BBC Scotland has recently launched a great little promotional video for this season's Scottish Cup tournament, in time for the fourth round ties later this month. They have animated the man on top of the trophy as he comes to life and the Victorian footballer kicks a ball around the Scottish Football Museum, ending up with a cracking goal against the motionless tinplate players, before quickly getting back into place as the museum attendant returns.
   But who was the original footballer on the cup? The Scottish Cup was commissioned in 1874 by the fledgling Scottish FA, who asked Glasgow silversmiths George Edward & Sons to come up with a suitably grand trophy. No cost was spared and the final bill came to £56 12 shillings (which included a set of medals) Trouble was, association football was in its infancy at the time, and the designer needed some help to create a lifelike representation of a player to stand on top.
   The inspiration for the figure was published in The Graphic after the first football international, played on 30 November 1872. One of the nine drawings by William Ralston shows a Scotland player steadfastly dribbling the ball while an English tackler is robustly pushed away by a teammate.

Having an action figure gave the Scottish Cup a unique identity, and helped to differentiate it from the original FA Cup, made two years earlier. In many respects that was a similar design, but it had a less adventurous static player on the lid, hand on hip, with the ball at his feet.
   Taking this theme further, I was surprised to find that this was not the only time that trophy designers took inspiration from printed sources. 

And remarkably the same scene, not so detailed but with some unmistakable similarities in the player positions, appears again on a later trophy. This photo shows the centrepiece of the original Scottish Juvenile Cup, which was made in 1899.
   I would love to know of any other early football trophies that have taken their inspiration from external sources.

This well-known image, claimed to be the world's first photo of a tennis player, was taken by the pioneering photographers Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill in Edinburgh around 1843. It features in a major exhibition just now at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and is one of the key images used to market the exhibition.
   The subject is recorded simply as Mr Laing (or Laine, the writing is not clear) and has never been identified. So I set out to find who this dapper young sportsman really was, and why he should be holding a racket.
   The first thing to establish was that he was not actually a tennis player. Lawn tennis had yet to be invented, while the only real (or royal) tennis court in Scotland at the time was at Falkland Palace in Fife.
​   Less well known is the fact that Edinburgh had a thriving racket court in the city centre. It had been established as a fives court in Rose Street around 1800 by John Hallion, who ran the adjoining tavern and also used it to stage cock fights. The court continued in operation throughout the 19th century, subtly changing use from fives to rackets, and in the 1840s was leased by a Mr Wilson. As the advert below shows, he aimed it at the city's well-to-do, and even employed a professional for tuition.

The essential difference between rackets and tennis is that rackets - the ancestor of squash - is played in an enclosed court, with the ball knocked against a wall; in tennis the ball is played over a net between the players.
   As with many recreational sports, there were virtually no reports of matches in the daily papers, but regular adverts show that rackets was popular among young men in Edinburgh at the time. The Rose Street court even attracted royal patronage, as in 1864 Queen Victoria's second son, Prince Alfred, played a game of rackets there and was hit in the eye by a ball.
   It would appear, therefore, that Mr Laing is not a tennis player after all, but a rackets player. 
   There is, incidentally, another photograph of him, held at Glasgow University Library, which shows him in a different profile with outstretched arm. He is again holding the racket in an unnatural position, too far up the handle, but that can be explained by the requirement to keep still for a long exposure. The metal frame which helped to hold him steady has been painted out, but the telltale shadow is clearly seen. Even so, the smart sporty outfit makes him look quite the young athlete!

So, who was he? It is impossible to be certain, but I am confident he was John Laing, an Edinburgh artist who was not only the same age as Robert Adamson, he was also a near neighbour.
   John Laing was born in February 1821 (two months before Adamson) and brought up in the city. Although I have not yet found where he trained as an artist, by 1846 he was in business and advertised his studio at 5 Calton Hill, just a few yards from Adamson's studio at Rock House:

As a neighbour and as a member of Edinburgh's artistic community, he was ideally placed to be a subject for Hill and Adamson's pioneering calotype photographs. Indeed, Hill and Adamson took photographs of several Edinburgh artists. Among them was another neighbour, the sculptor John Steell, who was then at 20 Calton Hill but had previously lived in Laing's house at number 5. Other artists included James Drummond, John Maclaren Barclay, William Leighton Leitch, Kenneth MacLeay, John Stevens, James Rannie Swinton and William Borthwick Johnstone.
   While these connections alone do not confirm Laing's identity as the man in the photo, there is a further link. After Adamson's early death in 1848, Hill continued the business and at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace, he showed off the calotypes of Newhaven he had taken with Adamson. In the very same room, John Laing had an exhibit of his own, as this cutting from the Edinburgh Evening Courant (6 May 1851) shows:

Laing and Hill were also listed in the same section of the Great Exhibition's official catalogue.
   In the 1850s, Laing's art and design business continued to thrive and he opened two shops, at Leith Street Terrace and in Baxter's Place at the top of Leith Walk, while retaining his studio in Calton Hill. He had married Susanna Bryce in 1845 and they had eight children including Thomas who became town clerk of Leith.
   But disaster struck when Laing was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease which then had no known cure or treatment. After suffering for over a year he died at home on 23 September 1858 and is buried in Warriston Cemetery.
   As yet there is no conclusive evidence which confirms John Laing as the holder of the racket. But the available clues, including his close connection to the photographers and their studio on Calton Hill, point strongly to the painter as the likely subject.

Postscript, May 2018: I am immensely grateful to the Friends of Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh, who not only tracked down the grave of John Laing and his family, but cleaned off the moss and took this photograph. He is buried with his wife and three of his children, and his artistic career is recorded beautifully and simply with the artist's palette carved on the headstone.
​

The exhibition A Perfect Chemistry, Photographs by Hill & Adamson is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh until 1 October 2017.

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.

Almost two hundred years ago, the world’s first football club was established in Scotland by a young lawyer and his friends in Edinburgh.
   The Foot-Ball Club remained active from 1824 until 1841, with around 300 recorded members. As the world’s first known organisation dedicated to football it is a crucially important episode in the development of football, yet its full story has never been told.
   Now, I am working with John Hutchinson on a detailed history of the club, together with a biography of its founder, John Hope (pictured above). It is not just a story about football’s early days, it also looks at the players and their impact on Scottish society.
   Hope is not given enough credit by historians for his contribution to the early development of football, where the focus is often on the founding of the Football Association in 1863, on the public schools, on Sheffield and so on. For example Sheffield FC, founded in 1857, have actually incorporated into their crest a claim to be ‘the world’s first football club’. It simply isn’t true. They might be the oldest surviving club, but the first? No way.
   For a definition of what constitutes a sports club, this is what Hope himself had to say in a letter:

The football club resumed in October; the fun first-rate.  I played for three hours on Saturday.  Had business not kept me from the field this winter, I would have been in splendid wind.  As it was. I am pretty swift, and am still a good hand at rolling down my opponents. Mr Esplin is very keen, and the life of the club.  He brings out the men.  He plays first rate.  He gives a splendid ground kick - so sure.  We mutually respect each other, but we are daily approaching to a keener contest.  He has had more practice that I, and carries six years less than I do.  He is short, and there is no upsetting him; but I hope to roll him next Saturday.  The club gave occasion to some very spirited caricatures by my brother Jamie, I being, of course, the principal butt.  We got new caps, very neat, improved by Esplin, like jockey caps.’

There, in one quote from the 1830s, are embodied all the essentials of a sporting club: the playing, the physical contact, the organisation, the team uniform, the rivalry, the respect for fellow members, the hope that it will all be better next week, the futile attempts to regain lost youth, the regret for not training enough and the laughter and camaraderie of a group of healthy and energetic young men united for one specific athletic purpose.

The next event for which we have hard evidence dates from 1851, when the students of Edinburgh University challenged the 93rd Highlanders, garrisoned in Edinburgh Castle, to a match. The losers were to present the winners with a silver medal. Won by the soldiers, that medal is preserved in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders collection at Stirling Castle, and is of enormous sporting significance – the world’s oldest football prize.
   The link to John Hope? The silversmith who designed the medal, James Mackay, had a son James who was schoolmate of John Hope and a member of the Foot-Ball Club – so he was no doubt able to advise on the correct manner of play for the image.
   John Hope wasn’t done yet. In 1854 he opened a playground in Stockbridge, where he encouraged boys as well as girls to play football. He laid down the rules of play – which bear similarities not just to his 1833 rules, but also to the future codes for association football. There was no hacking, no handling, and goals were scored between the posts.
   Then, when association football finally came to Edinburgh in the 1870s, John Hope founded one of the city’s first clubs for the soldiers in his volunteer regiment, the 3rd ERV. He actually kicked off their first match, and was presented with the trophy when they won their first cup.
   When Hope died in 1893, he left most of his fortune to the Hope Trust, which preserved his papers, over 200 boxes of them, in our national archives, now called the National Records of Scotland. The football records were discovered by the historian Dr Neil Tranter, of Stirling University, who first wrote about the club in the 1990s, and we are now researching it in greater detail, a far reaching project which will culminate in a full scale book later this year.
   Meanwhile, we have recently published an article in the academic journal Soccer & Society. It is a subscriber publication which can be accessed at this link, but for those who do not have a subscription please get in touch via the contact form on the home page.
   A report on our findings has also been published in Scotland on Sunday, and can be read via this link.

This article is based on a paper I presented this week to the British Society of Sports History conference in Edinburgh, and follows on from my previous blogs about the early relationship between Partick and Darwen football clubs.

In the autumn of 1878, two Scottish footballers moved to Lancashire.  James Love and Fergus Suter left Partick to join Darwen, where they became, almost certainly, the first professional players.
   That much is recorded in histories of the game. But what is not explained is why those particular men chose that particular moment to move between those particular clubs. In this paper I will demonstrate that it was not a random event, outlining the specific circumstances that led to Love and Suter exchanging a Glasgow suburb for an East Lancashire mill town, 200 miles away. And I will also, for the first time, reveal the identity of James Love.
   To begin with, however, some context. It is a challenge for historians to say definitively who the first professional football player was, as payments were made illicitly in various round-about ways, and nobody ever confessed. Some claim it was the Glaswegian JJ Lang, who went to Sheffield Wednesday in 1876, but he seems to have benefitted from a benevolent employer giving him time off, rather than taking any direct payment from the football club.
   To complicate matters, in fact many players moved across the border, in both directions, usually because of their work. To take just one example, the Smith brothers, Robert and James, had both been founders of Queen’s Park in 1867, and moved to London for work a couple of years later; both played for Scotland in the first international match of 1872, just a week after turning out for South Norwood in the FA Cup. But there is no question that they were amateurs.
   Cross-border connections such as these were crucial for the spread of association football. Queen's Park was first club from Scotland to undertake matches against English sides but it was not until New Year's Day 1876 that a second Scottish club fulfilled a match in England. That team was Partick, who travelled to face Darwen.

   It seems an unlikely pairing. Partick (nothing to do with Partick Thistle) had only been founded a few months earlier, and would never be one of the leading lights of Scottish football; no major trophies came their way and they provided no internationalists. Darwen, more formally Darwen Cricket and Football Club, had only just converted from rugby to association rules and played football as a winter pastime for cricketers.
   The explanation for the link lies with a footballer who crossed the border, going north. He was called William Kirkham (1854-1909), born and brought up in Darwen but who had gone to Partick for work - he was a colour mixer in the textile industry, a skilled job. While in Scotland he was a founding member of Partick football club in 1875, and when he returned south a couple of years later, he resumed playing for Darwen. Kirkham was the catalyst for inaugurating the relationship between Partick and Darwen, and it quickly developed, on and off the field. But there is much more to this than the personal link with William Kirkham, which was only the first piece in the jigsaw.
   That first match in 1876 launched a series of matches between the two clubs, which gave rise to further contacts in Lancashire as Partick also played Blackburn Rovers three times in 1878 and 1879, and later faced Turton and Bolton:
1 January 1876  Darwen 0 Partick 7
10 November 1877  Partick 5 Darwen 0
1 January 1878  Darwen 3 Partick 2
2 January 1878  Blackburn Rovers 2 Partick 1
9 November 1878  Partick 2 Blackburn Rovers 0
1 January 1879  Darwen 0 Partick 7
2 January 1879  Blackburn Rovers 2 Partick 4
1 January 1880  Turton 3 Partick 5
2 January 1880  Bolton & District 3 Partick 3
2 October 1880  Darwen 4 Partick 1

   Through these games, Partick became extraordinarily influential by supplying players for Lancashire football. They effectively acted as a 'shop window' for talented Scots who would become the earliest paid players in England. Have a closer look at the teams from 1 January 1878:

Darwen: J Booth, J Duxbury, A McWetherill, R Crookes, T Hindle, T Marshall, R Kirkham, J Knowles, J Lewis, T Bury, J Hayes.
Partick: E Suter, F Suter, A Stewart; R Love, A McGaw; J Love, J Keay, WH Kirkham, WG Struthers, W McLachlan and JN Boag.
 
Of the Partick players I have highlighted, five played for Darwen before the end of the decade – the Suter brothers Edward and Fergus, Jimmy Love, William Kirkham and William McLachlan – and for good measure William Struthers went to Bolton Wanderers, while John Boag later married a Bolton girl. In subsequent years several other Partick players also joined clubs in Lancashire.
   And among the Darwen players was Tommy Marshall, a future England football international who won numerous cash prizes as a champion sprinter on the professional athletics circuit, and Ralph Crookes, employed as the club's cricket professional.
   Clearly, Darwen was open-minded towards the morality of rewarding sporting talent with payment.  And crucially, the club also acquired the means: as early as March 1878 they played local rivals Turton and drew a gate of £18, which prompted the local press to remark that the Darwen committee 'were almost at a loss as to what to do with such an enormous sum'. The answer soon became apparent, especially as that £18 figure was soon dwarfed by gate receipts which reached well into three figures within the next couple of years.
   So, we come to the 1878/79 season, which was memorable for a number of reasons. Jimmy Love was first to arrive and a few weeks later Fergie Suter made his Darwen debut at full back. Their presence had a revolutionary effect as they were schooled in passing and combination play, which not only raised standards, it took Darwen to the FA Cup quarter final, the first northern team to reach that stage.
   They faced Old Etonians over three matches, all played in London, and the story is well known. In the first game, Old Etonians led 5-1 at half-time, but a whirlwind response levelled it at 5-5 including two goals from Love. The Etonians, fearing defeat if the match carried on, refused to play extra time. In the replay Darwen drew 2-2, and it was only at the third attempt that Old Etonians prevailed. A fortnight later they won the FA Cup itself.
   That cup run brought nationwide publicity for Darwen, especially as there was an element of mystique about Scots 'professors'. It was good box office, Darwen wanted more, and other clubs soon latched on.
   So, how did it come about? At the time there was no mention in the press whether Love and Suter were paid to pay football, but Suter was candid enough to admit it later in life, when interviewed about his career:
 
'On what plan were you paid in those days?' he was asked, responding: 'Well, we had no settled wage, but it was understood that we interviewed the treasurer as occasion arose. Possibly we should go three weeks without anything, and then ask for £10. We never had any difficulty.' [Lancashire Daily Post, 13 December 1902]

   This is as near as you can get to proof that Love and Suter were paid directly by the football club. And if the occasional tenner wasn't enough, at a time when a working wage was less than two pounds a week, Darwen played a benefit match for Love and Suter in April 1879.
   But the relationship was short-lived. While Suter spent the rest of his life in Lancashire, Love played his last game for Darwen in October 1879, just a year after his debut. He then turned out once for Blackburn Rovers, made an appearance for Haslingden in January 1880, and promptly disappeared. 
   So what happened to him? Who was James Love, a key figure in football history, probably the first man ever to receive payment for playing the game? He has never been identified until now. There was no mention of his background or his circumstances in the papers, while Keith Dewhurst, who recently wrote a book [Underdogs, 2012] about the Darwen team, wrongly identified him as a shipyard worker – but that man remained in Partick all his life and died in an accident at work in 1894. 
   Tracking him down was not easy. Years later, there were cryptic clues in press articles that he had been killed in the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 – but Love was not listed among the few British casualties. Then, searching more widely, I found that a Corporal Love of the Royal Marines had died of illness in Egypt, a couple of months after the bombardment of Alexandria. This led me to a family notice in the Glasgow Herald:
 
At Ismailia, of enteric fever, on 27 September aged 24, Corporal James Love, Royal Marine Light Infantry, eldest son of James Love, late of Greenock. [Glasgow Herald, 9 October 1882]
 
Now, Greenock is a fair distance from Partick, but this seemed as good a lead as any. After a lot of painstaking research, piecing together his life story, I found sufficient evidence not only to confirm that this was indeed him, but also to shed light on his reasons for going to Darwen.
   James Love was born in Gushetfaulds Cottage in Glasgow in 1858, his father the manager of a coal depot attached to South Side railway station and goods yard. When he was nine, his father – also James Love – gave up this job to set up a contracting business, which included coal supply, street cleaning and disposal of horse manure. The family moved to Greenock then on to Glasgow and, to cut a long story short, in the summer of 1877 the business failed and the father was declared bankrupt.
   Meanwhile, James junior also set himself up as a street-cleaning contractor in Partick but before long he too got into financial difficulties and a horse dealer called in an unpaid debt.
   In October 1878, his two horses and his equipment, including a street-sweeping machine, were sold off at a public warrant sale. A couple of weeks later he was summoned to the Glasgow bankruptcy court but when he failed to show up, the court postponed the case for a month. On 21 November 1878, he again failed to appear, so Sheriff Walter Spens issued a warrant for his arrest. It was never served: James Love had run away from his debts. He had gone to Darwen.
   That escape route was open to him thanks to his skills as a footballer and his friendship with William Kirkham. Also, Love had already visited Lancashire with Partick at New Year 1878. Going straight into the Darwen team, he formed a right wing partnership with Tommy Marshall and soon there was a steady diet of goals, cup ties and an admiring public. He had an income from the football club and may also have done some odd jobs.
   But a year later, after this initial excitement, he dropped out of the Darwen team for reasons which are not clear. This left him in a quandary. The football income would have dried up. He had no job. He could not go home because of the arrest warrant hanging over him. So he took perhaps the only option open to a fit young man: he joined the army.
   To be precise, he signed up with the Royal Marines in Liverpool on 24 February 1880 and I found his attestation papers at the National Archives.

They describe him as from Govan (Partick was in Govan parish), 5 feet 6 ½ inches tall, with a dark complexion, brown eyes and brown hair, giving his trade as a painter. His age is wrong, but that is nothing unusual in attestation papers.
   By the 1881 census he is at Chatham Barracks, having been promoted to Corporal. Then in the summer of 1882 the Marines were called into action and embarked for Egypt, where the British were putting down a nationalist uprising by Ahmed Urabi. His forces had occupied Alexandria but after a defiant stand-off they were forced out by a two-day naval bombardment of the city. Love would have taken part in the subsequent occupation of Alexandria by the Royal Marines, and perhaps some of the fighting thereafter. But then he fell ill with a fever and, sadly, died in the military hospital in Ismailia. Corporal Love is commemorated on the memorial in Tel-el-Kebir cemetery.​

The following year he was posthumously awarded the Egypt Medal (identical to the one pictured) which was sent to his father. Outside his family, his death went unnoticed. There were no obituaries, no tributes in the sporting press, and I've been unable to track down even a photo of him despite contacting several branches of his family.
   But the story doesn't quite end there as there is one final, poignant, connection with Partick FC. After his death, Love's elder sister Jessie married one of the other Partick players, David Muirhead, and they named their son James Love Muirhead. He too met a sad end, killed in action in the first world war.
   So that covers the story of Jimmy Love. What of Fergie Suter? His basic story is better known, and he even has an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, albeit with errors. Suter was born in Glasgow in 1857, the third son of a stonemason recently arrived from Ireland. He grew up in Partick where he was an apprentice mason like his father, and appears in Partick teams from 1876 onwards. He was well established as a footballer when, out of the blue, he also had a strong financial imperative for leaving.
   In October 1878, the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed suddenly and spectacularly, incurring huge losses for its 1200 shareholders who had unlimited liability. It sent financial shockwaves through Scottish society as the directors were jailed for fraud, and 80 per cent of the shareholders were bankrupted.
   One of those shareholders was a prominent Partick builder called Peter McKissock, who immediately halted work on his projects and dismissed all his men including the stonemasons. Among them, it seems likely, was 21-year-old Fergus Suter.  To make matters worse, in November the Partick masons went on strike in protest against reduced rates of pay.
   So, with little prospect of finding work locally Suter must have cast envious eyes at Jimmy Love in Darwen and wrote to ask if he, too, could be found a position. Suter had already played there for Partick, so it was not exactly a leap into the unknown, and according to the Lancashire Evening Post article I have already quoted, Suter 'came in the guise of stonemason, but only worked in that trade for a week or two. After that he purely played football, and though this was years before professionalism was legalised, he never lacked money.'
   I have to point out that there is an erroneous story, which has appeared in many books and articles, stating that Suter played for Turton before coming to Darwen. This story originates in Tony Mason's Association Football and English Society (1980), but from an examination of the original source material, a 1909 history of Turton FC, it is clear that Suter's appearance for Turton was at the end of the 1878/79 season, not the start, although it does confirm he was paid cash by Turton for an appearance in their Challenge Cup team. I have since found a report of the Turton Challenge Cup final, and it was played on 29 March 1879 - ie two weeks after the defeat to Old Etonians. Suter played as a guest for Turton, who lost 1-0 to Eagley, and so did Jimmy Love; it stands to reason that if one of them was paid, so was the other.
   Suter had made his debut for Darwen on 30 November 1878 at Accrington, where a spectator recalled 'he simply electrified players and spectators alike with points in the game of which they had never previously dreamt'. A week later, he and Love played in their first FA Cup tie, against Eagley on 7 December.
   If anything, Suter's immediate impact was greater than Love's as within two weeks of arriving he played a trial for Lancashire and went on to represent his adopted county on numerous occasions, while Love was never selected. Suter certainly found his vocation in football. In his second season, 1879/80, he was appointed club captain of Darwen, led the team to victory in the first Lancashire Cup final, and his brother Edward also joined from Partick.
   But in the summer of 1880, without warning, he jumped ship and moved to local rivals Blackburn Rovers. Darwen protested furiously that Suter had been financially induced, but there was, of course, no proof - and precious little sympathy for Darwen in any case as they were suspected of paying Suter themselves. The chances are that Rovers made Suter an offer he could not refuse, either a straight cash payment or a large loan on easy terms to set up a pub.
   However, I did discover another possible reason for Suter wanting to leave Darwen. According to a family legend, he fathered an illegitimate son by a servant girl, and the time of his move to Blackburn would have coincided pretty much exactly with the discovery that she was pregnant.
   Whatever, it was a successful move and Suter was the first man to make a career as a professional footballer. He remained with Blackburn Rovers through a glorious decade in which they were the first northern side to appear in the FA Cup final, in 1882, and subsequently won the FA Cup three times in a row, in 1884, 1885 and 1886. Suter just found time to make one appearance in the Football League's inaugural season in 1888, and continued to live in the town as a publican until shortly before his death in 1916.
   So there, in brief, is the background to the players who gave birth to professionalism in football. Love and Suter changed the game forever through a specific set of circumstances which provided the means, the motive and the opportunity to earn a living from the game.
   Partick and Darwen were unlikely bedfellows, but between them they established the rationale for paying football players. It is quite a legacy.

Article copyright Andy Mitchell, not to be reproduced without permission.

Click here to read an article about this research in the Sunday Herald.

NB In the course of researching Love and Suter, I have accumulated a large amount of background material, references and family trees. If other researchers would like to consult this archive, please get in touch through the contact form on the home page.

​Some time ago I bought this old French football medal, presented to the players of White Rovers FC in 1897. Having researched its background, there is a fascinating story about the impact of the club and its founders, all of which is particularly relevant in the build-up to this summer’s UEFA European Championship.

 
In 1891, the first football club in France had a problem: customs officials were suspicious that their newly imported corner flags carried the emblem of some political party.
   An Englishman called William Sleator went to see the Prefet de Police to sort it out, and had to start by describing this new-fangled game of football. The policeman was mystified, asking why they couldn’t just play the game indoors. But Sleator not only charmed the official into releasing the flags, he even talked him out of charging customs duty on the goalposts which had been brought over from England.
   Sleator came to be considered the ‘father of French football’ and for many years football veterans would raise a glass and toast his memory. He was even presented with the French Football Federation’s gold medal for services to the game, but his legacy and the adventures of his fellow pioneers are now largely forgotten.
   Although British sailors had introduced football to France at ports like Le Havre in the 1870s, and there was a failed attempt to set up a Paris club in 1889, the genesis of the modern game can be pinpointed to 30 October 1891.
   On that day, at the Café Francais on rue Pasquier, a football club was founded by a group of young English and Scottish sportsmen. They voted narrowly to play association rather than rugby rules, agreed to call the club White Rovers and elected Sleator as treasurer.
   Having successfully sourced essential playing gear like those flags and goalposts, the team’s first match, against a YMCA eleven, was very low key, as Sleator later related: ‘We had ten spectators, most of them boys. One of the boys told his father he had seen English lads, in uniforms, kicking a huge ball about, knocking it with their heads, and charging each other to get at it. The boy’s father said the English were mad enough for anything.’
   White Rovers worked hard to establish the game in France and were one of six clubs in France's first-ever football championship in 1894. Sadly they were never crowned champions and after losing the inaugural final to Standard AC in a replay, they also finished runners-up for the next three seasons. The championship, somewhat incongruously, was backed by the New York Herald, whose European edition was based in Paris, and whose proprietor James Gordon Bennett donated a magnificent silver trophy.
   Playing in white shirts with a large blue Maltese cross, White Rovers were based in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, near the railway station at Bécon-les-Bruyères, where they were granted the use of a ground by the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l’Est.
   This was thanks to a director of the railway company called Henry Blount, son of the British Consul and a well-known socialite, who became the club’s patron. In 1897, Blount felt so proud of the players as once again they fell at the final hurdle that he presented them with silver medals to commemorate their efforts.
   White Rovers lasted just eight years, but in that time they were hugely influential, inspiring French players to form their own clubs, the first being Club Français in 1892, which was founded by Charles Bernat and Eugene Fraysse who had learned the game while at school in the UK.

Rovers also introduced an international element, and in 1893 they invited Marylebone, an amateur team from London, to play the first ‘international’ match in France. Paris soon became a popular Easter tour destination for English clubs, and Rovers also travelled to Belgium. Then in 1898 the German football pioneer Walther Bensemann brought his All Germany team to Paris, and photos exist of their crushing 7-0 win over White Rovers.
   Not long after that, as some of the original players drifted back to the UK, the club foundered and it did not survive to the end of the century. However, its legacy remains.
   Today, although few French fans know the debt they owe to the pioneer players, the vibrant football culture in France can trace its roots right back to the heady days of William Sleator and his White Rovers.
 
Who were the White Rovers pioneers?
 
William Henry Sleator was born in Worcester in 1871 and grew up in the town’s Lansdowne Inn, run by his parents, but his father died before his second birthday. Although his mother remarried to the man who took over as landlord, that man also died ten years later, leaving her in sole charge of the tenancy.
   Despite these upheavals, William and his elder brother Alec were well educated at Worcester Middle School and Barbourne College, where they enjoyed sport and as well as playing football, both were active members of Worcester Rowing Club.

​Around 1890 William headed to Paris to go into business as a tailor, and he was soon joined in the city by Alec, who also played for White Rovers, and their mother. Around the turn of the century William established Sleator & Carter, high class English tailors and gentlemen’s outfitters, and would remain in business in Paris until the second world war, based in the Avenue de l’Opéra then the Rue des Pyramides. William lived in the city until shortly before his death in England in 1955.
   Alongside Sleator at the club’s foundation in 1891 was Walter Herbert Hewson (1868-1945), appointed secretary. He was born in Surrey and set up in business in Paris as a clothing outfitter.
   One of the most prominent players was Jack Wood (John Bertram Wood, 1872-1921) from north London, who went on to play for Standard AC and Club Français, then became a referee and officiated at the 1900 Olympic football tournament; his brother Tom also played for White Rovers.
   Edward Barclay (1872-1932) was a Scottish lawyer who attended Westminster School before taking a law degree at the University of Paris. He spent the rest of his life in Paris, where he was President of the British Chamber of Commerce.
   Robert James MacQueen (1871-1921) was a tailor like Sleator, but left Paris for Chile with his French wife, returning to England shortly before his death.
   Claude Farnworth Rivaz (1872-1958), a British artist who was educated at Westminster and spent three years studying in Belgium, where he played for Royal Antwerp, before coming to Paris around 1894 and joining White Rovers.
   These are just some of the early White Rovers players, but many others are recorded only by their surname in reports and are difficult to identify. I would welcome any further information and in particular a photo of William Sleator.

Most sports historians will know of Partick players James Love and Fergus Suter becoming the first football professionals when they joined Darwen in 1878. 
   But few appreciate that Partick blazed a trail as a 'shop window' for Scottish players and how their unlikely relationship with Darwen prompted a cross-border revolution which saw a number of others follow in Love and Suter’s footsteps. 
   Modern sport in Partick has its origins in the West of Scotland Cricket Club, founded 1862, whose home at Hamilton Crescent was the only major enclosed sports ground close to Glasgow. It hosted the first football international in 1872 as well as numerous other major sporting events including top level cricket, athletics and rugby. West of Scotland started playing football in 1865, but they chose rugby rules and it was not until 1875 that members of Partick Cricket Club expanded their horizons to become Partick Cricket and Football Club, playing to association rules.
   Partick (not to be confused with Partick Thistle) made little impact on the Scottish Cup in their ten year existence and never provided an internationalist, yet they were doughty football pioneers: within months of their foundation, they were the first Scottish club apart from Queen's Park to play a match south of the border. 
   Meanwhile in Lancashire, Darwen also grew out of a cricket club, dabbled with rugby rules, then switched to association football. The romance of their brief flirt with fame was cleverly told in Keith Dewhurst’s book 'Underdogs', but as so often with early football history his dividing line between established truth and educated guesswork is hazy. 
   The story began on New Year's Day 1876 when Partick travelled to the mill town of Darwen, 20 miles north of Manchester. Although the game was not mentioned in local papers there was a brief report in Bell's Life: 'The Partick Club seem to have had it all their own way at Manchester … in presence of upward of 5,000 people. Most of the English team were Rugby players, and two of them are amongst the finest exponents of those rules in England. The Partick Club sent a very strong team to Manchester, including four of the Eastern, and the result was painfully one-sided, Partick carrying off the game by seven goals to nothing.'
   Teams were not listed but the mention of 'four of the Eastern' is interesting as that club's members included Peter Andrews who moved to Sheffield that year, for work reasons. After the match the teams had dinner together at the Greenway Hotel (nowadays named The Cock, in Duckworth Street) which was close to Darwen's Barley Bank ground.
   So, why would a team from a Glasgow suburb (in fact, a separate burgh) travel 200 miles to play an inexperienced eleven in an obscure Lancashire town?
   The genesis of this link between can confidently be traced to William Kirkham of Darwen, who went to work in Partick and played football there before returning south around 1877, featuring in the Darwen team until 1880. Kirkham must have instigated the frequent contacts between the two football clubs over the next few years: 
   1 January 1876: Darwen 0 Partick 7
   10 November 1877: Partick 5 Darwen 0
   1 January 1878: Darwen 3 Partick 2
   1 January 1879: Darwen 0 Partick 7
   2 October 1880: Darwen 4 Partick 1
   31 December 1881: Darwen 3 Partick 3
   Partick also faced Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers on their travels, and the series of games had far reaching implications, effectively acting as a 'shop window' for talented Scots players who would be among the earliest paid players in England.
   Darwen was first to take full advantage, with the club perhaps open minded about the morality of paying footballers (which was not in fact outlawed by the FA until 1882). Their teams around this period included Tom Marshall, well known as a professional runner, and Ralph Crookes, who was their cricket professional in the summer months.
   The first to move south was James Love, who can be found in the Darwen eleven for the opening game of the 1878/79 season, against Church on 26 October 1878. A few weeks later, Fergus Suter made the same journey, having started the season with Partick.
   Love left after a year while Suter went on to a glittering career with Blackburn Rovers, and there is little doubt they were enticed by the promise of payment. In 1902, Suter recalled: 'We had no settled wage, but it was understood that we interviewed the treasurer as occasion arose. Possibly we should go three weeks without anything, and then ask for £10. We never had any difficulty.'
   They were the first footballers to be paid, and soon others would use the 'Partick connection' to embark on a professional football career. To demonstrate this, take a look at the teams for the game on New Year’s Day 1879, which Partick won 7-0 despite Darwen already having Love and Suter in their team.
​
Darwen: J Booth, A McWetherill, F Suter, WH Moorhouse, J Knowles, T Marshall, J Love, J Hayes, JG Gledhill, T Bury, Kirkham (reports do not specify if this is William).
Partick: E Suter, H McIntyre (Rangers), W Bell, JS Campbell, R Rolland, JN Boag, J Smith, R Hutchinson, R Love, WG Struthers (Rangers), W McLachlan.
   
​   Several of the players are worthy of closer inspection.
   In goal for Partick was Fergus’s elder brother Edward, born in Bangor, Co Down, just before the Suter family moved to Scotland. Edward joined Darwen in November 1879, initially as a forward before reverting to goalkeeper and for a year the Suter brothers featured in the Darwen team together. Although Edward did not initially settle he married a local lass in 1883 and spent the rest of his life in Darwen. (NB a third brother, Jerry (christened Jarvis), was later a key figure with Partick Thistle and also moved south to work at Fergus's pub in Blackburn.)
   There were two guest players from Rangers in the Partick team, Hugh McIntyre and William Struthers, who both turned professional. 
   McIntyre gravitated between Scotland and Lancashire before being induced to make the move permanent. His first match for Blackburn Rovers was in March 1879 v Sheffield yet he also played for Rangers in that season's Scottish Cup final.  In October 1879 he captained Rangers against Blackburn Rovers, in December he played for Blackburn in the FA Cup, then won his Scotland cap in March 1880 as a Rangers player. 
   That summer he set up in business in Blackburn, and the inducement for moving south was money, as revealed in his bankruptcy case in 1892: 'The debtor, who was formerly captain of the Blackburn Rovers football team, was a journeyman upholsterer until 1880, when he commenced business as a licensed victualler at the Castle Inn, Blackburn; paying with borrowed money £500 for the goodwill, stock, plant, and license.' The clear inference is that the football club lent him the £500 to set him up in business in return for his footballing services.
   William Struthers took slightly longer to move to Lancashire, joining Bolton Wanderers from Rangers in September 1881. He later became Bolton club secretary, moved on to coach Gorton Villa, and eventually emigrated to South Africa.
   These players had such an impact that in October 1881 the Lancashire team included Fergus Suter, Hugh McIntyre and William Struthers (as well as another Scot, Jimmy Douglas who came from Renfrew).
   But the Partick connection with Lancashire did not end there. 
   When Darwen played Old Etonians in the epic FA Cup quarter finals of 1879, which went to three matches, William Kirkham was injured in the second. His place in the third game was taken by W McLachlan, but this name does not appear in any other Darwen line-up, nor is there a McLachlan in local records. Yet there was a William McLachlan in the Partick team – was he invited to play for Darwen in an emergency?
   In 1880, John Inglis played for Partick in their Lancashire friendlies. He also moved to Rangers, was capped by Scotland, and ended up at Blackburn Rovers where he won the FA Cup in 1884 alongside Suter and McIntyre.
   Then there was Partick player and club secretary John Boag. Although he remained in Glasgow, and eventually 'transferred' to Partick Thistle in 1885 when the original club folded, he also had something of a love affair with Lancashire as in April 1882 he married local girl Eliza Almond in a Bolton church.
   And the final direct link is also one of the most intriguing: James Gledhill, a key player in Darwen's FA Cup run, moved in the opposite direction to play for Partick. 
   Born in 1854 to an English father and Scottish mother, Gledhill was brought up near Preston and trained as a doctor in London, playing football for Pilgrims until he passed his medical diploma exams at Apothecaries Hall in 1878. 
   Returning north, he joined Darwen, one of the few clubs then playing to association rules, and was a key forward at this period. Then Gledhill left to complete his medical studies at Glasgow University, graduating in 1883, and - according to his nephew, writing to a newspaper many years later - while in the city he played for Partick under an assumed name. Dr Gledhill was a surgeon and lawyer in Lancashire but his health declined and he died in 1906 in an asylum, with sufficient reputation to earn an obituary in the British Medical Journal.
   While there is insufficient space here to provide full details of all the players, the sum of these connections between Partick and Lancashire add up to a substantial contribution by one small club to the birth of the professional game.

If you would like to find out more, contribute further information or discuss these findings, please use the contact form on the home page or leave a comment below. Andy Mitchell

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.