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A case of mistaken identity – Emma Clarke and the British Ladies Football Club

24/9/2019

13 Comments

 
Picture
The British Ladies FC 'South' team in March 1895. Miss Clarke is back row, second from left. (The Sketch, via British Newspaper Archive)
Emma Clarke has been hailed as 'the first black woman footballer' for her exploits with the British Ladies Football Club in 1895.
   There have been feature articles about her in national media, notably the Telegraph, the Guardian and the BBC; a campaign to commemorate her with a blue plaque; a play was performed about her; a sold-out seminar at the Royal Society of Arts celebrated her life.
   The only trouble is, these were all about the wrong woman. It is a classic case of mistaken identity.
   After researching her story, I can say definitively that Emma Clarke was not from Liverpool, as widely claimed, but from Plumstead in the east end of London. It is also debatable whether she could be considered black.
   Emma played for the British Ladies FC alongside her sister Florence and one contemporary report mentioned they were from Plumstead. This was confirmed by a newspaper article to mark Florence's golden wedding, published in 1949: the Kentish Independent reported that, before her marriage, Florence 'had been gaining a name in soccer circles as a member of the British Ladies football team, for whom she played at inside right. The team toured England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and in the north played a number of men's teams. Mrs Carver has a gold medal to show for her efforts.'
Picture
This newspaper cutting from the Kentish Independent confirmed Florence (Clarke) Carver's identity. (With thanks to Dave Witham, her great grandson)
Picture
Picture
These grainy pictures show the British Ladies FC at practice before their first match in March 1895
With the Clarke sisters now properly identified, there is also the issue of their ethnicity. Is it correct to celebrate Emma Clarke as a pioneering black sportswoman?
   There is, in fact, a suggestion the Clarke sisters had some Asian heritage. I have contacted one direct descendant, Dave Witham, who recalls that his late grandmother (Florence's daughter) told him the story of an affair in the 'Indian Raj' in the family's past which led to a mixed race child. He was told that this showed in the footballing sisters' generation and particularly in Emma's case. Emma does appear to have slightly darker skin in contemporary team photos and there are comments in the press of a 'dark girl'. The narrative is certainly a good fit.
Picture
Emma Clarke, pictured in a British Ladies FC team group (National Archives)
To try and back up family legend with facts, I drew up a family tree and established that the sisters' grandfather, a Royal Artillery corporal called Edmund Bogg, spent four years serving at the British fort at Galle, on the south coast of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). While there he had a daughter called Caroline in December 1841. In 1863, Caroline Bogg married John Clarke (the son of another Royal Artillery man) in Woolwich, and the Clarkes raised a large family including Emma, born 1871, and Florence in 1877.
   As there are no others in the family tree with a non-British birthplace, I guessed that Caroline might have been the product of the suggested extra-marital affair. However, when I ordered up her birth certificate it recorded that Caroline was the daughter of Edmund Bogg and his wife Ann. It is plausible the certificate could have been an attempt to cover up a scandal: was she adopted, was she accepted into the family, or was she a genuine child of the marriage? In the absence of further testimony, the truth may never be established, short of extensive DNA testing.
Picture
Picture
Florence Clarke and her husband, the Arsenal player George Carver; they married in 1898. 
(with thanks to Tricia Leslie)
Regardless of that detail, the story of the British Ladies FC is fascinating (read Patrick Brennan's website for a detailed account). The club was launched in a blaze of publicity in the winter of 1894/95, when Emma and Florence were aged 23 and 17 respectively. Their first match was on 23 March 1895 at Crouch End, between sides described as North and South (indicating north and south of London, rather than England).
   Just one Miss Clarke was in the South team that day, probably Emma, but when the team embarked on its extensive tour of the UK in April both Clarke sisters played together more often than not, in about 40 matches over two months. It must have been enormously exciting for young working class women to be thrust into the limelight like this, and to be paid for their efforts.
   The first tour ended with a couple of games in Belfast, where Florence won a gold medal in a post-match race. This may be the medal she mentioned at her golden wedding.
   After a summer break, the British Ladies FC started touring again in September, and played once or twice a week for the next year until the novelty wore off, crowds dwindled and financial problems intervened.
   Following the fortunes of the sisters during this period is a challenge as teams were not often published, and even when they were the use of initials was erratic; added to which, a player called Nellie Clark (with no 'e') from Newcastle joined the club. However, where initials or first names were reported, Emma and Florence were clearly regulars in the side.
   Within a couple of years, the football club had effectively disbanded and the Clarke sisters settled down to conventional lives and domesticity.
   In 1899 Emma married Thomas Porter, a labourer with the local council, and they had two children, Ethel and Charlie. They continued to live locally but sadly Emma died in 1925, aged just 53, and is buried in Erith Cemetery.
   Florence married George Carver in 1899 and there is a great football connection as he was also a player, a left back with Arsenal (or Woolwich Arsenal, as they then were). He spent four years with the club but only made one first team appearance; unfortunately for him it was away to Loughborough on 12 December 1896, a match which resulted in Arsenal's all-time record defeat, 8-0. He did, however, win a Kent League championship medal with the reserves that season. The Carvers spent their lives in Plumstead's Bannockburn Road, where Florence died in 1955, five years after George. They had two daughters, Florence and Daisy, and their descendants still live in the area.
   The fact that their true identity has taken so long to establish is indicative of the wider challenge in researching early women's football, with conflicting and incomplete reports in the press, and even misleading information from the teams themselves.
   However, now that Emma and Florence have been correctly identified, their descendants can celebrate their famous sporting ancestors, the Victorian pioneers of women's football.

Emma Jane Clarke
Born 2 December 1871 in Plumstead
Married 28 October 1899 to Thomas Porter
Died 27 November 1925 in Belvedere, Kent

Florence Clarke
Born 9 June 1877 in Plumstead
Married 1 April 1899 to George Carver
Died 11 January 1955 in Woolwich
Picture
Some of the British Ladies players posed for photos in the press, such as this in the Pall Mall Budget (sadly, not including the Clarke sisters)
However, there remain some loose ends:

 - Not least is the question of black heritage. In the entire known newspaper coverage of the British Ladies FC, there is just one mention of a player's ethnicity. A report of a match in Stirling in the summer of 1896 mentioned 'a coloured girl of Dutch build' but frustratingly the team was not listed. 'Dutch build' was a Victorian euphemism for thickset or fat, yet photos of Emma and Florence show clearly that they were tall and slim. So was there another black player in the team? And as she played in Stirling, was she Scottish?
 - Did the Clarke sisters have football experience before the British Ladies club was formed? There was an attempt to start a women's football team in Plumstead in 1892, and a steady correspondence in the Woolwich Gazette that year featured an anonymous female organiser who claimed that a women's team played several matches that summer. There is no other record of these matches but it is plausible the sisters were involved or inspired: the correspondent used the pen-name 'Ann-Ticipation' and the Clarkes lived in Ann Street. Coincidence?


Finally, what of the 'wrong' Emma Clarke? Born in Liverpool on 15 July 1875, previous accounts said her fate was unknown, but in fact she married Harry Stockdale in Bootle in 1905, raised a family, and lived on Merseyside all her life. She died in Crosby early in 1957, aged 81. Sadly, she will now be erased from the history books as there is nothing to indicate she ever played football.
13 Comments
Bill Hern
27/11/2019 04:39:45 pm

This matches my research on the same subject. However, it seems that many still think that Emma was the first black lady footballer. I have even read about a plaque being put up in London on 1 December. I don’t want to be a wet blanket but it is important our history is accurate, is it not?

Reply
Jak Beula
27/11/2019 05:11:31 pm

Hi Bill you are not being a wet blanket or a damp squid. The truth is no-one can say for certain what Emma's ethnic background is. It is possible that one of her maternal grandparents descended from an African woman (or man) who had been living in South Ceylon since the 15th century (they are still there today btw). Equally, it is possible that she could have descended from one of the dark native people of southern Sri Lanka. We simply do not know unless we can do a DNA test on one of her surving relatives. This article is helpful as it identify's the region in which one of her grandparents came from. It also, irrefutably clarifies the identioty of Emma (I have seen the birth certificate myself). What we cannot deny is that her mother was of dual heritage. The fact she, her sister and therefor presumably all her siblings were darker than her father, suggests that her mother was a person of colour. We can rewrite the gentic rule book. However, how Caroline came about is still be researched. We also know that there are varous press accounts describing Emma and her sister as "black" and "darkie". The word "Black" like "white" is a construct, so we should not too get hung up on it. There are Asian people who are darker than many people of African descent. The important thing is celebrate this pioneering footballer, who like many other women had to endure so much, and in her case not just sexism, to play the game she and other women love.

Reply
Bill Hern
1/12/2019 11:30:03 am

Thanks for that Jak. I had not seen any evidence that shows that Emma's mother was undeniably of dual heritage. What led you to that conclusion? Emma's mother Caroline Bogg was born in what was then Ceylon to father Edmund (a career solider) and his wife Ann who was from Cornwall. Is there evidence or some suggestion that Edmund was not the father? What you say about the articles describing Emma and her sister as black is very interesting. I wasn't aware of them. Would you mind sharing the articles with me? I am very surprised that her sister should be described as black as there is clear documentary evidence in the Northern Whig that she was blonde. As you say, there is no way of absolutely proving Emma's ethnicity but I still feel the 'lady of Dutch build' is someone we have yet to definitively identify and give due recognition to.

Reply
Jak Beula
6/12/2019 11:09:22 am

Hi Bill, thanks for your response. The challenge we have faced to identify Emma Clarke stems from conflicting and conflating info presented early doors. This has help to skew any new emerging info on her. While there are a few historians on a mission to get to bottom of Emma's story, others have taken the position of dismissing any notion that she could be a person of colour despite photographic evidence and contemporary accounts. On Monday we installed Emma's plaque, and I met Dave Witham who is the great grandson of Emmas' sister Florence. Dave was given the honour of unveiling the plaque, and he was able to clarify that Florence was not a person of colour and I believe him. This highlights that neither Florence's parents were of colour. However, crucially, he proposed that Emma was likely to be have been adopted as "she was a different colour to her siblings". Again, I dont think that is in dispute as he has a number of family photographs not yet in the pubnlic domain that confirms that. My sole reason for doing the plaque was to celebrate the increasing interest in woman's football by highlighting the 1895 British Ladies FC, from which the fascinating story of Emma Clarkwe has emerged. The history Stuart Biggs who initially was one of those who misidentified Emma Clarke, with a little guidance Stuart Mitchell, has more than made up for that early rabbit hole. He has gone on to discover so much more about Emma's life after football, where she is buried and family descendants. I have no doubt at some point in the future we will get to doing the DNA tests that put this mystery to bed once and for all. Until then, there appears to be a 19th century scandal that has been understandably covered up by Emma's brave parents. Looking forward to seeing the movie whenever it gets done.

Reply
Andy Mitchell
6/12/2019 02:13:13 pm

Please note that the names referred to in Jak's entry above should read Stuart Gibbs and Andy Mitchell.

Reply
Jean Williams
7/12/2019 03:28:00 pm

As Andy's comments indicate there is no direct evidence of either black or Asian heritage and, given that the size of the British Empire at the time was so large, many career soldiers would have had children born overseas. This said, Emma may have been a person with mixed heritage, we have to allow that possibility, until the evidence conclusively tells us one way or another. I do not dismiss the notion, I am merely pointing out the need for evidence before putting up plaques and holding events.

My points on social media about this refer to the absence of conclusive evidence either way. As you rightly indicate, having events in 2017 to celebrate the 'wrong' Emma, mean it is all the more important to get this right, in so far as we are able. The photographs we have so far are not conclusive, since the variations in light, shade and so on are inconclusive and the newspaper reports can be unreliable sources. But if you are saying you have new photographic family evidence then please share it, as we can then proceed from evidence, as opposed to family stories which may or may not be reliable.
Dutch build, just means sturdy. Nettie Honeyball weighed 10 stone, and most Victorian women were more slight. I don't think it means anything more than built for football, as we also get descriptions of Dutch women hockey players at about the same time.

Reply
Bill Hern
8/12/2019 11:00:14 am

Hello Jean, I fully support your note of caution. I thought the idea of Emma (Liverpool or Plumstead) being the first black lady footballer had been dispelled at the end of 2018. If new evidence has arisen it would be really helpful if it could be made public.

Reply
Prof Jean Williams
8/12/2019 05:18:43 pm

Thanks Bill. I am happy to share my evidence so far with both Jak and Andy, as I have already shared it with Bill. The plaque at the school is factually inaccurate in that the match was not the 'first public national match for women' in March 1895. That is made up history. There had been previous matches in 1881 and in the 1890s, and all the players in 1894/5 were drawn from London. North and South London, not the North and South. Quite why the organisers would want to teach children inaccurate history I do not know, but I feel sorry for the school in question. If we agree that women's history, and the history of different ethnic groups is important (and I think we do agree on these issues), then we should hold ourselves to the same high standards of rigour as we expect in other areas of history. I am disappointed by the plaque for these reasons.

Reply
Jak Beula
9/12/2019 12:42:49 pm

Hi Bill, if we dismiss Emma as the first woman of colour to play footabll in Britain in 1895, that means you accept that 1876 a full Black woman by the name of Carrie Boustead as the original pioneer. Again, that is not in question, and we are only highlighting Emma as she payed a year before. What appears to be in question is that she was a person of colour which is very odd. No matter how light she was she had a hue that was darker that her team mates, and her family. But it appears Jean is now asking us to not believ our very on eyes. Incredible!!!
The information about Plumstead born Emma Clarke's life was not know in 2018. No one knew anything about this Emma Clarke other than she was born in Plumstead in 1871 and not 1876 like the rabbit hole Emma which has now caused so much scepticism. We did not know about her life after football, the fact that she had two children and died in 1925. That research did not exist in 2018. It appears you are betting on the wrong horse if you beieve all subsequent findings on Ms Clarke should be dismissed by Jean, who has positioned herslef as the authority. I believe judgement should be reserved until all the facts are laid bare. I dont accept Jean's notion that we should dismiss eye witness accounts, news paper articles, family oral history or photgraphic evidence. In fact, Jean has contacted to school today and not only has tried to undermine the plaque, but has suggested to the headmaster that Emma was called "darkie" because of the colour of her hair. I think its time I disengage from this discourse becasue it appears some of the jury have already made up its mind.

Reply
Bill Hern
9/12/2019 01:10:42 pm

Thanks Jak. Just a couple of points.
I don't follow your logic that if I don't think it is Emma in 1895 then it must be Carrie in 1876?
I'm actually happy to accept that the dark-skinned lady in the famous photo (which I have examined at the National Archives) may have been the first black lady footballer but I remain a long, long way from convinced that her name was Emma Clarke. I am aware of only one piece of evidence (a name against a photograph) that points in that direction. There is an awful lot more evidence that points to Emma Clarke being white.
I researched Emma Clarke from Plumstead in great depth in 2018 so can't agree with your contention that no one knew anything about her in 2018.
One day, when time permits, I will resume my research to find the true identity of the dark-skinned lady (I'm not totally ruling out Emma) but until then I think I'll join you in disengaging from this discourse. Best wishes.

Reply
Jak Beula
9/12/2019 03:27:26 pm

Apologies, for the typos. The date should read 1896 (not 1876).

Stuart Gibbs
9/12/2019 12:44:48 pm

I too was disappointed with the plaque inscription both Any Mitchell and myself made every effort we could to ensure that form of wording wasn't used and I suspect the plaque had already been produced when we voiced our protest. But for many years the FA listed Couch end as the 'first women's match' and recently an attempt to classify it as the first official match a claim which can be batted away quite easily. If I hadn't stepped in a plaque would have gone up in Liverpool I also got the name changed on the 'Offside' play as Carrie Boustead was almost certainly white.

Women's football is full of myths like Mrs Graham and her organisation of the 1881, the FA ban a narrative which as so hindered research into the game and Nettie Honeyball the supposed organiser of the British Ladies. She was as far as I can tell a figurehead created by the club to attract support. The panel for her in NFM is genuinely embarrassing yet few people have ever bothered to challenge these obvious 'made up histories' to borrow a phrase. So it's disappointing to see so much fuss being made over Emma Clarke when true and genuine myths have been left unchallenged.

As for Emma there is defiantly something there. 'Coloured' for example was a theatrical term used to describe the black female singers who came to the UK in the aftermath of the US Civil War. I had thought the Stirling report was describing a different person to the earlier Welsh one but having the 'dutch build' comment ironed out I'm convinced now that it was Emma Clarke on both occasions having spoken to the descendant of Florence Clarke I think the scandal came later and that Caroline was not Emma's birth mother. This would account for a lot of confusion which has surrounded this case.

Reply
Jak Beula
9/12/2019 03:43:58 pm

Just to clarify where I have elsewhere, although tjhe reading of the plaque clearly states it was the first public womens football match played on Nightingale Lane, I accept that this could be misinterpreted as being the first public womens football match. There is nothing factually inaccurate about the plaque. I have seen the name Clarke ascribed to the person of colour in the photograph. I have liaised with Emma's great grand niece whio I introduced you to. He has independently confirmed Emma's id through other family portraits. I was not aware Carrie Boustead, or Clara Berry was white. However, I dont profess to have the informatuion I have on her that I have on Emma. Please note, I am also not clainming to be an expert on Emma, my only contention is how others can be quick to dismiss her a person of colour when you put all the evidence together, the only honest and unbiased opinion we can draw is that she was!

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    All blog posts, unless stated, are written by Andy Mitchell, who is researching Scottish sport on a regular basis.