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ABSTRACT
The formation of the Women’s Amateur Rowing Association (WARA) in 1923 marked the start of a new phase of the sport’s history. Apart from any direct influence it could exercise as a governing body, its foundation suggests a commitment to building the longevity, reach and relevance of women’s rowing. Yet in the context of the renowned conservativism of the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) which preceded it, and the complex social permissions around women’s sport in the early twentieth century, it also raises important questions about the organisation and status of women’s amateur rowing. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the WARA using prosopographical data and analysis in conjunction with archival material. It challenges the existing depiction of this sporting community and administration as a female reflection of the ARA, aiming to replicate its structures and, in doing so, to bolster its respectability and the legitimacy of its practice among the middle and upper classes. Analysis addresses the intersection of domestic, professional and sporting lives, the role of education in sporting participation and administration, and the influence of class across these issues. The paper also interrogates the use of prosopography as an analytical tool for this type of analysis.
Acknowledgements
Margaret Roberts of Manchester Metropolitan University generously gave of her time and expertise in assembling the genealogical data for the research: I am very grateful for all her hard work and support. Many thanks are also given to British Rowing, and Annamarie Phelps and Pippa Randolph personally, for facilitating access to its archival materials in Hammersmith.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Carol Osborne and Fiona Skillen, ‘The State of Play: Women in British Sport History’, Sport in History 30, no. 2 (2010): 189–95; ‘Forum: Women in Sport’, Women’s History Review 25, no. 5 (2015): 655–61.
2. Amanda N. Schweinbenz, ‘Paddling against the Current: A History of Women’s Competitive International Rowing between 1954 and 2003’ (PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, 2007); ‘Against Hegemonic Currents: Women’s Rowing into the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, Sport in History 30, no. 2 (2010): 309–26; ‘Selling Femininity: The Introduction of Women’s Rowing at the 1976 Olympic Games’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 5 (2009): 654–72; ‘Little Girls in Pretty Shells: The Introduction of Lightweight Women’s Events in Competitive International Rowing’, Sport in History 28, no. 4 (2008): 605–19.
3. Claire Parker, ‘The Social History of English Women’s Rowing 1920–1963: A Case Study of Weybridge Ladies Amateur Rowing Club’ (MA dissertation, University of Warwick, 1993).
4. Christopher Dodd, The Story of World Rowing (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1992), 299. The first meeting minutes available date from 4 May 1923; these reference at least one previous meeting. All known minute books for the WARA are held at British Rowing headquarters, Hammersmith, London.
5. Neil Wigglesworth, The Social History of English Rowing (London: Frank Cass, 1992), 111, 191. The amalgamation was recorded in the 1964 Almanac (‘Review of 1963’, 41) and announced in Rowing magazine following a number of mentions throughout that year (‘A.R.A. merger scheme approved’, Rowing, December 1962, 11).
6. Eric Halladay, Rowing in England: A Social History: The Amateur Debate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 190.
7. Ibid., 187–8.
8. Schweinbenz, ‘Paddling against the Current’, ‘Against Hegemonic Currents’.
9. Schweinbenz, ‘Against Hegemonic Currents’, 318–19. Part of her evidence for this – meeting minutes which stipulate the explicit exclusion of labourers from WARA events and structures – was not made available in the course of this research, despite being specifically requested. Although this is clearly a significant piece of evidence, the extent to which it can be accepted at face value will be challenged here.
10. See Honor R. Sachs, ‘Reconstructing a Life: The Archival Challenges of Women’s History’, Library Trends 56, no. 3 (2008): 650–4.
11. Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports (London: Routledge, 1994), 43.
12. Amy Gentry, ‘The Women’s Amateur Rowing Assn.: The Early Days’, Rowing magazine, December 1949. This article reports that ‘an old rowing man’ asked one woman, Mrs K.L. Summerton, ‘“Why don’t you form your own Association?” … and, thanks to her vigorous efforts, soon the W.A.R.A. [sic] became a reality’.
13. It is indicative that neither of these address the period before the Second World War. Rowing magazine was launched after the war, and although almanacs were published from the mid-nineteenth century they did not incorporate any detail about the women’s sport until 1948.
14. Lawrence Stone, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus 100, no. 1 (1971): 46.
15. Samantha-Jayne Oldfield, ‘Narrative Methods in Sport History Research: Biography, Collective Biography, and Prosopography’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 32, no. 15 (2015): 1855–82.
16. This figure includes committee chairs from 1933. Prior to this point, the chair appears to have been assumed on an ad hoc basis by one of the club representatives.
17. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, 57–60, 65–6.
18. Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 144.
19. Rafaelle Nicholson, ‘“Like a man trying to knit”?: Women’s Cricket in Britain, 1945–2000’ (PhD thesis, Queen Mary University of London, 2015), 172–176.
20. Minutes of WARA meeting held 28 April 1943.
21. This was prior to both of their marriages.
22. Minutes of WARA meeting held 23 June 1947.
23. Jean Williams offers a thorough challenge to the liminal narratives of female participation in sport, and its subordination to domestic and professional responsibilities in A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport, Part One: Sporting Women, 1850–1960 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).
24. See for example Catriona M. Parratt, ‘Little Means or Time: Working-Class Women and Leisure in Late Victorian and Edwardian England’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 15, no. 2 (1998): 29–32.
25. Jane Humphries, ‘Women and Paid Work’ in Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945, ed. June Purvis (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995), 78–9. Humphries collates three analyses of census data to suggest the proportion of working-age women employed was between 30.6 and 38 per cent in 1921; between 31.6 and 38 per cent in 1931; between 36.3 and 43 per cent in 1951; and between 41 and 47 per cent in 1961.
26. See for example Gerry Holloway, ‘Women’s Work in the Inter-War Period’, in Women and Work in Britain since 1840 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 144–61.
27. Ibid., 153.
28. Fiona Skillen, ‘“Woman and the Sport Fetish”: Modernity, Consumerism and Sports Participation in Inter-War Britain’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 29, no. 5 (2012): 755.
29. Judgement made on the age at which they were registered as employed.
30. Statistics published in the Robbins Report (1963) show a gradual increase in university attendance over the period under consideration, by men and women, from 1.5 per cent in 1924 to 4 per cent in 1962. In 1962, separate statistics for men and women are available. These show that 2.5 per cent of the female population entered higher education in this year – a significantly lower proportion than the 17 per cent within the cohort. Committee on Higher Education, Higher Education: Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins, 1961–63, October 1963, Chapter 3. http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/robbins/robbins1963.html (accessed May 29, 2018).
31. Kathleen E. McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women 1870–1914 (London: Routledge, 1988). On rowing, see Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 338.
32. Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 229–34.
33. McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 53.
34. Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 61–7, 81–2; McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 62; Jane McDermid, ‘Women and Education’, in Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945, ed. June Purvis, 113.
35. This process can also be connected with issues of imperialism and militarism in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the social and cultural impact of the process of structuring sport, which had its roots in the public schools, was significant. See for example Tony Schirato, Understanding Sports Culture (London: Sage, 2007), 41–3; Richard Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man: Work, Health and Style in Victorian Britain’, Sport in History 26, no. 3 (2006): 353; Martin Polley, ‘The Amateur Ideal and British Sports Diplomacy, 1900–1945’, Sport in History 26, no. 3 (2006): 450–67. The highly masculine nature of these domains is instructive with regard to women’s experience of and engagement with such structures.
36. This individual was ‘Miss E.M. Adcock’ – her genealogical identity remains unknown. Her university education is inferred by her membership of the United Universities Women’s Boat Club, and has not been traced to a particular institution.
37. The formation of the club is noted in the minutes of WARA meeting held 31 March 1926.
38. See Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History: What’s Left of the Social? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007) for a discussion of the problematics of class as an analytic category, and a defence of its continued relevance in social history.
39. For a defence of this method see John H. Goldthorpe, ‘Women and Class Analysis: In Defence of the Conventional View’, Sociology 17, no. 4 (1983): 465–88.
40. See for example Beverley Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable (London: Sage, 1997); Jane Thompson, Women, Class and Education (London: Routledge, 2000); Joan W. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75; Theodore Koditschek, ‘The Gendering of the British Working Class’, Gender & History 9, no. 2 (1997): 333–63.
41. The first ARA regulations stated ‘No person shall be considered an amateur oarsman or sculler: First, who has ever competed in any open competition for a stake, money, or entrance fee; secondly, who has ever competed with or against a professional for any prize; thirdly, who has ever taught, pursued, or assisted in athletic exercises of any kind as a means of gaining a livelihood; fourthly, who has been employed in or about boats for money or wages; fifthly, is or has been by trade or employment, for wages, a mechanic, artisan or labourer’. The final clause makes an explicit correlation between class and amateur status; these rules remained largely unchanged for more than 50 years. Printed in The Rowing Almanack and Oarsman’s Companion (London: Horace Cox, 1881), 33.
42. http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/ (accessed February 26, 2018). As these are determined by profession, the ‘upper’ category was introduced in this analysis to represent individuals who were supported by private means.
43. Insufficient data was available in the case of Maud Cann, who was identified as coming from a working-class parental home. There is no evidence of her level of education or employment, and she remained single. Probate indicates wealth of around £115,000 on her death in 1990, indicating at lease a moderate degree of upward mobility.
44. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘The Making of a Modern Female Body: Beauty, Health and Fitness in Interwar Britain’, Women’s History Review 20, no. 2 (2011): 299–317.
45. Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender, 94.
46. For a broader consideration of the constraints on working-class female leisure, see Parratt, ‘Little Means or Time’, 22–53.
47. See for example Penny Summerfield, ‘Women and war in the Twentieth Century’ in Women’s History, ed. June Purvis, 307–22; Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain since 1914, 3rd edn (London: Palgrave, 2015), 219–35.
48. Minutes of WARA meeting held 19 February 1925.
49. Letter from Amy Gentry to Lady Ethel Desborough, 3 October 1927. Part of the collection held at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames, UK.
50. See for example Katherine Holden, The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain since 1914, 240–2; Jane Lewis, Women in Britain Since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 16–26.
51. Doris Page was appointed as a vice-president in 1953, under Rachel Nickalls as president, and subsequently took over her role. She is the only president to have held any other role on the committee previously.
52. Halladay, Rowing in England, 183–4.
53. For example, minutes of WARA meeting held 19 February 1923, 17 March 1925.
54. Schweinbenz, ‘Against Hegemonic Currents’, 318.
55. ‘Women’s Amateur Rowing Association: List of Committee and Affiliated Clubs; Constitution, Rules for Regattas and Laws of Boat Racing’, 1930, 9–12. Part of the collection held at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames, UK.
56. Schweinbenz, ‘Against Hegemonic Currents’, 318.
57. This issue is discussed in the 1927 letter referenced above. Amy Gentry, then honorary secretary of the WARA, claims that ‘when I met the Dutch Women’s Crew in Brussels in 1925 I discovered that country did not allow the women to race – all they were allowed to do was compete against each other in Style. I think they rather envied us but I must say they could teach us something as regards style then, but I hope, as we have introduced it to England, that we should be able to hold our own.’ With regard to Olympic inclusion, she suggests that ‘if we cannot get a Race put in perhaps they will consider holding a Style Competition’– the latter option less preferable to the WARA, but potentially more palatable to the conservative Olmpic administration.
58. Minutes of WARA meeting held 21 March 1932.
59. Wigglesworth, The Social History of English Rowing, 111.
60. The Oarswoman was edited by Joyce Sagar, who was also responsible for publicity and press relations.
61. ‘The Female of the Species: Or, “Woman” or “Lady” ?’, The Oarswoman: Official Bulletin of the Women’s Amateur Rowing Association 8 (October 1953), 9.
62. See John Munro, Frederick James Furnivall: A Volume of Personal Record (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911); Elizabeth Carter, A History of Furnivall Sculling Club: 1896–2004 (Deddington: The Elmore Press, 2006).
63. June Purvis, ‘Emmeline Pankhurst in the aftermath of suffrage, 1918–1928’, in The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918–1945, eds Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 19–36. Purvis discusses Pankhurst’s commitment to overcoming class barriers in order to achieve her goals, as well as the ideal of a more unified Britain, yet she also highlights the conflict between this cooperative agenda and the economic context of unemployment and recession in the 1920s.
64. ‘To comply with F.I.S.A. requirements it was agreed that the W.A.R.A. should be regarded as under the jurisdiction of the A.R.A. in matters connected with International entries, and should be represented on the Advisory Sub-Committee on International Rowing jointly with the A.R.A. and the N.A.R.A.’ From ‘A.R.A. Report’, Almanack 1953, 17.
65. Although under the merger women would now pay a slightly higher subscription, in line with the ARA fee, ‘the A.R.A. will undertake to devote a sum, not less than the total received from these sources, for the exclusive benefit of women’s rowing’. ‘A.R.A. News’, Rowing magazine, November 1962, 10.
66. Parker, ‘The Social History of English Women’s Rowing 1920–1963’, 46.
67. Minutes of WARA meeting held 20 May 1932.
68. The pseudonym Nancy Debenham appears to have been adopted by Nancy Cade (née Smallwood Warner). The identity of the other woman operating under the name of Debenham is unknown.
69. Minutes of WARA meeting held 17 December 1929.
70. Evening Standard, 12 April 1930.
71. Minutes of WARA meeting held 11 June 1948.
72. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, 47.
73. See for example McCrone, The Physical Emancipation of English Women, 92.
74. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, 58.
75. Ibid., 62.