The Victorian era saw the launch of a plethora of sporting titles, aimed at an audience which was thirsting for knowledge and insight.
   Many of them faltered as the 20th century progressed, thanks to the First World War and changing social habits, and the titles are now largely forgotten. Yet to sporting historians the periodicals - such as the Badminton Magazine, Sporting Mirror and Baily's Magazine - are packed with intrigue and information. They cast a light on an era when sporting pursuits looked very different to what they do now, with invaluable first-hand accounts of people, events and techniques.
   Now, thanks to the renowned sports historian Chris Harte, they have become accessible and searchable thanks to his extraordinary work in indexing a range of these titles. Not only that, he has written the history of each title, with biographies of the editors and contributors, and reproduced a vast number of the illustrations that made them so attractive. Although his books are aimed at academic researchers, and are printed in limited numbers, the pricing makes them accessible to anyone.
​   Chris's work is, without doubt, a labour of love which will benefit sports researchers around the world.

Here is a quick summary of recent titles:

Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes (1860-1926). A monumental book which covers 796 monthly issues, 380 pages. £30.

The Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes (1895-1923), 406 pages. £19.95.  There is also a volume entitled Strange Stories of Sport (508 pages) which are extracted from the Badminton Magazine, £12.95.

The Sporting Mirror (1881-86), 162 pages. £7.95.

Fores's Sporting Notes and Sketches (1884-1912), 200 pages. £9.95.

The Captain (1899-1924), 394 pages. £10.99.

Currently in preparation is the history and index of CB Fry's Magazine of Sports and Outdoor Life. 

The books can be ordered online from major retailers including Waterstones and amazon. They can also be found on ebay.

After buying a copy of a rare football handbook, I was intrigued to find out more about the author and his other sporting books.
   The little volume by 'Straw Hat' on Rugby & Association Football was one of Dean's Champion Handbooks, which had attractive cover designs and were published to capitalise on the growing desire of the population to take up sport. They came out in the 1890s, and are now very difficult to find.
   'Straw Hat' was the pseudonym of James Jeffery, who had an interesting story as a talented sportsman who combined school teaching with journalism.

Jeffery, born in 1834, went to school in Clapham and then qualified as a teacher at Battersea Training College. In 1858 he was appointed as Assistant Master at Epsom College, where his duties included running the school cricket team and he probably also played football. He held the post until 1879 when he set up a private Preparatory School for the College, which he ran until about 1900. He died in Epsom in 1907.
   Meanwhile, he also carved out a career as a sports writer, initially concentrating on angling as 'Straw Hat' in the Licensed Victuallers' Gazette. His enthusiasm for sports must have appealed to Dean & Son Ltd of Fleet Street, who had started a series of sporting handbooks in the early 1890s based on previously published works about cricket, cycling and swimming. To expand their range, they employed Jeffery and he churned out several books including Football, Croquet, Tennis and Rowing, with an adaptation of the book on Swimming. The cheap editions sold for sixpence, while the hardbacks with colourful covers were a shilling.

Jeffery was not just an enthusiastic writer, he also tried to improve the sporting experience and invented various gadgets such as a new type of batting glove, a kind of cricket practice net, and a spinning reel for angling.
   While most of his book about football is about playing technique, he does provide an interesting anecdote about the early days of football before codification, describing a match played at Wimbledon in the 1860s when his team, which was a 'non-hacking club', came up against a school which did play the hacking game. I believe, from his description, that 'Josh' was the athlete GR (George Richard) Nunn, who was schooled at Epsom.

At the end of the day, James Jeffery was not a hugely important writer on sport, but his work in the Champion series does provide an interesting insight into the late Victoria era. And if nothing else, the attractive cover designs deserve to be appreciated by a wider audience.
   Illustrated below are three more of Dean's Champion Handbooks, on billiards, swimming and golf. The images come from dealer catalogues, so they are not particularly sharp.

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 

When there was not enough advertising business for a specific club, they were grouped together in regional guides, such as Fife, Angus or the Highland League. There was even a handbook for Dundee junior clubs.

As the project ran out of steam, the company moved into national Scottish football yearbooks, the final output I know of being a large format hardback issue for 1953-54.
   Simmath Press, by this time, had moved into expanded premises in Hawkhill, and the original building in Roseangle was sold in 1949 to Dundee Art Society, who are still there today. According to press reports, the company had 30 employees at the time and aimed to bring this up to 100, but I have not been able to establish what happened after the mid-1950s. The last mention I can find of them was in 1955, agreeing a contract to publishing housing tenancy agreement booklets.
   The legacy of Simmath Press remains, however. Sold locally, few copies of their Scottish football handbooks now exist and most of them are not even in the National Library of Scotland, yet the company's prolific output represents a hugely important contribution to the history of our game. Some of their photos, in particular the action shots, are almost the only pictorial record of that era. Written and compiled anonymously, the Simmath football guides are lively and informative, a long-forgotten snapshot of the post-war boom years. 

A Simmath Press football bibliography

'Through the Years' series of club histories (1948): Aberdeen, Alloa, Brechin City, Cowdenbeath, Dundee, Dundee Utd, East Fife, Falkirk, Forfar Athletic, Hibernian, Hearts, Kilmarnock, Montrose, St Johnstone, Stirling Albion; Highland League (reprinted 1952)

Handbooks 1949-50: Aberdeen, Dundee, Forfar Athletic, Hearts, Hibernian, Stirling Albion; Fifeshire Football Clubs

Handbooks 1950-51: Airdrieonians, Alloa, Dundee, Forfar Athletic, Hearts, Hibernian, Kilmarnock, Peterhead, St Johnstone, Stirling Albion; Angus Football Clubs, Inverness and District clubs, North of Scotland clubs; Dundee Junior Football; Scottish League.

Handbooks 1951-52: Hearts/Hibernian (joint), Stirling Albion, Fifeshire Football Clubs, Raith Rovers Supporters' Club Silver Jubilee, Scottish League.

Handbooks 1952-53: Raith Rovers, Scottish League.

Handbooks 1953-54: Raith Rovers, Scottish League (hardback).

Tales from Tynecastle (1928).

This may not be a complete list, please let me know of any other editions.
   

A long time ago I was a dedicated follower of Meadowbank Thistle. I learned to appreciate that supporting football in Scotland's lower leagues is an acquired taste, one which offers a range of emotions and experiences, among which victory celebrations are low on the list.
   So I can empathise with the unique joy of being an Albion Rovers supporter, a team you would never associate with success. Professional photographer Iain Mclean has been following the Rovers for many years, and in this 'photo journal' has recorded a unique insight into life at the Coatbridge club, on and off the pitch.
   Yes, there are occasional on-field highlights, such as that pictured below on the day in 2015 when Albion Rovers were presented with the Third Division championship trophy. But cup victories and promotion challenges are a bonus rather than an expectation, largely outnumbered by the goalless draws and the windswept winter nights.
   In 48 pages spanning 15 years, Iain Mclean has captured the essence of life at this level, with pictures that, according to the intro, 'evoke the unique survivalist charm of Cliftonhill'. His abiding message is that lower league football can be great fun, offering a sense of camaraderie that raises you far above the tedium of the match itself. You will find fans wearing fancy dress, doing their knitting, bringing their dog to the match and having a picnic.
   More than just a football club is available price £9.99 from select Coatbridge outlets including the club shop, or direct from the author via his website. You can also see a wide range of his photographs in his online gallery.

I recently gave a talk about Scottish football literature - and the lack of it - at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. This was at a symposium on sport in the arts, hosted by the British Society of Sports History.
   The main thrust of my presentation was the lack of Scottish novels about football, despite it playing such a prominent part in our daily lives, and despite several high profile contemporary authors being football fans.
   You can read the full illustrated talk by clicking here. Please feel free to leave any comments below.

As a collector of football programmes, I have a fascination for the earliest known Scottish editions, going back over 100 years. But where did it all begin? The answer lies with a pioneer editor in Perth.
   His name was JG Cruickshank, and he was much praised in the local press for his publishing efforts with the Perthshire FA around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when he was honorary secretary of the association. Unfortunately, he met a tragic end.
   Football programmes - as opposed to team match cards - originated with a few English clubs during the 1890s. But in Scotland, the trend did not really get going until the 1920s, so it is quite a surprise to find the above drawing in the Dundee Courier in November 1899, above a lengthy appreciation of his work: 'Than Mr JG Cruickshank, the energetic secretary of the Perthshire Football Association, there are few gentlemen better known in the realms of sport in Scotland or more highly esteemed.' The article went on to say that Cruickshank had been on the PFA committee for three years and was also secretary of the Perthshire 2nd XI Association, the Perth City and County League and the newly founded Dewar Shield.
   It comments that he had taken the initiative to launch the Perthshire Football Annual, and the following year the Northern Football Annual, then adds: 'Mention ought to be made of the official guides which he prepares for every important event which falls to be decided. He handed over the proceeds of three of his programmes to the war fund (ie Boer War) - something like £4 after clearing all expenses.'
   Clearly programme publishing had already become a regular occurrence at major matches in Perthshire.
   Further mention of his editing skills came in the Dundee Evening Post in February 1900: 'We have just received the official programme of the inter-county match between Forfarshire and Perthshire which takes place on the Recreation Grounds, Perth, on Saturday. The programme is tastefully got up and contains, besides other information of interest to footballers, portraits of the rival captains, Mr James Eadie, Dunblane and Mr G Bowman, Montrose. It may be added that the official programmes are to be sold, and the proceeds are to be handed over to the local fund in aid of the wives and families of reservists. The programmes may be had for the humble 'brown' (ie a penny).'
   Described as 'Perthshire's Scribe', Cruickshank continued producing annuals and programmes until 1905, when he stepped down from his duties, again with much positive comment in the press. He was presented with a silver salver and a purse of sovereigns by the President of the Scottish FA, as well as a gold brooch for his wife. In fact, he was then prevailed upon to continue for another season before finally retiring.
   So, who was he? Born in Edinburgh in 1869, James Cruickshank moved to Perth and worked as a salesman for Macnaughtons of Pitlochry, a prominent woollen manufacturer, running their shop in St John's Place. His home was in Craigie, Perth, but his connections to his employers were so strong that he actually represented Vale of Atholl, the Pitlochry club, despite not living there.
   After stepping down from his Perthshire FA posts, he moved to Dundee and set up a drapery shop in Hawkhill. However, his life ended in tragedy and the Dundee Courier reported his suicide in November 1924, aged 55. He was found in his back shop, having poisoned himself with a pipe running from the gas oven. He left a wife and a son.

By a wonderful coincidence, just a couple of weeks after writing this blog I was visiting the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park and spotted this programme in a display case:

Yes, it is an original Cruickshank! Issued for the Perthshire Cup Final of 1903, in which St Johnstone beat Vale of Teith 3-2, it has four pages and was distributed free. I am indebted to St Johnstone historian Brian Doyle, who has provided me with the Perthshire Consitutional report on the game, which includes this info about the programme: 'A feature in connection with the match was the issuing of a nicely got up special souvenir ... the souvenir was largely taken up, and in fact was a huge success, for 'Davie' was finished handing out the copies long before the end of the game. The manner in which the souvenir was folded up and pocketed showed that it was indeed appreciated and no doubt is being duly preserved for the information it contains. On Saturday evening the souvenir was quite 'out of print' so far as the demand was concerned. Many persons desired to get copies with the object of sending them to Perth people abroad, and even on Monday there was a case where a person desired to purchase copies to send as far away as India.'

While the story of the Hearts footballers who went to war in 1914 is well known, and rightly so, another important side to the City of Edinburgh's support for football during the First World War has received little publicity.
   In this centenary year, I have digitised The Sport in War, an account of the extraordinary campaign which raised enough money to send 1,700 footballs to British soldiers, sailors and prisoners of war. This little-known booklet was published in 1930 by John McCartney, who was manager of Hearts throughout the conflict. Having retired the previous year, he turned his hand to writing and also compiled a history of the Scottish Football League.

You can read the booklet in full on my Sporting Anthology page, but it is worth pointing out some key elements. The story began early in the war when Heart of Midlothian FC received some letters from troops requesting footballs for their free time. The club could not cope with the demand so a charitable campaign was set up by the Edinburgh Evening News to raise money for balls, which could be sent on request to anyone in the armed forces, whether serving or imprisoned.
   No doubt some of these footballs were kicked during the famous Christmas truce of 1914, and the campaign continued throughout the war, battling at times against bureaucracy but managing to reach some extraordinary places, as far away as Mesopotamia and Palestine. There are quotes from letters of thanks, not just from ordinary servicemen but from Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, General Joseph Joffre and other high-ranking soldiers - all testament to the boost to morale that a football could bring.
   There were players from Hearts and Hibs among the many recipients, and a Sgt McCready of the RAF summed up the mood when he wrote "Our English mates can't understand how you not only send footballs, let alone of such quality. Their clubs don't respond. I told them they could expect nothing else from the Capital of Scotland. We were very tired when the ball came, but it was just the thing to brighten and revive us."
   McCartney said: "We set out to prove generally that the spirit of sport in the Soldiers and Sailors of the Allied Forces brought about the downfall of the Central Powers. We claim to have succeeded, even although a great part of our story is bound up in and around the City of Edinburgh."

   John McCartney spent a lifetime in football. From humble origins in Glasgow, where he was born in 1866, he had a fairly unremarkable playing career with Cartvale, Glasgow Thistle, Rangers, Cowlairs, Newton Heath, Luton Town and Barnsley. At Oakwell he stepped up in 1901 to become secretary/manager and found his metier. He joined St Mirren in 1904 and took them to their first Scottish Cup final, then joined Hearts in 1910, spending a decade at Tynecastle. He went south in 1920 to Portsmouth, taking them from the Southern League to the First Division, and concluded with two years at Luton where he fought back from a leg amputation before ill health ultimately forced his retiral. He died in Edinburgh in 1933.

Postscript: the story of the footballs has been picked up by the Evening News.

   The distinctive clock tower was recently restored to near its original position after Edinburgh's notorious tramworks were completed. A big crowd is expected this weekend at Haymarket (details on the Hearts website) but when it was unveiled in April 1922 by the Secretary of State for Scotland an extraordinary 50,000 people were in attendance. This is how Aitken Brown viewed the memorial:

   Football in Verse is a flimsy book and few copies have survived, but I will try and digitise my copy at some stage. Meanwhile, it is available in the National Library of Scotland.

A researcher's workload can be laborious but rewarding, as I found this week when transcribing 26 years of Dunblane FC player records from the Scottish Football Association archive.
   The big leather-bound registers, which are held within the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park, are a treasure trove, detailing names, addresses and appearances of every player since 1888 who has taken part in a cup competition: the Scottish Cup, the Scottish Qualifying Cup and the short-lived Scottish Consolation Cup. The inclusion of addresses allows further research by cross-checking against census records, so that dates of birth can often be established. This effectively means everyone who has played senior football can be traced - a great resource not just for sports researchers but also for family historians who have a footballer amongst their ancestors.
   As far as Dunblane (my home town) is concerned, the work had a natural limit as the club ceased to exist in 1914. But even in those 26 seasons, I now have a massive spreadsheet with 184 players listed. They range from the famous, such as the Christie brothers (internationalists Bob and Alex, plus their younger brother Sydney), to the obscure. Some became professionals, such as Archie McGeoch who was with Arsenal and Dundee, William Robertson at Hearts and Dundee, or Jamie Kinnaird and William Weir who both went to Sunderland Albion. Most have local addresses, some even in my own street, but in later seasons, when the club had no league and only took part in cup-ties, it is clear they had to cast their net wide with players coming from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife.
   Ultimately I will work on building up a complete record of all matches and players at the club. The registers will also allow me to research those players who lost their lives in the First World War, who I first wrote about in my last Dunblane blog.