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Abstract
This paper attempts to give some focus to what the game of golf offered to women in a period which saw an expansion of leisure pursuits for the health and well-being of the middle class. With the establishment of a national body to develop the game in the interests of British women and the leadership of a few pioneers, consideration is given to what it was like for the ‘fair sex’ to participate in the male dominated world of golf.
Notes
1. P.H. Chavasse's Advice to a wife, revised by Farncourt Barnes (London, 1906), p. 14.
2. Important exceptions are Allen Guttmann, Women's sports: A history (New York, 1991), who devotes his account to women only, while two general studies of sport Richard Holt's Sport and the British (Oxford, 1989), pp. 117–34 and John Lowerson's Sport and the English middle classes, 1870–1914 (Manchester, 1993), pp. 203–20 are important in highlighting the extent of women's contribution to sport.
3. Neil Tranter, ‘Women and sport in the 19th century Scotland’ in Grant Jarvie and Graham Walker, eds., Scottish sport in the making of the nation (Leicester, 1994), p. 35.
4. Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting females (London, 1994), p. 51.
5. Richard Holt, Sport and the British (Oxford, 1989), pp. 117–8.
6. Ada Ballin, ‘Introduction’ in H. Spicer, ed., Sport for girls (London, 1900), p. 15.
7. Ada Ballin, ‘Physical health and culture’, Womanhood, vol. I (Dec. 1898), p. iii.
8. Louie Mackern and M. Boys, eds., Our lady of the green. A book of ladies’ golf (London, 1899), p. 108.
9. Marilyn Constanzo, ‘ “One can't shake off the women”: Images of sport and gender in Punch, 1901–10’, International Journal for the History of Sport, 19 (1) (2002), p. 39.
10. See Jane George, Joyce Kay and Wray Vamplew ‘Women to the fore: gender accommodation and resistance at the British golf club before 1914’, Sporting Traditions, 23 (2) (2007), pp. 79–98, for the role of gender power relationships.
11. Quoted in David Hamilton, Golf: Scotland's game (Kilmalcolm, 1998), p. 156.
12. There are numerous examples of ladies having to ‘give way’ to men even although they were within their rights as paid-up members of the same club. The author is in the process of preparing a forthcoming article on the treatment of women in golf clubs in the twentieth century.
13. Harry and Alfie Ward, A history of Biggar Golf Club through 100 eventful years, 1895–1995 (Biggar, 1995), p. 23.
14. Peter MacPhee, Ballater Golf Club 1892–1992 (Ballater, 1992), p. 45.
15. George Fullerton Carnegie, ‘The Golfiad’ in Golfiani: or niceties connected with the game of gold (Edinburgh, 1842), pp. 5–10. ‘The Golfiad’ was originally published by Blackwood in 1842.
16. John Kerr, The golf book of east Lothian (Edinburgh, 1896), pp. 133–4.
17. John Kerr, The golf book of east Lothian (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 133.
18. Eustace White, ‘Lady golfers’, Golfing, IX (56) (1908), p. 439.
19. Mabel Stringer, Golfing reminiscences (London, 1924), p. 33.
20. The Ladies’ Field, 25 Feb. 1899, p. 493.
21. Quoted in C.B. Fry's Magazine of Sports and Outdoor Life, 3 (16) (July 1905), p. 314.
22. There were approximately 65 ladies's clubs prior to 1893 as noted by Rosalind Cossey, Golfing ladies: Five centuries of golf in Great Britain and northern Ireland (London, 1984), p. 244.
23. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green, p. 14.
24. The Gentlewoman, 29 Apr. 1893.
25. Joyce Wethered, Golfing memories and methods (London, 1933), p. 182.
26. Cossey, Golfing ladies, p. 26.
27. Malcolm Crane, The story of ladies’ golf (London, 1991), p. 18.
28. Kathleen McCrone, Sport and the physical emancipation of English women, 1870–1914 (London, 1988), p. 171.
29. Quoted from Fairway and Hazard, Apr. 1943, pp. 40–1.
30. Letter to Blanche Martin, LGU treasurer, from Horace Hutchison, 9 Apr. 1893, cited in Lewine Mair, One hundred years of women's golf (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 13.
31. The Scotsman, 24 May 1897, p. 4.
32. The Gentlewoman, 5 June 1897, p. 796.
33. A. Starkie-Bence, ‘Golf’, in F. Slaughter, ed., The sportswoman's library, vol. I (2 vols., London, 1898), p. 313.
34. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green, p. 27.
35. Horace Hutchison, The book of golf and golfers (2 vols., London, 1899), p. 202.
36. McCrone, Sport and the physical emancipation of English women, p. 235.
37. H. Roberts, ‘The exquisite slave: The role of clothes in the making of Victorian woman’, Signs, 2 (3) (1977), p. 565.
38. The Gentlewoman, 4 Mar. 1893, p. 266.
39. Hargreaves, Sporting females, p. 164.
40. St Andrews Citizen, 20 June 1903, p. 5.
41. McCrone, Sport and the physical emancipation of English women, p. 240.
42. Jihang Park, ‘Sport, dress reform and the emancipation of women in Victorian England: A reappraisal’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 6 (1), p. 10.
43. Jane George, ‘Women and golf in Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 77–107.
44. Jane George, ‘Women and golf in Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003), pp. i–ii. Evidence to suggest this came from approximately 50 British women born between 1906 and 1985.
45. A collection of Miss Glover's press cuttings in the Scottish Ladies’ Golfing Association archive indicates the extent of her frequent trips to play at golf clubs in the south of France in the early 1900s.
46. Constanzo, ‘One can't shake off the women’, pp. 40–2.
47. J.R. Longstaff, The first hundred years of Bishop Auckland Golf Club, 1894–1994. (Bishop Auckland, 1994), p. 55.
48. William Russell, A history of Craigmillar Park Golf Club 1895–1995 (Craigmillar, 1995), p. 5.
49. William Russell, A history of Craigmillar Park Golf Club 1895–1995 (Craigmillar, 1995), p. 5.
50. R.B. Smith, Blackburn Golf Club 100 years, 1894–1994 (Blackburn, 1993), p. 19.
51. Eve M. Soulsby, Braemar Golf Club. The story of the first 100 years (Braemar, 1902), p. 9.
52. Eve M. Soulsby, Braemar Golf Club. The story of the first 100 years (Braemar, 1902), p. 15.
53. Alex McIntosh, Blairgowrie Golf Club 1889–1989 (Blairgowrie, 1989), p. 17.
54. Alex McIntosh, Blairgowrie Golf Club 1889–1989 (Blairgowrie, 1989), p. 19.
55. Douglas Caird, ‘Miss Leitch looks back …’, Fairway and Hazard, Apr. 1969, p. 42.
56. Enid Wilson, A gallery of women golfers (London, 1961), p. 53.
57. Eleanor Helme quoted in Fairway and Hazard, Dec. 1955, p. 210.
58. Douglas Caird, ‘Miss Leitch looks back …’, Fairway and Hazard, Apr. 1969, p. 43.
59. Alan Jackson, ‘The oldest contest of all’, Through the Green Mar. 2000, p. 29.
60. Cecil Leitch, Golf (London, 1922), p. 59.
61. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications.
62. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 95.
63. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 94.
64. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 96.
65. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 101.
66. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 100.
67. Mackern and Boys, eds., Our lady of the green (London, 1899) includes some articles which had already appeared in the Badminton Magazine and Golf publications. p. 97.
68. Wray Vamplew, ‘Successful workers or exploited labour? Golf professionals and professional golfers in Great Britain, 1888–1914’, Economic History Review 61 (1) (2008), p. 57.
69. Prince's Ladies’ Golf Club on Mitcham Common was instituted in 1894. Nisbet's Golf year book (London, 1906), p. 364, notes that Mrs Gordon Robertson and Mr Philpot were instructors at that time.
70. Robert Browning, History of golf (London, 1955), p. 196.
71. Alan Jackson, ‘Mitcham's mystery unmasked’, Through the Green June 1998, p. 20.
72. The Hockey Field, 8 Oct. 1908.
73. Jackson, ‘Mitcham's mystery unmasked’, p. 20.
74. The Hockey Field, 8 Oct. 1908, p. 428.
75. Ladies’ Field, 10 Oct. 1908, p. 428.
76. Vamplew, ‘Successful workers or exploited labour? pp. 62–63.
77. Catriona Parratt, ‘Athletic “womanhood”: exploring sources for female sport in Victorian and Edwardian England’, Journal of Sport History, 16 (2) (1989), p. 155.
78. Park, ‘Sport, dress reform and the emancipation of women in Victorian England’, p. 10.
79. Noel Dunlop-Hill, History of the Scottish Ladies’ Golfing Association (London, 1930), pp. 44–5.