A fascinating new booklet has just been published, coinciding with Black History Month, on the stories of Britain's black athletic pioneers. 
   Researched and written by Peter Lovesey, this 64-page volume brings to life a wide range of long-forgotten names as well as summarising the athletic careers of famous sportsmen like Arthur Wharton, Andrew Watson and Jack London.
   I was surprised to know just how far back the stories of black athletes go, with records of anonymous participants taking part in events as long ago as 1720, over three hundred years ago. The first known name was Levi Baldwin, a black trumpeter in the 4th Dragoon Guards, who ran numerous races in 1805-06, and he was followed through the 19th century by many others, male and female.
   Of particular interest to me was the inclusion of men I have written about from a football perspective, such as Robert Walker and Andrew Watson, who broke one barrier in 1876 by becoming the first known black athletes to compete as amateurs - all previous contestants had been professional, or at least took part for wagers. The fact they did so in Scotland adds to the impression that multi-culturalism in sport in the late Victorian era was more acceptable here than south of the border.
   The stories end in the inter-war period with Britain's first black Olympic athletes, Harry Edwards and Jack London, and the last entry is the sprinter Ethel Scott who was the first black woman to represent Great Britain.

Black Athletes in Britain - The Pioneers is published by the National Union of Track Statisticians. It is available to order at www.nuts.org.uk 

The arrival of Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour at SSC Napoli has added to the list of distinguished Scottish footballers in Italy. But they are not the first Scots stars in Naples, as my new research has found that the very first football captain in the city was born in Glasgow.
   His name was Peter Jackson, and he was elected captain of Naples Foot Ball Club at their inaugural meeting in the spring of 1906. He was a key player as organised football made its first steps in Naples but only remained with the club for a couple of years. His identity has remained hidden until now.
​   Naples FBC is a direct ancestor of SSC Napoli, which came into being in 1926 but its exact date of founding is uncertain. Around 1904/05 a group of Italian, British and Swiss residents with links to cricket and rowing came together to play football, and in February 1906 they established a standalone club.
   Peter Jackson was a popular choice as captain at that meeting. An influential player who led by example, when he left Naples at the end of 1907 for work reasons, his departure was perceived as a 'heartfelt loss' according to Stampa Sportiva, which said he had 'trained his team with such diligence since the formation of the NFBC'.
   Somewhat misleadingly, the same article called him a champion player of 'the First Union of Newcastle', which has baffled historians as there is no such club. So, who was Peter Jackson? 

It took a lot of research to track him down, as although there is a link to Newcastle it was not immediately obvious. I found that Jackson had come to Naples to work at the Stabilimento Armstrong armaments factory at Pozzuoli, a couple of miles west of the city. This was a subsidiary of WG Armstrong & Co, based at Elswick in Newcastle, where it had a massive plant for naval munitions and shipbuilding.
   Jackson had actually learned his football at school in Harrogate, where he attended Western College along with his elder brother Thomas. They both played for the school, then progressed to the Harrogate Corinthians amateur team. Peter was good enough to be picked for the town select in 1903.
   The reason he ended up in Naples is that he followed his father into the steel-making industry. His father James, from Glasgow, was a metals expert whose career had taken him as far as Russia. While there, he married his Scottish wife Janet in St Petersburg, and when they came back to the UK their second son Peter Ainslie Jackson was born in Govan, the shipbuilding heart of Glasgow, in the summer of 1883.
   The family did not remain in Scotland for long as James Jackson then took up a post as foreman steel smelter in Newcastle, moved to Harrogate and came back to Newcastle in the mid 1900s. Peter appears to have been taken on by WG Armstrong but was sent to the Pozzuoli factory to serve his apprenticeship. He was clearly a useful employee, as his name appears in the Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1907, for contributing to a research project.
   He was not the only Pozzuoli apprentice to play for Naples, as the name of George Pratt appears in some early reports.
   However, their time in Italy concluded at the end of 1907 when Jackson and Pratt were recalled to Newcastle, probably because there was an Italian management buyout of the Pozzuoli plant.

I can find no evidence of Peter Jackson playing football once he returned to Newcastle, but he was perhaps focussed on his rising career as a steel engineer. He was clearly prosperous as in 1913 he was reported to have a motor car - a rare luxury in those days - and he remained in Newcastle for the next decade. After getting married in 1917 he took up a job in Manchester, first with Armstrong Whitworth at Openshaw, then at the Trafford Park steelworks, where he was manager of the melting shop.
   He was still in post when he died in 1939, aged just 55. As he had no children, and his siblings did not marry, there were no descendants to carry on the family name. 

At a time when two modern-day Scots are making such an impact in Naples, it is worth remembering that the football-mad city opened its arms to another Scotsman over a hundred years ago.

Peter Ainslie Jackson
Born 28 June 1883 at 23 Burndyke Street, Govan, Glasgow.
Died 8 May 1939 at Mellor, Cheshire.

​Naples football pioneers

In the course of researching this article, I identified some other early Naples players:

William Henry Potts (1883-1959) was an important player for Naples through their first decade, one of the founders of the club and its captain after Peter Jackson left in 1907. After winning the Lipton Challenge Cup for the second time in 1911 he joined US Internazionale Napoli. Originally from South Shields, he came to Naples as a young man and remained there until the Second World War, apparently as a local agent for the White Star Line. He spent his final years on Merseyside, dying in Southport.

Harry Saltmarshe (1870-1929) was not only a player but also club treasurer in 1907. He moved to Naples around the turn of the century and worked for Dent Allcroft & Co, luxury glove makers. Originally from London, he married in Naples and spent the rest of his life there.

George Archibald Pratt (1888-1971) played alongside Jackson in the first games between Naples and Rome in 1907. An engineer, after returning to England he became a well-known tennis player in Cheshire, and even played once at Wimbledon against Bill Tilden.

Harold Frederick Greaves (1881-1962) appears in an early team line-up. Originally from Derbyshire, he was a shipping clerk in Liverpool before heading to Italy, and married in Naples in 1907.

​George Edgar Little (1884-1961) played for Naples in 1906 and settled in the city for most of the rest of his life, although was forced to return to his home town of Liverpool during World War 2. He was a director of a pharmaceutical firm, Bell Sons & Co Ltd, and died in Naples.

I have more detailed information about these players which I will gladly share if you contact me using the form on the home page.
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I would like to thank Felice Ba, football historian in Naples, for his assistance in researching this article.

Click on these links to the site Calcio Antico for further information on the early years of Naples Foot Ball Club:
La fondazione del Naples
Pionieri del Naples