Scottish football is, understandably, proud of the 'Scotch professors' who took the passing game to England and beyond in the pioneering days.
​   Well known names include JJ Lang and Peter Andrews who went to Sheffield in 1876, Fergie Suter and Jimmy Love moved from Partick to Darwen in 1878, the brothers Robert and James Smith played for Scotland in the 1872 international while with South Norwood, and Hugh McIntyre who first played for Blackburn Rovers in 1879.
   What is not well known is that several English footballers went in the opposite direction and played for Scottish clubs. They all came north to work or study, and there is no suggestion that they were paid to play, but they certainly had an impact on the game here. I have identified five English players in the 1870s and there may well be more.
   The most influential, although he would not have realised it at the time, was William Kirkham. The man from Darwen came to Glasgow to work, was a founding member of Partick FC in 1875, and was the catalyst for the close relationship between Darwen and Partick.
   He played for Partick for two years before going home and the outcome of that, as I have previously detailed, was the decision by Jimmy Love and Fergie Suter to head south in 1878. When Darwen faced Old Etonians in the FA Cup later that season, Kirkham's experience of Scottish football could be added to that of Love and Suter.

Kirkham was not the first Englishman in Scottish football, however. From 1874-78, James Waghorn was a key player for Alexandra Athletic, based in Dennistoun. Born in Essex, he came to Glasgow in the 1860s when his father found work on the railways and took up football, playing for the Kennyhill Park club from 1874-78.
   Alexandra Athletic, like Partick, was one of the pioneers of cross-border football and in 1876 played the first of a series of matches against Sheffield Albion, home and away. Waghorn was not only a club official, he was team captain. His elder brother George also played for the team in some early matches.

James Waghorn had an interesting career after he left Glasgow. He spent a few years in London, where he played rugby for the Reindeer club, then emigrated to Canada where he was founding editor of the highly successful Waghorn's Guides. He died in Vancouver in 1942.

One well-established English player to come to Scotland was Godfrey Turner. Born in Slough in 1854, he played football regularly in the early 1870s for Uxbridge, Windsor Home Park and Swifts. With Swifts his team took Old Etonians to two replays in an FA Cup tie, he was good enough to be selected for an England trial in 1875, and the following year he was England's umpire in the international match against Scotland at Partick.
   In 1877 he started studying science at Edinburgh University, and helped to found a football club with his fellow students. In fact, he captained the University in their first ever match in February 1878, against Glasgow University.

Turner continued to represent the University until he graduated in 1880 when he went into business in Liverpool. He played football for several more years, initially for Bootle, with one appearance for Everton, then in 1882 he founded Liverpool Ramblers where he was team captain. He also captained the Liverpool & District Select and in 1886 he even played for the famous Corinthians. Meanwhile he had a successful brewing business, and remained in Liverpool until his death in 1936.

Another high profile name who made a major impact was Thomas Britten, who was part of the famous multi-cultural Parkgrove team alongside Andrew Watson, Tommy Marten and Robert Walker.
   Britten is something of an enigma. He was born in the village of Byton in Herefordshire, just a couple of miles from the border with Wales, and his birth was registered in Presteign which straddled the border.
   This appears to have qualified him to play for Wales and he was capped twice, in 1878 and 1880, as well as being selected several other times. However, he also came very close to playing for England and was named as a reserve in the team to face Scotland in 1879.
   Educated at Doncaster Grammar School, he came to Glasgow in 1874 to undertake an apprenticeship in engineering and worked in Govan and Linthouse for four years. He joined Parkgrove FC and was in such fine form in 1877-78 that he was selected for Glasgow in the annual match against Sheffield, scoring one of the goals in a 4-2 victory. A few weeks later he made his Wales debut at Hampden.
   On leaving Glasgow he worked in Grantham, and later in Liverpool and London. He was much in demand from clubs including Grantham, Bootle and Brentwood, and was also selected for representative teams including the South, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and London. Wales picked him against England in 1883 and 1887 but each time he called off.
   Britten emigrated in 1887 to Johannesburg, where he won the Transvaal Cup with Wanderers. He remained in South Africa as a mechanical engineer in the gold mining industry, and died there in 1910.
   These brief summaries of the stories of Kirkham, the Waghorn brothers, Turner and Britten show clearly that football skills were transferred in both directions between England and Scotland in the 1870s. Before the first glimmer of professionalism, players moved for work or study and this must have helped to spread tactics and ideas.

Everything changed in the following decade which saw a flood of 'Scotch professors' heading south, but there was one more example of the early relationship between Partick and Darwen. Two Darwen players, James Gledhill and John Holden, both came to Scotland to study medicine in the 1880s. Gledhill is thought to have played for Partick under an assumed name, but Holden made a considerable impact in four years at Edinburgh University, and was selected for Edinburgh nine times, at least one of them as captain. 

When Scotland meets England, patriotism comes to the fore, so it would take a strong personality for a Scot to wear an English jersey - yet several Scots have indeed played for the 'auld enemy' over the years. Some were due to accidents of birth or emergencies, others are harder to explain. 

Joe Baker spent just six weeks in Liverpool, where he was born in 1940 to Scottish parents, but despite his upbringing in Wishaw, Lanarkshire and a strong Scottish accent, it was enough to qualify him irrevocably for England. In the 1959-60 season, when he scored no less than 42 goals for Hibernian, he became the first player to be selected from a team outside England and made a scoring debut against Northern Ireland. It was the first of nine England caps. He was not the only one of his family to have an unusual international career - his elder brother Gerry was born in New York and played for USA.
   You have to go back to the nineteenth century for more examples of Scots being selected for England. Although one was born in England due to his father’s military posting, the others had no English heritage apart from their residence.

John Goodall was born in 1863 in London where his father, a corporal in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was serving, but when his father died he moved to Kilmarnock as a boy (via Belfast where his brother Archie, a future Ireland cap, was born). Brought up in Ayrshire, he played for local clubs until moving south in 1883. After initially playing for Great Lever in Bolton, he went on to a glittering career with Preston North End and Derby County, and scored 12 goals in 14 appearances for England.
   Stuart Macrae, despite his fine Scottish name, won five caps for England in 1883-84. He was a son of Duncan Macrae of Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute, but was born in 1855 in Bengal, where his father was serving in the Indian Army. Stuart was sent back to Scotland for his education at The Edinburgh Academy, where he was captain of the school rugby team in 1872-73, and later moved south to Newark where he married into a brewing family. There, having switched to association rules, he played for Notts County and was duly capped by England. He also introduced golf to the town and was a decent cricketer for Gentlemen of Nottinghamshire.

Two Scots played against Scotland in the same match for England in 1877. William Lindsay was born in 1847 in Benares, India where his Dundee-born father was serving with the Bengal Native Infantry; his grandfather had been Provost of Dundee. After his parents were killed in the Indian Mutiny, he was educated at Winchester before entering the civil service. He won the FA Cup three times with Wanderers, and played first class cricket for Surrey, but despite representing Scotland in all five of the unofficial internationals of 1870-72, he was chosen once for England.
   Alongside him in the 1877 team was the only England player ever to have been actually born in Scotland. John Bain was born in Bothwell, Lanarkshire in 1854 to Scottish parents, but the family moved south when he was about ten. He went to Westminster College and Oxford University, where he won his blue at football in 1875, and earned a cap two years later. In the same month he played in the FA Cup final for Oxford – in opposition to William Lindsay.

And finally, two Scots were cajoled at short notice into playing for England during unofficial wartime matches. Jimmy McMullan of Partick Thistle, who would go on to captain the Wembley Wizards, played for England against Scotland in a charity match at Celtic Park on 8 June 1918.  Then on 2 December 1939, when two England players heading for Newcastle were involved in a car crash, the home team needed urgent replacements. One of them was Tommy Pearson, Newcastle United’s Scottish outside left. He later won two Scotland caps in 1947.

When England meet Scotland on 10 June there will be intensive, round-the-clock preparation, with every movement of the players planned and monitored. They are thorough professionals, their focus entirely on the match. They will fly into Glasgow the day before and leave immediately afterwards.
   It wasn’t always like that, though. We’ve been taking a dip into the archives to see how the players used to fill their time before the big match, and have found some surprising diversions which kept them occupied.
   First, Douglas Gorman tells the story of a magnificent signed sheet from the Turnberrry Lighthouse, then Andy Mitchell relates a few anecdotes of past visits.

When the England international team alighted from their train at Mauchline in Ayrshire on Thursday 13 April 1939 they were met by driving wind and rain, and a warning from the stationmaster that they would face 'an awfu licking' at Hampden Park on the Saturday.
   As they quickly transferred to a motor bus, Stanley Rous, FA Secretary, retorted 'We have a grand team and I am confident that we will win' and they travelled the twenty miles to their pre-match base at the Turnberry Hotel on the Ayrshire coast.  Tom Whittaker of Arsenal, trainer to the team, reported that his eleven was fighting fit. At this time the Football Association did not, and indeed would not, appoint a manager for its international team but Rous understood the need for proper preparation and probably worked with Whittaker to get the team together for a full day before the game. In earlier years some England teams had simply arrived in Glasgow on the Friday night.
   However, their preparation did not extend to packing a spare kit. The rain fell so heavily on Saturday that a drenched team needed to change their shirts, and had to borrow replacements from Queen's Park for the second half.
   This was one of the first all-ticket matches at Hampden Park and apparently when SFA President Douglas Bowie travelled from Ayr to welcome the visitors at Turnberry his first question to Will Cuff, Everton Chairman and FA Vice President, was did he have any tickets to spare!
 On the Friday the English team had the opportunity to relax and paid a visit to the Turnberry Lighthouse. We know this as eleven members of the party signed the visitors’ book, including some of the most famous names in English football: Stanley Matthews, Tommy Lawton, Stan Cullis, Eddie Hapgood among them. Also on the page are Tom Whittaker, Frank Broome (a travelling reserve), Vic Woodley, Joe Mercer, Len Goulden, Ken Willingham and Bill Morris.
 Not all the players signed, and perhaps they did not go: the signatures of Willie Hall, Pat Beasley (a late substitute for Eric Brook of Manchester City), Wilf Copping (the other reserve) and Stanley Rous do not appear.  Hall was a keen golfer so that may explain his absence, while Rous would have had administrative details to attend to, and indeed had to provide a late substitute for a talk he was due to give to Glasgow referees.
 Curiously, Stanley Matthews signed the visitors' book for a second time when he returned, this time with his family, in 1947.
   The Turnberry Lighthouse visitors’ book is preserved in the Northern Lighthouse Board archive, which is now held at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh. The former keepers’ accommodation is now a luxury retreat in the Trump empire, which would take a footballer’s salary to hire at a reported £7,000 a night, while the lighthouse itself remains an important aid to navigation in the Firth of Clyde.

While we tend to think of the cross-border invasion being a Tartan Army thing, it also used to happen in the opposition direction.
   In 1939, over 40,000 England supporters reportedly travelled to the match, with the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) running 33 special trains for 16,000 supporters, including 600 who 'invaded' Ardrossan early on Saturday morning on two excursions organised by Sheffield and Manchester newspapers.
   Each train had two kitchens which served supper on departure, breakfast on arrival at Ardrossan and, after a stroll around the town, lunch en route to King’s Park station near Hampden. It was all rounded off by dinner on the return journey. The on-board darts competition to pass the time seemed a risky endeavour!
   They squeezed into a packed Hampden and had an outing to remember, as England bounced back from a half-time deficit to win the match through Tommy Lawton’s late header. At the time it was a rare triumph for the visitors, but it would be 1962 before the next Scotland win at Hampden over the old enemy.

Saturday 15 April 1939
Hampden Park, Glasgow (149,269)
Scotland 1 (Dougal 20), England 2 (Beasley 67, Lawton 88).
Scotland: Jerry Dawson (Rangers); Jimmy Carabine (Third Lanark) and George Cummings (Aston Villa); Bill Shankly (Preston North End), Bobby Baxter (captain, Middlesbrough) and Sandy McNab (West Bromwich Albion); Alex McSpadyen (Partick Thistle), Tommy Walker (Heart of Midlothian), Jimmy Dougal (Preston North End), Alex Venters (Rangers) and Jackie Milne (Middlesbrough).
England: Vic Woodley (Chelsea); Bill Morris (Wolverhampton Wanderers) and Eddie Hapgood (captain, Arsenal); Ken Willingham (Huddersfield Town), Stan Cullis (Wolverhampton Wanderers) and Joe Mercer (Everton);  Stanley Matthews (Stoke City), Willie Hall (Tottenham Hotspur), Tommy Lawton (Everton), Len Goulden (West Ham United) and Pat Beasley (Huddersfield Town).
Referee: William R Hamilton (Belfast)

The Ayrshire coast remained a popular training base, for both countries, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The English generally stayed at Troon, sometimes arriving as early as Wednesday evening, and trained at Somerset Park in Ayr. The Scotland team base was not far away at the Marine Hotel in Largs, with training sessions at the local junior team’s Barrfield Park.

It reflects an era when internationals were more relaxed, but in the very early days, the England team barely had time to sample the Scottish air. This itinerary from 1906 show that the players travelled on the Friday, catching a train at their nearest suitable station, either on the east or west coast, joining forces at Carlisle, then on to Glasgow. They had afternoon tea in the saloon coach and arrived at Glasgow Central at 6.15pm, with dinner served in the St Enoch Hotel at 7pm prompt.
   There was no time to hang around. The Saturday schedule included lunch at 12.30, departure from the hotel at 2.30, kick-off at 3.30, and the post-match dinner back at the hotel at 6.30. The train south departed Glasgow Central just after 9pm, and dropped people off through the night at various stations en route to London where it arrived at 6.30 am. For those fearful a sleepless night, 'Arrangements can be made for sleeping accommodation to Euston if required, and at the Park Hotel, Preston, for those members who cannot reach home.'
   The next visit in 1908 saw a complete change of pace. The England team stayed at Dunblane Hydro, where former Scotland international Robert Christie (now a local architect) was delegated to look after them and was ‘assiduous in seeing to their comfort and fraternising with them.’ His programme for the guests included a visit to Dunblane Cathedral, where the players and officials were entertained by an organ recital. Changed days! But they must have enjoyed it as the team returned to Dunblane in 1910.

On occasion, the players even socialised together. In 1927, the Sunday Post took the above photo of the Scotland and England players over a billiards table.
   It was not just the players who enjoyed spending time in Scotland. We often think of the Tartan Army excursions down south, but it was the same in the other direction. The mass invasion by visiting England fans started early in the century and continued long after the War. In 1956, for example, there were 16 special trains from England, not to mention 11 plane-loads from London and Birmingham and hundreds of buses.
   As a final comment, have a read of my article about the Scots who felt at home in London, published in the Scotsman in August 2013: http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/scots-footballers-history-with-london-1-3039856

by Andy Mitchell

The discovery of documents signed by the man who gave his name to Lord’s Cricket Ground has shed new light on early cricket.
   The fascinating papers, found in Edinburgh, contain previously unknown material from over two hundred years ago signed by Thomas Lord, one of the most important figures in the history of English sport.
   Lord was an entrepreneur who established and managed a private cricket ground in London, where in 1787 the Marylebone Cricket Club (the MCC) was founded. It was effectively the governing body of the game but as the club’s records were lost in a disastrous fire in 1825 there are few surviving records of those early years, let alone examples of Lord’s signature. 

However, tucked away in a bundle of bills in the Buccleuch family archive, deposited at the National Records of Scotland, I discovered a series of receipts all signed by Thomas Lord. They relate to the Earl of Dalkeith, who became the fourth Duke of Buccleuch when he succeeded to his father’s title in 1812. The Buccleuchs are descended from the Duke of Monmouth - the illegitimate son of Charles II who tried to seize the British crown in 1685 –  and the family remains one of Britain’s largest private landowners.
   The treasure trove records the young Earl’s membership of the MCC and the expenses he incurred. In 1797, aged 25 and already a Member of Parliament, he joined the club and paid a subscription of two guineas. This was acknowledged by Lord:
 
Rec’d May 2nd 1797 of Earl Dalkeith, two guineas for his subscription to the Marylebone Cricket Club for this year. Thos Lord.

The Earl, who had learned to play cricket at Eton, took up his membership with gusto and that month he played in two matches at Lord’s Ground which are considered as ‘first class’. He scored ten runs In his first innings for Charles Lennox’s XI, which also featured Thomas Lord, and just one run in the second. A couple of days later, he remained in Lennox’s team but was bowled in both innings by Lord, who had switched to the Earl of Winchilsea’s XI.
   The second receipt from a year later is much more expansive, on two pages. The cover sheet reads:
 
Rec’d April 12th 1798 of the Earl Dalkeith, Seven pounds eight and six pence, for bill del’d. Thos Lord.  £7-8-6.

​This large sum, the equivalent of many thousands of pounds today, is broken down on a second piece of paper which specifies that on 9 June 1797 the Earl bought from Thomas Lord three ‘batts’ for 15 shillings, three balls for 18 shillings and one ‘sett of stumps’ for ten shillings and sixpence. 

Amazingly, two of the Earl’s bats have survived and are now in the collection at Lord’s Museum, very likely the same ones he purchased that year.
   To this was added four guineas for a match, and one guinea as a subscription to Nyren’s widow. This was a reference to the death in April 1797 of Richard Nyren, one of the game’s most prominent pioneers with the Hambledon club. He was clearly still held in high esteem despite having retired from cricket several years earlier and his widow Frances, whom he had married in 1758, was no doubt helped by the payments from club members as she lived on into her nineties with their son John, who made his name as a cricketing author.
   The final receipt was issued three years later and indicates that, while the Earl may have been an avid cricketer, he was not so adept at paying his bills. It covers three seasons’ membership of the MCC:
 
Rec’d March 12 1801, six guineas of Earl Dalkeith for his sub’n to the Cricket Club for the years 1798, 99 & 1800, & half a guinea lent at Swaffham.  Thos Lord.  £6-16-6

The final element is intriguing. Why did Thomas Lord lend the Earl of Dalkeith half a guinea? It was probably a reference to a week of cricket in July 1797 at Swaffham in Norfolk. The two men played on opposing sides as Earl of Winchilsea’s XI again took on Charles Lennox’s XI, a couple of days after a grand match between an all-England eleven and 33 men of Norfolk for stakes of a thousand guineas to the winners. Newspaper reports indicated that a further £10,000 changed hands in betting on the day, so it can be guessed that the Earl lost a bet and, finding himself a bit short, had to lean on his friend to help him out. If this is correct, it took four years for Lord to get his money back!
   That appears to be the end of the Earl’s active involvement in cricket, although he continued to be a keen sportsman in other fields. He was a member of the Royal Caledonian Hunt, a steward of Dumfries and Kelso Races, and Captain General of the Royal Company of Archers, the monarch’s bodyguard in Scotland which held regular archery contests. However, perhaps his greatest sporting legacy was to football, as in 1815 he acted as patron to the great Carterhaugh ball game on his estate in the Scottish borders. This is considered by many as the match which started football’s transition from disorganised mob game to the regulated sport we know today.  
   It was also his last sporting venture: in declining health, probably suffering from tuberculosis, he was sent by his physicians to Portugal to seek a warm weather cure. It was to no avail and he died there in 1817 within two months of his arrival, aged 46.
   Thomas Lord’s name lives on at the world-famous cricket ground, although it is not the same one that the Earl of Dalkeith frequented at Dorset Fields. That had to be vacated when it was sold for development and the present site – the third to carry his name – opened in 1814, since when it has remained the spiritual home of English cricket.
 
The Buccleuch archive is held at the National Records of Scotland, collection reference GD224.
 
Images reproduced by kind permission of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE.

Census returns are a key tool for football historians, but sometimes they can reveal more than simple ages and addresses. This sheet from the Queen's Hotel on Southport Promenade in 1911 reveals a fascinating story about England v Scotland and a bunch of footballers from Newcastle.
   The census was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911, which just happened to be the day after England drew 1-1 with Scotland at Goodison Park, in front of 38,000 fans. Jimmy Stewart gave England the lead in the 18th minute, while Scotland equalised a few minutes from the end through Alex Higgins, who had hit the post in the first half (and claimed the ball crossed the line).
   Both of the goalscorers were Newcastle United players, and instead of returning to the north-east they spent the weekend in Southport, where they were joined by Scotland players Wilfrid Low and Jimmy Lawrence, as well as Newcastle coach James Q McPherson, who was training the Scotland team for the game. Each of the guests in the Queen's Hotel was asked to complete the census return themselves, so an added bonus for historians is that the entries have the players' signatures.
   The obvious question is, why did the Newcastle contingent not return home after the match? The answer lies in the fixture schedule. On Saturday 1 April, their club missed them badly as Woolwich Arsenal came away from Tyneside with a 1-0 win. Then on Monday 3 April, Newcastle had a match at Sheffield United, so rather than taking two long journeys, the players simply enjoyed a weekend by the sea and travelled on Monday morning to Sheffield, where they took part in a 0-0 draw. In fact, they may have stayed away from home all week, as Newcastle also fulfilled league fixtures on Wednesday at Nottingham and Saturday at Bradford.
   It seems extraordinary from a modern perspective that a top division club could be asked to play a league match without four key players. And it does seem to have had a seriously negative effect on Newcastle United: the previous week they won an FA Cup semi-final, yet the loss to Arsenal kicked off a disastrous month of April in which they won just once and saw them lose the cup final. Arsenal, however, benefited from playing weakened opposition as their surprise victory at St James' Park was part of an 11-game unbeaten end-of-season run that took them well clear of relegation.

This is a book I would love to have written – imagine finding that one of your ancestors was a famous footballer, one of the greatest of his age, yet now almost forgotten. What a great opportunity to bring him back to life!
   That was the challenge facing Clive Nicholson, who is Fred Spiksley’s great great nephew. He has devoted much of the last 20 years to researching Spiksley’s biography, and has dug deep into conventional and less likely sources to uncover every aspect of his life story. A huge amount of work left no stone unturned and the resulting book is substantial and fascinating, extending to 390 pages packed with detail and accompanied by numerous photos, several of which are new to me. Another factor that makes this book different is that instead of launching into the publishing world himself, Clive brought on board professional writers and designers.
   Fred Spiksley (1870-1948) was an England international left winger whose most famous period came at Sheffield Wednesday, but whose career encompassed a wide range of clubs.
   Having written a biography of Arthur Kinnaird, I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to bring Victorian characters to life, and the authors do manage it very well for Spiksley, demonstrating an understandable fondness for his skills and forgiveness for his flaws. It turns out that Spiksley was not just a fine footballer of international class, who went on to an adventurous coaching career in several countries, he was also a compulsive gambler, a womaniser and possessed of a unpredictable temper.
   There are anecdotes galore as the authors provide an insight into the precarious world of football in the early professional era: the brutal tackles, the appalling conditions for players and spectators, the financial pressures and the shady characters.
   One of the reasons the book is interesting to a Scottish audience is the authors' claim that Fred Spiksley scored a hat trick for England against Scotland in 1893, which would have been the first. All the contemporary reports attributed the final goal to John Reynolds, but later on a number of observers, including Spiksley, claimed it for himself. The case for attributing the goal to Spiksley is not particularly well detailed in the book itself, but is outlined in great detail on their dedicated website, spiksley.com.
   Having read it through carefully, some of the background research is impressive but I have to say I am not convinced, although the arguments have been accepted by others, including the influential englandfootballonline site. It was only many years later that people started to claim that Spiksley had scored a third. The main justification for the 'error' is that the journalists' view of the match was obscured, but I find it hard to believe that the reporters from Sheffield, who knew Spiksley well, did not recognise him as the scorer, or did not quickly correct such an obvious error for a local readership. Especially if, as the authors say, 'Fred was bombarded by a horde of Scottish reporters once he left the sanctuary of the pavilion'. Did they not ask him?
   There is also the assertion that Spiksley was presented with a gold chain by the FA to mark his achievement. Again, there is no contemporary report of a presentation, nor an FA Council minute or note of expenditure in the accounts, and the chain is now lost.
   Ultimately, it is impossible to prove either way, but there are many similar instances in football history of stories arising years after the event which have no foundation in the truth. In fact, the authors inadvertently perpetuate another of these, writing that Jack Lyall, Sheffield Wednesday’s  goalkeeper, was 'picked to play for England only for it to be established that he had been born in Scotland' (page 262). Not true. There is no contemporary evidence to support this, and as far as I can gather this apocryphal story first emerged in Lyall's obituaries.
   Another criticism is that the book would have benefitted greatly from a rigorous editor. I know the authors had a difficult time getting the book into print as their deal with a publisher collapsed, but there are numerous formatting errors and text repetitions (eg several times it was a 'miracle that no one was killed' in a crowded stadium). The text also sometimes veers off at a tangent, as their enthusiasm for detail gets in the way of a good tale. For example, the fact that an England player had a telephone in 1893 is interesting but a potted history of the development of the telephone industry is superfluous; and a bizarre paragraph about Britain's waning colonial ambitions in the middle of a review of the 1896/97 season (page 197) is utterly irrelevant.
   Those quibbles apart, the book succeeds in bringing Fred Spiksley to life - notoriously difficult to achieve in football biographies - and deserves the wide audience it appears to be finding. It has benefitted from an innovative marketing campaign, using the whole toolbox of social media, personal appearances and interviews, publicity stunts and pestering journalists, which all conspired to boost sales, and it is now into a reprint; which teaches a lesson to other sports historians (like myself) who should really be better at publicity.
 
Flying Over an Olive Grove has a cover price of £19.99 hardback, and can be ordered post free from spiksley.com 

I've recently being researching the links between Partick and Darwen in the 1870s and 1880s, which include the movement south of James Love and Fergus Suter, thought to be the first professional players. I'll write that up soon but in the meantime I stumbled across a bizarre case of mistaken identity for one of the prominent Darwen players.
   In the spring of 1880, the FA announced they had selected T Brindle of Darwen at full back for England's matches against Scotland and Wales. He was originally only chosen to face Wales, but a withdrawal led to him playing both games. Darwen's first internationalist, he is pictured above, circled, in a Boy's Own Paper supplement of 1881.
   Newspapers around the country duly reported T Brindle in the team lines, and every reference book since then has gone with that name; in fact, a number of who's who publications, histories and wikipedia describe him as Thomas (or Tom) Brindle.
   The trouble is, Darwen did not have a player of that name.
   Darwen team lines for matches around that time consistently list W Brindle at full back, including the famous 1879 FA Cup ties against Old Etonians which brought him to national attention. He played for Lancashire, and in September 1880 W Brindle was elected captain of Darwen. He continued to play for the club until 1882.
   He was a top player, deserving of international recognition, and his name was actually William Brindle. He is a difficult man to research as there are few references to him in the press apart from match reports, but from what I can establish he was born in Darwen in 1853 and worked in a paper mill. In the 1871 and 1881 census he is living at Hollins Row in Darwen with his parents and younger sister but then disappears from census records. 
   However, I found a reference to him in the Paper Maker and British Paper Trade Journal of 1 September 1916, which says:
  
WILLIAM BRINDLE, who was so well known as one of the best full-backs in Association football, and who was a tower of strength to the Darwen Football Club, left the service of Messrs. Potter & Co., Hollins, a short time ago to seek his fortune in America as a paper maker, and has now taken full charge as manager of the Spring Lawn Mills, Pennsylvania. 

Whether he returned from Pennsylvania or settled there, I have been unable to establish and I invite other researchers to come up with some answers.
   The question has to be asked, how did the FA make the mistake in the first place? I can only guess that they were familiar with the Darwen club president Tom Hindle, a well-known football administrator and founder of the Lancashire FA, and somehow got the two mixed up. 
   It seems extraordinary that the mistake was never spotted and has been perpetuated for such a long time. Hopefully the records can now be amended, albeit 135 years late, to give William Brindle his place in English football history.

I recently came across an interesting little article in the Lancashire Telegraph about yet another Victorian football personality whose gravestone has been restored. Thomas Brown Mitchell is not well known but has quite a pedigree as the secretary-manager of Blackburn Rovers in the 1880s and 1890s when they won the FA Cup repeatedly, and also as the first professional manager of Arsenal.
   Like so many influential people in 19th century Lancashire football, he was a Scot. Born just north of Dumfries in 1843, Mitchell initially worked in Glasgow before travelling south in the 1860s, and married a local lass in Blackburn in 1866.
   At some stage, possibly in time for their 1884 FA Cup victory, he became involved with Blackburn Rovers and was with them as secretary-manager and club director for further triumphs in 1885, 1886, 1890 and 1891. He had a year as manager of Arsenal from 1897-98 before returning to Lancashire to live out his days; he died in Blackburn in 1921.  
   His football career is well described in the Arsenal History blog, but some aspects of his life are a bit murkier - not least the fact that he was a convicted fraudster before he became involved in football. Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive his criminal past has come to light with detailed reports of his trial and conviction for embezzlement early in 1880. He was a salesman (and former business partner) with William McKie & Co, wine and spirit merchants, and was accused of taking many hundreds of pounds although the court case was based on three specimen charges for much smaller amounts. Found guilty by a jury (which recommended mercy), 36-year-old Mitchell was sentenced to six months with hard labour.
   Evidently he served his time and carried on as though nothing had happened, as in the 1881 census he is back living with his family, described as a commercial traveller. 
   However, Mitchell was no stranger to the courts and in 1884 was found guilty of assault (fined 10 shillings). In 1888 he was implicated in a pheasant poaching case (case dropped), then again two years later Nottingham Forest brought an action in the High Court against him and other Blackburn directors for poaching players. 
   Somehow, Mitchell not only rose above his criminal past but did well for himself. He drew a salary of £14 from Blackburn Rovers and was described in the 1891 census as living on his own means, while ten years later he was a retired secretary of a football club. There are gaps in his life story but what remains without doubt is that he was an influential Scot in the early days of English professional football.

* And in case you are wondering, he is no relation to the author!
   

In the course of six momentous meetings in the autumn of 1863, the way association football should be played was determined by some of the leading players of the day. By the time the Laws of the Game were finally agreed by the Football Association on 8 December 1863, a total of 43 players had contributed to the debate. [Click here for a meeting-by-meeting record]
   The identities of all 43 founders of football are published here for the first time, after intensive research, and can now be given the recognition they deserve for creating the world’s greatest sport.
   A few are well known, but most are obscure individuals who did little in the game apart from their willingness to take part in this debate.  Three were chosen as office bearers at the first meeting: A Pember (President), EC Morley (Hon Secretary), FM Campbell (Hon Treasurer). Four additional committee members were added at the sixth meeting: GT Wawn, J Turner, HT Steward and JF Alcock.
   There are fascinating stories, triumphs and tragedies which can only be touched on here but provide plenty of material for further research. As revealed in my previous blogs, the influences on football ranged from Scotland to Australia, and while the players were solidly middle class they represented a wide variety of professions and backgrounds.
   A few question marks remain – some of which may never be resolved – and I would welcome any additional information. However, I am reasonably confident in my conclusions: for example, Blackheath had a player reported as H Poynder in meeting 6, but the only player of that surname at the club was Alfred Poynder.
   Forest School sent two representatives to meeting 5, listed as J Morgan and J Bouch, but both had left the school by then and the former’s full name was David John Morgan; but he did go on to play for Wanderers so was a player of some consequence. As an aside, Forest School make the claim that a player called H Tubb sat on the first FA committee, but in fact Henry Tubb was captain of football in 1867/68, and thereafter went to Rugby School.
   Most intriguingly, Wimbledon School’s representative at meetings 4, 5 and 6 was reported as AE Daltry in the press and in the handwritten minutes. With no corresponding name at the school, I suspect this is a mis-reading of AE Duthy; however there was a Dealtry at Wimbledon, but with initials HTC (Hugh Thornton Cunninghame).
   By the sixth meeting, 12 clubs and seven schools had paid their guinea membership fee to join the FA.  Eight clubs were from the London area: Barnes, NN Kilburn, Forest, Crystal Palace, War Office, Surbiton, Crusaders and Blackheath, and they were joined by four others who had heard about the meetings through the press: Lincoln, Aldershot, Royal Engineers (Chatham), and Sheffield FC. The schools were Blackheath Proprietary School, Perceval House, Forest School (Walthamstow), Wimbledon School, Kensington School, Royal Naval School (New Cross) and Uppingham.
   These, then, are the founders of association football.

No Names, Kilburn
Arthur Pember
Born Lambeth, Surrey, 15 January 1835; died LaMoure, North Dakota, USA, 3 April 1886.
The son of a stockbroker, the captain of NN Kilburn was first president of the FA. He emigrated to the USA in the mid-1860s and pursued a career as an investigative journalist before his early death.

George Lawson
Born Pitminster, Somerset, 30 January 1838; died London 9 March 1898. 
Educated at Elizabeth College (Guernsey) and Marlborough College (1854-55). Played for NNs, Crusaders and Civil Service in the early 1860s. He joined the Civil Service in 1856 as a Clerk in War Department, rising to become Assistant Under Secretary of State for War in 1895, and was knighted to become Sir George Lawson KCB in 1897.

Barnes
Ebenezer Cobb Morley
Born Hull, 16 August 1831; died Richmond, Surrey, 20 November 1924.
A driving force behind the founding meetings of the FA, Morley was FA secretary for three years, then president until 1874. Brought up in Hull, he moved to Barnes as a young man and lived there for the rest of his life. A solicitor, he was keen rower and helped found the Barnes and Mortlake Regatta as well as Barnes FC.

Thomas Dyson Gregory
Born Wakefield, Yorkshire, 19 July 1835; died Camberwell, 13 February 1904.
A corn merchant in partnership with his brothers Frederick and George. A founder of Barnes FC in 1862, he was also on the committee of London Rowing Club (along with EC Morley and RW Willis) and treasurer of the Barnes and Mortlake regatta.

Blackheath
Francis Maule Campbell
Born Blackheath, Kent, 1843 (christened 1 September 1843); died Reigate, 30 December 1920.
Elected treasurer of the FA at its first meeting, he took the rugby-playing schools out of membership after the sixth meeting and had no further involvement. Was also a founder of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. Initially entering the wine trade like his father, he became a merchant of continental produce. Married twice, first in 1902 aged 58, and the second time just three months before his death.

Frederick Henry Moore
Born Guildford, Western Australia 1839; died Hobart, Tasmania, 2 April 1934.
One of the founders of the Blackheath club, he came to London as a 14-year-old to go to school at Blackheath, then worked as a wine merchant in the city with Dalgety and Co, his uncle’s company. In 1864 returned to the southern hemisphere where he was an insurance agent and company director in New Zealand, Tasmania and Sydney.

John Whitaker Cooper
Born London, 12 February 1842; died Earls Court, London, 13 August 1902.
A banker with Brown, Janson & Co, which later merged with Lloyds Bank. Had ten children, nine of them girls.

Lorne Augustus Campbell
Born Great Malvern, Worcs, 2 July 1842; died Lausanne, Switzerland, 14 June 1893.
Educated at Rugby (1855-61), and Trinity College Cambridge. Joined the Indian Civil Service in 1863 and ten years later was appointed Under Secretary to the Government Revenue Department. His uncle, the Duke of Argyll, was Secretary of State for India.

Alfred Poynder
Born Barming Heath, Maidstone 5 December 1839; died Blackheath, 27 September 1906.
Private schools then Caius College, Cambridge, 1858-62. Graduated BA, qualified as a solicitor in 1866 and practised in London. Son of George Poynder, surgeon.

War Office
George Twizell Wawn
Born West Boldon, Co Durham, Apr-Jun 1840; died Newquay, Devon, 17 April 1914.
Won a scholarship to Durham University and on graduating in 1859 with an MA he moved to London to work for the War Office as a Clerk. He had rowed for his university and joined London Rowing Club, as well as playing football for several teams. He joined the African commissariat in 1873, with postings to Sierra Leone and Ghana, retiring in 1889 with the honorary rank of Major.

Charles Frederick Hawker
Born Abbeville, France, 3 July 1821; died Easthampstead, Berkshire, 3 April 1902.
The oldest man to attend any of the founding meetings, he had been at Charterhouse 1833-1838, where he played in the cricket XI. He joined the Civil Service in 1838, initially in the Ordnance Department and latterly in the War Office, retiring in 1865. He was a Major in the War Office Company of the 2nd Middlesex Rifle Volunteers.  In 1860 he inspired a colleague, Guy Pym, to form the Civil Service Athletic Association by promoting a sports meeting for War Office staff. The son of Lt.-Gen. Sir Samuel Hawker, an aide to King George III. 

George Mariette
Born Paris, France, 20 May 1837; died Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 25 April 1925.
Originally George Mariette de Villeblin, son of a French father and English mother. When his father died in 1838 the family moved to England, and he became a naturalised British Subject in 1850. Went to Eton 1844-50, and worked as a Clerk in the War Office until retiring in 1881. Described as ‘oarsman, fisherman, boxer and a very good amateur actor’; the Mariette family papers are held at the University of Exeter.

Horace William Gray
Born Brompton, Middlesex, March 1843; died South Kensington, 19 February 1923.
Bradfield College 1853-59 (cricket XI for five years). Joined the War Office in 1862 as a Clerk, stayed until 1880. Also served in 2nd Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps, retiring in 1902 as honorary colonel.

Crusaders
Herbert Thomas Steward
Born Westminster, 9 November 1838; died Henley, 9 September 1915.
Educated at Westminster School, he was an architect and surveyor. His primary passion was rowing and he was president of Leander Rowing Club, and wrote the history of Henley Regatta.

Forest FC (Leytonstone)
John Forster Alcock
Born Bishop Wearmouth, Durham (christened 14 April 1841); died Berkhamsted, Herts, 31 March 1910.
After the family moved from Durham to London in the 1850s, he had three years at Harrow, and continued to play football as a pioneering member of Forest FC. He followed his father’s profession as a ship owner and broker. Older brother of Charles Alcock.

Alfred Westwood Mackenzie
Born Leytonstone, 24 May 1840; died Acton, Middlesex, 6 April 1924.
Insurance Manager with Guardian Assurance, with his brother Sir Morell Mackenzie he was one of the founders of the Throat Hospital in London. Attended the FA’s jubilee dinner in 1913 and presented with a silver casket.

Cowper Donne Jackson
Born Blackheath, Kent, 1839; died Camberwell, Surrey, Oct-Dec 1900.
A Mechanical Engineer, known from his initials as ‘Seedy’, he was a Member of the Honorable Artillery Company of London. Married in the British Embassy in Paris, 1868.

Crystal Palace
Francis Day
Born Westerham, Kent, Feb/March 1838; died London, 12 March 1886.
Owner of the Black Eagle Brewery in Bermondsey, succeeding his father as a partner in the company of Day Noakes & Co, together with another Crystal Palace player, Wickham Noakes. Frank Day was also a fast bowler for West Kent. Left £58,000 in his will.

James Turner
Born Croydon, Surrey, 6 December 1839; died Eastbourne, 27 July 1922.
A Crystal Palace player throughout the 1860s right up to the first FA Cup tournament, he was FA treasurer 1864-68. Educated at Streatham Academy, he was a wine merchant and was son of the first President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Henry Lloyd
Born Camberwell, Surrey, 24 July 1841; died at sea, 30 January 1869.
From a family of Crystal Palace players, brother of Theodore, his sister Rachel married James Turner. He was a shipping insurance agent in his short life.

Theodore Lloyd
Born Bewdley, Worcestershire, 7 September 1834; died Croydon, Surrey, 15 June 1904.
Elder brother of Henry, he was referee of the England v Scotland match in 1873. A stockbroker.

Frederick Urwick
Born Clapham, Surrey, 14 July 1842; died Hampstead, London, 30 November 1915.
A wine merchant in London, he also composed a patriotic song, the Union Jack.

John Louis Siordet
Born Clapham, Surrey, 10 May 1839; died Bradford upon Avon, Wiltshire, 24 April 1882.
From a Swiss family which had settled in England, he was an indigo merchant.

Lawrence Vivian Desborough
Born Beckenham, Kent, 4 December 1844; died Port Said, Egypt, 11 October 1892.
An accountant, for a time he ran an agency in Southbridge, New Zealand, then was manager of the Equitable Life Assurance Co office in Bombay. He died in Egypt, en route for England.

Surbiton
Theodore Bell
Born Uppingham, Rutland, 30 July 1840; died Epsom, Surrey, 7 November 1923.
Educated at Uppingham, where he was captain of football 1857-58. Although he represented the short-lived Surbiton club at the first meeting of the FA and signed them up for membership, he was better known as a rower and was for many years the secretary of Kingston Rowing Club. A solicitor, he established a legal practice in Epsom and London. He was Clerk to Justices in Epsom, and also to the Commissioners of Taxes.

Charterhouse
Bertram Fulke Hartshorne
Born Cogenhoe, Northants, 26 October 1844; died Water Eaton, Oxfordshire, 31 December 1921.
The only public school representative at the first meeting (which was on his 19th birthday). After leaving Charterhouse, he took his degree at Pembroke College, Oxford, qualified as a barrister, joined the Indian Civil Service in Ceylon, then returned to England as a District Auditor for the Local Government Board.

Perceval House School
George William Shillingford
Born Purneah, Bengal , 4 October 1844; died Kolassy, Bengal, 27 July 1896.
Born on the family estate in Bengal which grew indigo plants, he was sent to Perceval House, a private school in Blackheath run by Edinburgh-born William Kieser MA (1819-1911). Returning home after his education, he and his brothers were responsible for hunting Bengal tigers almost to extinction. Purneah is now called Purnia in the northern Indian state of Bihar.

Arthur Christian Tawke
Born Norfolk 6 April 1847; died Claremont, South Africa, 4 July 1927.
A career soldier, he went to Royal Military College and served in the 32nd Regiment, the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, retiring as Lieutenant Colonel. Lived in South Africa until his death.

Alexander Rose Stenning
Born Godstone, Surrey, 9 February 1846; died Kensington, 22 April 1928.
Educated at Chatham House, Ramsgate, and at Blackheath. An architect, he was  President of the Surveyors Institution 1909-10, magistrate for Sussex and was knighted.

Walter Russell Langton Brackenbury
Born Madras, India, 1845; died Dorking, Surrey, 18 March 1880.
The only son of Walter Charles Brackenbury (who had been court martialled in Madras in 1851, and went to New Zealand). A soldier with the 20th Regiment of Foot from 1864-69, then a land surveyor and valuer.

Kensington School
William John Mackintosh
Born Calcutta, 14 July 1845; died Honiton, Devon, 16 November 1923.
Born in Bengal where his Scottish father Alexander was a merchant, he was educated at Elgin Academy, Edinburgh Academy (1856-59), Kensington School and a military ‘crammer’ in Kensington Square which got him into the Royal Military Academy. A career soldier, he won a commission with the Royal Artillery in 1867, but there is no evidence he ever saw action in 20 years’ service before he retired with the honorary rank of Lt Colonel. He lived out his days in Devon, where he served as a JP.

Lewis McIver
Born Eddrachillis, Sutherland, 6 March 1846; died London, 9 August 1920.
Born in remote north-west Scotland where his father was factor to the Duke of Sutherland. After Kensington School he went to Bonn University, joined the Indian Civil Service, and was called to the bar in 1878. First elected to parliament in 1885 as Liberal member for Torquay, he lost his seat after a year but was elected for Edinburgh West 1895-1909. Created a baronet in 1896, he was caricatured in Vanity Fair as the ‘member for Scotland’.

Jasper Alexander Redgrave
Born Kensington, London 23 November 1845; died Birmingham, 21 November 1909.
Inspector of Factories for the Midlands, and author of works on industrial safety.

Eyre Burton Powell
Born Madras, India, 1847; died Penzance, Cornwall, 3 August 1923.
From an Irish family, after school he went to Dublin University, where he got his BA. He qualified as a barrister in Ireland in 1870.

Blackheath Proprietary School
William Henry Gordon
Born Edinburgh, 30 March 1845; died Toronto, Ontario, 1 January 1929.
Educated at Edinburgh Academy (1854-59), Cheltenham College (1859-60), Blackheath Proprietary School (1860-64), then Trinity College, Cambridg, graduating with a BA in 1868. After he qualified as a barrister in 1870, he changed his surname to Lockhart Gordon and emigrated to Canada where he was a lawyer and director of the Canadian Land and Emigration Company.

Thomas Percy Fox
Born Balham, Surrey, 23 May 1846; died Chislehurst, Kent, 20 October 1918.
Educated at Elizabeth College (Guernsey) then Blackheath Proprietary School (1861-63). Entered the East India trade and worked in Calcutta until 1880, when he returned to London as a wine merchant.

John Barwick Sams
Born Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, 31 January 1847; died Denver, Colorado, 16 March 1895.
Son of a minister, he joined the Royal Navy in 1868 in the Paymasters Division, but in 1873 was dismissed from the service. Worked in Ireland as a steward for Walter Bourke, who was assassinated in 1882, then went to Denver, Colorado, where he worked as an investments adviser.

Royal Naval School (New Cross)
Ferdinand Brand
Born Leigh, Essex 28 March 1846; died Kew, Surrey, 19 April 1922.
Son of a Navy captain who fought at Trafalgar, he was educated at Royal Naval School, and joined the Civil Service in 1867 as a Clerk in the Admiralty. Edited the Navy List 1880-98, and was Admiralty Librarian 1898-1908.

William Pears Johnston
Born Cawnpore, India, 17 April 1847; died Darjeeling, India, 15 April 1889.
Son of Charles Cornwallis Johnston, a Major in the Royal Engineers, he joined the Indian Telegraph Department, part of the Civil Service. Published a number of telegraphic innovations before his early death.

Wimbledon School
Archibald Edward Duthy
Born Sudborough, Northamptonshire, 4 January 1846; died Sudborough, 10 November 1906.
Winchester College (1859-62), Wimbledon (1862-63) and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned in the Royal Artillery, he had an eventful career that included the Afghan War of 1879 and the North West Frontier campaign of 1897-98, retiring as Colonel in 1898. Played cricket for various teams including I Zingari.

Fletcher Hayes Grant Cruickshank
Born Ootacamund, India, 10 December 1846; died Chelmsford, Essex, 20 January 1912.
A Captain in the Royal Horse Artillery, he retired through ill health in 1881 and became a stockbroker with the prestigious Cazenove firm.

Forest School
David John Morgan
Born Leytonstone, Essex, 25 April 1844; died Brentwood, Essex, 28 February 1917.
Educated at Forest School and at Vevey, Switzerland, he played football for Wanderers. Worked for his father as a Russian merchant in London, and as a company director. Served as Conservative MP for Walthamstow 1900-06.

John Bouch
Born Dulwich, 13 October 1844; died Hemsworth, Yorkshire, 9 April 1926.
A clothing wholesaler of Surbiton, he took over as head of the firm from his father until it went bankrupt in 1902. Strong family football connections: his sister Jane married FA Cup winner Morton Peto Betts, while brothers William and Alfred (also at Forest School) both played for Crystal Palace.