Truly muscular Gaels? W.N. Kerr, physical culture and Irish masculinity in the early twentieth century

ABSTRACT

In 1908 W.N. Kerr, a tee-totalling, non-smoking, vegetarian athlete from Dublin took first place in a ‘Best Developed’ figure competition. Two years previously, Kerr had written to Vitality magazine, an English physical culture periodical, declaring his interest in building his physique. Kerr, like many other men in England and Ireland, had become enamoured with physical culture, a societal interest in the body as cultivated through diet and exercise. The intervening period between his letter and competition victory saw Kerr submit several letters and photographs to English physical culture magazines. In using Kerr's letters, photographs and interest in physical culture as a microcosm for wider societal trends, the following article argues that Kerr’s public interest in physical culture reflected a new kind of masculinity in Ireland understood primarily by the body. Unlike previous studies of Irish masculinity, which have tended to focus on those identities created in reaction or against English stereotypes, the form of masculinity embodied by Kerr was fostered primarily in Great Britain. Britain supplied Ireland with physical culture outlets, books, workout devices and figures to emulate. The kind of masculinity envisioned and embodied by Kerr thus spoke of a masculine archetype free from the nationalist sentiments previously studied by Irish historians.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Bernarr MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, Physical Culture 20, no. 1 (1908): 35.

2 Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1–20.

3 Ibid., 152; David L. Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 129; Dimitris Liokaftos, A Genealogy of Male Bodybuilding: From Classical to Freaky (London: Routledge, 2017), 49.

4 Jan Todd, Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful: Purposive Exercise in the Lives of American Women, 1800–1870 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999), 2–3.

5 Budd, The Sculpture Machine; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Michael Hatt, ‘Physical Culture: The Male Nude and Sculpture in Late Victorian Britain’, ed. Elizabeth Prettejohn, After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England (London: Rutgets University Press, 1999), 240–56.

6 David Webster, The Iron Game: An Illustrated History of Weight-Lifting in Scotland (Irvine: David Webster, 1976), 2–22.

7 F.S.L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 7.

8 P.J. Mathews, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, The Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003); Neal Garnham, ‘Accounting for the Early Success of the Gaelic Athletic Association’, Irish Historical Studies 34, no. 133 (May, 2004): 65–78 or Paul Rouse, Sport and Ireland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

9 ⁠Mike Cronin, ‘What Went Wrong with Counting? Thinking about Sport and Class in Britain and Ireland’, Sport in History 29, no. 3 (2009): 392–404.

10 Ronald Deutsch, The Nuts Among the Berries: An Exposé of America’s Food Fads (New York: Bull Pub Company, 1967).

11 Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880–1922 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 64–70; Patrick McDevitt, May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880–1935 (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2004), 14–31; Aidan Beatty, Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 1884–1938 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 62–6; Brendan Walsh, Boy Republic: Patrick Pearse and Radical Education (Dublin: The History Press, 2013), 147–57. See also Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots: St Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004), 115–30.

12 Laura Kelly, ‘Irish Medical Student Culture and the Performance of Masculinity, c. 1880–1930’, History of Education 46, no. 1 (2017): 51–6. One study of masculinity which includes the body is Donal O’Donoghue, ‘Speak and Act in a Manly Fashion: The Role of the Body in the Construction of Men and Masculinity in Primary Teacher Education in Ireland’, Irish Journal of Sociology 14, no. 2 (2005): 231– 253.

13 See endnote ten. For an overview of British masculinities see Karen Harvey, ‘The History of Masculinity, circa 1650–1800’, Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 296–311; Michael Brown, ‘Like a Devoted Army: Medicine, Heroic Masculinity, and the Military Paradigm in Victorian Britain’, Journal of British Studies 49, no. 3 (2010): 592–622; Michael Roper, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The ‘War Generation’ and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914–1950’, Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 343–62.

14 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 1–12; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 2–22.

15 A. Wallace Jones, Fifty Exercises for Health & Strength (London: Gale and Polden, c. 1908), 9.

16 On Sandow see Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent; David Waller, The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman (London: Victorian Secrets, 2011).

17 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 72–99.

18 Gherardo Bonini, ‘London: The Cradle of Modern Weightlifting’, Sports Historian 21, no. 1 (2001): 56–70.

19 Lesley Steinitz, ‘The Language of Advertising: Fashioning Health Food Consumers at the Fin de Siècle’, in Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945, eds. Mary Addyman, Laura Wood, Christopher Yiannitsaros (London: Routledge, 2017), 135–63.

20 W.R. MacPherson, ‘Weightlifting in Ireland’, Health and Vim, September (1916): 214.

21 ‘Good Old Ireland’, Vitality 7, no. 6 (1906): 270.

22 1901 Census of Ireland, Down, Newry North Urban, House 5 in Windser Hill.

23 ‘Reader’s Responses’, Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture, Vol. X, January to June (1903) (London: Gale and Polden, 1903), 240.

24 ‘The Influence of One’, Sandow's Magazine, 18 July (1907): 86. See also 1911 Census of Ireland, Dublin, Rathmines & Rathgar West, House 9 in Wynnefield Road.

25 Ben Griffin, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity as a Historical Problem’, Gender & History 30, no. 2 (2018): 377–400.

26 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 31–45.

27 MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, 35.

28 W.N. Kerr, ‘Letter from Dublin’, Vitality 9, no. 1 (1906): 19–20.

29 James Gregory, Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 1–21.

30 Leah Leneman, ‘The Awakened Instinct: Vegetarianism and the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain’, Women’s History Review 6, no. 2 (1997): 271–87.

31 James C. Whorton, ‘Muscular Vegetarianism: The Debate over Diet and Athletic Performance in the Progressive Era’, Journal of Sport History 8, no. 2 (1981): 58–75.

32 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 30–6.

33 Ibid.

34 Anne Fernihough, Freewomen and Supermen: Edwardian Radicals and Literary Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 212–19.

35 The Irish Times, 8 June, 1900, 3.

36 Richard Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man: Work, Health and Style in Victorian Britain’, Sport in History 26, no. 3 (2006): 352–69.

37 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 30–6; Eustace Hamilton Miles, Muscle, Brain, and Diet (London: Gale and Polden, 1900); Ferdinand August Schmidt and Eustace Hamilton Miles, The Training of the Body for Games, Athletics, Gymnastics, and Other Forms of Exercise and for Health, Growth, and Development (London: Gale and Polden, 1901).

38 W.E. Fay, ‘Nation Building and Body Culture’, Sinn Féin, October 6 (1906): 3–4.

39 Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 64–70; McDevitt, May the Best Man Win, 14–31; Aidan Beatty, Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 62–6.

40 W.E. Fay, ‘On Vegetarianism’, Sinn Féin, January 27 (1907): 3.

41 Ibid.

42 Cyclops, ‘Cycling and Athletics’, The Constabulary Gazette, 12 September (1908): 435.

43 Eustace Miles, Avenues to Health (London 1902); E. F. Benson and Eustace Miles, Daily Training (London: Gale and Polden, 1902).

44 Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 7.

45 Ann Fabian, ‘Making a Commodity of Truth: Speculations on the Career of Bernarr Macfadden’, American Literary History 5, no.1 (1993): 51–76. On MacFadden in Ireland see Stephanie Rains, ‘Do You Ring?’.

46 Robert Ernst, Weakness is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 60–5.

47 Mary Macfadden and Emile Gauvreau, Dumbbells and Carrot Sticks: The Story of Bernarr MacFadden (New York: Holt, 1953), 15–33.

48 While no circulation records exist, it is possible to judge such magazines’ popularity through Irish submissions and newspaper reference. See They do not appear in the dated but thorough Louis Michael Cullen, Eason & Son: A History (Dublin: The History Press, 1989) on Irish print culture at this time.

49 Roswell Duncan, ‘Physical Culture Among the Children of the World’, Physical Culture 22, no. 5 (1909): 387–93.

50 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 49.

51 MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, 35.

52 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 123.

53 Thomas Waugh, ‘Strength and Stealth: Watching (and Wanting) Turn of the Century Strongmen’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies 2, no. 1 (1992): 1–19.

54 Peter Adkins, ‘The Eyes of That Cow: Eating Animals and Theorizing Vegetarianism in James Joyce’s Ulysses’, Humanities 6, no. 3 (2017): 8.

55 MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, 35.

56 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 72.

57 Ibid., 72.

58 ⁠ Murat C Yıldız, ‘What is a Beautiful Body?’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 8, no. 2–3 (2015): 192–214.

59 Kerr, ‘Letter from Dublin’, 19–20.

60 W.N. Kerr, ‘Dear Editor’, Health and Strength, November (1907): 12.

61 Neil Carter, Medicine, Sport and the Body: A Historical Perspective (London, 2012), 25.

62 Laura Kelly, ‘Irish Medical Student Culture and the Performance of Masculinity, c. 1880–1930’, History of Education 46, no. 1 (2017): 39–57.

63 John Money, ‘The Masonic Moment; Or, Ritual, Replica, and Credit: John Wilkes, the Macaroni Parson, and the Making of the Middle-Class Mind’, Journal of British Studies 32, no. 4 (1993): 358–95; Hannah Greig, ‘All Together and All Distinct’: Public Sociability and Social Exclusivity in London's Pleasure Gardens, ca. 1740–1800’, Journal of British Studies 51, no. 1 (2012): 50–75; Hannah Weiss Muller, ‘Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire’, Journal of British Studies 53, no. 1 (2014): 29–58.

64 Kerr, ‘Dear Editor’, 12.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man’.

68 Alan M. Klein, Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction (New York: SUNY Press, 1993) and Loïc Wacquant, ‘Why Men Desire Muscles’, Body & Society 1, no. 1 (1995): 163–79.

69 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 72.

70 ⁠ Liam O’Flaherty, The Short Stories of Liam O’Flaherty (London: New English Library, 1937), 397–8.

71 Lambros Comitas, ‘Conrad Maynadier Arensberg (1910-1997)’, American Anthropologist 101, no. 4 (December, 1999): 810–13.

72 Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (New York: Harvard University Press, 1950), 115–16.

73 Kerr, ‘Letter from Dublin’, 19–20.

74 Kerr, ‘Dear Editor’, 12. Kerr’s relationship with Inch is discussed later in the article.

75 MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, 35.

76 Bonini, ‘London: The Cradle of Modern Weightlifting’, 56–70.

77 James Galavan, ‘How I benefitted from Physical Culture: By a Sandow Gold Medallist’, Physical Culture, 27 April (1905): 437.

78 An Enthusiastic Physical Culturist, ‘Serious Charge Against Belfast’, Sandow's Magazine, 18 April (1907): 504.

79 A seminal text in this regard remains Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

80 Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 130–5.

81 Ibid., 133.

82 ‘Some Entrants from the Competition’, Physical Culture 1, no. 6 (1898): 447.

83 ‘The Great Competition’, Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture, Vol. III, July to December (1899) (London: Harrison & Sons, 1899), 375.

84 Ibid., 384.

85 Ibid.

86 Budd, The Sculpture Machine, 59–63.

87 Ibid., 59–66.

88 Kerr, ‘Dear Editor’, 12.

89 MacFadden, ‘The Secret of Human Power’, 35.

90 Ibid.

91 Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). See also Roper, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity’.

92 Roach, Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors, 83–4.

93 Ibid., 83.

94 ‘Irish Lifter’s Decision’, Health and Strength, 11 (1919): 494.

95 Ibid.

96 Freeman’s Journal, 28 March, 1908, 6; Evening Herald, April 6, 1908, 4.

97 Waller, The Perfect Man, 173–80.

98 Evening Herald, April 6, 1908, 4.

99 On Health and Strength see ‘A Young Antrim Athletes’, Health and Strength, 12 (1906): 266.

100 Aside from Evening Herald, April 6, 1908, 4.

101 From Author’s collection.

102 Evening Herald, February 10, 1939, 9.

103 Charlotte Macdonald, Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935–1960 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013).

104 Griffin, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity as a Historical Problem’, 377–400.

105 See endnote 10.

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Conor Heffernan

Conor is Assistant Professor in Physical Culture and Sport Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his PhD on physical culture in Ireland from 1893 to 1939 at University College Dublin in 2019. In the past Conor has published on football in post-colonial Africa, health trends in nineteenth-century England and India, physical culture in Ireland and animal history.