Edwin Oxley was one of Scotland’s leading rugby players in the 1930s, captain of Edinburgh side Heriot's FP, yet he was never capped by his country. According to some accounts, including his old school, the reason for this snub was that he was black.
   However, while he was undoubtedly discriminated against in a time of endemic racism, there is perhaps a more prosaic reason for his non-selection for Scotland: he was born in England. In fact, he spent the first 13 years of his life in Staffordshire before he was able to join his birth mother in Edinburgh.
   His father was James Oxley, a black medical student from Trinidad at Edinburgh University. While in Scotland he had a relationship with Isabella Nichol, the unmarried daughter of a local joiner, and when she fell pregnant she went far away to Burton-on-Trent to have the baby, presumably to avoid the inevitable stigma of an illegitimate child, and a black one at that.

Born on 4 May 1907 in a small terraced house in Burton, the infant Edwin was fostered to a local family, his foster mother Mary Lukin taking care of him until he was 13, while he attended school in the town.
   Meanwhile his parents did marry in Edinburgh early in 1910, using the Scottish system of 'marriage by declaration' but it appears to have been purely for practical reasons as six weeks later his father sailed for America, never to return. Dr James Edwin Tyndall Oxley, who had just graduated with first class honours in medicine, settled in Pennsylvania, where he married for a second time in 1919 (apparently without seeking a divorce) and raised another family. He died in 1927 of pneumonia.
   Edwin's mother, meanwhile, remained in Edinburgh and he finally joined her there in 1921, enrolling at George Heriot's, a fee-paying school. Clearly her financial circumstances had improved and it may be that the father sent money to cover the boy's education.
   At school he was given the nickname Sam, short for 'Sambo', which went unquestioned at the time and stuck throughout his life. He stood out as probably the only black pupil but, as an athletic and personable young boy, he fitted in well, and ended up captaining the school rugby team as well as playing for its cricket eleven.
   When he left school in 1927 it was a daunting time for a black man to enter adult life in Edinburgh. This was the year of the infamous 'colour bar' in the city, imposed by some bars and restaurants against African and Asian students. Although that racist ban caused such condemnation that it was soon withdrawn, it reflected a society where feelings about race could run high.
   It was little surprise that he stuck to the people he knew, and continued to play rugby with Heriot's FP. They were then one of Scotland's top sides, and were the country's unofficial champions in 1928 and 1929. A wing forward, he remained with the club throughout the following decade, captaining the team for three seasons and regularly praised in the media, but whenever representative sides were named, he was never in the mix.

It is easy to speculate that the Scottish Rugby Union, a notoriously reactionary body, would have baulked at the idea of picking a black man for Scotland. At the time, it was not the done thing to challenge the selectors, yet one wonders if they knew he was English-born and had a simple excuse at the ready.
   At the very least, he would have been a natural fit for the Edinburgh team in the annual inter-city clashes with Glasgow (and would not have been the first black player for Edinburgh, as James Robertson did so in the 1870s). But perhaps because the inter-city matches were seen as trials for the international team, he never got the nod.
   His only honour was being picked for a one-off Glasgow & Edinburgh Select which faced the All Blacks at Old Anniesland in October 1935. The match was narrowly lost 8-9 but although he did well he was not named in the next Edinburgh fifteen – 'a notable omission' according to one newspaper.

One area where Oxley excelled was Rugby Sevens, and he led Heriot's to a superb haul of medals in the prestigious Borders tournaments. With him in the team, they won at Jedforest three times, Melrose twice, Langholm four times, Hawick and Selkirk once each.
   He finally retired from the game in 1939 and was immediately taken onto the Heriot’s selection committee, retaining his link to the club for many years.
   Meanwhile he went into business as a commercial artist, running Oxley Studios in Cockburn Street, and his work sometimes turns up at auction. In 1947 he married Inga Peace, a fashion illustrator, and although they had no children they remained together until his death. Sadly, he died early in 1969, aged 61, after taking an overdose.

While Oxley's story is little known, thankfully he has not been forgotten, and the Heriot's School Magazine The Quadrangle recently published a lengthy article about him. They paid tribute to his achievements: "We know that Eddie Oxley was a great player who was undoubtedly deprived of an international career because he was black; that this charismatic man was a gifted artist and a creative and successful businessman. What we don't know is how he coped with and felt about the social mores of the time; with being a black man operating in, and apparently embraced by, polite Edinburgh society; a person patronised with what we now know as the 'casual racism' of his popular moniker 'Sam', and yet loved and revered by so many people."
   From my researches in recent years, it is clear that Eddie Oxley is just one example of Scotland's hidden history of black sportsmen and women, who overcame discrimination to make their mark in sport. I hope that bringing their achievements to a wider audience will inspire a greater appreciation of the challenges they faced, and I am convinced that there are more stories waiting to be uncovered.

Edwin James Oxley, rugby player.
Born 4 May 1907 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
Died 19 January 1969 in Balerno, Edinburgh.

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.

In several years of research into the Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh, it was always thought that there was not a single mention of its activities in the papers of the day, and that the only record was John Hope's personal archive. That view can now change, with the exciting discovery of a report from 1828.
   Thanks to fellow historian Javier Terenti, I have been alerted to this cutting from the Caledonian Mercury, published on 13 November 1828. Although this newspaper has been available online for some time, the key words did not appear in OCR searches, and it was only because this snippet was then republished in a recently-digitised London paper that it was found.
   This brief report of a club dinner reveals much about the activities of the football players. For a start, it shows that the members were numerous, with 60 of them coming to the annual dinner in a Stockbridge pub. It details the breadth of their activities, not just football but also athletic exercises similar to other well-known Edinburgh clubs. And it reveals where they sometimes played, on the city's main recreational area at Bruntsfield Links, even though the club also rented Dalry Park at the time.
   Most importantly of all, however, this discovery confirms that the club was widely known about in the city at the time.
   The conviviality of a dinner was clearly important to the football players, and helps to emphasise that this was a sporting club in every essential: it had subscriptions, it had rules, it met regularly, it was active, and the members not only played together, they socialised together.
   There is also a bit of wider Edinburgh history, as the venue was a new coffee house and tavern at 4 Hamilton Place, Stockbridge - the building is still there to this day and I think it is now Caffe Nero. It was run by Charles Presgrave, who clearly wanted to cater for many more such club dinners, judging by his advert (below) which appeared a few weeks later. It seems not to have worked as he was declared insolvent the following year.

Meanwhile, I recently had the privilege of talking about the story of the Foot-Ball Club and its long-term influence to the members of the Old Edinburgh Club.
   I have now published my talk and the associated PowerPoint presentation, which can be accessed on the following links in pdf form. They should be opened and read together.

Click here for the PowerPoint.
​Click here for the text of my talk.

If you are interested to read more, my book 1824, The World's First Foot-Ball Club is available price £11.99 (post free) from this website, or from Amazon.

The discovery of this unique illustration of the world's first rugby football international has brought to life one of the most important moments in sporting history.
   Scotland met England on 27 March 1871 at Edinburgh Academicals' ground in Raeburn Place but although both teams were photographed there were not thought to be any pictures of the match in progress.
   However, when I came across this engraving in a print dealer's catalogue I soon realised its significance. Previously unknown to historians, it was published four weeks after the match in a short-lived publication called The Illustrated Newspaper, originally in black and white then colourised at a later date.
   It is signed J McL R, the initials of John McLaren Ralston (1849-83), a talented 22-year-old Glaswegian artist who was starting to make a name for himself in a career that brought admiration from, among others, Vincent van Gogh.
   What makes Ralston's illustration all the more intriguing is that his elder brother William (1841-1911) famously drew the sketches of the first association football international, which took place the following year.

The brothers' style of illustration has strong similarities and it has been said by art historians that John (known as Jack) was the more talented of the two and taught William how to draw. They certainly had an excellent artistic pedigree as their father Peter ran a well-known photographic studio in Glasgow city centre, good enough to earn a royal warrant. Peter Ralston took his sons into the business, and both used it as a springboard to launch their careers.
   When Jack Ralston headed over to Edinburgh in 1871, he joined an enthusiastic crowd of around 4,000 crammed into Raeburn Place to witness the inaugural rugby international. He had ample opportunity to draw a number of character studies and used a degree of artistic licence to capture the scene, placing his focus on the spectators in the foreground. They are paying scant attention to the match, some of them engaged in discussion or argument and they are clearly well-to-do, including a finely dressed lady. Whether they relate to specific individuals is hard to say.

The players, by contrast, are almost incidental, a blur of movement in the background. There is just enough detail to show that the forwards are engaged in a mighty scrum while some backs stand aside from the struggle, ready to intercept a loose ball or breakaway run. An umpire in top hat, perhaps the legendary HH Almond, watches intently. 
   ​There are other interesting aspects to the scene, as it appears to confirm that the playing surface was laid out between the slope of the ancient archery mound, which used to be a feature of ground, and its boundary on the east side. The English team actually complained that the pitch was too narrow, just 55 yards wide. Also of interest, the goalposts are much shorter than in modern times.
   The idea that the international pitch was squeezed into a corner of Raeburn Place is emphasised by the absence of spectators behind the north goal, a slope would have given a good vantage point but was on neighbouring farmland and separated from the sports field by a burn. In the distance can be seen the buildings of South Inverleith Mains Farm, which was bought by the city and demolished in 1889 to create what is now Inverleith Park.

The day ended in an unexpected – and much celebrated – victory for the Scotland twenty by a goal and a try to a try, yet until now the only known images relating to this historic match were the posed team groups. The Scotland photo was taken in front of the pavilion by ER Yerbury, just before the start of play, while the England team had two photos taken that morning 'in plain clothes and in uniform' by Ross and Pringle of George Street.
   Ralston was only 22 at the time and his drawing of the scene was an exciting addition to his portfolio. He must have taken it directly to his publisher as he is recorded in the London census just five days later. Over the coming decade he was in much demand as an engraver and his prolific output appeared in journals such as the Illustrated London News, not to mention many books. He covered a range of contemporary, rustic and historic scenes and among them are more sporting subjects such as bowls, croquet and curling.  His talent was even admired, somewhat incongruously, by Vincent van Gogh, who described one Ralston print as 'exquisitely done'.

Sadly, Ralston's star shone only briefly. He lived in Hampstead while he worked as an engraver for London publications, but then he fell ill. He returned to Glasgow and died on 11 July 1883 in the family home at 2 Kersland Street, aged 34 and unmarried. His cause of death was given vaguely as 'debility'.
   Rugby football, on the other hand, went from strength to strength, and the Raeburn Place ground, which opened in 1854 as a school sports field, is itself currently being transformed. Jack Ralston's impressions of the first match will go on public display for the first time at the new Museum of International Rugby, due to open there in 2020. 

You can also read an article about this discovery in The Times newspaper.

The full story of the first football internationals, both rugby and soccer, is detailed in my book 'First Elevens', available here price £9.99 post free.

The growth of Scottish sport in the late Victorian era owes much to the efforts of Percival King, an Edinburgh sports shop owner. He was one of the first to understand the value of self-promotion, edited a superb cricket annual and donated football trophies which are still competed for today.
   King was born in Surrey in 1835 and although he was apprenticed as a cooper he was hooked on cricket and soon found himself in demand as a batsman. Still following his trade, he moved to Cheshire where he played for Birkenhead Park, and returned to London where had a trial for Surrey. He was given his first professional engagement in Birmingham and then Fred Lillywhite offered him the chance of a job in Scotland.
   He duly came to Edinburgh in 1862 as cricket professional at Merchiston Castle School and would remain in the city for the rest of his life. Although he coached at the school for 13 years, he really  made his mark with his pioneering sports retail business. He opened his first shop in Bristo Street in 1868 and it did so well that he soon expanded to a Cricket and Football Warehouse at 54 Lothian Street, which included a billiard room as well as an extensive stock of playing equipment.

He launched the Scottish Cricketers' Annual in 1871, which was not only an indispensible record of the game in Scotland, it also included a full catalogue of his stock. It would run to 17 editions, which are now rare and highly collectable.
   The same year he played his one first class match for Surrey, and although he scored 13 his great achievement was as wicket keeper, catching WG Grace.
   Back in Edinburgh he was noted as a batsman, captained the Players of Scotland and played many years for Brunswick; in 1885, aged 49, he scored 115 not out for them against Craigmount. He umpired numerous matches and was the undoubted guru of Scottish cricket thanks to his shop and the Annual.
   King was also an excellent businessman and clearly had an eye for an opportunity, keen to encourage other sports that might improve his turnover, notably football.
   In 1887 he donated the first Scottish Junior Cup to the fledgling Scottish Junior FA, and the inaugural competition was won by Fairfield Athletic, who defeated Edinburgh Woodburn 3-1 in Govan. King presented the cup to the winners in the public bar next to the ground.

From those small beginnings, the Scottish Junior Cup is now the world's oldest continually played football competition, having been contested annually without a break ever since (including war years). However, as the competition grew, King's silver-plated cup was soon considered too insignificant and in 1897 a new and grander trophy was commissioned by the SJFA, the one that is still in use today.
   King's original cup went into retirement, although it made one more appearance before modern times, being put up by the Scottish Junior FA as the War Fund Cup in 1917-18 and won by Renfrew Juniors. Then it disappeared from view until 1985 when the Sunday Post were contacted by a Lanarkshire reader who had been given the cup by a relative. The trophy duly came up for auction at Christies in April 1987 and sold for £500 to a demolition company in Kilsyth. The company's general manager was quoted in the press a few days later saying that he had intended to display it in his offices, but realising the interest of the SJFA he would donate it back to its original owners.
   Also in 1887, Percival King donated a cup to the Edinburgh FA who decided to use it 'with a view to keeping up interest among clubs after they had been defeated in the Shield competition'. It was named the King Cup and is still played for to this day by East of Scotland League clubs, probably one of the oldest sponsorship deals in world football!

He wound up his business in 1899, selling off his entire stock at auction, but his latter years were a challenge as he and his wife lived in straitened circumstances. Scotland’s top cricketers played a benefit match in 1909 which brought some comfort but he died the following year in Longmore Hospital after a long illness.
   Percival King deserves to be remembered as a sporting pioneer whose efforts enabled a generation of Scottish sportsmen to play the games they loved, and whose legacy lives on in the competitions he helped to establish.

​ 
Percival King
Born 9 December 1835 in Stockwell, Surrey.
Died 29 October 1910 in Edinburgh.

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.
​

When writing the book 1824: The World’s First Foot-Ball Club, we took a close look at the lengthy pre-history of football in Edinburgh. This led to the rediscovery of some remarkable seventeenth century drawings which include what is probably the earliest illustration of football goalposts yet discovered – not to mention the oldest picture of football in Scotland.
   It was drawn by Archibald Flint, a student who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1673. He doodled extensively in the margins of his lecture notes (known as dictates) and on the title pages of two surviving volumes are four little pen sketches which show men – presumably students – taking part in sport. They depict billiards, tennis, football and target archery.
   The importance of these drawings was first recognised by Charles Pringle Finlayson, who was keeper of manuscripts at Edinburgh University library. He wrote a lengthy analysis in the Scottish Historical Review, published in 1958, but his paper has been largely forgotten and deserves to be better known among sports historians.

The football scene is fascinating, with two men in hats kicking a ball between a curious set of three-barred goal posts. Finlayson speculates that the bars may be associated with some kind of scoring differential, depending on which bit of the goal the ball crosses. Alternatively, he says, they might relate to the Edinburgh field where football was played, Gallowgreen, because of their similarity to the shape of the gallows.
   Finlayson also notes that the Latin translation of one of James VI’s works calls football 'pila Scotica quae pede propellitur' (a Scottish ball which is propelled by the foot).
   The drawings confirm that sport of various kinds had became respectable in late 17th century Scotland, when attitudes relaxed again after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It was not just football: emerging from years of negativity by the Kirk and the civic authorities, golfers started to knock balls around Bruntsfield and Leith Links, horse racing began again on Leith Shore and Musselburgh, and bowling greens were laid out in the city by landowners on their estates.
Archery was strengthened by the founding in Edinburgh of the Royal Company of Archers in 1676, the nation's first sporting society. From Alexander Flint’s drawings we can deduce that tennis was popular – there was a tennis court at the Abbey of Holyroodhouse – and so was billiards.

Students were at the forefront of this activity, and around the same time, there is an account of the money spent by Alexander Heriot, who was perhaps a factor for the Gilmour household, on behalf of Alexander Gilmour of Craigmillar (just south of Edinburgh), reflecting what the young man about town needed in 1671-3: 'A great comb to his periwig, half a dozen golf balls, a football at fastern's even'.
Golf was also considered a suitable game for a student of that era, as Thomas Kincaid, an Edinburgh surgeon’s son, reveals in his diary for 1687-88. Aged about 26 years old, he played golf on Bruntsfield Links, 'near the Tounis College', and on Leith Links. Kincaid went on to describe 'the only way of playing at the Golve', giving instruction on how to adopt the correct stance and hit the ball, and elsewhere in his diary he outlined how golf clubs were made. He also developed a talent for archery and went on to be an active member of the Royal Company of Archers, becoming just the third winner of the Edinburgh Arrow in 1711.
 It all goes to show that football games, archery butts, tennis courts and billiard tables were an accepted part of the landscape for Edinburgh gentlemen towards the end of the 17th century. The enthusiasm of the university authorities for some of these sports appears to have waned in the following century, before John Hope and his friends revived football as a respectable pastime when they founded their club in 1824.
 
With thanks for the Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library, for rephotographing Archibald Flint's dictates, and giving permission for reproduction.
 
CP Finlayson's article was entitled: Illustrations of Games by a Seventeenth Century Edinburgh Student. The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 37, No. 123, Part 1 (April 1958), pp. 1-10.

One of the most important developments in football in the 19th century was the creation of rules, a common code by which all the players had to abide.
   Pictured above is the world's earliest known set of football rules, written by John Hope in Edinburgh in 1833 to guide the members of his Foot-Ball Club which had been established in 1824. This crucial document now resides in the National Records of Scotland, and is a priceless piece of footballing history.
   It is worth examining why Hope felt it necessary to lay down the rules in writing, and what they implied for the players.
   By 1833 the club had been going for nine years, it was buoyant and attracting new recruits from a variety of backgrounds and schools. Therefore many of the players may not have had the implicit understanding of how to play and how to behave that former High School boys would have had.
   The club's membership records indicate that football games involved up to 40 men playing at the same time, wearing caps to distinguish sides. Their football was of a robust and healthy nature, played within a defined area on rough grass fields in summer and winter. All games were played within the club membership as there simply was no other club with which to play competitive matches.
   Their football was clearly a competitive game with a code of behaviour to avoid serious injury - the members were young men who needed to be able to walk to work or study the next morning. Their game had progressed from the schoolboy pastime of the High School Yards, and Hope probably felt he needed to establish some guidelines. His rules therefore appear to mark a step on football's evolutionary path from its often violent origins in the folk games of a less sophisticated age to the more sanitised, codified form which emerged in the 1850s. Hope wrote in his own hand:

1. Single soled shoes, no iron
2. No tripping
3. Ball to pass imaginary line
4. A free kick if ball out of bounds
5. Pushing is allowed. Holding not illegal
6. Allow the ball to be lifted between fields

Underneath, he noted the attributes of the game:
Aff [affirmative] Fun, air, exercise
Neg [negative] No tripping

These rules are brief, and leave much to the imagination, but they are highly significant not just in what they say, but what they do not say. In many respects this is similar to the early editions of Rugby School's laws in the 1840s, which stated they were to be regarded 'rather as a set of decisions on certain disputed points in football, than as containing all the Laws of the Game, which are too well known to render any explanation necessary.'

   Hope's first two rules indicate a concern for safety and a desire to avoid injury. Therefore the players could be robust (a founding member wrote of 'such kicking of shins') so there was clearly a risk of being kicked, but they were expected to avoid hurting their opponents unnecessarily. It seems to have worked, as there are no mentions anywhere in the correspondence or club records of serious injury.
   Rules three and four introduce the concept of a method of scoring. The game needed winners and losers so a goal (or 'hail') was scored when the ball passed over the 'imaginary line', and we know from the financial records that there were painted hail sticks which operated as goalposts. Similarly, to stop the play wandering off into the distance, this imaginary line extended right round the pitch; so, if the ball went beyond the agreed boundary it would be retrieved and kicked back into play.
   Rule five is interesting as it permits an element of physical aggression, allowing players to push and hold their opponents (as rugby allows to this day within defined circumstances such as tackling and scrums). However, pushing and holding are a long way from the 'no holds barred' approach of traditional folk football.
   The final rule is harder to analyse, particularly as this is the only rule that Hope redrafted. He crossed out some words and perhaps had difficulty in condensing accepted practice into a short sentence. It appears to mean that the only time the ball could be lifted, i.e. picked up or handled, was when it was out of play 'between fields'. If that interpretation is correct it confirms that this was a forerunner to the non-handling code that ultimately became association football.
   While Hope's football rules are brief and open to interpretation, it has to be remembered he was the first to attempt the task. This was ​decades before the versions created by footballers at Cambridge (1848), Sheffield (1858), the Football Association (1863) and several prominent schools. He was a man ahead of his time.

The story of The World's First Foot-Ball Club is on sale now, price £11.99.

In sport there has to be a first time for everything, and the earliest known football medal dates from 1851, this beautiful silver prize which was presented by Edinburgh University students to the soldiers of the 93rd Regiment.
   Engraved with a detailed action scene of soldiers in kilts challenging for a ball against students in ordinary outdoor clothes, on the other side it has the match details. This silver medal provides an indisputable record of a competitive game of football taking place, and is of exceptional historical value as the sport's first trophy, in the sense that it was a prize for the winners.

How did it all come about? There was already a tradition of organised football in Edinburgh, where John Hope had founded his Foot-Ball Club in 1824 and ran it into the 1840s. There was then a ten year gap before a flurry of football match reports were published, somewhat incongruously in the London-based Bell's Life rather than the Scottish newspapers.
   The first of these related to a momentous game played on 25 January 1851 'in presence of a vast multitude' in the Queen’s Park (next to Holyrood Palace). It was contested 20-a-side between the Edinburgh University Foot Ball Club and the 93rd Regiment of Foot (later to become the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), who were garrisoned at Edinburgh Castle. The reporter gushed: 'The students looked all confidence and appeared active, fine, athletic fellows. The Highlanders took their places coolly but with resolute determination, arranging themselves in a manner which displayed excellent training.'
   The teams kicked off at half past two for the best of five games (goals), with ends changed each time a goal was scored, and two hours later the soldiers were declared the winners by a convincing 3-0 margin.
   What made this contest particularly noteworthy is that the teams had agreed beforehand that the losers would present the winners with a medal – originally meant to be gold, but in the event only silver. It was commissioned from the silversmith James Mackay, whose son Robert had been a member of John Hope's Foot-Ball Club from 1824-26; he may have been able to advise his father on the design. This priceless object is now on display in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders' regimental museum in Stirling Castle.
   The soldiers were no strangers to football. The previous month they had played a match at Spark's Cricket Ground in Grove Crescent, reported in the press, and that helped to provide clues to the identity of the winning captain. He was Lieutenant William Donald Macdonald, born in 1827 in Strathmartine, Angus and who joined the regiment in 1847 as Ensign. He had a much-decorated military career in the Crimea, China and the Indian Mutiny, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he died of cholera in India in 1862.

Much to my delight, I found that Edinburgh University Library holds his manuscript account of a 'Pedestrian tour round the west coast of Scotland in 1849' together with the above carte-de-visite photo of Lieut-Col Macdonald in his hunting clothes. This picture of the first prize-winning football captain has never been published before.
   While the medal match was important, the students were not done yet. A month later Bell's Life published a report headed 'University of Edinburgh Foot Ball Club’' of a 24-a-side match between 'the Scotch and English members composing this club'. I believe this is the first known example of a football match of any kind being played according to nationality.
   The game started at two, the teams identified 'on the Scotch side by a green badge, and on the English by a red', and it was agreed that they would play for three hours. The Scots scored first with 'a lucky hit', then the English scored twice and were declared winners when five o'clock struck. The writer counted 500 spectators, named seven players from each side and two umpires, and gave us one of the most complete football reports of its day.
   Although the participants were identified only by their surnames, it is possible to work out who some of them were. The English (Russell, Broadbent, Cobbold, Aldridge, Frost, Jones and Cousens) all appear to have been medical students, including William Henry Broadbent (1829-61) of Cheshire, Thomas Spencer Cobbold (1828-86) of Ipswich, and one of two Aldridge brothers from Hampshire.
   The Scots (Nasmyth, Smyth, Currie, Frazer, Dickson, Bone and Christison) also featured future doctors such as John Barclay Nasmyth (1832-55) and David Christison (1830-1912), both of Edinburgh, and one of three Bone brothers from Barbados. The team also included James Currie (1828-86), a Divinity student, and Archibald Dickson (1829-95) of Hawick who was studying Law. The two umpires were probably Robert Paterson, a Law student from Ayrshire, and James Hood Wilson, later a Free Church minister.
   The final report in Bell's Life that spring was of a match played on Leith Links on 21 March 1851, between 'the members of the Edinburgh University club and the gentlemen attending the Veterinary College'. It was won 2-0 by the former after two hours, and the writer noted that 'the arrangement of the forces from the University was decidedly superior, and throughout their play was of a much higher order. This is mainly attributable to the good practice the side has been in since the commencement of their season.'
   He makes reference to a proposed match between the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, 'the first time the rival clubs have competed together', but unfortunately no report of this match has been found, if indeed it took place.
   Thanks to these anonymous articles in 1851, we know that Edinburgh University Football Club was organised, practised regularly and had a programme of fixtures. The soldiers of the 93rd also clearly enjoyed their sport and even after they left Edinburgh for a posting at Weedon Barracks in Northamptonshire they held Highland Games which concluded with a game of football.
   Although there are no further accounts of the Edinburgh students playing football until the end of the decade, that may simply be due to a lack of newspaper coverage. The clear inference from all of this, notably the presentation of the first medal and the number of detailed reports, is that football was played more widely in the 1850s than is generally believed. Long before it was codified into the modern game, football was a popular pastime in Edinburgh.

The well-known story of how rugby came to Scotland is that the Crombie brothers, Alexander and Francis, brought the rulebook with them when they came to Edinburgh in 1854 having learned the game at Durham Grammar School. Rugby rules were adopted by the Edinburgh Academy and soon followed by other city schools.
   What intrigued me was, why had the Crombies been in Durham in the first place? The Crombie family had been living in Edinburgh for over ten years by this time.
   In fact, it was all due to a shameless charlatan of a schoolteacher - a fascinating example of how unconnected events can lead to an unexpected outcome.
   Alexander and Francis were born in 1836 and 1838 respectively at Thornton Castle, the family seat, then lived in Kent with their lawyer father (also called Alexander) before they all settled in Edinburgh New Town around 1843.
   In 1847, when they were aged 10 and 9, both boys went to Merchiston Castle School on the outskirts of Edinburgh. They probably played football here, as the school had a playing field directly opposite. But more importantly they were taught by a charismatic teacher called Edward Humphreys.
   In 1850, Humphreys left Merchiston to set up his own private school, Salisbury House in Newington, and the Crombie boys followed him there. They boarded, despite the family home being so close, and did well, judging by the number of prizes they won.
   Then early in 1852, out of the blue, Humphreys was appointed as headmaster of Cheltenham Grammar School (now known as Pate's). With little regard for his existing pupils, he closed his school in Edinburgh immediately, and took up his new post.
   This left parents and pupils in the lurch, and Alexander Crombie senior had to find a new school for his two boys in a hurry. For whatever reason, he chose Durham and they enrolled there in March 1852.
   Durham Grammar had recently taken up Rugby rules for school football, and therefore the brothers learned to play football that way. Alexander stayed until December 1853, while Francis remained until the autumn of 1854 when he came home to complete his education at Edinburgh Academy.

He was in the right place at the right time. 1854 was also the year when Edinburgh Academy opened its new sports field at Raeburn Place, and the little booklet of rules from Durham gave a new structure and purpose to the game which Edinburgh schoolboys had played for generations. In his two years there Francis was appointed as the school’s first ever Captain of Football which recognised not just his sporting prowess, but his understanding of the game.
   By the end of the decade, the Rugby code had gained widespread popularity. Not until 1867 was the non-handling association football taken up by Queen’s Park in Glasgow, and the association game did not reach Edinburgh until 1873.
   Meanwhile, elder brother Alexander matriculated at Edinburgh University to study Law, and while there he helped to found the Academical Football Club early in 1858, becoming its first captain.
   The Crombie brothers are rightly credited with introducing Rugby football to Scotland, but what is particularly interesting is the back story to Mr Humphreys, the disappearing teacher. He was a fake academic and a financial fraud.
   Edward Rupert Humphreys was born in Dublin in 1820, and went to Heversham School in Westmorland before matriculating at Cambridge University in 1836 to study medicine. He did not graduate and in 1838 was listed as an insolvent debtor.
   He found a teaching post near Manchester, where he married in 1841, but two years later was declared insolvent for a second time. His response was to run away and somehow he landed a job as head master of a school on Prince Edward Island, in what is now Canada.
   In four years there, during which his first wife died and he remarried, Humphreys did such a good job at reinventing himself that in 1848 he was able to return to Britain as Head Classical and English master at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh. What is more, he acquired credibility by writing textbooks, becoming a Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland, and crowned it all in 1850 by persuading both Edinburgh and Aberdeen Universities to give him honorary degrees.
   What they based their decisions on is not recorded but he could now legitimately describe himself as Reverend Dr Humphreys LLD. He was, to all intents and purposes, an outstanding teacher and scholar, and on that basis, he left Merchiston in 1850 and set up his own school across the city in Salisbury Place.

The Crombies’ father must have been impressed by Humphreys’s plausibility as he sent both of his boys to board there. And a grateful Humphreys returned the compliment, naming his next son Alexander Crombie Humphreys. In the light of subsequent events, it is more than possible that Crombie had been persuaded to lend Humphreys money to get the school going.
   However, although the school promised much it seems to have struggled as there were constant adverts in the local papers for new recruits. Hence when Cheltenham Grammar School advertised for a new head, Humphreys had no qualms about applying and abandoning his own school in the middle of the session.
   Cheltenham had been flagging for years and in 1852 he set about restoring the school’s fortunes with gusto. He introduced science to the curriculum – for which he was personally thanked by Prince Albert – increased the school roll, was popular with parents and governors, and held in such high regard that even when he was successfully prosecuted for flogging a boy, he was applauded on his return to school.
   However, he borrowed heavily and ran up extensive debts, reported to have reached £26,000. In 1859, for the third time, he was declared insolvent in the London Gazette and his response, yet again, was to disappear across the Atlantic. If that was not bad enough, he scandalised the town by doing so with the wife of one of the school governors (who was also one of his debtors), each of them abandoning a large family. The newspapers were full of the affair, and although a tearful Emily Comyn came home a couple of months later, Humphreys never returned. He would have faced a substantial claim for damages had he done so.
   Yet, astonishingly, he reinvented himself in Boston where carried on teaching as if nothing had happened. In those pre-internet days, it is not as if anyone could google him. He was appointed Principal of South End Collegiate School, became a naturalised American, and even persuaded his wife Margaret and six children to join him there. Perhaps anything was better than the scorn they faced in Cheltenham.
   Humphreys escaped scandal to such an extent that when he died in 1893 the Gloucester Journal described the former headmaster as ‘a distinguished classical scholar’ without any reference to his murky past. Humphreys was undoubtedly a charlatan, but without his shameless behaviour the history of Scottish sport might have been very different.
   
As a postscript, the son named after the rugby-playing family, Alexander Crombie Humphreys (1851-1927), went on to have a legitimately brilliant academic career, rising to be president of the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and is known as the father of engineering economics.