Sport and the Victorian City
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Sport and the Victorian City: The development of commercialised spectator sport, Bradford 1836-1908 David Pendleton A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of De Montfort University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Abstract This study is a history of popular spectator sport in the city of Bradford between the years 1836 and 1908. Its major aim is to chart and analyse the experience of Bradford in relation to the national development of sport in the modern city and how spectator sport, in particular, helped shape personal and civic identities in a bourgeoning industrial community. This project builds on a growing body of work on the development of sport and leisure in British towns and cities during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it will both complement earlier studies on sport in Bradford and West Yorkshire and add to our understanding of how urban sporting and leisure cultures were forged through a combination of national trends and local economic and social peculiarities. The emergence of a national sporting culture ran parallel with an exponential acceleration in urbanisation, the adoption of the factory system, regularised working hours and growth in disposable income. Bradford’s sporting culture, however, was also a product of the city’s shifting social structures, which had been shaped by its unique economy. As a consequence, Bradford also played a significant role in determining the national sporting culture as well as reflecting wider trends. !i Bradford’s move from an essentially pre-industrial sporting landscape towards a recognisably modern one took place over a period of little more than fifty years. However, it will be shown that this was an uneven process. In challenging Malcolmson’s ‘leisure vacuum’ theory, it will be argued that Bradford’s sporting culture exhibited as much continuity as change. Pre- modern sporting practices, such as the game of knur and spell (presented here as a case study), for example, overlapped with the emergence of codified team sports. Nevertheless, the changes that were wrought in the second half of the nineteenth century were significant and lasting as an increasingly assertive working class had more time and money to spend on leisure. The thesis not only examines and charts how the development of cricket, soccer and rugby within the city were subject to changing economic and cultural contexts, but, especially through an analysis of the switch from rugby to soccer of both Manningham FC and Bradford FC, how agency was a crucial factor in bringing about historical change. !ii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the staff of De Montfort University, in particular my first supervisor Professor Tony Collins, whose enthusiasm and interest has been vital to the production of this thesis and my second supervisor Neil Carter whose constructive criticism dramatically improved the thesis. Also, I acknowledge the staff of Bradford Local Studies Library, Bradford Industrial Museum and the West Yorkshire Archive Service for their help and interest. The generosity and assistance given to me by officials and supporters of Bradford & Bingley RUFC; Bradford Bulls RLFC; Bradford Cricket League; Bradford City AFC; and Bradford Park Avenue AFC has been invaluable. Many other individuals, including: Chris Ambler; John Ashton; Mick Callaghan; John Dewhirst; Brian Heywood; Mick Pendleton; Dave Russell; John K. Walton have all played a role in bringing this work to its conclusion. This work is dedicated to the memory of my late father Ernest Pendleton who pushed me through the turnstiles at Park Avenue and Valley Parade at a tender age and began an obsession that remains with me to this day. David Pendleton, Bradford, 2015. !iii Contents: Introduction i Historiography of Bradford and Urban Culture xi ii Historiography of Sport xxiv iii Themes xxxvii iv Sources xlii v Structure of the Thesis xlv Chapter One Pre-Modern sporting leisure in Victorian Bradford c.1750-1868 i Bradford’s Industrial Revolution 4 ii The Supposed Leisure Vacuum 11 iii Horse Racing 18 iv The Publican as an Entrepreneur of Entertainment 24 v Pedestrianism 31 vi Knur and Spell 39 Chapter Two !iv ‘As in Burma or even Bradford Park Avenue’ Bradford Cricket Club 1836-1880 i From Chartism to Capitalism 53 ii Bradford Cricket Club 59 iii Cricket, the first commercial team spectator sport 76 iv Cricket’s Half-Hearted North-South Schism 82 v The Road to Park Avenue 88 vi A Civic Enclosure 96 vii Cricket in the Neighbourhood and Workplace 108 Chapter Three The Rise of Rugby c.1863-1892 i Liberalism and Global Competition 125 ii Informal Football 130 iii Public Schools and the Formation of Bradford FC 138 iv Manningham FC, a people’s team? 155 v King Football: commercialism, populism and professionalism 165 vi Crowds and Congestion, the price of popularity 177 vii Barbarians Abroad in Bradford 185 !v Chapter Four A Transformation of Sport: the coming of the leagues 1892-1903 i Working Class Self-Determination on and off the Field of Play 199 ii The Yorkshire Senior Competition, rugby’s first league 204 iii A Northern Union, rugby’s second league 222 iv Death of a Hero 234 v The Decline of the Northern Union in Bradford 240 vi The cricket Leagues 247 Chapter Five Schoolboys and professionals Football and the worstedopolis, 1895-1903 i Bradford Granted City Status 281 ii Football Missionaries 284 iii Bradford or Leeds? 302 iv Bradford City AFC, football comes to Valley Parade 317 v Cash or Class? Bradford FC and the Northern Union 321 Chapter Six A Modern Sporting Landscape !vi Bradford Park Avenue AFC and Bradford Northern RLFC 1907-1908 i Edwardian Bradford 339 ii 1907 and all that, the merger controversy 341 iii The Curious Case of Bradford (Park Avenue) and the Southern League 382 iv Bradford Northern Union 402 Conclusion 410 Appendix 422 Bibliography 449 List of tables Table 1.1 Percentage Population Growth in Northern England 1801 to 1851 5 Table 1.2 Scorecard of Knur and Spell match, Bradford, April 1863 43 Table 2.1 !vii Local Cricket Matches Reported in the Bradford Observer July 1856 to 1866 115 Table 4.1 Percentage Population Growth of European Cities 1801 to 1911 204 Table 5.1 Votes Cast at the Football League AGM 1903 314 Table 6.1 Votes Cast at the Football League AGM 1907 386 Table 6.2 Votes Cast at the Football League AGM 1908 398 !viii Introduction On the evening of 26 April 1911 Bradford City’s team arrived at Bradford Exchange railway station after winning the new FA Cup trophy following a 1-0 victory over Newcastle United in a replayed final at Old Trafford. A reported 100,000 people, roughly a third of the entire population of the city, lined the streets to welcome home the victorious team.1 The lord mayor boarded the train as it arrived in the station to give the team a civic welcome. Fifty years earlier codified football did not exist in Bradford. However, by 1911 a professional football team, comprising of eight Scotsmen, two Englishmen and one Irishman, was arguably being embraced as an integral part of the city’s identity and progression from market town to one of the world’s leading industrial cities. Even the new FA Cup trophy could be portrayed as being representative of Bradford’s economy as it had been designed in the city by the jewellers Fattorini’s. However, the celebrations which seemingly united Bradford hid the fact that the city had a contested identity in sport, Bradford (Park Avenue) AFC had been formed in 1907 and Bradford Northern was the city’s representative in the rugby league. It was a vibrant, albeit disunited, sporting culture largely based around professional team sport, but it was a culture that was less than fifty years old. How that 1 Daily Mirror, 29 April 1911. !ix sporting culture developed, in tandem with the physical city itself, from the often informal, ad hoc and raucous to the regularised, professional and the use of sport as a metaphor of the city’s prowess and progress, is central to the aims of this thesis. This thesis explores the emergence of popular spectator sport in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The focus is limited to an individual city, in this case Bradford, and between the years 1836 and 1908. Dave Russell identified, very crudely by his own admission, three distinct periods of popular recreation in Bradford: the first 1800 to 1830 when traditional elements persisted; the second 1830 to 1850, an age of crisis which coincides with Chartism; and finally 1850 to 1900 an era of expansion and the establishment of codified sport.2 It mirrors Mike Huggins chronological model he provided for Middlesbrough.3 Bradford’s experience is probably representative of most large British towns and cities, but in particularly those of the textiles districts on either side of the Pennines. The thesis considers the impact Bradford’s rapid industrial expansion and urbanisation had on the development, provision, commercialisation and professionalisation of sport. This thesis 2 Dave Russell, ‘The Pursuit of Leisure’, in D.G. Wright & J.A. Jowett, eds., Victorian Bradford (Bradford: Bradford Metropolitan, 1982), p.199. 3 Mike Huggins, ‘Leisure and Sport in Middlesbrough 1840-1914’, A.J. Pollard, ed., Town and Community (Stroud: Sutton, 1996), pp.128-9; Catherine Budd and Neil Carter, ‘A Noble Game Became Degraded: The rise and fall of professional football in Middlesbrough, 1889-1894’, North East History Journal, no. 45 (2014), p.2. !x attempts to view those developments in a national and international context and relate them to the prevailing economic, political and social circumstances. It is another addition to the growing number of works examining the development of sport and leisure at the town and city level.4 This thesis not only adds to the localised studies of the development of sport, it seeks to illustrate how rapid urban expansion impacted upon, and helped drive changes, to British sport that would reverberate around the world.