that have to be faced when dealing with the simple word ‘sport’. Today we may have our own picture of what constitutes sport, or a sport, but that picture may not be the same as the one envisaged in the past. This problem can be observed in a wonderful statement made by William Grenfell (1855–1945) in the 1930s. Also known by his title, Lord Desborough, he is a fine example of one type of English sportsman of his time. He rowed for Oxford in the boat race, won medals for fencing and was a top administrator in cricket, tennis, fencing and rowing. His use of the words ‘sport’, ‘games’ and ‘pastimes’ are particularly intriguing, though possibly confusing:

The old order changeth, yielding place to the new, and perhaps during the last fifty years more changes have taken place in sport than in most activities. But how is sport to be defined? Does it include games such as cricket, football, rowing, athletics, polo, and lawn tennis? Or should it be confined to hunting, shooting, fishing, stalking, coursing, and other pastimes perhaps more strictly sporting? Sport would seem to imply the pursuit of some quarry, even if it were only rats, and if there is a spice of danger attending it, so much the better.

From an essay ‘Sport of Many Kinds’ in Fifty Years Memories and Contrasts: A Composite Picture of the Period 1882–1932 (The Times, London, 1932) p. 196.

BRITISH SPORTING HISTORY: AN INTRODUCTION

BEFORE VICTORIA (UP TO 1837)

The problem with studying sport and sporting ancestors in Britain prior to the early nineteenth century is not so much a lack of sporting activity as a lack of records. Evidence suggests that human beings have indulged in sport since the dawn of time. While Britain remained rural and communities isolated, little was noted down on the sporting front and even less on the success of individuals. A recent survey of village life in rural North Cumberland in the eighteenth century came to the conclusion that songs of the day were perhaps the best evidence for sporting activity – and activity there was in the shape of horse racing, wrestling, running, jumping and throwing.

Despite these drawbacks, it is still possible to discover something about those who succeeded at a higher level in the popular sports of the day. This is particularly true from the time of the Civil War and the Restoration of Charles II in the late seventeenth century. Charles was not only ‘merry’ but also sports mad, and took an active interest in a wide range of sporting activities.

By the time sport took off as a truly popular activity in Victorian times, a variety of ball-kicking sports had been around for centuries. Football, or foot-ball as it was commonly known, seems to have been popular since the first victorious warrior decided to kick the severed head of a defeated foe around the battlefield. There is also a written record of football activity in Scotland during the Middle Ages.

The starting point for Orkney ball game. (Author’s collection)

The best known and longest lasting form of foot-ball is that associated with annual Shrovetide or Pancake Day celebrations. Places such as Alnwick in Northumberland, Workington on the Cumbrian Coast and Kirkwall, capital of the Orkney Islands, share a similar heritage in such a game. In the case of Orkney a plaque outside its Cathedral of St Magnus gives a brief synopsis of the game and its origins. These games usually took place between residents of different areas of the town or village and often became so anarchic that in some places they were eventually banned. There were virtually no rules and serious injury was common. Shops were closed and boarded up for the day, while pubs did a roaring trade. The annual match at Alnwick has survived mainly because organisers moved the pitch from the centre of the town to meadows on the outskirts. Today both residents and keen visitors take part and the contest remains spirited. Goals, or hales as they were sometimes called, were a rarity with the scorer rewarded and his name often recorded for posterity.

Shrovetide foot-ball was not the only form of this sport played in earlier times. There is evidence of activity in that birthplace of many a great footballer: the schoolyard. Eighteenth-century Anglo-Scottish poet Susanna Blamire has left us this delightful account of a kick around in a village schoolyard in the middle of that century:

For races some, but more for football cry

Mark out their ground and toss the globe on high;

The well-fought field deals many a galling stroke

And many a chief’s o’erthrown, and many a shin is broke

Our modern forms of the game also developed from versions played at public schools such as Eton, Rugby and Harrow. What rules there were differed slightly from school to school, but they shared with the Shrovetide form of the game a hero worship of the goal scorer and a tendency towards ‘mob violence’. Though organised by the boys themselves, the games were encouraged by the staff and were seen as a way of improving both school morale and morals – both of which were in decline in the early nineteenth century. Some records of these games have survived.

One early ancestor worth having would be William Webb Ellis, who is credited with picking up the ball and running with it and creating forever a link between his school, Rugby, and the popular sport of today. Rugby Union’s World Cup carries his name despite a number of modern sports historians disputing his stature as the single ‘inventor’ of the modern game.

The story of the beginnings of organised cricket is one of gradual development between the Civil War of the seventeenth century and the days of Queen Victoria. There is evidence for cricket being played in the reign of Charles II, culminating in the first recorded ‘county match’ between London County and Kent, which took place in 1719. This took place on Lamb’s Conduit Fields in London, later to gain a reputation as a dumping ground for the capital’s sewerage.

The laws of cricket began to take shape in the eighteenth century with 1774 and 1788 both key dates. They were then revised in 1835. Set against these major developments were others of importance. The first Lord’s Cricket Ground and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) date back to 1787. The initial Eton and Harrow cricket match took place in 1805, with gentlemen and players first coming together the following year. Oxford met Cambridge for the first time in 1827, and the first of the modern counties, Sussex, traces its cricketing roots back to 1836.

Horse racing has existed in one form or another ever since man has used horses and ridden on horseback. Here Roman chariot racing springs most readily to mind, as well as the mad dashes that took place in Britain when the wealthier classes were out hunting. As with cricket, the Restoration period was an important one for the development of horse racing and Chester Racecourse, still in operation today, was in use from an even earlier date. Both Royal Ascot and Epsom have been on the go since the early eighteenth century and The Derby was first run in 1780. The Carlisle Bell remains one of Britain’s oldest horse races.

Tennis also existed in many places and in many forms although, unlike Wimbledon (until relatively recently at least), it was an indoor game and differed from the much later ‘lawn’ tennis. Real tennis and rackets were two forms of the game with a courtly tennis enjoying particular favour in pre-revolutionary France. Tennis was as much the ‘sport of kings’ as horse racing. Rackets/racquets was very much an indoor game – and had to be for, as one historian has noted, it was played chiefly in taverns and debtors’ prisons during the early nineteenth century.

Pedestrianism (at this time defined almost entirely as walking at pace round a selected track) enjoyed immense popularity in the early nineteenth century too, especially in the years immediately following the Napoleonic Wars. Competitions were frequently one-on-one or simply based upon time and distance with heavy betting and backing involved. The Napoleonic Wars also saw the beginning of an important military involvement in sport, with wider athletics meetings traceable back to Sandhurst Academy in 1810.

During the same period prizefighting, or pugilism, also enjoyed an enormous popularity, mainly because it too involved heavy betting and backing. Although the sport flirted with the law and was a moveable feast, those who worked within the law were among its most fervent supporters. Up until the 1830s fights were carried out mainly under rules devised by John Broughton, who has been awarded the title ‘the Father of the English School of Boxing’.

Although boat racing, or aquatics, was later to enjoy a professional status equal to prizefighting, many of the sport’s early participants took part simply for pleasure. The first boat race between Oxford and Cambridge Universities took place in 1829 with the Wingfield Sculls contested soon after. On water, and almost universally open water, yachting gained in popularity and once again it was Charles II, the merry monarch, who had a hand in promoting the sport. A keen yachtsman, he was willing to race both family and friends for considerable sums of money.

The later Stuart period saw a spell of extremely cold weather that increased the incidence of skating as both a sport and a pastime. For months on end the Thames was frozen over with ice thick enough to accommodate contemporary wheeled vehicles. A skating club was also set up in Edinburgh in the middle of the eighteenth century. Bowling is another sport with something of a legendary past. Sir Francis Drake famously finished a game on Plymouth Hoe before taking on the Spanish Armada in 1588. A form of this sport also began to enjoy currency in the emerging pit communities of north-east England with betting and backing involved.

Charles II, not just ‘merry’ but sporty too – Taylor, Rev. J., The Family History of England, Vol. V, 1890–1910 (London). (Author’s collection)

There were also sports we recognise today more for their cruelty than their sporting nature – namely bear, bull and badger baiting, and dog and cock fighting. Although for obvious reasons little space will be given to these sports in this book, there is every chance that, in the case of the third of these three sports in particular, ancestral references may turn up in the usual genealogical sources. Cockers and their adherents could be men of standing and wealth in their communities, and have often been written about. The same goes for fox hunting and huntsmen, such as the legendary John Peel who belonged to a large family and has many modern Cumbrians claiming direct descent or a distant relationship (among them the author’s own nephew).

To some extent the division between amateur and professional was not a serious issue during these periods. In nearly every major sport fun and gambling were the order of the day, though this was soon to change.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA (1837–1901)

The reign of Queen Victoria was one of the most significant in British social history and in British sporting history, too. It started with Britain a primarily as rural society and ended with it as an urban one suited to the rapid spread of organised sport. Running alongside developments in the recording of data, such as those required for civil registration and decennial censuses, advances in education and newspaper communication made possible the noting down of details relating to much of this sporting activity.

Foot-ball is a classic game in point. In 1837 there were the Shrovetide games, various school matches and occasional kick arounds. By 1901 association football (soccer), Rugby Union and Rugby League were all structured and recognised sports played and supported by many. Association football (‘the dribbling game’) has become such a part of the British way of life that it is now recognised by the word football alone. It developed steadily as a sport throughout the Victorian period with a particular surge in the 1870s and ‘80s. Rules were codified at Cambridge University in 1848 and the first recognisable club was set up in Sheffield nine years later. The oldest of the league clubs, Notts County, dates from 1862.

In terms of structure, 1863 was a special date for football with the formation of the English Football Association (FA). Its cup was first played for in the 1871/2 season with internationals starting around the same time. A league structure took longer and had to await the formation of the English Football League in 1888. Recent research indicates that there was a real upsurge of local football during the years between the founding of the FA and the Football League, with teams playing friendlies and entering cups – often organised at county level. The public schools were also heavily involved, helping to establish the laws of the game and setting up old boys’ clubs.

The formation of the Football League was a highly significant development with the twelve initial teams (all still playing today) divided between Lancashire and the Midlands. It was also during the Victorian period that football lay down its roots in other parts of Britain. Scotland’s oldest club, Queen’s Park, was formed in 1867 with the Scottish FA and its cup first played just under a decade later. The initial international between England and Scotland took place in 1872, with the Scottish side made up entirely of Queen’s Park players. The Scottish League was set up in 1891. The links between English and Welsh football has always been strong at league club and cup level. Wrexham was formed in the early 1870s, Cardiff and Swansea later in the century. The Welsh FA was set up in 1878. Ireland’s oldest football club is Cliftonians, formed in 1879. The Irish FA and its cup were set up in 1880 and the league dates back to 1890.

What is now known as Rugby Union gathered in strength in the 1870s and, in many areas, kept its head in front of football (association) and was still known simply as ‘football’ in many local newspapers. Between 1870 and the middle of the 1880s, the home internationals’ calendar was set up. Oxford began its games with Cambridge in the 1871/2 season and the influential Hospitals Cup had its first winner in Guys in 1875. The 1870s and ‘80s also saw the commencement of both county and inter-county cups. Yorkshire dominated the early county championships in the 1890s. By this time, many major rugby clubs had been established.

The major rift in rugby, ‘the carrying game’ (examined more carefully in The Professionals chapter), came in the middle of the 1890s with the setting up of the Rugby League. The cause of the split was the payment of financial compensation for ‘broken time’ and the subsequent dispute accented the difference between those who could afford the time to play the sport and those who could not. The breakaway clubs were initially known as the Northern Union and came from Yorkshire and the north-west of England. At first the schism was simply financial and it was only with time that the laws of league changed to make it a recognisably different game from union today. Researchers may be interested to note that Rugby Union clubs carrying the RFC affix were usually founded before the split; those with RUFC came after. League clubs changed their affix from RFC to RLFC after the split (or took up RLFC if a later foundation).

Cricket was more developed than foot-ball when Victoria came to the throne. Like the games of the round and the oval ball, its organisation was recognisably modern by the end of the nineteenth century. By then a first class and minor county structure was in place, and both local league and village cricket had become a part of the British way of life. In all this, the year 1864 and the initial publication of Wisden, the famed recorder of all first-class cricketing activity, is key. Yet for the sporting family historian there may be much of interest to be discovered in examining the deeds of the non-first-class teams of wandering professionals set up in the mid-Victorian period to play ‘against the odds’ (as in a professional XI versus a local XXII). The local team was usually made up of those with talent plus a couple of professional ‘ringers’.

The first recognised English cricketing tour was to Canada in 1859; the rivalry with Australia being established across the 1861/2 season. The first test match between the two countries took place in Melbourne in 1877. Nine counties played in what has since been recognised as the first county championship in 1873 – a championship which included all but three of the modern first-class counties by 1900. The Minor Counties Championship got under way in 1895.

Tennis was another sport that really established its modern structure in the Victorian period and also proved an activity enjoyed by both males and females. Among the main features were the move from indoor to outdoor, the commencement of grass or lawn tennis and the initiation of ‘Wimbledon’. As trivia experts will be aware, the invention of lawn tennis is laid at the door of Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, who created a game known as sphairistike. Basically a country house pursuit, the game was quickly discarded (or remodelled) and the late 1870s and early ‘80s saw the development of modern lawn tennis. Both cricket and croquet took an early interest but cricket, in the shape of the MCC, soon backed out, leaving tennis to be organised by the All England Croquet and Tennis Club. The Wimbledon men’s singles championship dates back to 1877 and the women’s to 1884. The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) was founded in 1888.

Another racquet sport, squash, generally associated with the twentieth century, also has nineteenth-century origins. During the 1870s the boys of Harrow School used a soft ball in their warm-up procedure for hard ball racquets and gradually this caught on. Competitive badminton just shaded into the nineteenth century with the commencement of the All England Championships in 1899. Badminton had already been a pastime for a number of years and was popular with females.

An early croquet lady in Punch. (Author’s collection)

In terms of athletics, the pre-Victorian period is best known for the development of professional pedestrianism, though there is evidence for a wider interest in military circles and ‘leaping’ and ‘throwing’ in village sports. With the Victorian period, general interest eventually moved from walking to running and amateur athletics took root in the universities (Cambridge in 1857 and Oxford in 1860). The Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) was formed in 1880 with its first championships being for men alone. Early events included the 100, 440 and 880yds, and the 1 mile and 10 mile race. Hurdles were over a distance of 120yds and field events included the long jump, high jump and pole vault, plus putting the weight and throwing the hammer.

At a local level, football, rugby and cricket clubs began to organise bank holiday sports and these attracted large crowds. In many cases the same sports clubs developed fitness clubs as well. Cross-country also came into being as an offshoot from another sport, with the Thames Rowing Club promoting it during the winter months in order to keep its rowers in shape. The first English cross-country championships took place at Roehampton in 1877. Professional athletics moved from the walking track to the running track, taking its audience, betters and backers with it. At tracks across the nation, handicap and scratch races took place across a number of distances – not all of them the same as those raced over by amateurs.

Cycling was a sport that went hand in hand with athletics and grass cycle racing was a common sight at Victorian athletic events. Cycling itself is acknowledged as a very Victorian pastime and up until the late 1880s competition was carried out on penny-farthings and tricycles. By 1889 safety bicycles were replacing these in competitions. Events also began to take place over considerable distances including London to Brighton and Lands End to John O’Groats.

Most of the sports in the athletic spectrum were eventually to benefit from the foundation of the modern Olympics at the very end of the Victorian era; the result of Frenchman de Coubertin’s love of English amateurism and his experience at the ‘Much Wenlock Olympics’. The modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896 and Paris in 1900. Many Britons became involved. One modern Olympic sport from the outset was weightlifting, which started to enjoy currency around the time the Olympic movement was revived. The first Open Championship was held in London in 1891 and there were successful weightlifting Britons at the first Modern Olympics in Athens five years later.

The reign of Victoria was a great period for both amateur and professional boat racing. By 1861 the Wingfield Sculls, amateur singles championship of the Thames, was firmly established. In the same decade Oxford University was totally dominant in the annual boat race. Amateur championships involving pairs, fours and eights were also in place by the late Victorian period, alongside the wide-reaching blue riband of single sculling, the Diamond Challenge Sculls.