I recently came across a remarkable collection of Scottish sports programmes dating back to the 1880s, many with a strong football connection. They are held at National Records of Scotland, having been deposited there by the renowned athletics historian, John Keddie.
   The programmes include the earliest known issues from several football clubs, including Hearts, St Bernard's, Falkirk and Dunfermline Athletic, and there are later issues from Hibs and Aberdeen. There are programmes from a variety of other clubs, whether athletics, cycling or football, and the common feature of nearly all of these meetings is five-a-side football contests. Sometimes the player names are given.
   The earliest are from 1883, and while the early issues are the most interesting, the extensive collection goes right up to recent times.
   They give a fascinating insight to sports meetings of a long-forgotten amateur era, where prizes for the winners ranged from cutlery sets to silver cups, clocks to butter dishes, but never money.
   The programme pictured above is from the Heart of Midlothian FC Sports of 1884, a flimsy four page issue which you can read in full by clicking here. This is thought to be the earliest known event programme from Hearts.

Across the city, the 1880s also saw the start of a series of annual sports at St Bernard's FC, and follows them as they moved around grounds, from Powderhall to Logie Green, back to Powderhall and then to the Royal Gymnasium. The programmes cover over three decades, from 1883 to 1904, and you can read the full St Bernard's issue from 1884 - which included five-a-side teams from Hearts and Hibs - by clicking here.

It was not just the football clubs which realised the crowd-pulling potential of five-a-side competitions. Edinburgh Northern Bicycle Club, for example, invited Hearts and St Bernard's to play in their competition in 1883, pictured here.
   Their programmes are filled with adverts for bicycles, tricycles and tandems, for racing or for everyday use, at a time when the mechanics of cycling was in its infancy. There are some weird and wonderful illustrations of these contraptions.

While much of the collection relates to Edinburgh, there are a few from further afield. The Falkirk FC Sports of 1883 was held at Blinkbonny Park, their home before they moved to Brockville two years later. It is a four page programme [click here], as is the issue produced by Dunfermline Athletic in 1890 at East End Park [click here]. Again, both teams had five-a-side competitions, with an interesting selection of entrants. 

Pictured above are the Hearts programmes for 1886, when they had just moved to their current ground at Tynecastle Park [click here]. There is also one for 1894 [click here], then a gap until the series resumes in the 1920s. One interesting item is the event in 1924 when Eric Liddell ran at Tynecastle, shortly before heading to Paris to take part in the Olympic Games, winning a famous gold medal. A full set of Paris Olympic athletics programmes is also in the collection.

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 

I was researching something else when I stumbled across this report from 1876 on a professional athletics meeting in Kirkcaldy: 'Special interest was taken in this race as one of the competitors was a coloured man, as black and shiny as a well-polished boot, W Foreman by name and hailing from Leith; he was the winner, and received a cheer for his pluck.'

I had never seen any reference to a black athlete in Scotland in the Victorian era, and an internet search produced no results. So, who was he? I felt I had to find out more.
   Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, I established that William Forman (or Foreman) was a regular competitor at professional sprint events in Scotland over several years. He was not a top level runner and did not win many prizes, but was confident enough to enter the famous New Year Sprint handicap at Powderhall.
   Unfortunately there was also a dark side to his life: three times he was convicted of assaulting his wife and he served time in prison.

When William Forman married Isabella Davis at St Thomas's Church in Leith in 1874, neither of them were able to sign the marriage certificate as they were illiterate and they marked their names with a cross. His parents were recorded as Dickson Forman (blacksmith, deceased) and Harriet Thomson, and the next census revealed that he was born around 1853 in the USA.
   Isabella was also black although born in Leith in 1850, the daughter of another American immigrant called John Davis and his Scottish wife Christina Paterson. Isabella already had an illegitimate daughter, but there were no further children with William.

Within months of their marriage, William was up at Leith Police Court, charged with assaulting Isabella. According to the Evening News 'the prisoner was in the habit of constantly ill-using his wife' and he was sentenced to 20 days with hard labour. He was convicted again later the same year, and early in 1877 was given a two month sentence for a particularly violent attack. Yet despite all that, the couple were still living together in the 1881 census.
   Throughout this time, his name cropped up in reports of races in Edinburgh and Leith, competing for cash prizes. Sometimes he won a heat, for example earning 7s 6d in that meeting at Kirkcaldy, but never a main prize. His last recorded race was in 1882, when the New Year event was held at the Royal Gymnasium, coming second in his heat for the 250 yards handicap.

However, apart from the years between 1874 and 1882, I have been unable to find any reference to Forman in newspapers, censuses or genealogy records. There are also no known photos of him. Large gaps remain in his life story and perhaps records will be found in due course.
   Looking at the bigger picture, it has to be pointed out that in the 1870s Scottish sport had at least four black sportsmen: Andrew Watson and Robert Walker in football, James Robertson playing rugby and William Forman competing in athletics. The same decade also saw two with Asian heritage, Alfie Clunies-Ross representing Scotland at rugby and Tommy Marten playing football alongside Watson at Parkgrove.
   Yet after their sporting careers ended there was a yawning gap in black and ethnic minority participation in Scottish sport for over a hundred years. Apart from a few fleeting footballers, these black sporting pioneers were not emulated by subsequent generations as negative social attitudes and racism blanked any opportunities.

NB I am currently researching the lives of 1870s footballers Robert Walker and Tommy Marten, mentioned above, and hope to publish my findings soon.