The Archive, the Press and Victorian Football: The Case of the Glasgow Charity Cup1

1. The author is grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for research opportunities, the staff of the Scottish Football Museum for their patient assistance, and Wray Vamplew for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Abstract

History depends on sources. Using the local press and the limited archive of the Scottish Football Association, this article attempts to weigh up conflicting evidence on the origins of the Glasgow Charity Cup, a pioneering Scottish football tournament. While demonstrating the significance of Glasgow for the Victorian game in Britain, it highlights the difficulty of establishing ‘the facts’ from the fragmented, partisan and frequently contradictory material that historians work with.

Notes

1. The author is grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for research opportunities, the staff of the Scottish Football Museum for their patient assistance, and Wray Vamplew for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

2. L.P. Hartley, The go-between (London, 1953), p. 7.

3. For recent criticism of historical sources, see Douglas Booth, The field: Truth and fiction in sport history (London, 2005), especially Chapter 5, ‘Remnants of the past’; Jeff Hill, ‘Anecdotal evidence: Sport, the newspaper press and history’ in Murray G. Phillips, ed., Deconstructing sport history: A Postmodern analysis, (Albany, NY, 2006), pp. 117–29; Michael Oriard, ‘A linguistic turn into sport history’ in Phillips, Deconstructing sport history, pp. 75–91; Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), pp. 91–109.

4. D. Goldblatt, The ball is round: A global history of football (London, 2006) p. 68; Adrian Harvey, Football: The first hundred years (Abingdon, 2005), p. 214; Bill Murray, The old firm: Sectarianism, sport and society in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 7.

5. Booth, The field, p. 83, p. 88.

6. SFA annual, 1876–77 (Glasgow, 1876), p. 22.

7. Irene Maver, Glasgow (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 125; Charles Withers, ‘The demographic history of the city 1831–1911’ in W. Hamish Fraser and Irene Maver, eds., Glasgow, Vol II, 1830–1912 (Manchester, 1996), p. 142.

8. Charles A. Oakley, The second city (London, 1947), Introduction, p. 149; S. G. Checkland, The Upas tree: Glasgow, 1875–1970 (Glasgow, 1976), p. 22; Maver, Glasgow, p. 170; Glasgow Herald, 24 April, 1879.

9. S.G. Checkland, Scottish banking: A history 1695–1973 (Glasgow, 1975), p. 471; W. Hamish Fraser, ‘The working class’ in Fraser and Maver, eds., Glasgow, p. 320.

10. John K. McDowall, The people's history of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1899), p. 64.

11. General subscriptions to the Glasgow Convalescent Home at Lenzie fell in 1876, resulting in a deficit of £384, and it was ‘unhappy’ at having to encroach on its capital fund, Glasgow Herald, 17 January 1877; annual subscriptions to the Lock Hospital fell from £575 in 1876 to £544 in 1877 ‘chiefly attributable to the dulness of trade’, Evening Times, 15 January 1878; at the AGM of the Glasgow Asylum for the Blind there were complaints of the ‘dulness of trade and business which has prevailed for so long a period’, Evening Times, 21 January 1878.

12. The Charity Organisation Society was said to be synonymous with much that was ‘grudging, callous, dogmatic and reactionary’, Benedict Nightingale, Charities (London, 1973), p. 111; an editorial in the Glasgow Herald, 12 February 1877, extolled the ‘virtue of self-reliance’; the late Victorian ‘scientific approach’ to social enquiry, aimed at investigation of individual circumstances and eliminating overlap rather than doling out indiscriminate relief, eventually led to professional social work, Olive Checkland, Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 4, p. 299.

13. T.W.R. Johnston, ‘The Scottish Football Association: Its Early Days’ in John K. McDowall, ed., SFA annual, 1894–95 (Glasgow, 1895), p. 75 – italics added. The counties included in the west of Scotland are Ayrshire, Dumbartonshire, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire.

14. Matthew Taylor, The association game: A history of British football (Harlow, 2008), p. 41.

15. SFA annual, 1876–77, pp. 26–7.

16. SFA annual, 1876–77, p. 45. The report on p. 27 of this volume states that the donation was exactly £100. An earlier friendly match had been held in Glasgow to raise funds for the victims of a fire in the district of Bridgeton (Evening Times, 17 March 1877).

17. Richard Robinson, History of the Queen's Park Football Club 1867–1917 (Glasgow, 1920), p. 181.

18. Johnston, ‘Scottish Football Association’, p. 79.

19. The Evening Times first refers to the tournament as the Merchants’ Charity Cup on 28 March 1877. See also Dave Twydell, Rejected F.C. of Scotland, vol. 3 (Harefield, 1994), p. 215, p. 255; and Rangers website, http://www.rangershistory.co.uk/competitions/charitycup.html, accessed 15 July 2008.

20. SFA annual, 1889–90, p. 83. The first Hampden Park, home of Queen's Park, included a permanent grandstand facility, built in 1876. See Simon Inglis, The football grounds of Great Britain (London, 1987), p. 296. This would have made it particularly suitable for prestigious matches such as cup finals and international matches.

21. Professionalism was finally sanctioned by the SFA in 1893. For further detail on the ninety years of the Glasgow Charity Cup, see Wray Vamplew, ‘Remembering us year after year: The Glasgow Charity Cup 1876 –1966’, Recorde, Revista de Historia de Esporte, 1 (2) (2008), pp. 1–27.

22. Dave Russell, ‘“Sporadic and curious: The emergence of rugby and soccer zones in Yorkshire and Lancashire, c.1860–1914”’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 5 (2) (1988), p. 190; Richard A. Sparling, The romance of the Wednesday 1867–1926 (Sheffield, 1926), p. 49.

23. N.L. Jackson, Association football (London, 1900), p. 153; S.W. Clives, Centenary book of the Birmingham County FA, 1875–1975 (Birmingham, 1975), p. 36. In season 1878–79 Birmingham Calthorpe, Birmingham Aston Villa and a representative side from Birmingham and District FA all arranged matches against west of Scotland opposition.

24. N.L. Jackson, Association football (London, 1900), p. 153; S.W. Clives, Centenary book of the Birmingham County FA, 1875–1975 (Birmingham, 1975), p. 36. In season 1878–79 Birmingham Calthorpe, Birmingham Aston Villa and a representative side from Birmingham and District FA all arranged matches against west of Scotland opposition.

25. SFA annual, 1876–77, p. 38; Twydell, Rejected F.C., p. 264; Robinson, History of QPFC, p. 178.

26. Twydell, Rejected FC, p. 265; Robinson, History of QPFC, p. 95; Glasgow Herald, 2 January 1877.

27. Twydell, Rejected FC, p. 265; Robinson, History of QPFC, pp. 96–8 cites the heated correspondence, published in the local press, that continued throughout January 1877.

28. Robinson, History of QPFC, pp. 178–9.

29. Hill, ‘Anecdotal evidence’, p. 117; oral accounts of the ‘spikes’ incident were given to the author while undertaking research at the Scottish Football Museum, Hampden; Michael Oriard, Reading football: How the popular press created an American spectacle (Chapel Hill, NC, 1993), quoted in Booth, 2005, p. 94.

30. Joyce Kay and Wray Vamplew, ‘Beyond altruism: British football and charity 1877–1914’, Soccer and Society, (forthcoming 2010).

31. Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), p. 92.

32. Johnston, ‘Scottish Football Association’, p. 73.

33. Johnston, ‘Scottish Football Association’, p. 73.

34. Martin Johnes, ‘Archives, truths and the historian at work: A reply to Douglas Booth's “Refiguring the archive”’, Sport in History, 27 (1) (2007), p. 131.

35. SFA annual, 1876–77, p. 27.

36. Jeffrey Hill, ‘British sports history: A post-modern future?, Journal of Sport History, 23 (1) (1996), p. 18.

37. Joe Fisher, The Glasgow encyclopedia (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 248.

38. ‘The Vale’ was said to have a ‘leaning towards publishing official documents’, having ratcheted up the earlier ‘spikes’ incident by divulging to the press the contents of letters between itself and Queen's Park. Robinson, History of QPFC, p. 179.

39. ‘The Vale’ was said to have a ‘leaning towards publishing official documents’, having ratcheted up the earlier ‘spikes’ incident by divulging to the press the contents of letters between itself and Queen's Park. Robinson, History of QPFC, p. 244.

40. See, for example, Evening Times, Saturday 3 February 1877, 70 matches, and Monday 5 February 1877, 15 results.

41. Tony Mason, ‘All the winners and half-times’, Sports Historian, 13 (1) (1993), p. 6.

42. The Scotsman, 10 October, 1816; Evening Times, 26 March 1877; Mike Huggins notes that lists of the ‘company’ at race meetings were often printed in local papers. Mike Huggins, Flat racing and British society 1790–1914 (London, 1914), p. 42.

43. Evening Times, 20 April and 27 April 1877.

44. Glasgow Herald, 30 April 1877; Evening Times, 30 April 1877.

45. Hill, ‘Anecdotal evidence’, p. 123.

46. Inglis, Football grounds, p. 296, p. 344.

47. Glasgow Herald, 2 January, 1877.

48. This is not yet the age in which ‘sport sells newspapers’. Hill, ‘Anecdotal evidence’, p. 121.

49. There are other instances of press involvement in the launching of a charity cup competition but at a later date. The editor of The Football News in London organised the Southern Charity Cup competition for which the London Evening News purchased a trophy in 1900. Gamages Association Football Annual 1910–11(London, 1910), p. 657.

50. Evening Times, 9 March 1877.

51. Queen's Park are said to have rented the first Hampden Park for only £20 a year, Inglis, Football grounds, p. 296. Even allowing for press exaggeration, many clashes between the best local teams regularly produced attendances of 2–3,000, cup ties probably more.

52. Evening Times, 9 March 1877.

53. Evening Times, 17 March 1877.

54. Does the naming of these two teams lend some credence to the idea, discredited earlier, that a rapprochement could be achieved by arranging a match between them for charity? Or were the names selected at random?

55. After the success of the SFA-sponsored charity match in 1876, a second contest took place in March 1877 between representatives of the counties of Scotland and Glasgow. Aome for Incurabccording to the SFA annual, £130 was collected for the Home for Incurables, founded in 1875 ‘for people labouring under chronic or incurable disease.’ (Checkland, Philanthropy, p. 276) A letter in the name of its directors had been published in the Glasgow Herald on 15 March 1877 calling for additional funds and assistance from the general public. Whether this influenced the SFA's choice of charity is unknown. The Evening Times noted that the proceeds from the match amounted to £123 15s 3d but the SFA committee ‘very handsomely added from their own funds a further sum of £6 4s 9d.’ Evening Times, 7 April 1877. No record has been found of additional SFA-sponsored charity matches in spring 1877.

56. Evening Times, 4 May 1877.

57. ‘Shall association football die out in Scotland? Breakers ahead,’ SFA annual, 1880–81, p. 15.

58. SFA Annual, 1878–79, p. 22.

59. Evening Times, 29 October 1877.

60. Glasgow News, 23 February 1878; an advertisement in the North British Daily Mail, 18 December 1877, announces that the match between Queen's Park and Third Lanark for the Blantyre Relief Fund is the first tie for this season's Merchants’ Charity Cup. This seems to indicate that it is still considered to be the merchants’ competition.

61. North British Daily Mail, 26 November 1878.

62. Glasgow News, 23 February 1878; correspondence between SFA and Vale of Leven continues from 23 January to 18 March 1878.

63. Glasgow News, 6 April 1878.

64. SFA Annual, 1887–88, p. 74.

65. SFA Annual, 1887–88, p. 74. Eighteen additional Scottish charity cup competitions were listed in this volume.

66. Booth, The field, p. 85.

67. Booth, The field, p. 12.

68. Quoted in Booth, The field, p. 90.