Strength Peddlers: Eddie O’Callaghan and the selling of Irish strength

ABSTRACT

Building on Geraldine Biddle-Perry's 2014 discussion of Gamage's department store, and seeking to address the still existent historical dearth on sporting retail, the following article highlights the case of Eddie O’Callaghan, an Irish bicycle and physical culture retailer operating in fin de siècle Ireland. Focused exclusively on O’Callaghan's trade in ‘Sandow Developers’, an elastic workout device sold by famed physical culturist Eugen Sandow, the article examines three distinct marketing approaches taken by O’Callaghan's company from 1898 to roughly 1906. To do so, the article begins with a brief discussion of cycling and physical culture in Ireland, so as to provide a background to O’Callaghan's situation. Following this, the article explores three distinct marketing approaches taken by O’Callaghan and his associates at the dawn of the twentieth-century. The article concludes by exploring the possible reasons for O’Callaghan's retreat from physical culture commerce by 1906. In doing so, it is argued that O’Callaghan and his affiliates called upon ideas of gender, strength and health in their bid to attract Irish consumers. The article thus sheds light on the then nascent physical culture market alongside larger questions of gender and sporting retail in the Irish sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical culture
• sporting retail
• Irish sporting history
• Eugen Sandow
• gender

Acknowledgements

This work was generously funded by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship and a Universities’ Ireland History Bursary.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Conor Heffernan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5001-4257

Notes

1. ‘Sandow's Developers’, Irish Examiner, 1 November 1898, 8. While this newspaper collection is now held under the title Irish Examiner, it was published as the Cork Examiner during O'Callaghan's time.

2. As will be discussed, Eddie was a common source of interest for nationally distributed newspapers such as the Irish Examiner. Furthermore he was chosen to represent Ireland internationally in cycling in 1893. See ‘Cycle Notes’, Irish Examiner, 31 May 1893, 3.

3. Geraldine Biddle-Perry, ‘The Rise of “The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter”: A Study of Gamage's of Holborn, 1878–1913’, Sport in History 34, no. 2 (2014), 295.

4. Ibid., 302.

5. For example, although masterfully written, Rouse's 2015 work Sport and Ireland is silent on the issue of sporting retail in Ireland. See P. Rouse, Sport and Ireland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

6. Jean Williams, ‘Given the Boot: Reading the Ambiguities of British and Continental Football Boot Design’, Sport in History 35, no. 1 (2015), 90.

7. A recent and noteworthy contribution on the relationship between weightlifting and technologies of the self can be found in Dimitris Liokaftos, A Genealogy of Male Bodybuilding: From Classical to Freaky (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017), 16–20.

8. For O’Callaghan's gramophone interest see ‘For Sale’, Irish Examiner, 6 April 1917, 1.

9. On the Irish context see Rouse, Sport and Ireland alongside Tom Hunt, Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland: The Case of Westmeath (Cork: Cork University Press, 2007). On the British context see the dated but seminal work, Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

10. This is not to say that such sports fell out of public view. Neal Garnham, ‘The Survival of Popular Blood Sports in Victorian Ulster’ (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: archaeology, Celtic studies, history, linguistics, literature, 2007), 107–126.

11. Introductory texts of note being Cormac Moore, The Irish Soccer Split (Cork: Cork University Press, 2015); Liam O'Callaghan, Rugby in Munster: A Social and Cultural History (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011) and Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The GAA: A People's History (Cork: Collins Press, 2009).

12. On this phenomenon see Brian Griffin, Cycling in Victorian Ireland (Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing, 2006).

13. The most notable being Brian Griffin, ‘Cycling and Gender in Victorian Ireland’, Eire-Ireland 41, no. 1 (2006): 213–241.

14. Patrick McDevitt, May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880–1935 (London: Springer, 2004), 14–31.

15. Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 181.

16. For rugby during this period see Laura Kelly, ‘Irish Medical Student Culture and the Performance of Masculinity, c.1880–1930’, History of Education 46, no. 1 (2017): 39–57.

17. Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 218.

18. ‘Mr. Eddie O’Callaghan’, Irish Examiner, 10 August 1893, 8.

19. ‘Mr. Eddie O’Callaghan’, Irish Examiner, 11 September 1893, 8.

20. Ibid.

21. ‘Cycling Notes’, Southern Star, 1 July 1893, 4.

22. A series of lengthy articles on O’Callaghan emerged in the mid-1890s. See ‘Cycle Notes’, Irish Examiner, 31 May 1893, 3; ‘Cycle Notes’, Irish Examiner, 10 April 1893, 7; ‘Cycle Notes’, Irish Examiner, 16 August 1893, 7; ‘Cork R.I.C. Evening Tournament’, Irish Examiner, 31 July 1894, 8.

23. A. Beatty, Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 1884–1938 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 61–65.

24. McDevitt, May the Best Man Win, 14–16.

25. See ‘Letter to the Editor’, Irish Examiner, 09 December, 1896, 7.

26. The Cyclist, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 12 April (1902), 62. For matters relating to the Gazette, this article defers once more to Brian Griffin's work on cycling. See B. Griffin, ‘Sporting Policemen: Sports and the Police in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, Éire-Ireland 48, nos. 1–2 (2013): 54–78.

27. See Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Building a British Superman: Physical Culture in Interwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 4 (2006): 599 and Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 107.

28. ‘Amusements’, The Freemans Journal, 22 April 1898, 4.

29. Works on the topic include, but are not limited to, Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire (New York: New York University Press, 1997). A selection of similar works includes Dominique Padurano, ‘Making American Men: Charles Atlas and the Business of Bodies, 1892–1945’ (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2007); A.D. Morris, Marrow of the Nation : A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (California: University of California Press, 2004); J. Tumblety, Remaking the Male Body: Masculinity and the uses of Physical Culture in Interwar and Vichy France (Oxford: OUP, 2013); S. Grant, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s (London: Routledge, 2012).

30. See ‘The Sailing of the Lucania’, The Irish Examiner, 27 November 1893, 6. Such was Sandow's impact that Corkconians were still fond of the story nearly a century later. See ‘Strong As Sandow’, The Irish Examiner, 2 November 1985, 7.

31. Strong As Sandow’.

32. Initially Sandow disputed Murphys’ claim to his image rights, going so far as to take the brewery to court. A settlement was quickly reached. See ‘Sandow and his Posters’, Aberdeen Evening Express, 21 April 1899, 4.

33. See D.L. Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding, 2nd edn (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994); David Waller, The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Sandow Victorian Strongman (London: Victorian Secrets, 2011). For a fascinating insight into Ziegfield's influence in American entertainment see R. Carter, The World of Flo Ziegfield (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1974).

34. The local Cork newspaper, Cork Constitution simply noted Sandow was on board a ship headed for America, making no reference to his Queenstown performance: ‘Steaming Extraordinary’, Cork Constitution, 21 July 1894, 6.

35. Eugen Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It (London: Gale & Polden, 1897), 114.

36. ‘Celebrated Cyclist Volunteers’, Irish Examiner, 15 January 1915, 3.

37. ‘Eddie O’Callaghan & Co,’, Irish Examiner, 16 April 1898, 5.

38. D.G. Morais, ‘Branding Iron: Eugen Sandow's & Modern Marketing Strategies, 1887–1925’, Journal of Sport History 40, no. 2 (2014), 195.

39. See Section One for O’Callaghan's public persona prior to his Sandow arrangements.

40. ‘Eddie O’Callaghan & Co,’, Irish Examiner, 16 April 1898, 5.

41. ‘Sandow's Developer’, Irish Examiner, 15 October 1898, 8.

42. Ibid. For O’Callaghan's bicycle comparisons see ‘Advertisement’, Irish Examiner, 22 April 1902, 8.

43. A particularly good example being the American Charles Atlas’s ‘Hey Skinny’ Campaigns. E. Toon and J. Golden, ‘Live Clean, Think Clean, and Don't go to Burlesque Shows: Charles Atlas as Health Advisor’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 57, no. 1 (2002): 39–60.

44. Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 65.

45. Though a history of female Irish physical culture has yet to be written, the discourses surrounding competitive sports were remarkably similar. See R.N. Congáil, ‘Looking on for Centuries from the Sideline: Gaelic Feminism and the Rise of Camogie’, Éire-Ireland 48, no. 1 (2013): 168–190.

46. An example of this in the sporting world being found in Jean Williams, ‘“Tri-ang Strong Toys”: Lines Brothers and British Motor Sport in the Inter-War Period’, Sport in History 35, no. 3 (2015): 419–440.

47. Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 40–45.

48. According to Foucault, technologies of the self permitted individuals to effect by their own means a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality. The Developer would certainly fit this description. M. Foucault, L.H. Martin, H. Gutman and P.H. Hutton, Technologies of the Self : A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 18.

49. Hegemonic in the Connell understanding of the phrase as the then most honoured way of being a man, which required all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and which ideologically legitimated the global subordination of women to men. R.W. Connell and J.W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 832 (http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639)

50. ‘A Prize for the Strongest Man in Cork’, Irish Examiner, 16 March 1899, 4.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Biddle-Perry, ‘The Rise of “The World’s Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter”’, 300–302.

54. ‘Advertisement’, Irish Examiner, 26 April 1898, 8.

55. Caroline Daley, ‘Selling Sandow: Modernity and Leisure in Early Twentieth-Century New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History 34, no. 2 (2000): 248.

56. Richard Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man: Work, Health and Style in Victorian Britain’, Sport in History 26 no. 3 (2006): 352–369.

57. ‘Advertisement’, Irish Examiner, 29 November 1898, 9.

58. Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1998), 150–151.

59. ‘Healthy Winter Exercise’, Kerry Evening Post.

60. Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man’, 352–360.

61. McDevitt, May the Best Man Win, 14–31.

62. ‘O’Callaghan: 73 Grand Parade’, Irish Examiner, 19 October 1901, 2.

63. Conor Heffernan, ‘Indian Club Swinging in the Early Victorian Period”, Sport in History 37, no. 1 (2017): 95–120.

64. Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). More recent works being Pamela K. Gilbert, The Citizen's Body: Desire, Health, and the Social in Victorian England (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2007) and Mary Wilson Carpenter, Health, Medicine, and Society in Victorian England (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010).

65. This being the driving focus of Budd, The Sculpture Machine.

66. An example of Sandow's importance being the vast number of Irish contributions to his physical culture magazine. By means of demonstration see P.H. MacEnery, ‘Hurling: The National Pastime of Ireland’, Sandow's Magazine of Physical Culture, IV, January to June (1900) (London: Harrison and Sons, 1900), 34–38; ‘Portrait Gallery’, Sandow's Magazine of Physical Culture, Vol. IX, July to December (1902) (London: Harrison and Sons, 1902), 204 and ’Some Entrants from the Competition’, Physical Culture I, no. vi (1898),: 447.

67. C.E. Forth, ‘Manhood Incorporated: Diet and the Embodiment of Civilized Masculinity’, Men and Masculinities 11, no. 5 (2009): 591.

68. Stephanie Rains, ‘“Do You Ring? Or Are You Rung For?”: Mass Media, Class, and Social Aspiration in Edwardian Ireland’, New Hibernia Review 18, no. 4 (2014): 17–35.

69. A. Gramsci and J.A. Buttigieg, Prison Notebooks, Vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 115.

70. Paul Vaughan, ‘Secret Remedies in the Late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries’, in Alternative Medicine in Britain ed. M. Saks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 101–111.

71. C.A. Watt, ‘Physical Culture as “Natural Cure” – Eugen Sandow's Global Campaign Against the Diseases and Vices of Civilization c.1890–1920’, in Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950 Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and “Immorality”, eds H. Fisher-Tiné, J.A. Pliley and R. Kramm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 74–100.

72. ‘Display Ad 35’, The Irish Times, 21 November 1906, 4; ‘Advertisement’, The Belfast Telegraph, 28 November 1906, 6.

73. ‘Sandow Developer’, Skibbereen Eagle, 26 February 1898, 4.

74. ‘For Sale’, Irish Examiner, 6 April 1917, 1.

75. M. Ginsburg, ‘Rags to Riches: The Second-Hand Clothes Trade 1700–1978’, Costume 14 (1980): 121–135; M. Lambert, ‘Cast-off Wearing Apparel: The Consumption and Distribution of Second-Hand Clothing in Northern England during the Long Eighteenth Century’, Textile History 35, no. 1 (2004): 1–26; B. Lemire, ‘Shifting Currency: The Culture and Economy of the Second Hand Trade in England, c. 1600–1850’, in Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion, eds A. Palmer and H. Clark (New York: Berg, 2005), 29–47.

76 E.C. Sanderson, ‘Nearly New: The Second-Hand Clothing Trade in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh’, Costume 31 (1997): 38–48.

77. Ginsburg, ‘Rags to Riches’, 125–130.

78. A focus on retro sporting jerseys has already been alluded to. See Christopher Stride et al., ‘From Sportswear to Leisurewear: The Evolution of English Football League Shirt Design in the Replica Kit Era’, Sport in History 35, no. 1 (2015): 178.

79. James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Random House, 1960 edition), 4.234.

80. ‘Classified Ad 139’, The Irish Times, 1 May 1906, 10.

81. ‘For Sale’, Skibbereen Eagle, 14 August 1909, 13.

82. ‘Advertisement’, Irish Examiner, 25 September 1901, 2; ‘Advertisement’, Skibbereen Eagle, 26 February 1898, 4.

83. ‘Advertisement’, Irish Examiner, 13 October 1898, 8.

84. ‘Gymnastics: The Dublin Gymnasium, The Irish Times, 3 October 1904, 7.

85. ‘Display Ad 35’, The Irish Times, 21 November 1906, 4; ‘Advertisement’, The Belfast Telegraph, 28 November 1906, 6.

86. ‘Health by Post’, Sunday Independent, 14 November 1909, 5.

87. ‘Classified Ad 152’, The Irish Times, 2 May 1906, 12; ‘Classified Ad 39’, The Irish Times, 24 December 1910, 2.

88. A fascinating discussion of physical culture in Ulysses can be found in V.M. Plock, ‘A Feat of Strength in “Ithaca”: Eugen Sandow and Physical Culture in Joyce's “Ulysses”’, Journal of Modern Literature 30, no. 1 (2007): 129–139.

89. Rains, ‘Do You Ring? Or Are You Rung For?’, 19–20.

90. ‘Prepaid Advertisements’, Freemans Journal, 27 April 1906, 2.

91. Cyclops, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 3 October 1908, 37.

92. ‘Mr. T Inch, Britain's Greatest Physical Culture Expert, chats with our London Representative’, The Constabulary Gazette, 30 September 1911, iv.

93. In the Irish context, Muller's works found a fierce advocate in the athletic writer for the Constabulary Gazette. See Cyclops, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 26 September 1908, 24; Cyclops, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 10 October 1908, 54. See also ‘Books Received’, Freemans Journal, 17 August 1912, 6 and ‘The Fresh Air Book’, The Irish Examiner, 19 October 1908, 8. An excellent discussion of Muller's transnational importance can be found in H. Bonde, ‘From Hygiene to Salvation: J.P. Muller, ‘International Advocate of Gymnastics’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 10 (2009): 1357–1375.

94. Cyclops, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 12 September 1908, 435.

95. Though Carter briefly refers to Miles in Neil Carter, Medicine, Sport and the Body: A Historical Perspective (London: A&C Black, 2012), 25; there is much more work to be done and, one adds, a rich body of Miles’s publications regarding both tennis and physical culture to be explored.

96. The book in question being G.S. Greene and P.A. Marrinan, The Athletes’ Guide to Health and Physical Fitness: Modern Physical Culture, Boxing, Deep Breathing, Swimming and Resuscitation (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers, Walker, 1908). On its publicity see H. Finn, ‘Physical Culture Notes’, Weekly Irish Times, 6 January 1912, 21.

97. ‘Celebrated Cyclist Volunteers’, Irish Examiner.

98. ‘Cork Officer Wounded’, Irish Examiner, 29 May 1916, 5.

99. ‘The Business of Eddie O’Callaghan’, Irish Examiner, 4 June 1920, 6.

100. Sam Fussell, Muscles: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (London: Poseidon Press, 1991), 137.

101. Such alternative approaches, albeit those found in America, have been described well in J.C. Whorton, Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America (Oxford: OUP, 2002).

102. Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 217.

103. Dion Georgiou, and Benjamin Litherland, ‘Introduction: Sport's Relationship with Other Leisure Industries–Sites of Interaction’, Sport in History 34, no. 2 (2014): 183.