Wyndham Halswelle and the 1908 Olympic 400 metres final, the most controversial race in Olympic history?

ABSTRACT

One of the central narratives of the 1908 Olympic Games is the intense Anglo-American acrimony which culminated in the nadir of their sporting relations. One of the major controversies involved the 400 metres final which featured Halswelle, a British athlete, and three Americans – Carpenter, Robbins and Taylor. The final was declared void after Carpenter obstructed Halswelle and was disqualified. In protest the Americans withdrew Robbins and Taylor from the re-run and Halswelle won the gold medal unopposed. This paper explores the 400 metres final from the perspective of the British athlete Wyndham Halswelle utilising his diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks and the papers of his elder brother, Gordon. Serendipitously, the continual digitisation of newspapers also gave further insight into allegations of illegal team tactics by Carpenter and Robbins in the initial race. The article then further exploits these resources to develop a case study of Halswelle as an elite early-twentieth-century British amateur athlete. Differences in ideas of the amateur athlete ideal are often identified as an underpinning cause of international squabbling at the IV Olympiad and may have led to Halswelle’s decision to retire after the games at the age of 26 while still improving his performances.

KEYWORDS:

• Olympics
• Britain
• United States of America
• Wyndham Halswelle

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Luke Harris http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7960-387X

Notes

1 ‘Americans Disgusted With Unfair Treatment in England’, Los Angeles Herald, 24 July 1908, 6.

2 Elmer Holmes Davis, History of the New York Times, 1851–1921 (New York: The New York Times, 1921), 416; ‘A Bitter Wrangle Over Olympic Race’, New York Times, 24 July 1908, 6.

3 Matthew P. Llewellyn, ‘The Battle of Shepherd’s Bush’, International Journal of the History of Sport 28, no. 5 (2011): 688–710.

4 ‘Sullivan Scores Britons’, New York Times, 26 July 1908, 25.

5 ‘America Puts Ban on British Games’, New York Times, 17 November 1908, 8.

6 During one author’s recent visit to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Village, coincidentally just prior to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, a local radio station hosted a public phone-in on the myth of American teams not dipping the flag at Olympic opening ceremonies. Literature pertaining to the 1908 London games includes: George R. Matthews, ‘The Controversial Olympic Games of 1908 as viewed by the New York Times and the Times of London’, Journal of Sport History 7, no. 2 (1980): 40–52; Steven W. Pope, ‘American Muscles and Minds: Public Discourse and the Shaping of National Identity during Early Olympiads, 1896–1920’, Journal of American Culture 15, no. 4 (1992): 105–24; Bill Mallon and Ian Buchanan, ‘To No Earthly King’, Journal of Olympic History 7, no. 3 (1999): 21–8; Bill Mallon and Ian Buchanan, The 1908 Olympic Games (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000); John Baker, The 1908 Olympics: The First London Games (Cheltenham: SportsBooks, 2008); John Bryant, The Marathon Makers (London: John Blake, 2008); Mark Dyreson, ‘“This Flag Dips for No Earthly King”: The Mysterious Origins of an American Myth’, International Journal of the History of Sport 25, no. 2 (2008): 142–62; Rebecca Jenkins, The First London Olympics: 1908 (London: Piatkus, 2008); Graeme Kent, Olympic Follies: The Madness and Mayhem of the 1908 London Games, A Cautionary Tale (London: JR Books, 2008); Matthew McIntire, ‘National Status, The 1908 Olympic Games and the English Press’, Media History 15, no. 3 (2009): 271–86; Matthew P. Llewellyn, ‘A British Olympics’, International Journal of the History of Sport 28, no. 5 (2011), 669–87; Bob Wilcox, ‘This Flag Dips to No Earthly King’, Journal of Olympic History 19, no. 1 (2011): 39–45; Iain Adams and Mitchell J. Larson, ‘“Hey Pal! Who Won the Marathon?” The Illustrated London News’s Coverage of Sport in 1908, an Olympic Year’, Sport in History 32, no. 2 (2012): 135–56; Luke J. Harris, Britain and the Olympic Games, 1908–1920: Perspectives on Participation and Identity (London: Palgrave, 2015). Mallon and Buchanan’s The 1908 Olympic Games has an extensive review of the disputes in Appendices II, III and IV.

7 Michael Stewart, ‘The Lone Olympian: An Account of the Life and Achievements of Wyndham Halswelle (1882–1915) (2006). Copy available at The Royal Highland Fusiliers Home Headquarters and Museum, 518 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LW.

8 Michael Stewart, telephone interview with Iain Adams, 26 June 2017; The Royal Highland Fusiliers are the descendant regiment of the Highland Light Infantry, Wyndham Halswelle’s regiment.

9 Wyndham Halswell, interview with Iain Adams, at Halswell’s residence, 27 July 2017. Halswell would not divulge the name of the collector and explained that he had received guarantees that the objects will not be sold. He further opined that the materials would probably be out of reach of sport historians for the foreseeable future.

10 ‘Lieut. Halswelle and The 400 Metres Event’, The Sporting Life, 3 October 1908, 7.

11 Ibid.

12 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 24 January 1897.

13 Halswelle, ‘Diary’. Sometimes Halswelle does not indicate a day. Stewart, ‘The Lone Olympian’, thinks that the diary is frequently written up at a later date.

14 Gordon Halswelle, ‘Memoir’, 24 July 1892.

15 Ibid., May 1898.

16 Halswelle, ‘Diary’.

17 ‘Cricket’, Highland Light Infantry Chronicle 3, no. 8 (January 1903), 806.

18 Iain Adams, ‘James Curran: Ethereal Scottish Athlete and American Coaching Legend’, International Journal of Sport Science and Physical Education 115, no. 1 (2017): 83–8; ‘Halswelle retires with great record’, Washington Times, 5 July 1909, 11.

19 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 1 January 1903.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 2 August 1904; ‘Athletics’, Edinburgh Evening News, 3 August 1905, 5.

22 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 24 June 1905. So far searches of the Scottish newspapers have not revealed these rumours.

23 For example. see Kevin Jefferys, ‘Lord Burghley, Chariots of Fire and the Gentleman Amateur in British Athletics’, Sport in History 33, no. 4 (2013): 445–64.

24 ‘The Olympic Games’, Scotsman, 22 July 1906, 7.

25 Interview with Wyndham Halswell, 27 July 2017. Wyndham Halswelle’s grandfather, David Haswell, ran a plumbing and glazing business in London where Halswelle’s father, John Keeley Haswell, was born in 1831. Stewart, ‘The Lone Olympian’, shows that John Keeley Haswell was signing his name as Keeley Haswell in 1855 but when he married in 1861 he was Keeley Halswelle, the name used on his paintings. According to Stewart, Keeley left an estate of about £38,000 (equivalent to about £4,700,000 in 2018) when he died in 1891.

26 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 30 April 1906.

27 ‘Lieut. Halswell’s Performances as an Athlete’, Highland Light Infantry Chronicle 6, no. 3 (July 1906): 90–2, 90, 91 (note the spelling of Halswelle). This was the only scratch 400 metres/440 yards race that Halswelle lost and the whereabouts of his silver medal is unknown.

28 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 1 May 1906.

29 Ibid, 11 June 1906.

30 Ibid, 23 June 1906.

31 ‘2nd Battalion News’, Highland Light Infantry Chronicle 7, no. 3 (July 1907), 79.

32 ‘Athletics: The Scottish Championships in Edinburgh’, Scotsman, 24 June 1907, 4.

33 Halswelle, ‘Diary’; ‘Annual Games’, Highland Light Infantry Chronicle 7, no. 4 (October 1907), 158.

34 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, undated but he was posted to the HLI depot at Hamilton in March 1908. This is almost certainly James (Jimmy) Wilson who was a professional athlete before coaching at Edinburgh Harriers, Powderhall and finally training Glasgow Rangers football club 1897–1914 (David Mason and Ian Stewart, Mr Struth: The Boss (London: Headline, 2013).

35 Halswelle. ‘Diary’, May 1908; ‘Athletics: Sports at the Exhibition’, Scotsman, 14 May 1908, 12; ‘Athletics: Scottish Amateur Championships in Edinburgh’, Scotsman, 29 June 1908, 15; ‘Athletics: Great Performance by Lieutenant Halswelle’, Scotsman, 2 July 1908, 11; ‘Amateur Athletic Championships: Halswelle Wins the Quarter-Mile’, Scotsman, 6 July 1908, 3. ‘Athletics and Cycling: Scotland v Ireland’, Irish Times, 13 July 1908, 4.

36 British Olympic Association, Olympic Games of London 1908. IVth Olympiad (London: BOA, 1908); Lord Desborough, ‘To the Editor’, The Times, 5 March 1908, 4.

37 ‘The Olympic Games; The Modern Games’, The Times, 9 July 1908, 16.

38 Allan Nevins, ‘American Journalism and Its Historical Treatment’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1959): 411–519, 412, 413–14.

39 ‘A Votive Vase of Modern Olympic Competitors’, Illustrated London News, 18 July 1908, 85. Twelve British and 1 Americans are featured, including two Britons for the 400 metres, E.H. Montague and Halswelle. Adams and Larson, ‘Hey Pal! Who Won the Marathon?’

40 ‘Editorial: Olympic Games’, The Scottish Referee, 20 July 1908, 1, cited in Harris, Britain and the Olympic Games, 71.

41 C.B. Fry, ‘Editorial’, C.B. Fry’s Magazine, June 1908, 286.

42 Dyreson, Making the American Team, 135; Matthews, ‘The Controversial Olympic Games’, 40.

43 Dyreson, ‘This Flag Dips for No Earthly King’; Mallon and Buchanan, ‘To No Earthly King’; Barbara Parker, ‘Imre Kiralfy’s Patriotic Spectacles: Columbus, and the Discovery of America (1892–1893) and America (1893)’, Dance Chronicle 17, no. 2 (1994): 149–78; Wilcox, ‘This Flag Dips to No Earthly King’. The flag of Sweden was also missing, but the flags of China and Japan, who were not competing, were flying. Llewellyn, ‘The Battle of Shepherd’s Bush’, noted that Kiralfy had put his three sons in charge of flags and they were American citizens, one a sprinter on the American team.

44 Adams and Larson, ‘Hey Pal! Who Won the Marathon?’ 149; Llewellyn, ‘The Battle of Shepherd’s Bush’.

45 Theodore Andrea Cook, The Fourth Olympiad being The Official Report of the Olympic Games of 1908 celebrated in London (London: The British Olympic Association, 1909), 91; Kent, Olympic Follies, 94; Llewellyn, ‘The Battle of Shepherd’s Bush’, 689; Mallon and Buchanan, The 1908 Olympic Games, 313–405.

46 ‘Great Britain’s Triumph’, Observer, 19 July 1908, 11; Brooks Adams, The New Empire (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1903); John Nauright and Timothy Chandler, eds, Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity (Abingdon: Routledge, 1996); Gareth Williams, 1905 and All That (Llandysul: Gomer, 1991).

47 ‘Splendid Trials in Early Meet’, New York Times, 12 July 1908, 25.

48 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 22 July 1908. Stewart remarked that in places Halswelle obviously made notes and wrote up his diary later.

49 Ibid., 23 July 1908. This is the only hint he gives that ‘tactics’ may have been used against him in Athens, whereas in London, there were no lanes and the start was not staggered.

50 ‘The Gaelic American’, OCLC WorldCat. http://www.worldcat.org/title/gaelic-american/oclc/9400293 (accessed 3 August 2017); ‘English Action Premeditated’, Gaelic American, 1 August 1908, 1.

51 ‘Angry Scenes at the Stadium’, Cornubian, 30 July 1908, 7.

52 Cook, The Fourth Olympiad, 55. The report also outlined the American rules; Heath D. White, ‘Athletic Note and Comment’, The Boston Post, 3 August 1908, 4.

53 Mallon and Buchanan’s The 1908 Olympic Games has an extensive review of the 400 metre race and British American responses in Appendix III.

54 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 23 July 1908.

55 Cook, The Fourth Olympiad, 57.

56 Ibid., 56–7; Dr Badger’s name probably caused some confusion when it was used inappropriately in a syndicated reiteration of the story in 1960: ‘As the hunched field pounded around the last turn, people yelled “foul” and an excited British badger rushed forward to cut the tape.’ Tommy Holmes, ‘Old Olympic Rhubarbs were Best’, Florence Morning News (Florence, SC), 15 August 1960, 9.

57 Paula M. Kane, Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism 1900–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Peabody’s letter is included in full in Mallon and Buchanan, The 1908 Olympic Games, 332–7. John Taylor, who forfeited a certain medal by not taking part in the re-run of the 400 metres, became the first African American to win an Olympic gold medal when he was part of the victorious United States medley relay team.

58 ‘Fair Race Says Carpenter’, Gaelic American, 1 August 1908.

59 Historic Newspapers, ‘A Brief History of the Daily Mail’. https://www.historic-newspapers.co.uk/old-newspapers/daily-mail (accessed 4 September 2017).

60 ‘Fair Race Says Carpenter’, Gaelic American, 1 August 1908.

61 Daily Mail, 24 July 1908, 7.

62 ‘Carpenter Back’, Sun (New York), 14 August 1908, 6.

63 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 23 July 1908, 216. Compare this to his statement in The Sporting Life (note 10).

64 Ibid., 24 July 1908 and similar note in Gordon’s ‘Memoir’.

65 Ibid., 1 August 1908.

66 ‘Sensation at the Stadium: Halswelle Fouled in the 400 Final’, Scotsman, 24 July 1908, 8; Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘The Daily Telegraph’. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Daily-Telegraph (accessed 31 January 2018); ‘Wyndham Halswelle’, Daily Telegraph, 24 July 1908, 217.

67 Editorial: The Olympic Games: Were They a Success?’ C.B. Fry’s Magazine, October 1908, 67. Fry is repeating the story in the Daily Mail.

68 ‘The Olympic Games’, The Times, 24 July 1908, 9.

69 W.W. Alexander, ‘Athletic Notes’, Sporting Mail, 1 August 1908, 1.

70 J.E. Fowler-Dixon, ‘The Stadium: Quarter-mile Champion’s Time’, Observer, 26 July 1908, 11.

71 Ibid.

72 ‘National welcome for Olympic victors’, Gaelic American, 1 August 1908, 1; ‘Olympic Games Marred’, Pittsburgh Press, 19 July 1908, 12.

73 ‘British ignored Sullivan: A.A.U’s President, says George Brown’, Boston Post, 6 August 1908, 10.

74 David Ralph Spencer, The Yellow Journalism: The Press and America’s Emergence as a World Power (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 35; Nevins, ‘American Journalism and Its Historical Treatment’, 419; ‘British Officials Unjust’, Sun (New York), 25 July 1908, 3.

75 ‘About New-York Tribune’, Library of Congress Chronicling America. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/ (accessed 4 September 2017). ‘More Disputes in Olympic Games’, New York Tribune, 24 July 1908, 5.

76 ‘Canadian Makes Warm Criticism of Our Athletes’, Evening World (New York), 8 August 1908, 4.

77 Gerry Wilkinson, ‘The History of the Philadelphia Inquirer’. http://www.phillyppa.com/inquirer.html (accessed 30 January 2018); ‘Early September Days in Society’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 September 1908, 4.

78 ‘About Los Angeles Herald’ Library of Congress Chronicling America. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/ (accessed 30 January 2018). ‘How True Sport Differs from Barbarous Spectacle’, Los Angeles Herald, 10 August 1908, 4.

79 William Richard Cutter, Families of Western New York (Baltimore, MD: Clearfield, 2009). ‘Britons say they don’t care what A.A.U. does’, Buffalo Commercial, 4 December 1908, 6.

80 ‘A Bitter Wrangle Over Olympic Race’, New York Times, 24 July 1908, 6.

81 ‘Hayes Olympic Parade Hero’, Sun (New York), 30 August 1908, 7.

82 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 24 July 1908.

83 Ibid., 25 July 1908.

84 Peter J. Beck, ‘Britain and the Olympic Games: London 1908, 1948, 2012’, Journal of Sport History 39, no. 1 (2012): 21–43, 30; Dave Day, ‘The British Athlete “is born not made”’, Journal of Sport History 44, no. 1 (2017): 20–34.

85 Harry Grayson, ‘Olympics Breed Disputes’, Reading Times (Reading, PA), 15 June 1936, 12; Richard D. Mandell, The Nazi Olympics (n.p.: Endeavour Press, 2016), 38.

86 Mallon and Buchanan, The 1908 Olympic Games, 327, 10.

87 Halswelle, ‘Diary’, 1 May 1906.

88 Ibid.

89 Matthews, ‘The Controversial Olympic Games’, 51–52; Holmes, History of the New York Times, 277. This arrangement was cancelled after differences of opinion between Lord Northcliffe, The Times' owner, and the New York Times management at the beginning of the First World War.

90 ‘Canadian Makes Warm Criticism of Our Athletes,’ Evening World (New York, NY), 8 August 1908, 4.

91 New York Times, 29 July 1908, 9; ‘Editorial, Marathon’, Edinburgh Evening News, 25 July 1908, 4. The Evening News focussed on local issues with a strong interest in sport; Halswelle was something of a local hero after being based and running there as a soldier.

92 Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism (Ubana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 38.

93 ‘Olympic Games, When should Britain Retire. Mr Lehmann’s views’, Observer, 4 August 1912, 6.

94 McIntire, ‘National Status’, 280.

95 Gordon Halswelle, ‘Memoir’, 23 July 1908.

96 Halswelle, Diary, 28 July 1908.

97 Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves, ‘A Universal Dilemma: The British Sporting Life and the Complex, Contested, and Contradictory State of Amateurism’, Journal of Sport History 41, no. 1 (2014): 95–116, 96; Lincoln Allison, Amateurism in Sport: An Analysis and a Defence (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 3; Llewellyn and Gleaves, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism; Norman Baker, ‘Whose Hegemony? The Origins of the Amateur Ethos in Nineteenth Century English Society’, Sport in History 24, no. 1 (2004): 1–16.

98 Ian Thomson, ‘Athletics’, in Sport, Scotland and the Scots, eds Grant Jarvie and John Burnett (East Lothian: Tuckwell, 2000), 19–38, 28.

99 Halswelle. ‘Diary’, 8 August 1908.

100 Dave Day, ‘The “Human Training Stables” of Victorian America: Cultural Differences in Sports Coaching’, The International Journal of Sport Science and Physical Education 115, no. 1 (2017) 49–54. Both John Carpenter and John Taylor had graduated from university shortly before the 1908 Olympics, Carpenter from Cornell and Taylor from Pennsylvania. William Robbins’s biography is sparse, but a ‘Mecca Cigarettes Champion Athletes and Prize Fighters’ card has him as a graduate of Cornell.

101 ‘Letter from Halswelle’, 14 March 1908, 376; ‘How Captain Halswelle Died’, Highland Light Infantry Chronicle 15, no. 2 (April 1915 – but published in July): 68–9.

102 ‘Flower of Old Nobility and Men of Genius Eminent in Every Field of Activity Have been claimed as Toll of Death in Big War’, The Washington Post, 29 August 1915: 3; ‘Halswelle Killed in War; Victor in Olympic Games’, Chicago Tribune, 6 April 1915. The German language Hermanner Volksblatt from Hermann, MO included a German translation of the article on 26 November 1915. Halswelle’s 400 metres teammate at London, Noel Chavasse, was killed in 1917 after being awarded two Victoria Crosses. Also, his friends Guy Chichester, who encouraged him to get involved in elite running, and Leo Pringle, his Athens trainer, were both killed in the First World War.