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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

Black football players were a rarity in the Victorian era. Some have become well known in recent years, notably Andrew Watson and Arthur Wharton, but the others can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Little is known about them: Watson’s teammate Robert Walker at Parkgrove in the 1870s, then two decades later the tragic John Walker of Leith Athletic, Hearts and Lincoln City, and possibly Emma Clarke of the British Ladies FC (although her identity is still debated). But that seems to be about it.
   Black players are rare enough in 19th century football for the discovery of another one to be worth noting. Recently I was reading the jubilee history of the Hampshire FA, published in 1937, and was surprised to see in a team photo from 1893 that one of the players stood out because of his colour: V Ledger of Bournemouth Wanderers.

A bit of research turned up a fascinating story: Victor Ledger was a first generation immigrant to England, born in Vienna to an African-American lion tamer and a Prussian mother. Yet in contrast to his exotic heritage, he spent his adult life working for the local council.
   His father Joseph was an archetypal showman who went by the stage name Delmonico. Originally from Philadelphia, or perhaps Delaware, he told so many amazing stories about his life that fact is hard to separate from fiction. Talking to incredulous journalists, as well as describing his dangerous exploits in the circus he claimed to have been wounded in the American Civil War and to have been awarded the Légion d'Honneur in the Franco-Prussian War. Rather than repeat what has been written elsewhere about him, I suggest reading this blog by Phil Martin which gives a flavour of the enigma.
   Victor's mother Anna, born in Poznan in what was then Prussia, was daughter of a showman herself and after meeting the lion tamer on tour in Leipzig they apparently eloped to England where they married in 1866.
   After a spell in England, during which he performed at the Crystal Palace and toured the country, they departed for the continent and their son Victor was born in Vienna in 1873. Then they spent some time in Paris where Delmonico performed at the Folies-Bergère and other venues, which gave rise to some magnificent posters, three of which have survived in the French national library, along with a short biographical sketch.

While Delmonico continued to tour with circuses and in the theatre, the family set up home on the Hampshire coast, and that was where young Victor was introduced to football. He is first mentioned in a local newspaper report in April 1888 when he was only 14 years old, playing for Bournemouth Wanderers against Poole Albion. He went on to be an almost constant presence in the team over the next two decades, at left half and centre half.
   From small beginnings the side known locally as the 'Wonders' grew in stature and was moderately successful in local competitions. With Victor in the team they won the Hampshire Minor Cup in 1892 and were finalists in the Hampshire Junior Cup the following year.

His only year away from the club was the 1896/97 season, a few months after he had advertised in a local paper: 'Vic Ledger of the Bournemouth Wanderers offers his services to any Football Club finding him suitable employment.' If the advert was an attempt to become a professional player it didn't work, but he did spend a year with local rivals Bournemouth FC, who were trying to make an impact in the inaugural season of the Hampshire League (NB this was an amateur side, not the same as the present day AFC Bournemouth, then known as Boscombe FC).
   The following summer, he was back with Wanderers, who entered the newly created Dorset and District League in 1898/99, winning the title that season and again in 1905. From 1903 they also competed in the Hampshire League as it was possible to play in both counties because of their geographical position.
   Meanwhile, Victor was good enough to play for his county, picked twice for Hampshire Juniors in 1893, and finally he earned a full county cap for Hampshire against Dorset in February 1900. He also played for a Bournemouth and District select in 1899 in a glamour friendly against Southampton, then Southern League champions.
   After hanging up his boots in 1908, he remained on the Wanderers committee until the club closed down on the outbreak of WW1. They did not reappear after the conflict.
   Given his unusual background and his colour, it may have been difficult for Victor to fit into the football scene and Bournemouth life in general, but there is little evidence of any overt racism in newspaper reports. I have found just one passing reference to 'that dark young gentleman'.

There was only one occasion when he may have been typecast because of his race. In the summer of 1901, perhaps encouraged by his father who had come to stay, he was persuaded to compete in a football contest against an elephant when Sanger’s Circus visited Bournemouth. The local papers advertised it as a 'great novelty, Elephant v Man' for the prize of a 'massive cup' but although Victor duly won the match by a single goal the reports give no further detail.
   A few days later, he had more serious issues to contend with when his father died suddenly. According to newspaper reports, 'Joseph Ledger, aged 57 years, a coloured gentleman, was for many years engaged as a lion tamer … but latterly he had been employed as a traveller in a commercial business, and for the past few weeks had been staying with his son at 170 Malmesbury Park Road.'
   Victor gave evidence to the inquest that at 2am he found his father had fallen out of bed and struck his head on the dressing table; he died a few hours later of a cerebral haemorrhage. For the man known as Delmonico, who had dallied with wild animals and (if his stories are to be believed) fought in several wars, it was a sorry way to go.
   The exotic adventures of Joseph Ledger were in stark contrast to his son who never experienced the glare of publicity apart from a few football match reports. Victor spent his life working for Bournemouth Corporation as a house painter and lamplighter, ​and died in the town in 1943, aged 69. He left a wife called Emily, one son and seven daughters.

by Andy Mitchell

Look closely at the team photograph of the Royal High School Former Pupils team from 1871: it may come as something of a surprise that one of the players is black.
   Standing between two well-known Scotland internationalists, Angus Buchanan and Alexander Petrie, he is identified in the caption as JG Robertson.
   So, who was he? Can he claim to be the world's first black rugby player?
   Finding out about Robertson took some detailed research to identify him and unravel his fascinating story. It turns out he was a prominent rugby player on both sides of the border who would surely have faced significant social barriers because of his colour, yet appears to have been accepted and integrated. 

According to the club website, between 1871 and 1875 Robertson played a total of 46 games for Royal High School FP, one of the founders of the Scottish Rugby Union. He appears in two more team photos, and also made four appearances for the Edinburgh representative team against Glasgow. Other than that, he is barely mentioned in sports histories. There was no JG Robertson in the 1871 or 1881 census in Edinburgh, and I could find nobody of that name in the Royal High School archives.
   The answer is that he was the son of Dr Daniel Robertson, a Perthshire-born surgeon who had gone to Gambia in 1834 after graduating from Edinburgh University, and rose to become colonial secretary. Daniel Robertson devoted his entire working life to Gambia and spent over 30 years there before retiring in the mid-1860s. There is no record of him marrying, and the assumption must be that he had a relationship with a Gambian woman which produced two sons: James George Robertson was born about 1854 in Bathurst, Gambia, and his younger brother John three years later.
   James was sent to Scotland for his education, initially boarding in Crieff (1861 census) before going to live in St Andrews, where his father and younger brother joined him. James attended Madras College from 1866-70, did well educationally and matriculated at St Andrews University in 1870, but left after his first year.
   In the autumn of 1871 he went to Edinburgh University to study medicine and throughout his five years in the capital he played rugby for Royal High School FPs. It would have been natural for him to join the University's thriving sports teams, yet he chose not to. The obvious question is 'Why?' as the major unknown factor in this story is the lack of an obvious connection between him and the school. One can speculate that he may have gone to the Royal High as a boy, or his father had a connection, but I have not yet found any proof.

In 1876 Robertson graduated from Edinburgh University in medicine and surgery, in the same ceremony as Scotland rugby legend RW 'Bulldog' Irvine. He found his first job in County Durham where he was appointed resident medical officer at Gateshead Dispensary. It was not the end of his rugby days by any means and over the next few years he played regularly. He first appeared for Northumberland (a club, not the county) early in 1878, where he would have found a familiar face in the team: PB (Patrick Bruce) Junor, a Glasgow Academical who had played for Royal High School FP (also without a past pupil connection) before coming to Durham in 1874.
   Dr Robertson went on to captain the North Durham club, which was based in Gateshead, from 1879-82 and may have played for Darlington after that, although records are not clear.
   He married local girl Emily Joel in Newcastle in 1879, and they had three sons and a daughter. The 1891 census shows the family living in Gateshead, joined by James’s father. However, Daniel died in 1892 and this may have been the catalyst for the family to move on, as in 1894 James Robertson purchased a medical practice in Ashwell, Hertfordshire. He became a prominent figure in local life, not only as the town's doctor but also as president of Ashwell tennis club and a committee member for the cricket club.
   However, his life ended unexpectedly in February 1900. He had been doing his usual rounds but when he came home he collapsed and died in front of his wife. The funeral three days later attracted over 300 mourners and he was buried in St Mary's Churchyard. He was only 46, and left almost £10,000 in his will.
   JG Robertson's story is important as he is the first known black footballer, of any code, yet I have not found a single reference to Robertson's colour in contemporary accounts.

His story has strong echoes with two other non-white Scottish players of that era. Alfred Clunies-Ross, who was half Malay, played in the first Scotland rugby team in 1871; he was also educated at Madras College, studied medicine at Edinburgh University but played for a club side (Wanderers) and then went to London where he played for Wasps. A decade later, the Scotland football team in 1881 was captained by Andrew Watson, born in Guyana to a Scottish father and local woman, then educated in Britain; he played for Parkgrove and Queen's Park, then went to London where he played for Swifts, Corinthians and Bootle.
   The common thread for all three is that their colour was barely mentioned (if at all) in newspaper reports, and there is virtually nothing to indicate that they suffered discrimination due to their colour. This raises the question as to whether their social class allowed them to rise above racial discrimination.
​   It also make me wonder why attitudes then changed, making it harder for non-white players to participate in high level sport: from Arthur Wharton onwards, their colour was regularly highlighted and discrimination in sport became the norm.
​

Further details about the life of Andrew Watson, the first black international footballer, have come to light with the digitisation of shipping manifests on the genealogy website ancestry.
   It was already known that he qualified as a First Class Engineer in May 1893, and these fascinating new records reveal the work he was able to obtain over the next few years while he had his home in Liverpool. Not only do they show his address (he seems to have moved several times) and his pay, they are all personally signed by him.
   The first was an 18 day journey on the Louisianan in October 1893, and he went on to make five voyages on the same ship over the next year as Second Engineer, paid at the rate of £11 per month. There is then a gap before his first voyage on a ship called, appropriately enough, the West Indian in January 1896; however, the register for the first voyage says his most recent ship had been the Waesland. He had 13 voyages on the West Indian, travelling four or five times a year, and during this period was promoted to Chief Engineer, with a pay rise to £15 per month.
   The only other surviving shipping record is an intriguing one from 1901 which shows Andrew Watson, together with his wife Eliza and their two children Henry and Phyllis, sailing from Liverpool to Philadelphia. They were on their way to visit a friend called JD Caswell in New Orleans, presumably for a family holiday. The ship they travelled on was the Waesland, which was one of his former employers.
   Although these are an incomplete record of Watson's maritime career (most of the manifests do not even reveal the ships' destinations), they do help to fill in some gaps in the life of one of football's most important early characters.

The first black international footballer, Andrew Watson, has been recognised with a place in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as part of its 10th anniversary update.
   Watson, whose full story only came to light last year when my research was published, captained Scotland to an astonishing 6-1 victory over England on his international debut in 1881. For many years his fate was unknown until I tracked down his death in London in 1921, and visited his gravestone. I was delighted to be asked by the ODNB to contribute his entry for the Dictionary.
   Andrew Watson was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856 to Peter Miller Watson, a Scottish sugar planter and Hannah Rose, a local woman. Despite being black and illegitimate, he was generally accepted by his fellow footballers as he was a 'gentleman' (he was of independent means after his father left him a substantial legacy), but there are hints that he required broad shoulders. 
   While most descriptions were purely about his ability, there was some evidence of discrimination: 'Both on and off the field he is courtesy and unostentation personified and although of a most powerful build he invariably plays a sterling honest game. … Although on more than one occasion subjected to vulgar insults by splenetic, ill-tempered players, he uniformly preserved that gentlemanly demeanour … he is the embodiment of rare geniality and kind-heartedness' (Scottish Athletic Journal, 15 December 1885). 
   Less controversially, the 1880 Scottish Football Annual described him as: 'One of the very best backs we have; since joining Queen’s Park has made rapid strides to the front as a player; has great speed and tackles splendidly; powerful and sure kick; well worthy of a place in any representative team.'
   In over a decade of top level football in Scotland and England he was a significant personality and helped to draw crowds and plaudits wherever he played. Capped three times by Scotland, all comprehensive victories, he missed out on further international honours by moving to England. Having first come to prominence with Glasgow team Parkgrove, he won the Scottish Cup four times with Queen's Park, and played for a range of teams in England including Swifts, Pilgrims, Corinthians and finally Bootle, having gone to Liverpool to pursue a career as a maritime engineer.

Andrew Watson set a number of firsts for a black footballer:

+ First black player to gain representative honours, playing for Glasgow v Sheffield in February 1880;
+ First black player to win Scottish Cup, in 1880/81 with Queen’s Park;
+ First black internationalist, captaining Scotland v England, 12 March 1881;
+ First black administrator, as match secretary with Parkgrove 1878-80 and club secretary with Queen's Park 1881-82;
+ First black player in FA Cup, reaching 4th round in 1882-83 with Swifts;
+ First black match official, as umpire for Old Carthusians v Royal Engineers, FA Cup, 25 Jan 1883;
+ First black player for Corinthians, on their Easter Tour in March 1883
+ First to play for an English county, Surrey v Notts in March 1884 (as a Swifts player);
+ And possibly the first black professional. In December 1887, Great Bridge Unity FC protested to the FA Cup committee against Watson and Hastings of Bootle for professionalism; however the case was dismissed (an investigation by the Lancashire FA also failed to find evidence).

Andrew Watson is the 16th Scottish footballer to be included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The others are: Walter Arnott, Jim Baxter, Billy Bremner, tommy Burns, Matt Busby, Alex James, Jimmy Johnstone, Arthur Kinnaird, RS McColl, Jimmy McGrory, Ally McLeod, Jock Stein, Fergus Suter, John Thomson and George Young.

My story on Andrew Watson is published in the Scotsman newspaper today, revealing for the first time what became of the pioneering black Scottish football player.
   For many years it had been thought he died in Australia in 1902, but there has never been any documentary evidence to back that up. I decided to start from scratch, examining his life step by step, but the biggest and most obvious clue was that he showed up in a search in the 1911 census. The fact that he had a wife and two children - not the same wife and children he had 20 years earlier - just made the research more challenging and interesting. I found his first wife had died age 22, leaving their son and daughter to be brought up in Glasgow with their grandparents. Watson married again, had two more children, and lived in Liverpool and finally London, where he died in 1921.
   A fascinating element of his story is that he was the product of a Scottish planter and a Guyanan woman. His father, Peter Miller Watson, was a former slave owner who was compensated by the British Government for the freedom of his slaves in the 1830s; so when he left £35,000 in his will to Andrew Watson and his sister Annetta, giving them financial security for life, much of their fortune derived from the misery of slavery. Little is known about his mother, whose name is given as Anna Rose on his first marriage certificate and Hannah Rose on his second; but as one of his father's wealthy business associates was called Peter Rose, possibly she was linked to his household.
   I have yet to visit Watson's grave, but will do so next time I am in London. Meanwhile, if anyone else would like to go to Richmond Cemetery and take a photo or leave a bunch of flowers, it is in Section 4, grave plot No 6321.