Reading time: 30 minutes

(A version of this post was presented as a speech at the 100th Anniversary Celebrations of the Cornwall ~ All Blacks match at Camborne RFC on September 20, 2024)

It’s just after lunchtime on Wednesday, September 17, 1924. Camborne is a ferment of expectation. Over the past few years, the town hasn’t had much to look forward to, but today is different.

Today, any minute, special guests are arriving.

Tomorrow, Thursday the 18th, a special game will be played.

Camborne will be hosting the Cornish rugby team – and their opponents.

Camborne’s people know how to welcome visitors. Even when their arch-rivals, Redruth, come to play at the Recreation Ground for the annual Feast Monday fixture, houses and fences would be whitewashed anew. Camborne Town Band would march ahead of the XVs from the town centre to the pitch, and folks would line the streets to cheer on (or hurl insults at) the iron-jawed, muscled players¹.

Today, even the Town Hall is decked out in flags and ferns. Today, even the grandees of the Cornwall RFU are here, in their very best Sunday best. They’re currently up at Camborne Railway Station, pacing the platform with equally starch-shirted members of various town councils, straightening their ties and checking their pocket-watches².

Everything, and everyone, had to be ready.

For the first time in several years, Camborne was the centre of attention – for all the right reasons. Great Western Railways were attempting to cash in on the town’s new status as a visitor hotspot by offering cheap excursion trips³. Camborne’s hoteliers and businessmen were rubbing their hands with glee.

It seemed every entrepreneur and raconteur wanted to get in on the act. Hell, there was probably even some wild rumour going about the place regarding an aeroplane display tomorrow?! But no, surely that was crazy talk.

Yes, Camborne needed something positive to get behind. For in Camborne in 1924, it was hard times. Holmans may have been employing over 500 men, Roskear Mine may have looked promising, but Camborne was no longer the epicentre of a Cornish mining industry that had once dominated world trade⁴.

Prayers had been offered in the churches for God to intervene and save Camborne’s mines, but God wasn’t listening⁶. Nor was the Government. A loan of £200,000 (that’s £7.5 million today) was requested to keep Wheals Dolcoath and Grenville open. The miners themselves sent petitions, but to no avail⁷.

The price of tin was too low, the price of coal too high, developmental work was impossible, and machinery was out of date. Dolcoath hadn’t paid dividends since 1913⁸.

As the miners were laid off by the hundred, their fatalism was apparent:

I have tramped this road daily for more than thirty years, and now I am doing it for the last time…God knows whether I shall have dinner next Sunday…

Cornishman, June 30 1920, p5

By 1921, there were 3,000 unemployed miners in Cornwall. By 1924, Camborne had the highest Cornish unemployment rate. Burial rates for nearly a thousand people had been excused. Since 1922, the Camborne Relief Fund had distributed £75K, or £2.8 million in 2024⁹.

In desperation, the ex-miners formed charity choirs, and must have cut a pathetic sight on the streets, or at half-time during rugby matches¹⁰.

Others simply left. In 1920 a hundred Dolcoath men sailed for Ontario, with another hundred to follow¹¹. Others, such as Camborne RFC’s Ernie ‘Tatsy’ Wills, backed their sporting abilities and joined the Northern Union. In 1922 he signed to Rochdale Hornets for £350 – that’s £16K now. Not bad for a man who, in 1921, was just another unemployed miner. He wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t be the last¹².

By January 1924 Camborne’s unemployment figures revealed an astounding fact:

…it seems that all the miners have gone.

Cornish Post and Mining News, January 19 1924, p5

Some had gone to seek a better life in New Zealand¹⁴, and it is here that we begin to understand why Camborne’s townspeople had so extravagantly pushed the boat of welcome out.

Camborne was hosting a County rugby match, yes, but this was bigger.

For, on Thursday 18th, 1924, Cornwall’s opponents would be New Zealand – The All Blacks.

And the people of Camborne wanted to say thank you. When the train finally pulled in that afternoon (proving once and for all that the train does indeed stop at Camborne on a Wednesday), the tourists were addressed by the Chair of Camborne’s Unemployment Committee:

…our fathers and grandfathers emigrated to the dominions, and wherever there is mining you will find Cornishmen…During the time of the mining depression New Zealand assisted us and many of our young men went to your country to work…

Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4

From the Copper crash of the 1870s (which has traditionally marked the beginning of the end for Cornish mining), over 5000 Cornish emigrants travelled to New Zealand. This number swelled through the early 1900s, creating a ‘dependency culture’ in Cornwall: the wages sent home from countries such as New Zealand put bread on the table in the former mining districts¹⁶.

Things may have been bordering on the desperate in Camborne, but the money earned and the support given from New Zealand had truly kept the wolves from the door.

And Camborne wanted to show its gratitude. New Zealand, represented that day in 1924 by its rugby team, was a symbol of hope, of better times.

The people of Camborne had another reason to celebrate too, and be at the game en masse.

Seven of the Cornwall XV to line up against the All Blacks were Camborne players. An eighth, scrum-half Albert Gibson, was a Hayle player but had guested on occasion for Camborne the previous season¹⁷.

And when I say they were Camborne players, they were Camborne men too. They worked at Holmans, or Climax, or were miners – if they could find a mine that wasn’t a scat bal, as they used to say. They were ordinary men, working men, who had given up a day’s pay (that they could scarcely afford to sacrifice), to represent Cornwall and face down the mightiest rugby team on the planet.

If we’re being uncharitable, we could say that, in picking seven Camborne men for a game at Camborne the Cornwall RFU were ensuring plenty of local bums on seats. However, the CRFU’s selection committee were from Redruth, Hayle and Falmouth, and would have doubtless pressed the merits of their own players¹⁸.

For Camborne was easily the strongest club in Cornwall. Though earlier that year they had lost the services of their skipper, County centre Leonard Hammer, to Birmingham¹⁹, the 1923-4 season ended with 32 wins from 49 matches, and 3 draws. 605 points had been amassed, and 305 conceded²⁰.

That season, they were undefeated against Redruth. In fact, they beat Redruth a record five times²¹. Their play overall was noted as “splendid”, but Town were also the meanest, most “brutal” XV on the block²².

In one victory against Redruth, Reds’ skipper Ray Jennings was booted unconscious after taking a penalty. In that same match, three other Redruth players were knocked out and spectators had begun to ask why the perpetrators weren’t arrested²³.

Even by the standards of the day, Camborne were hard.

So, who were The Magnificent Seven?

Phil Collins (1905-1964) was the kind of centre you did not want to be tackled by. A 5ft 9, 12 stone rock-drill engineer at Climax, the stocky lad was picked for Cornwall at the tender age of 17, and was only 19 when he faced New Zealand – or rather, they faced him. He earned over forty caps for his County, and was their skipper in three separate seasons (1925-6, 1928-9, 1930-1).

Such a strong, fast tyro was always going to attract the attention of bigger clubs, and so it proved. Phil guested for the powerful Plymouth Albion XV in 1923; family tradition has it they ‘looked after’ him financially.

In 1922 the Northern Union club Leeds had come knocking. Phil was offered £600 down to sign (that’s £28K today), £4 (£190) per match, and a job at a local engineering firm. For one reason and another, he turned them down. Likewise Oldham, who approached him twice.

On his retirement in 1934 he was described as

…one of Camborne’s great footballers.

Cornishman, November 29 1934, p9

Of course, his other claim to fame is as the father of the only Camborne player (to date) who has represented England, John Collins. One of John’s earliest memories of his dad is watching him play for Camborne at Plymouth Albion. So aggressive was Phil, and so devastating his tackles, that he endured no end of stick from the home crowd. Apparently, this wasn’t uncommon. Such was his speed that a 3-versus-2 overlap could be negated by him making two tackles himself.

Cornwall were going to need all of him in 1924²⁵.

Collins’ centre partner was to be Fred Barnard (1895-1976). Of the seven Camborne men who played the All Blacks, Fred’s story best illustrates how tough life in Camborne could be at the time.

When Fred was six, his father (aged 35) and eldest brother (12) both died from lung disease. As soon as they were able, Fred and his five siblings had to find work, with their widowed mother scratching a living from charring. In 1921, he was out of work – in Camborne surface labourers for the mines were a dying breed. Poverty and destitution were a constant threat.

Fred must have been a tough, cussed character. In 1923 he quit Camborne RFC when he wasn’t selected for the inaugural Crawshay’s fixture, and then did the unthinkable in joining Redruth. (In those days, such an act was liable to get your windows smashed and you barred from all of Camborne’s pubs.) He saw the light, however, and returned to the fold for the start of the 1924-5 season.

He didn’t know it yet, but this game was to be the last of his three caps for Cornwall – but what a fixture to go out on²⁶.

Half-back Rafie Hamblin (1904-1990) was a genuine Camborne character. For many years he ran the family butcher shop on Trelowarren Street, and was a regular at the old clubhouse on East Terrace, dispensing sage advice to youngsters. His son, Paul, who also came to be known as ‘Rafie’, proved an equally fine servant to the club.

As a player, Rafie must have been sharp, quick and alert. Not the biggest man on the pitch, he was elected skipper for the 1927-8 season, at a time when the Camborne side of the Roaring Twenties were at the peak of their powers. This was a period when Town could best the ‘Welsh Barbarians’, Crawshays, and do a number on Bath.

Rafie had other interests besides rugby, including exhibiting his prize cockerels and racing a 500cc BSA on grass tracks. He once assisted in saving a man from drowning at Kynance Cove. He was also renowned for the dark red hue of the tomatoes he grew and sold; unbeknownst to his customers, the colour was achieved by liberal applications of pigs’ blood to the plants’ soil.

Nevertheless, one of Rafie’s proudest moments was the day he played the All Blacks, and he would often recall it as the biggest of gates, and the friendliest of matches²⁷.

Though hailing from Wadebridge, forward Bill Biddick (1896-1984) is a Camborne RFC legend. Another Holmans/Climax man, while apprenticed during WW1 he joined the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (1/5th Battalion), and probably saw action on the Western Front.

He played his first rugby for Beacon, and was associated with the village’s cricket team for many years. However, Town soon secured his services – as did Cornwall. He was a master of the line-out, and by all accounts possessed a massive punt.

Inevitably, Biddick’s prowess and physical presence on the pitch rapidly attracted the interest of the Northern Union clubs, and Rochdale Hornets offered him £100 (nearly £5K today) to join them in 1922. With a steady job at Holmans, he could afford to turn them down.

Equally inevitably, Biddick became Camborne’s skipper, and led them during their most successful season, 1926-7: played 38, won 32, drew 2; points for, 651; against, only 151. As we saw earlier, during the 1924-5 season they scored over 600 points yet conceded over 300: this time round, Town were a much tighter unit.

As Bill himself remarked,

Camborne were on top in those days, and no matter where we played they were all after our blood because we were the tops.

Camborne RFC Centenary Programme, 1878-1978

Those who knew him would know this was no idle boast. All the people I spoke to, including his son Derek who, along with brother Max, also played for Camborne, recall him as a modest, distinguished gentleman, who would make a point of not bragging about his achievements.

Indeed, the only time he would truly open his mouth was to sing, as he regularly did in a choir at the Carnhell Green pub on a Sunday evening.

Humble or not, Bill could have bragged plenty. When Cornwall beat Middlesex in the County Championship semi-final of 1928 (they lost to Yorkshire in the final), Biddick’s performance was singled out for being truly monstrous. When you consider that his opposite number that day was the England Captain (and no shrinking violet himself) Wavell Wakefield, you begin to understand how good Bill Biddick was, and how unlucky to never gain international recognition.

Remembered as

…a giant in every respect…

West Briton, January 5 1984, p6

…in 1924 he could show the All Blacks what he was made of²⁸.

Wing-forward Walter Mayne (1903-1981) was a rugby pioneer. A fitness fanatic who could sprint up Camborne Hill, in 1921 he was an 18 year-old miner and out of work. Like Fred Barnard’s, Walter’s dad had died of lung disease, leaving him the family’s sole breadwinner.

When he eventually found work, it didn’t suit Walter – perhaps understandably. His job underground was to wade through deep water and clear the mine’s drainage channels, so when opportunity knocked, he took it.

Walter emigrated to Chicago in 1926, taking a job at Crane Co., a valve engineering firm. During WW2 his department was unknowingly part of the Manhattan Project, and Walter went on to work at several nuclear power plants and submarines, such as USS Nautilus.

Such were Walter’s services to the Atom in the States that he once met President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

More importantly for us, Walter brought rugby union to Chicago, forming the Chicago Southerns club in the 1920s.

Along with Penryn’s George Jago (who played with Walter against the 1924 All Blacks), Walter deserves recognition as a forgotten trailblazer of rugby union in America. Once a game confined to colleges, nearly a hundred years later the USA’s Major League boasts 13 professional clubs.

Walter Mayne went a long way, but he never forgot where he came from. In 1972 he visited Camborne (and his elderly mother in Beacon), receiving a hero’s welcome from old friends and team-mates.

Naturally, he watched his old team, and said of them that

…they are just as good as ever we were. They have the speed and the courage and the will to play good football…I say to Camborne folk, ‘Get down there and give the Camborne lads some support. They deserve it’.

Qtd in: Henry Cecil Blackwell, From a Dark Stream: The Story of Cornwall’s Amazing People and Their Impact on the World, Truran, 1986, p220

Back in 1924, they were coming through the gates in their thousands²⁹.

In the amateur game, working men had to accept that work came before play, and that where you worked, or where you came from, might hinder the progression of your play.

Witness the story of Herbert Wakeham (1897-1963), who has a reputation of being one of Camborne’s toughest ever forwards, and also the unluckiest. As a drill salesman for Climax, his frequent and far-from brief journeys abroad counted against a fully realised rugby career.

A WW1 Warrant Officer in the DCLI (he was stationed at St Antony), Herbert played all three England trial matches during the 1920-1 season, yet missed out on selection.

In the final match, he was the only player representing a Cornish club, trying to prove his worth against servicemen, University dons and gentlemen of the Home Counties. One suspects his face didn’t fit.

At this time he was also offered a Northern Union contract, but in late 1921 Climax sent him to South Africa; he only returned in 1924. Luckily for Herbert, he was able to keep his rugby hand in by playing for Transvaal’s Pirates RFC.

Rushed into the Cornwall XV for the All Blacks fixture, he was also selected for another international trial. Again, full honours eluded him.

In 1927 Herbert sailed once more, this time for Malaya. Camborne RFC presented him with a silver tea service (now a precious family heirloom), and it was said of him that he was

…undoubtedly a tower of strength to the side…an inspiration to any team…[who] always played a clean and sporting game.

Cornish Post and Mining News, January 1 1927, p2

(That said, Herbert was one of three men sent off – and later suspended – for fighting during the notorious 1926 Camborne-Redruth match that led to fixtures being abandoned between the clubs for two years. In his defence, he seems to have retaliated.)

He wouldn’t return home until the mid-1930s, by which time, sadly, he was past his peak. A serious dose of malaria contracted whilst abroad can’t have helped.

Like Bill Biddick, Herbert was a big, strong, tough man. In September 1924, he would be relishing the challenge of playing against the best³⁰.

Herbert’s greatest pal was George Thomas (1895-1971). They both joined the DCLI’s Territorials in 1914, and people who knew them said that

…they were very keen and friendly rivals for promotion during the war and for county rugby honours afterwards.

Cornish Post and Mining News, September 9 1933, p6

Wakeham achieved the higher military rank and greater rugby recognition. George, no slouch, rose to be Sergeant Major himself, and won eleven caps for Cornwall. Of similar build to Phil Collins (5ft 10, 12st 7), he gained something in the war that Herbert didn’t: George was wounded in France, and hospitalised near St Quentin.

Fortunately, his injuries can’t have been serious, and he was back playing for Camborne – alongside Herbert – for the 1919-20 season. By 1924, he was Town’s Captain, which tells us that George was, with his military experience, a good leader of men. That 1924-5 XV is, by common consent, the finest Camborne side ever assembled: thirteen of the players pictured (above) represented Cornwall; if Rafie Hamblin hadn’t been injured and absent from the photo, the number would have been fourteen.

On his retirement in around 1933 (and George had a long career, making his Camborne debut in 1912 aged 17), he became the side’s trainer. Being a PT instructor in the Army doubtless helped, and his love of Swedish Drill and physical jerks whipped the Town boys into shape throughout the 1930s.

(That Camborne had a gym instructor as early as 1919, a role George was to occupy later, serves as a corrective to the notion that coaching and training are relatively modern phenomena. In the amateur era, Camborne’s methods were bordering on the professional. Small wonder they dominated the 1920s.)

Clearly not a man to be taken lightly, George was also something of an entertainer. His banjo playing made him a valued member of a local black-and-white minstrel band, such forms of entertainment being popular at the time.

One imagines that, for the All Blacks, George certainly had his game face on³¹.

The New Zealanders had their frivolous side too. Rafie Hamblin would recall how, when the following photograph of the two XVs was taken, there was so much fooling about the lensman finally lost his rag. Certainly, they all look happy to be there.

But that wasn’t all the tomfoolery on display. Shortly before kickoff, the 12,000 crowd crammed cheek by jowl in temporary (and permanent) grandstands were treated to a breathtaking aerobatic display by WW1 Ace Captain Percival Phillips, DFC, of the Cornwall Aviation Company.

Phillips’ Avro 504 biplane swooped low over the trees, looped the loop and bombarded the pitch with leaflets advertising cheap joyflights, while the punters gasped in awe.

It later transpired that neither the Cornwall RFU or Camborne RFC had hired, or indeed given Phillips permission to indulge in his little sortie. Hauled before Camborne magistrates’ court, accused (amongst other things) of dangerous flying, Phillips confessed that the only people to consent to his buzzing the Recreation Ground…were the All Blacks themselves³⁴.

But it was about to get serious. Camborne Town Band had run through ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. The crowd, thousands of them, had naturally belted out ‘Trelawny’. The National Anthems had been sung. The All Blacks had treated the crowd to what was described as

…their weird war cry…

Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4

Finally, everyone was about to see what the All Blacks were about.

For it was the rugby people had paid their money for. The tourists were supposed to be the best. The sport historian Lynn McConnell has written that

New Zealand’s sporting success demands that no ground be conceded in the ever improving quest for excellence and staying a step or two ahead of rival nations.

Lynn McConnell, Will the NZ Government be a Party Pooper?³⁷

The All Blacks’ Tour Manager in 1924, Stanley Dean, went further:

Rugby is almost a religion in our country.

Cornubian and Redruth Times, September 25 1924, p6

New Zealand’s players had a reputation to uphold. The previous visitors to the British Isles in 1905, known as ‘The Originals’, had only lost one match, against Wales. They had slaughtered the English XV and made each and every one of their opponents look lumpen and outmoded.

Indeed, before The Originals lost to Wales, the press were in fact calling them The Invincibles³⁸.

The Originals had played the legendary John Jackett’s Cornwall XV too, and beaten them easily. (One Cornish great from that era, Redruth’s international half-back James ‘Maffer’ Davey, was at the match in 1924³⁹.)

Could this New Zealand party go one better than The Originals, and beat everyone? Could Cornwall upstage their 1905 counterparts and pull off a shock victory?

Few at the time thought Cornwall had it in them⁴⁰, but there was a feeling that these tourists were not of the same calibre as the 1905 vintage. Nobody was calling them ‘The Invincibles’ yet (obviously), and in their opening match, Devon had run them surprisingly close⁴¹.

Before the All Blacks had sailed for Britain, Auckland had beaten them in a warm-up match, leading one Original to say that this was

The weakest team New Zealand has ever had; weak in scrums, weak in defence, and lacking in pace…

From Lynn McConnell, All hell breaks loose after Auckland loss⁴³

Even a concerned New Zealand Government had intervened in the tour’s selections. They had a full-back, George Nepia, who looked out of position, and a captain, Cliff Porter, who had no idea why he’d been elected⁴⁴.

However, this was a touring party selected after nine trial matches. This was a touring party who had gelled as a XV in a series of warm-up matches in Australia. This was a touring party who, in their month or so at sea, barring the Sabbath trained every morning from 6:45am till noon. This was a touring party who, reckoning they’d soon be meeting some of the players in person, watched Camborne beat Torquay in Devon, and doubtless made mental notes⁴⁵.

Once arrived, they practised daily at Newton Abbot, and were rapidly getting admiring murmurs from the press. Their impressive, if not imposing vital stats were recorded, as were the

…exceptionally clever exhibitions of the short passing game…[they] are one of the fastest teams ever sent over, and they are also great tacticians.

Cornishman, September 10 1924, p6

Compare this to Cornwall’s preparation. The final XV was picked from one trial match⁴⁷, and, as Phil Collins’ notice of selection makes clear, there was to be no further warm-ups or training:

In the previous season’s County Championship, Cornwall had lost all three matches, and were described as the “weakest” XV in England⁴⁸.

After the All Blacks ran in three tries in the opening ten minutes (the final scoreline was 29-0), victory was a foregone conclusion. They were just too good and, like the thousands fortunate enough to see them play at Camborne that day, Cornwall’s players could do little else but admire them⁴⁹.

Cornwall’s big, heavy forwards weren’t big and heavy enough. The All Blacks shoved them off the ball and, indeed, all over the pitch. In a game that featured no less than fifty-five scrums, the visitors had ample opportunity to assert themselves. Always unlucky, late in the game Herbert Wakeham had to come off injured. Biddick, Mayne and Thomas were all hard men, but Maurice Brownlie (6ft), Ian Harvey (6ft 1), and Les Cupples (6ft 2) were something else.

England skipper Wavell Wakefield would later say of Brownlie that attempting to tackle him when on the rampage was like trying to fell

…a moving tree-trunk…

Qtd in the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame

Phil Collins, as you would expect, tackled like a demon, but he and Fred Barnard struggled to attack from the centre. Bert Cooke and ‘Snowy’ Svenson closed them down before they could feed Jago and Rees on the wing. Nepia was always lying in wait anyway.

Albert Gibson and Rafie Hamblin were starved decent possession too. Only fullback Harvey Ham from Redruth emerged from the experience with any credit.

Rafie would later claim that Cornwall’s gracious acceptance of New Zealand’s wish to have both XVs play with a five-eighth formation cost them the match. A seven-man scrum allowed for an extra fly-half, or ‘five-eighth’ outside. Cornwall had never played with such a system before, and it showed. Bert Cooke, a specialist five-eighth, excelled, but then he was probably up against a Cornish forward who had been drafted into the position at the last minute.

Although one suspects Cornwall would have been beaten whatever the formation, Rafie may have had a point. After all, The Originals had employed similar tactics back in 1905, and surely a little homework and practice matches experimenting with the formation wouldn’t have been a waste of time.

Battered and bruised (Cornwall had been brave, and were frequently hurt in the tackle, so tough and conditioned were their opponents), the local boys had earned a drink. They joined the tourists for a slap-up meal at Camborne’s Commercial Hotel.

New Zealand’s play was rightly eulogised, as was the spirit in which the game was played. Cornwall had shown plenty of guts, but ultimately the All Blacks were superior in every respect.

After their meal, the tourists repaired to the Town Hall, where a dance was laid on. The large number of female spectators at the match had been earlier remarked upon, as had the fact that many of the All Blacks were currently unattached.

What goes on tour, stays on tour.

The next morning, Friday the 19th, crowds gathered in Commercial Square to see the tourists leave. They had other teams to conquer, they would ultimately conquer them all, and would go down in history as the greatest XV to tour the British Isles ever – The Invincibles⁵².

The people of Camborne had seen something special, something they wouldn’t forget. For those few hours, life in the town wasn’t as bleak. They could leave their concerns behind, and appreciate what New Zealand meant to so many Cornish people: hope.

Maybe the All Blacks sensed this. In the Square they gave the onlookers a private demonstration of their ball-handling skills, which surely thrilled as much as Percy Phillips’ aeroplane.

At the train station, on the platform, the All Blacks turned to face the hundreds of well-wishers and autograph hunters. And there, right there, they performed the Haka, one last time⁵³.

And then, they were gone.

But the memories remained.

With special thanks to: Malcolm Collins (Phil Collins’ grandson); Brett and Kelly Hamblin (Rafie Hamblin’s grandchildren); Leslie Fiedler (Walter’s Mayne’s granddaughter), Hugh Trevarthen (his nephew), and Kathy Oxenham (his niece); Lizzie Mitchell (Fred Barnard’s great-niece); Derek Biddick (Bill Biddick’s son); Peter Thomas (George Thomas’ grandson); Pamela Best (Herbert Wakeham’s daughter).

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. Read all about Camborne’s Feast Day sporting traditions here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/08/26/cambornes-feast-day-rugby/
2. From: Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4.
3. Cornishman, September 10 1924, p4.
4. Cornish Post and Mining News, March 23 1924, p5, and May 3 1924, p5. For more on the decline of Cornish mining, see: John Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed, Cornish Hillside Publications, 1993, p305-326.
5. Image from: Mining in Cornwall: Volume 8, Camborne to Redruth, by L J Bullen, History Press, 2013, p56.
6. Cornish Post and Mining News, June 26 1920, p5.
7. Cornishman, June 9 1920, p4; West Briton, June 24 1920, p4.
8. Cornish Post and Mining News, March 27 1920, p5; April 3 1920, p5.
9. Cornish Post and Mining News, June 29 1921, p5; June 21 1924, p5; May 10 1924, p4; April 26 1924, p5.
10. Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 20 1921, p6.
11. Cornishman, November 3 1920, p3.
12. Cornishman, October 4 1922, p6; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, September 30 1922, p14; 1921 census. For more on the cream of Cornish rugby going North, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
13. Image from: Henry Cecil Blackwell, From a Dark Stream: The Story of Cornwall’s Amazing People and Their Impact on the World, Truran, 1986.
14. Cornish Post and Mining News, January 19 1924, p5.
15. From: Read Masters, With the All Blacks: In Great Britain, France, Canada and Australia, 1924-5. Christchurch Press, 1928, p6.
16. From: Philip Payton: The Cornish Overseas: The Epic Story of the ‘Great Migration’, Cornwall Editions, 2005, p256-322.
17. As noted in the Cornishman, February 2 1924, p7.
18. The make-up of the committee is noted in the Cornubian and Redruth Times, August 7 1924, p5.
19. Cornubian and Redruth Times, February 7 1924, p6. The reporter reckoned Camborne would struggle without him. They were wrong.
20. Cornish Post and Mining News, August 2 1924, p8.
21. West Briton, May 1 1924, p3.
22. Cornubian and Redruth Times, February 7 1924, p5.
23. Cornubian and Redruth Times, February 7 1924, p5.
24. Tom Salmon’s The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, CRFU, 1983, contains lists of all who represented Cornwall.
25. 1921 census, Western Morning News, September 10 1923 p2; Cornishman, November 29 1934, p9. For more on the career of John Collins, see: https://www.epcrugby.com/european-professional-club-rugby/content/rugby-legend-john-collins-reminisces. With special thanks to John’s son, Malcolm.
26. 1911 and 1921 census, Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 4 1923, p5; September 4 1924, p6; Cornishman, October 24 1923, p4; West Briton, December 16 1976, p19. With special thanks to Lizzie Mitchell, Fred’s great-niece.
27. Cornish Post and Mining News, April 16 1927, p6; September 17 1927, p6; October 6 1928, p6. Cornishman, December 15 1932, p3; August 23 1934, p7. West Briton, June 30 1932, p7; November 8 1990, p41. With special thanks to Rafie’s grandchildren, Brett and Kelly Hamblin.
28. Cornishman, August 3 1927, p2; West Briton, September 15 1927, p3; February 9 1928, p3; Janaury 5 1984, p6; Cornish Post and Mining News, September 10 1927, p3. Camborne RFC Centenary Handbook, 1878-1978. Biddick was a Private in the 1/5th regiment, DCLI, #2486/240390, which saw action on the Western Front between 1926 and 1918: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Cornwall%27s_Light_Infantry. With special thanks to Derek Biddick, Terry Symons, and Roger Moyle.
29. Walter’s story is summarised from: Henry Cecil Blackwell, From a Dark Stream: The Story of Cornwall’s Amazing People and Their Impact on the World, Truran, 1986, p213-220. Though Blackwell’s book credits George Jago with introducing the game to Yale, he was only in the USA for little over a year: Cornishman, April 25 1929, p6; West Briton, December 25 1930, p12. See also: 1921 census, Cornishman, August 4 1926, p7; West Briton, June 22 1972, p3. For more on Chicago’s Crane Co., see: https://www.craneco.com/about/history/. For more on Major League rugby in America, see: https://www.majorleague.rugby/history/. With special thanks to Leslie Fiedler, Walter’s granddaughter, Hugh Trevarthen, his great-nephew and Kathy Oxenham, Walter’s niece.
30. See: Western Morning News, January 3 1921, p3; July 5 1921, p2. Cornubian and Redruth Times, August 30 1924, p8; September 25 1924, p5. London Daily Chronicle, December 6 1924, p9. Cornish Post and Mining News, April 17 1926, p3; January 29 1927, p2. We know Herbert was back in Cornwall by 1935; he was in court for fighting on a bus to Hayle: Cornish Post and Mining News, December 21 1935, p8. For more on the infamous 1926 Camborne -Redruth derby, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/09/02/camborneredruth-the-oldest-continual-rugby-fixture-in-the-world-part-one/. See also: 1921 census, Herbert’s obituary (West Briton, April 18 1963, p11), UK, British Army World War I Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920 for Seth H Wakeham, here for Transvaal’s Pirates RFC: http://piratesclub.co.za/. With special thanks to Pamela Best, Herbert’s daughter.
31. See: Cornish Post and Mining News, September 9 1933, p6, which contains a profile of George. Swedish drill image from: https://shop.memorylane.co.uk/mirror/0000to0099-00080/scout-sports-kingston-display-swedish-drill-21381495.html. See UK, British Army World War I Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920 for Sgt 2471/240385 George Thomas, DCLI. With special thanks to Peter Thomas (of New Zealand), George’s grandson.
32. Thirty minutes of precious Invincibles footage can be viewed here: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F7026/. Sadly, the film crew were not present for the fixture against Cornwall.
33. Still from the short film on Phillips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SSn0g7pYTM
34. Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4; Cornish Guardian, November 28 1924, p5. Tragically, Phillips died in a ‘plane crash aged 45 in 1938. See: http://www.gamlingayhistory.co.uk/james-browns-blogs/a-poignant-death/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SSn0g7pYTM, https://www.cornishmemory.com/item/CHA_05
35. Thirty minutes of precious Invincibles footage can be viewed here: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F7026/. Sadly, the film crew were not present for the fixture against Cornwall.
36. Thirty minutes of precious Invincibles footage can be viewed here: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F7026/. Sadly, the film crew were not present for the fixture against Cornwall.
37. From: https://lynn.substack.com/p/will-the-nz-government-be-a-party
38. Yorkshire Evening Post, October 11 1905, p3. For more on the 1905 Tour, see: Fifty Years of The All Blacks, ed. Wilfred Wooller and David Owen, Sportsmans Book Club Ltd, 1955, p13-56.
39. For more on Jackett, Davey, and the Cornish XV of the early 1900s, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/, and https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/20/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-four-the-king-of-cornish-sport/
40. Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4. That Cornwall had a chance against New Zealand was something of a joke.
41. For a report of the Devon match, see: Cornubian and Redruth Times, September 18 1924, p6. The 1925 newsreel footage of the Tour calls the players ‘Invincible’: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F7026/.
42. Image from: Read Masters, With the All Blacks: In Great Britain, France, Canada and Australia, 1924-5. Christchurch Press, 1928, p18.
43. See: https://lynn.substack.com/p/all-hell-breaks-loose-after-auckland
44. See Lynn McConnell’s articles: https://lynn.substack.com/p/all-hell-breaks-loose-after-auckland, and https://lynn.substack.com/p/11-cliff-porter-captaincy-surprise
45. Read Masters, With the All Blacks: In Great Britain, France, Canada and Australia, 1924-5. Christchurch Press, 1928, p1-14. The All Blacks’ presence at the Camborne-Torquay match is mentioned in the Cornishman, September 10 1924, p6.
46. Image from: Read Masters, With the All Blacks: In Great Britain, France, Canada and Australia, 1924-5. Christchurch Press, 1928, p1-14. The All Blacks’ presence at the Camborne-Torquay match is mentioned in the Cornishman, September 10 1924, p18. See Lynn McConnell’s account of the match (and Nepia’s play) here: https://lynn.substack.com/p/17-referees-get-under-all-blacks. For more on John Jackett, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
47. Cornishman, September 10 1924, p6.
48. Tom Salmon’s The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, CRFU, 1983, p117; Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p8.
49. The match is summarised from reports in: Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p4, 8; Cornubian and Redruth Times, September 25 1924, p6, and https://lynn.substack.com/p/17-referees-get-under-all-blacks
50. Thirty minutes of precious Invincibles footage can be viewed here: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F7026/. Sadly, the film crew were not present for the fixture against Cornwall.
51. See above.
52. See: Fifty Years of The All Blacks, ed. Wilfred Wooller and David Owen, Sportsmans Book Club Ltd, 1955, p57-94, and Read Masters, With the All Blacks: In Great Britain, France, Canada and Australia, 1924-5. Christchurch Press, 1928. Neither book gives much space to the matches against Cornwall.
53. Cornish Post and Mining News, September 20 1924, p8.

(If you missed Part Three, click HERE…)

Reading time: 30 minutes

…the Northern Union is a superior game…

~ John Jackett preaches with the zeal of the converted

I blame the officers of the Rugby Union for the ruin of English Rugby Football.

~ the journalist ‘Rover’ speaks his mind after watching the 1905 All Blacks destroy England¹

Making hay

In late 1911, John Jackett was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Business – we are not told what – put him in contact with the Yorkshire theatre impresario George Smith. Jackett spent several days in the man’s company. When he returned to Leicester, his mind was made up.

Jackett would become manager of the Dewsbury Empire Theatre.

He would also, for an undisclosed fee, sign on for the Northern Union (NU) club Dewsbury².

The moment he put pen to paper, John Jackett’s Rugby Union career was over. Sportswriters reckoned his time was nearly up anyway:

He is not by a long way the player he was, and probably recognising this himself, he decided to accept a good offer before it was too late – to make hay while the sun shone – and no one can blame him for seizing the chance…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 4 1912, p3

He wasn’t Leicester’s first choice full-back anymore, and younger players were squeezing him out. Plus, Jackett was no longer the gung-ho, hell-for-leather track cyclist who would commit everything to a win, or crash in the attempt. In 1910, we find him officiating a cycle meet in Leicester³.

That same year, he took part in a novelty sprint – against, of all things, a whippet – at a Falmouth meet⁴. His name was obviously still a draw, but maybe taking part in serious competition was rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Small wonder, then, that some saw Jackett’s signing for Dewsbury as an attempt to earn some easy appearance money in the fast-approaching twilight of his career.

Perhaps so. But Jackett had probably always done pretty well financially from the amateur game of Rugby Union⁵. He’d regularly, discretely ‘made hay’ wherever and whenever he could. How else do you explain a Northern ‘paper’s statement that

Other clubs have been in search of Jackett’s services for some time, and he has received tempting offers, but his answer has always been ‘Not for sale’.

Yorkshire Evening Post, December 22 1911, p5

Maybe Jackett wasn’t previously for sale because he’d already been bought. As the Royal Cornwall Gazette wryly observed,

…an above-board deal of this sort is infinitely better than the surreptitious and very tempting bait all too often dangled.

January 4 1912, p3

It’s easy to guess which clubs the Gazette was referring to: Jackett’s most recent Union outfit, Leicester, and Devonport Albion, with whom he had earlier had a season⁶.

So John Jackett was allowed to ride off into the sunset of his career and earn himself a few (legitimate) bob as a stadium-filler for an unfashionable NU club. Dewsbury hadn’t won a trophy of any kind since 1881⁷.

Admittedly, Cornwall and Leicester were sad to see him go, but ultimately wished him all the best, and no hard feelings⁸.

Both Cornwall and Leicester thought they knew, and understood, John Jackett. They were forgetting that, throughout the course of his sporting life, he’d singlemindedly dedicated himself to being the best at any game he could turn his hand to.

His devotion to sport had, for certain periods, left him bereft of a regular, or conventional occupation. To be able to join, and play for, the best rugby teams in the land, he’d courted controversy and risked suspension. His drive to succeed was extraordinary.

Doubtless realising he wasn’t getting any younger or faster, Jackett craved one last challenge. Track cycling was now beyond him. He’d been the Cornish champion anyway. In Rugby Union, he’d won the County Championship with Cornwall, represented England and toured New Zealand with the (then-named) Anglo-Welsh XV. He even had an Olympic medal.

He’d done all he could in Rugby Union. But laurels, for Jackett, weren’t there to park your backside on. The NU was a new game to master, to win at. In an interview for the Yorkshire Evening Post, Jackett remarked how he had observed his opposite number for Hull KR, who

…is quite the best full-back I have seen…I watched him closely, and now I think I know how to realise my proper function as Dewsbury’s full-back…

February 3 1912, p3

If you want to be the best, learn from the best. Jackett wasn’t just along for the ride. Furthermore,

…I am having to unlearn much of that which I have learnt in the past.

Jackett is completely forsaking his Rugby Union past. He is 100% committed to Dewsbury and the NU.

Granted, in the Post interview he talks fondly of Leicester RFC and Cornwall’s annus mirabilis, 1908. But, like other interviews Jackett gave over the course of his life¹⁰, what’s not being said is as important as what he’s saying.

Although his interviewer mentions in passing Jackett’s international career, not once does the man himself touch on his time with England or the Anglo-Welsh tour.

Here we can suggest another reason why Jackett joined the NU: dejection, maybe bitterness, with the RFU and its ethos.

To begin to see why this might be the case, we have to go back to Jackett’s England debut in 1905…

The Crumpled Rose

There’s baptisms of fire, and then there’s making your international rugby debut against the 1905 All Blacks – ‘The Originals’.

They weren’t quite up to the calibre of the legendary 1924 Invincibles¹¹, but only marginally: The Originals only lost one game, against Wales¹².

In 35 matches they scored 976 points, and conceded only 59.

They introduced innovative – and controversial – playing positions. The forwards all passed like threequarters, and the threequarters passed like Welshmen. They were all incredibly fit. Hell, they even practised their lineouts.

In other words, they played rugby like a modern XV, and instantly made their opponents look outmoded and Victorian by comparison¹³. The one thing they lacked was a decent haka:

Before Jackett was selected for England, his Cornishmen had met the Tourists at Camborne RFC in September. The Cornish XV, under Jackett’s leadership, were finally developing into a promising unit, but the All Blacks were something else. They’d marmalised Devon 55-4 days previously; Cornwall, by contrast, had never beaten Devon¹⁵.

With a certain degree of inevitability, Cornwall were overwhelmed 41-0, the visitors scoring four goals and seven tries:

Cornwall could not stand the pace. The whole of the second half they had to settle down in their own twenty-five and defend…the brilliant lightning-like flashes of passing, broke Cornwall up…

Western Morning News, September 22 1905, p3

That said, Jackett and his men had shown plenty of grit, and there was no shame in such a result¹⁶.

Surely, thought John Jackett as he read of his selection, a XV of England’s best men could match the tourists?

At Crystal Palace, with 100,000 fans (including the future George V) in attendance, New Zealand ran in five tries, winning 15-0.

The beating handed them by the All Blacks was nothing compared to the slaughtering that awaited England in the Press:

England had been an embarrassment:

The score in no way represents the intrinsic superiority of the New Zealanders. One side played practically all the football; the other side played the fool…

‘Rover’, Morning Leader, December 4 1905, p6

Stagnation and conservatism from the top down was the cause of English rugby’s woes:

I blame the officers of the Rugby Union for the ruin of English football. They have tried to keep the game exclusive, they have tried to keep all the plums for public school boys and Varsity men, they have tried to jockey the working man out of the game, and they have nearly succeeded.

‘Rover’, Morning Leader, December 4 1905, p6

Furthermore, ‘Rover’ continued, there had been no attempt to embrace the fast, daring approach of, say, Leicester, Devonport Albion or any club in Wales. England’s only worthy performer on the day was, in fact, a Leicester (and formally Albion) man – John Jackett:

This was the only department in the game where we were superior to the enemy.

‘Rover’, Morning Leader, December 4 1905, p6

Jackett trudged from the field, wearing an All Black jersey:

Though he had acquitted himself well, maybe he was in a reflective mood. Maybe playing at the pinnacle of English rugby wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. His Cornish team of miners and fishermen had surely given a better account of themselves against the All Blacks, yet here he was with men with supposedly better opportunities and backgrounds, who had no stomach for it?

What’s more, Jackett’s new team-mates were predominantly the kind of player the Cornish were desperate to have a crack at. When that chance came in 1908 against Middlesex, Cornwall’s partisan local Press had dismissed them as soft

Varsity men and public school boys, who will probably crack…

West Briton, February 17 1908, p3¹⁹

But here Jackett was, on the same XV as a bunch of nobs. It can’t have been a comfortable experience.

For English Rugby Union in the early 1900s was a game in the doldrums. The advent of the NU in 1895 had robbed the game of much of its innovation and talent. To add insult to schism, the NU made frequent forays into Union heartlands, acquiring the best talent for itself²⁰.

RFU clubs in turn made a mockery of the Union’s anti-professionalism laws by keeping their top men sweet – and away from the temptations of the NU. Some ‘shamateur’ teams, such as Jackett’s Leicester, were so powerful and valuable to the RFU that the game’s governing body was loathe to call them out in a show of strength²¹.

Enthusiasm dwindled. In 1895 the English RFU had 416 adult clubs; by 1905 the total was just 155²².

As it was the working-class, Industrial North that had engendered the 1895 split, the RFU’s response was to close its amateur, public-school, Home Counties ranks and shun the working man.

In the Edwardian era, it’s possibly the only thing the RFU undertook with any success. In 1894, 36% of England internationals had working-class backgrounds. Between 1906 and 1910, it was only 13%²³.

Class prejudice was endemic in the highest echelons of the game. As one RFU crony remarked, to say that the working man

…knows more about the game than one who has been brought up in the best traditions of the public schools and universities is absurd.

Qtd in Tony Collins, A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009, p39

This was the kind of atmosphere Jackett would encounter. How you spoke and where you came from was more important than how you played²⁴.

And the play wasn’t great either:

Opponent	Venue	Date	Result	Score	Game
NZ	Crystal Palace	2/12/1905	Loss	15-0	Test
Wales	Richmond	13/1/1906	Loss	16-3	Home Nations
Ireland	Leicester	10/2/1906	Loss	16-6	Home Nations
Scotland	Inverleith	17/3/1906	Win	9-3	Home Nations
France	Parc de Princes	22/3/1906	Win	35-8	Test
S. Africa	Crystal Palace	8/12/1906	Draw	3-3	Test
France	Richmond	5/1/1907	Win	41-13	Test
Wales	Swansea	12/1/1907	Loss	22-0	Home Nations
Ireland	Dublin	9/2/1907	Loss	17-9	Home Nations
Scotland	Blackheath	16/3/1907	Loss	8-3	Home Nations
France	Stade Colombe	1/1/1908	Win	19-0	Test
Wales	Bristol	18/1/1908	Loss	28-18	Home Nations
Ireland	Richmond	8/2/1908	Win	13-3	Home Nations
Scotland	Inverleith	21/3/1908	Loss	21-3	Home Nations
Australia	Blackheath	9/1/1909	Loss	9-3	Test
Wales	Cardiff	16/1/1909	Loss	8-0	Home Nations
France	Leicester	30/1/1909	Win	22-0	Test
Ireland	Dublin	13/2/1909	Win	11-5	Home Nations
Scotland	Richmond	20/3/1909	Loss	18-8	Home Nations

Of the thirteen internationals John Jackett played, England won four and drew one. Of these victories, two came against the newest national XV on the block, France, who were only admitted to the Home Nations Championship in 1910, thus making the competition the Five Nations.

When England beat Les Bleus 22-0 in 1909, it was written that

…the play was of a very moderate character…England won easily…but their form scarcely justified such a wide margin.

Leicester Daily Post, February 1 1909, p6

Indeed, an English victory over any side other than France in these years was something of a shock. In March 1906 they regained the Calcutta Cup over a much-fancied Scottish team. Adrian Stoop came into the England XV at the expense of Jackett’s old Falmouth pal, Raphael Jago²⁵, and made the difference.

Jackett also played his part:

He twice stopped what looked like irresistible Scottish rushes, and after the second he got in a kick that developed into a general passing rush by the Englishmen…

Morning Post, March 19 1906, p9

Overall, though, Jackett’s England career was undistinguished, mainly because England were undistinguished too. In 1907 they lost all three Home Nations matches, and won, if that’s the word, the infamous wooden spoon. Jackett played all three matches.

In the final match of 1907 against Scotland, Jackett had to suffer the indignity of having the ball chipped over his head to set up a Scottish try. In happier circumstances, it’s the kind of cheeky move he would have loved to pull himself²⁷.

He also had to contend with an RFU selection policy that would often award a cap to a local player in an attempt to put bums on seats. This happened in 1908 when England lost to Wales 18-28 in Bristol. A Gloucester man got the nod ahead of Jackett²⁸.

In one of his most successful years, 1908, Jackett was bizarrely not picked for England at all. He’d captained Cornwall to the County Championship, won an Olympic Medal, and been selected for the Anglo-Welsh Tour of New Zealand³⁰. But that wasn’t good enough for England.

The nadir was reached in March 1909. For months, Scotland had been refusing to play England. It was a move made in protest at the daily ‘pocket money’ granted the 1905 New Zealanders. Added to this, RFU President Charles Crane had resigned over the impotency of his organisation regarding the Leicester affair. These were dark days for English rugby³¹.

Somehow, the rift with Scotland was papered over, and the game went ahead. Jackett, in form after England’s first victory in Ireland for 14 years³², was inked in for the Calcutta Cup game. Some expressed surprise at his being the only Cornish selection:

…strange to say, E. J. Jackett is the only one connected with the champion county, Cornwall, considered worth a place…

Manchester Courier, March 9 1909, p3

Scotland came to Richmond and thrashed England 18-8. The Calcutta Cup went back North, as it had done every time Scotland had travelled South for the last 25 years. Jackett was outplayed by his opposite number, and it was his final international³³.

Surely his tour to New Zealand in 1908 was more enjoyable?

A very sick animal

To call the 1908 Anglo-Welsh Tour a British and Irish Lions Tour is, to say the least, stretching it a bit. Of course, in 1950 all British Isles tours were retrospectively stamped with the Lions brand, including the 1908 edition. But even at the time, the 28 players selected were hardly representative of the entire British Isles³⁴.

From the get-go,

…strenuous efforts to induce the Scottish and Irish Unions to sanction the inclusion of their players in the side have been futile, and the team will be an Anglo-Welsh combination.

Daily Mirrot, January 3 1908, p14

Scotland and Ireland, still smarting at the liberal amounts of daily spending money permitted the 1905 Originals, boycotted the return tour Down Under. An Anglo-Welsh combination it would have to be, but even then,

Not one of the men would be chosen for a representative British team of to-day; some of the players could not find places in the second team of a first-class Welsh club…

Athletic News (Lancashire), March 9 1908, p1

Only 11 members of the touring party were capped internationals. Five players were Old Boys of Christ’s College, Brecon, and there was a man each from Oxford and Cambridge³⁵. At least Jackett had his old mates Maffer Davey and Fred Jackson for company (see image above).

Bearing in mind the all-powerful Lions outfits of modern times, what, if anything, was hoped to be achieved with such a cobbled-together outfit? The official line was announced during the farewell dinner held at The Howard, on The Strand:

…the tour would be of service to the great cause of rugby football…the time was opportune to give assistance to those who were fighting against professionalism in the Colonies…

Sportsman, April 4 1908, p3

A professional All Blacks team operating under NU rules had visited the British Isles in 1907³⁷. To spread the increasingly battered gospel of RFU amateurism, a good-will tour of the Antipodes was thought the appropriate remedy.

That’s the official line. It’s obvious many of the players prioritised women, booze and high-jinks above any actual rugby they might play. In fact the 1908 Anglo-Welsh Tour appears to have been undertaken in the best (and worst) traditions of any club team when they’re far away from home.

In New Zealand, however, the following question was asked:

Furthermore, the

…English Union…recognised in football a means of recreation and amusement…Here [New Zealand] there was a tending to regard it chiefly as a sport, and as a means of attracting big gates and big monetary returns.

Evening Post (NZ), May 15 1908, p3

Ne’er the twain shall meet. Recreation and amusement were much in evidence on the Tourists’ voyage:

…they eschewed shipboard training…on the grounds that gentlemen who played the game for its own sake had no reason to prepare for it.

The NZ journalist Ron Palenski, qtd in Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery: Who Really Was F. S. Jackson?, London League Publications, 2012, p33

Stories filtered back of a player dressed as ‘King Neptune’ honouring the Gods of the Ocean by daubing his fellow travellers with a concoction of treacle and flour³⁸.

What the teetotal, fitness-fanatic and dedicated trainer John Jackett made of all this is anyone’s guess. That said, he may have appreciated a break. The tourists sailed on April 3; on March 28, he, Jackson and Davey had been in Redruth, winning the County Championship.

Suffice, when the squad finally arrived, one reporter was unimpressed, remarking on

…the sturdiness of their build gained on the steamer…Some of the men seemed in rather poor condition…

Otago Witness, May 20 1908, p62

By some miracle, the tourists won the opening match against Wairarapa, it being noted that Jackett was

…in brilliant form…

Daily Telegraph (NZ), May 25 1908, p14

Obviously he’d prepared himself in time-honoured fashion.

Storm-clouds were gathering though. Back home, the RFU’s investigation into Leicester was heating up, and rumours were beginning to circulate that Fred Jackson wasn’t who he said he was. The Tour’s evangelistic amateur purity was immediately put under strain, and the very point of sending such an outfit to a land where shamateurism was rife was also brought into question³⁹.

Surely the only riposte was for the Tourists to do their talking on the pitch?

At Dunedin in the First Test, in front of 19,000 spectators, they went down 32-5. The All Blacks ran in seven tries. If modern scoring regulations were in force, the result would have read 46-7. But in any context, that’s a beating⁴¹.

By half-time the hosts led 21-0, and

…from this stage onwards there was little interest in the result.

New Zealand Times, June 8 1908, p5

The Anglo-Welsh XV were utterly overwhelmed:

…the lion was a very sick animal indeed.

New Zealand Times, June 8 1908, p5

If the All Blacks’ haka was, to our eyes, lacklustre, the Tourists’ response of crying ‘hip-hip-hooray!’ was as laughable as their play⁴².

There was one shining light: John Jackett. His kicking, tackling and general industry ensured the All Blacks were unable to push their dominance even more⁴⁴. As the tour progressed, his reputation was enhanced:

…the inclusion of Jackett as fullback will give additional interest, as his performance in the position is said to be quite a revelation.

Colonist, June 20 1908, p2

Another ‘paper revelled in his “eccentric genius”⁴⁵.

Not so the rest of the party, whose pathological adherence to the amateur ideal hamstrung them at every turn. In an early match against Wellington, they played most of the game with 14 men after Jackett went off injured. The offer of a substitute (legal in New Zealand) by the hosts was refused. This happened again in the final match of the tour, when even the crowd exhorted the stubborn Britishers to field a replacement, but to no avail⁴⁶.

The New Zealand public recognised the shortcomings of their visitors, one fan even going so far as to suggest playing an uncapped XV for the Second Test, thus ensuring a more palatable spectacle⁴⁷.

The All Blacks did field a weaker team second time round. A 3-3 draw was the result, but the home XV could have won, were it not for

…Jackett, who kicked the ball amongst the spectators, robbing the Blacks of a seemingly certain try.

Colonist, June 29 1908 p2

Normal service was resumed for the Final Test, where the All Blacks dished out a 29-0 thrashing.

By this stage, the Anglo-Welsh party was a shambles. Two unidentified members went fishing on a boat which capsized. Jackett himself, with the aid of two All Blacks, put the experiences of a lifetime to good use by saving another player from drowning, then seems to have started a mischievous rumour about himself going to work for the New Zealand Tourist Board. Their interests in the fairer sex were sardonically observed, with one player, Vassall, missing the boat to Australia on account of these extracurricular activities⁴⁸.

The Tourists also complained bitterly about the All Blacks’ rough play, and accused them of outright cheating⁴⁹.

Worse still, their image as paragons of amateur virtue had been destroyed. Gossip columnists reckoned at least one Anglo-Welshman had been clandestinely recruiting for the NU whilst in New Zealand⁵⁰, and Fred Jackson had been recalled home to face the RFU’s music. He sailed on June 26⁵¹.

He never returned to England.

As a result of the RFU’s investigations into Leicester RFC, it became apparent that ‘Fred Jackson’ had played NU for Swinton, under the alias John Jones. In fact, the man’s real name was Ivor Gape, and he was neither Cornish, nor English, but Welsh. Rather than sail home, he jumped ship, settled in New Zealand and eventually represented the All Blacks NU side. He died in 1957⁵².

Jackett watched his old Cornwall and Leicester comrade sail off, and was so overcome team-mates had to lead him away⁵³.

Which raises an interesting point. Why would Jackett be upset? After all, he’d surely see Jackson again in England? Jackett’s grief only makes sense if he knew Jackson had no intention of returning home: Jackett knew he’d never see his friend again. And if Jackett knew that, what else did he know of Jackson’s story?

We can speculate that Jackson had taken Jackett into his confidence: Jackett knew Jackson had played for the NU, and that ‘Fred Jackson’ wasn’t in fact his real name. And if Jackett knew that, he would have also been aware that, in playing with Jackson for Leicester, he had knowingly professionalised himself.

All of which makes his following statement ring rather hollow:

Any suggestions which are made reflecting upon the amateur bona fides of the club are, you can take it from me, most unjustifiable.

Yorkshire Evening Post, February 3 1912, p3

For the rest of his life, John Jackett never publicly uttered a word about Fred Jackson. He would have also known that, if Jackson was in hot water at Leicester, then he probably was too.

*

Despite being the Anglo-Welsh Tour’s sole success, Jackett was only to represent England on four more occasions.

His approach to the game, his methods and outlook, a lack of public school polish, allied to the questionable activities of his club, Leicester, perhaps meant his face didn’t fit with the RFU.

Maybe Jackett suspected, or realised this. He could have gone quietly and ended his playing days at Leicester. But not John Jackett. Nor Fred Jackson.

One final slap in the face sent him to Dewsbury.

Fry’s

It may not surprise readers to learn that Jackett was something of a rugby theorist. He contributed an article on threequarter play to a New Zealand ‘paper, and shows how deeply he thought about the game, how serious his approach was⁵⁴.

It would have also put him at odds with the Rugby Establishment.

First off, Jackett emphasises “systematic training” for his threes in various key areas. For cast-iron amateurs, ‘training’ was a dirty word.

The best threequarters he’d seen in action (and Jackett by 1908 had seen them all), were the Welsh:

…the best and cleverest players in the world…in my opinion the Welsh three-quarters cannot be beaten.

Evening Star (NZ), January 13 1908, p8

He also identified the Welsh centre Gwyn Nicholls⁵⁵ as the “finest the world has ever seen”.

Nicholls wasn’t selected for the Anglo-Welsh Tour.

Contrast that with his opinion of England’s outsides:

English players do not study the game sufficiently. They are not serious enough in their efforts…

For ‘serious’, read ‘professional’. Jackett outlined a thorough training programme (speed, swerving, tackling, punting, following-up, judgment), as well as recommending the back-line formation pioneered by the All Blacks – and to start coaching said formation to youngsters, thus “inculcating the idea into their minds”.

As Jackett’s article goes on, it becomes a critique of English rugby’s methods:

English rugby footballers were inferior to the All Blacks…because they were not so fast…[they] are lacking in judgment. They have no plan of action…

Jackett concludes by wishing that

If only the English ‘outs’ could practice together and there was not so much changing in the composition of the team, England would have done far better in the past.

Systematic training methods, youth development, consistency in selection. But the RFU were never going to listen to John Jackett. Adrian Stoop had similar ideas to his, and being as Establishment (Rugby School, Oxford University, Harlequins) as they come, he could finally start to change the system from within⁵⁶.

Jackett saw his ideas and criticisms ignored, as were his captaincy skills. Had he not whipped an unfancied bunch of Cornishmen into being the best in the land? What might he have done in charge of England?

The article he produced on full-back play in October 1911 for C. B. Fry’s Magazine was far from ignored⁵⁸. Jackett was widely condemned for the writing the following:

Always remember that you can better get and hold a ball that has bounced…

Fry’s Magazine, October 1911, p47. Bodleian Library, Oxford

Jackett appears to be advising full-backs to not catch the ball in the air, but to rather wait for it to bounce before fielding it. This practice, as anyone will tell you, is rugby suicide.

How they lined up to shoot him down:

…the practice is condemned…the man who is uncertain about a catch or who ‘funks’ it by waiting for the drop is rightly regarded as not being up to his game…

Morning Leader, October 4 1911, p6

Jackett suddenly had a

…fatal obsession for ‘waiting for the bounce’ – the worst of all faults in a full-back.

Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 4 1912, p3

However, his critics were misreading, or ignoring Jackett’s text:

Of course there will be many times in a match when you cannot allow the ball to bounce…the opposing men may be too near you, or the screw on the ball may make you not at all certain which way it would turn after bouncing…

Fry’s Magazine, October 1911, p47. Bodleian Library, Oxford

Before the article appeared, Jackett had been noted as a full-back who, if he could help it, didn’t allow the ball to bounce. Indeed, the earliest recorded instances of him playing rugby note his safe pair of hands when dealing with the high kick⁵⁹. The reaction to the Fry’s article damaged his reputation.

Jackett rightly took up the cudgels:

I have been wrongly quoted…It is true that the ball is easier to take from the bounce, but that involves a delay in fielding which may be fatal, and, therefore, I say always go for the ball before it bounces.

Yorkshire Evening Post, February 3 1912, p3

They wouldn’t listen to him. They twisted his words. They wouldn’t take him seriously. They wouldn’t pick him. They thought he was finished. And, most risible of all for an arch-competitor like Jackett, England kept losing.

Small wonder he jacked it all in for the NU.

A light of other days

Jackett wasn’t exactly joining a top NU outfit. In the 1910-11 season, Dewsbury finished a middling tenth in the League. Silverware was a memory from the 1880s⁶⁰.

All that would change with the big-name signing of John Jackett. He was making his mark as early as December 1911, kicking three goals in a victory over Wakefield Trinity⁶¹. His presence certainly “heightened interest”⁶², and he enjoyed a certain media attention:

Jackett himself was an enthusiastic participant. The NU game is

…the more open, and the one in which there is less time wasted; therefore, it must be a better game from the spectators’ point of view.

Yorkshire Evening Post, February 3 1912, p3

It was later heard in Cornwall that Jackett believed the NU game “superior” to Rugby Union⁶³. He demonstrated this in deeds as well as words: there are reports of him recommending Union players for Dewsbury to tempt North⁶⁴.

John Jackett was not a man to do things by half. In the Second Round of the 1912 Challenge Cup at Salford (a close-run 9-8 victory for Dewsbury in front of 16,000), he “outshone” his younger, faster opposite number⁶⁵.

Coming second to Jackett that day was Harry Launce (or Lance), who had joined Salford in August 1911 from Camborne RFC. It would be fascinating to know what they said to each other.

In the Quarters, Dewsbury came through 5-2 against Batley. Jackett’s kicking for once was off, but his tackling was “always deadly”. His team were having a good run, but this year Oldham were tipped to win overall⁶⁷.

18,000 watched the Semi at Dewsbury’s ground, Crown Flatt (now the FLAIR Stadium). Jackett may have been pushing the years, but he knew when to put his body on the line: a try-saving tackle meant his team beat Halifax 8-5⁶⁸.

20,000 watched the Final in Leeds, as Dewsbury faced the favourites, Oldham. Lancashire against Yorkshire in the Challenge Cup Final – it doesn’t get bigger. At half-time, Dewsbury led 5-2. Only Jackett’s last-ditch tackling was keeping them ahead.

And then, all the years of single-minded dedication and practice paid off. Jackett slammed a monster kick deep, deep into OIdham’s half, sparking a mad scramble back. It was the kind of kick defending teams hate, and it pushed Oldham perilously close to both the touchline, and their own tryline.

John Jackett, past it? Not on your life. He could still gift his set of forwards a dream position when it was asked of him.

Oldham failed to clear up, and Dewsbury scored. For the first time in their history, they had won the Challenge Cup. They wouldn’t repeat the feat until 1943, and haven’t won it since⁶⁹.

Sadly, Jackett’s playing time with Dewsbury was short. Even at the start of the 1912-13 season, he was described as

…a light of other days…

Yorkshire Evening Post, September 13 1912, p3

A broken jaw suffered against Coventry in October 1912 kept him out for six weeks. It was the beginning of the end⁷¹.

Being John Jackett, he didn’t go quietly. Controversial to the last, he requested a transfer when a satisfactory explanation regarding his non-selection for a game in March 1914 wasn’t forthcoming⁷².

His ever-burgeoning theatre commitments, allied to his age, meant his appearances for Dewsbury became ever-more sporadic. One of his final games was against Rochdale Hornets, where he came up against another Camborne and Cornwall player, Sam Carter⁷³.

By early 1915, it was all over⁷⁵. A lifelong dog-lover, Jackett switched his energies to his beloved Chows, winning prizes at Crufts in the early 1930s⁷⁶. He also gained a reputation as a selfless coach of young rugby players⁷⁷.

Finally, people listened to his wisdom.

The King of Cornish Sport

At time of writing, only seven men have represented the British Lions and won the Rugby League (or Northern Union) Challenge Cup. If we allow for the obvious qualifications regarding the 1908 Anglo-Welsh Tour (and the British Lions website certainly does⁷⁸), then John Jackett was the first. As you can see above, this puts him in a pretty exclusive club.

Of the seven, only two of them, Jackett and Tosh Holliday, captained County Championship winning XVs. Holliday took Cumberland & Westmorland all the way in 1924⁷⁹. Only Jackett has won an Olympic Medal. His achievements are truly extraordinary.

In purely Cornish sporting terms, these accolades surely put him head and shoulders above any other sportsman Cornwall has produced. If you include his early, pioneering prowess as a track cyclist and athlete, then you can say with some confidence that John Jackett was the best there ever was, the

King of Cornish Sport.

Complex, controversial, intelligent, outspoken, single-minded, competitive, talented, individualistic yet a born leader, John Jackett died in Middlesborough in 1935.

A man who knew him said he had dedicated his

…heart and soul…

Leicester Evening Mail, November 13 1935, p6

…to rugby football.

Unsurprisingly, a racehorse was named after him. Equally unsurprisingly, the ‘John Jackett’ proved very successful, setting a world record time for a hurdle race in Manchester⁸⁰.

John Jackett – what better name for a thoroughbred?

With special thanks to: Danny Trick and Victoria Sutcliffe, Falmouth RFC; Mr John Jackett of Falmouth; Professor Tony Collins; Adrian Ellard, Cape Town; Richard Pascoe, St Piran Pro Cycling; Donna Westlake, Falmouth Town Council; Dewsbury Rams RLFC; Dr Sharron P. Schwartz, Exeter University; Phil Westren, Cornish Pirates RFC; David Fuge, Plymouth Albion RFC; Mark Warren, Camborne RFC, and many more.

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. Excerpts from: West Briton, January 15 1914, p3; Morning Leader, December 4 1905, p6.
2. Yorkshire Evening Post, December 22 1911, p5. The Dewsbury RLFC official history (chapter 6) witholds Jackett’s fee.
3. Leicester Evening Mail, October 16 1910, p6 and the Leicester Daily Mercury, November 22 1911, p6. For more on Jackett’s cycling exploits, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
4. Cornish Echo, August 12 1910, p7.
5. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
6. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
7. For more on Dewsbury Rams, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewsbury_Rams
8. Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 4 1912, p3; Leicester Daily Mercury, November 22 1911, p6.
9. Image from the Dewsbury RLFC official history, chapter 6.
10. Witness the two where he touches on his time in South Africa: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/06/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-two-the-artists-model-the-coastguards-daughter/
11. Played 32, won 32. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924%E2%80%9325_New_Zealand_rugby_union_tour_of_Britain,_Ireland_and_France
12. A game that was billed as ‘The Match of the Century’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_of_the_Century_(rugby_union)
13. The All Blacks employed a ‘rover’, an early version of a wing-forward. All their pack had allocated scrummaging positions – in the British Isles, it was still ‘first up, first down’. In the outsides, instead of a left and right half-back style (where modern scrum- and fly-half duties are alternated), the All Blacks had a dedicated scrum-half, with the 10 and 12 combining for a more defensively solid five-eighth formation. For more on The Originals tour, including results, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Original_All_Blacks
14. Image from: https://www.theoffsideline.com/remembering-1905-originals-overcome-icy-edinburgh-reception/
15. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
16. In 1906, Jackett’s men held the South Africans to 9-6 in Redruth: Cornishman, December 27 1906, p5. At Camborne in 1909, the Australians beat a Cornwall minus Jackett 18-5. His absence was “badly felt”: Western Echo, October 10 1908, p3.
17. Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:England_rugby_team_1905.jpg
18. See: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/17669461.john-jacketts-1905-new-zealand-blacks-top-auctioned-off/
19. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Three: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
20. The effects of this on Cornish rugby can be seen in my post on the subject here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
21. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Three: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
22. Figures from: Tony Collins, A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009, p39.
23. Tony Collins, A Social History, p39.
24. For more on this period, see: Tony Collins, A Social History, p22-46, and his Rugby’s Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football, Frank Cass, 1998. Also, James W. Martens, “They Stooped to Conquer: Rugby Union Football, 1895-1914”, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 20.1 (1993): p25-41.
25. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Three: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
26. For more on Peters, see: https://www.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/12321/12717311/james-jimmy-peters-the-tragic-and-turbulent-story-of-englands-first-black-rugby-player
27. Morning Leader, March 20 1907, p8.
28. Leicester Daily Mercury, January 1 1908, p3.
29. Image from: https://www.tate-images.com/MB8825-Photograph-of-Johnny-Jackett-wearing-his-England.html
30. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Three: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
31. Daily Mirror, February 1 1909, p14, and In Search of John Jackett, Part Three: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
32. Daily Mirror, February 15 1909, p14.
33. Morning Leader, March 22 1909, p6.
34. For more information, see: https://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/story/_/id/18778556/1908-lions-tour-new-zealand-unmitigated-shambles, https://www.lionsrugby.com/2010/01/25/the-lions-down-under-1908/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_British_Lions_tour_to_New_Zealand_and_Australia
35. Information from: https://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/story/_/id/18778556/1908-lions-tour-new-zealand-unmitigated-shambles
36. Image from: The Tigers Tale: The Official History of Leicester Football Club 1880-1993, by Stuart Farmer and David Hands, ACL & Polar Publishing, 1993, p20.
37. Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p218-24.
38. Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery: Who Really Was F. S. Jackson?, London League Publications, 2012, p31.
39. Athletic News (Lancashire), June 1 1908, p1.
40. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_British_Lions_tour_to_New_Zealand_and_Australia
41. Daily News (London), June 8 1908, p2, and New Zealand Times, June 8 1908, p5. In 1908, a try was worth 3 points, a conversion 2. The All Blacks converted four of their tries, and kicked a 3-point penalty.
42. From: https://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/story/_/id/18778556/1908-lions-tour-new-zealand-unmitigated-shambles
43. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_British_Lions_tour_to_New_Zealand_and_Australia
44. Daily News (London), June 8 1908, p2, and New Zealand Times, June 8 1908, p5.
45. New Zealand Times, June 6 1908, p5.
46. Lyttleton Times (NZ), May 28 1908, p7; Otago Witness, July 20 1908, p62.
47. Evening Post (NZ), June 13 1908, p2.
48. Colonist, June 20 1908, p2; New Zealand Observer, July 4 1908, p7; Otago Witness, August 5 1908, p31; New Zealand Truth, August 29 1908, p3; Observer (NZ), August 29 1908, p10. Jackett knew rather a lot about saving men at sea: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
49. Oamaru Mail, July 24 1908, p4; Observer (NZ), August 1 1908, p3.
50. New Zealand Truth, July 11 1908, p3.
51. Feilding Star, June 27 1908, p2.
52. Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery: Who Really Was F. S. Jackson?, London League Publications, 2012.
53. Leicester Daily Mercury, August 15 1908. p5.
54. Evening Star (NZ), January 13 1908, p8.
55. For more on Nicholls, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyn_Nicholls
56. For more on Stoop, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Stoop
57. Image from: https://www.tate-images.com/preview.asp?item=MB8807&itemw=4&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=28
58. Jackett probably knew Fry through Henry Scott Tuke; the artist was friends with the eminent cricketer. See In Search of John Jackett, Part One: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/. The two sportsmen had much in common. Fry was a driven, multi-talented crack (England cricket captain, FA Cup Finalist, long-jump specialist) who also worked as a nude model in times of financial stress. His Magazine is a high Edwardian cultural touchstone on matters such as sports, games, gentlemanly pastimes and even childrens’ toys. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._B._Fry
59. Jackett’s safe catching is noted in Athletic Chat, March 10 1909, p11. Going further back, it’s also observed in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, March 3 1897, p3. See Part Three, https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/13/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-three-a-modern-bartram/
60. Dewsbury RLFC official history (chapter 6); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewsbury_Rams
61. Yorkshire Post, December 26 1912, p3.
62. Hull Daily News, December 23 1912, p6.
63. West Briton, January 15 1914, p3.
64. Yorkshire Evening Post, September 27 1913, p5. Courtesy Mark Warren, Camborne RFC.
65. Athletic News, March 4 1912, p6. Dewsbury had enjoyed an easy win in Round One over Lane End Utd. Yorkshire Post, February 19 1912, p4.
66. For more on Launce, and other Cornishmen who joined the NU, see my post on the subject here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
67. Yorkshire Post, March 25 1912, p3.
68. Yorkshire Post, April 15 1912, p4.
69. Star Green ‘un, April 27 1912, p5; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewsbury_Rams
70. Image from: http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/DewsburyTheatres.htm
71. Yorkshire Evening Post (p8), and Hull Daily Mail (p2), December 8 1912.
72. Yorkshire Post, March 7 1914, p16; Yorkshire Evening News, March 14 1914, p5.
73. Jackett’s increasing theatrical involvement is noted in the Yorkshire Evening Post, November 21 1914, p4. That he played against Carter is noted in the Rochdale Observer, April 4 1914.
74. For more on how Carter came to join the NU, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
75. Yorkshire Evening Post, January 16 1915, p6; Hull Daily Mail, February 10 1915.
76. Leeds Mercury, February 14 1931, p5.
77. From Jackett’s obituary: Leicester Evening Mail, November 13 1935, p6.
78. See: https://www.lionsrugby.com/2010/01/25/the-lions-down-under-1908/
79. For more on Holliday, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Holliday_(rugby), and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_Rugby_Union
80. Leeds Mercury, November 13 1935, p13.

(If you missed Part Two, click HERE…)

Reading time: 35 minutes

…this is a matter for the county committee to sift!

~ the rugby pundit ‘Impartial’ notes the suspicion surrounding Jackett’s appearance for Penzance RFC in 1898

…the admirable performance of Jackett – reared in our own “nursery”, remember – against the conquering Colonials comes as a crowning point…

~ Jackett’s impressive England debut against the formidable 1905 All Blacks proves that rugby in Cornwall, and especially Falmouth, is a force to be reckoned with¹

The story of Teddy Bartram

In the late 1870s and 1880s, Teddy Bartram was a centre threequarter of breathtaking ability. He also knew what his talent was worth to any club he cared to join. He left York because they wouldn’t pay his rail fare from Harrogate, and was soon recruited by Wakefield Trinity. They would pay his train fare, and quietly slip him a few bob on the side too. That was fine with Teddy. He helped Wakefield to win consecutive Yorkshire Cups in 1879 and 1880.

Responding to mutterings about Wakefield having a ‘paid man’ in their ranks, in 1879 the Yorkshire County Football Club introduced the very first rules against professionalism in the game. A player could be reasonably reimbursed for travel expenses, but anything beyond that was verboten.

Wakefield’s response was to dream up a job for Teddy: that of the club’s assistant secretary, with a salary of £52/annum (giving him a labour earning of around £29K/annum in 2022³). This thinly disguised sinecure lasted Teddy until 1889, when he received a life ban from football for receiving loans from his club. Despite his skill, Teddy was never picked for England. Down south, they didn’t like the cut of his professional jib.

Thus began the long and bitter saga that, in 1895, resulted in twenty-one northern clubs breaking away from the amateur RFU to form the Northern Union. The NU would pay players’ expenses, as well as payments for ‘broken time’, ie. for loss of earnings on account of missing work to play for their club.

That’s the story of Teddy Bartram⁴.

Quidnunc

The 2022-23 season marked the 150th anniversary of Falmouth RFC. As the exact date of its founding in 1873 has been lost to history, the club decided to launch their celebrations on the birthday, in July 1878, of John Jackett. He was noted for being

One of the club’s greatest successes from the early 20th century…

Falmouth RFC website⁶

The birth of rugby in Falmouth and the birth of John Jackett, you might argue, are inextricably linked. He, and indeed the Jackett family, are rightly revered by the club. All his brothers played, and his father Thomas Jackett was prominent on the committee.

Every now and then, a precious piece of John Jackett memorabilia is unearthed at the Falmouth clubhouse, such as his 1908 British Lions cap:

However, apart from occasional guest appearances for the Falmouth XV⁷, his playing years for Falmouth Chiefs (as opposed to Falmouth One and All, a junior ‘feeder’ team for the senior club), only spanned from 1897 to 1905.

Furthermore, during this period Jackett also signed with, and represented Penzance, Devonport Albion and Plymouth, before finally committing to Leicester. He may have even guested for Penryn, such practices being common at the time⁸.

He was first selected for Cornwall whilst a Penzance player, and was picked for England and the 1908 Lions as a Leicester man.

For the Falmouth faithful though, by and large he could do no wrong. From one of his earliest appearances in 1896 for the One and All XV, the local rugby pundit ‘Quidnunc’ (an archaic term for an inquisitive, gossipy person) was already tipping him for bright things⁹.

A year later, and now full-back for Falmouth Chiefs (he wasn’t yet twenty), Quidnunc observed that the youngster’s play was

…superior…his huge punts to touch being, as usual, quite a feature of the game.

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, December 4 1897. p5

It’s tempting to don the rose-tinted spectacles and assume that, as he is recalled so fondly now by the club, that Jackett was always a popular figure. Maybe he was. But one suspects that, while his play won many games and earned him much plaudits, there may have been many clubmen whose life he made difficult.

Who’s he playing for this season? What are his plans? Who knows? Who do we pick now he’s gone? Who are we going to drop now he’s back? How long is he going to be back? How do we keep him here?

One could draw a parallel here with Jackett’s contemporary and Cornwall team-mate from Redruth, Bert Solomon. Solomon is feted now as one of Cornwall’s greatest players, a centre of elusive, ghost-like running ability. Yet how many Redruth committee men must have cursed him blind when, on match-day, he was once more nowhere to be found, and they had to shrug on their overcoats yet again to beg him to leave his bleddy pigeons alone and come and play rugby?¹⁰

The question we have to ask is, why did John Jackett switch clubs so often?

The Magpies

Jackett seemed to arrive at Falmouth RFC as the complete package, and his impact on their Chiefs cannot be underestimated.

In March 1897 Falmouth recorded a notable 13-0 victory over Redruth. ‘The Bounder’, Cornish Echo‘s rugby columnist (Cornish sportswriters loved a pseudonym) noted that, even though Falmouth’s young full-back had an off-day,

…his tackling was sure and his huge punts were always of considerable advantage.

March 19 1897, p8

Jackett’s B-game is already up to the level of many a 15’s best efforts.

So he could tackle. He had a massive kick – and it must have genuinely been a whopper, so often is this facet of his game remarked upon. One wonders how many yards he would have made given a lighter, more aerodynamic modern ball to hoof.

He was secure under the high ball too, Quidnunc noting that he was a

…very safe custodian…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, March 3 1897, p5

…when dealing with any proto-Garryowens.

Jackett was fast, and he was very fit. A preview of the 1898 season observed that he

should be in good form as a result of his cycle training…

Lake’s Falmout Packet, September 3 1898, p5

As we saw previously¹⁴, Jackett trained hard for his cycling, and he was equally noted for being

…always in strict training…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, November 11 1899, p5

…where rugby was concerned. One of his kicking drills was to place buckets along the touchline of the Falmouth pitch and, from the other half, aim his punts at them¹⁵. In an amateur sport, Jackett’s dedication was worthy of a professional.

The long hours of practice bore fruit too in his goal-kicking. When he started, a try only counted to your score if it was converted, or ‘majorised’ as the term was then. Additionally, field-goals (kicking the ball over the posts during open play) were permitted until 1905. Jackett’s prowess in this area was noted in the Press as often as his kicking, catching and tackling¹⁶.

Jackett had another aspect to his game. Attacking flair.

The “proper Cornish game”, wrote the journalist Jerry Clarke in 1970s, is one

…in which threequarters are mere spectators.

The Packet, March 23 1978

If Cornish rugby is forward-focused, then Rugby Union in general in the 1890s was undeniably dominated by the big men with their scrimmaging and dribbling.

But not all of it:

Jackett was responsible for the opening, running from half-way and passing to a threequarter, who ran over with a try, Jackett goaling amidst a scene of great excitement.

Lake’s Falmouth Packett, March 12 1898, p8

Last in defence, first in attack. Jackett had the 15’s complete game.

He was one hell of a player. He knew it, and Falmouth knew it. So did other XVs.

*

Long before they joined forces with Newlyn RFC, and even longer before they became the Cornish Pirates, Penzance RFC were known as The Magpies. They lived up to their name in the autumn of 1898.

There were “howls of disapproval” from the Penryn faithful as the Penzance XV took to the pitch, with a known Falmouth player on their team. The howls must have turned to screams of outrage at full time, when The Borough went down by one goal and one try to two tries.

They’d crossed Penzance’s line twice, but failed to majorise their efforts. Penzance, by contrast, had a decent kicker on the field, and his goal won them the game¹⁷.

The kicker was John Jackett. Here we might add another couple of strings to his rugby bow: an ability to stay out of trouble, and to remain calm under pressure. The Penryn crowd repeatedly exhorted their players to stick one on him or worse, but to no avail. He was too cute for that¹⁸.

He’d quit Falmouth at the end of September, offering no reason. However, it’s suggested that criticism for a poor early-season showing against Plymouth’s Keyham College was the explanation for his sudden departure¹⁹.

If true, Jackett can’t have had a very thick skin, and he didn’t use the brickbats’ words constructively. As we shall see, later in his career he again demonstrated that his knee-jerk reaction to any denunciations of his play was to pack his bag and try his luck elsewhere.

Rumours circulated as to who he’d join. Redruth counted themselves among the hopefuls²⁰, but it was The Magpies that poached the rising star. How?

Jackett seems to have found, or been offered a job in Penzance²¹. What exactly this was is unknown, but some had their suspicions:

…he has to work hard enough when he plays on one or two occasions per week for the Penzance team, and if had to work the rest of the week it would kill him in a very short time; but I think you can depend on it he isn’t going to do that…

Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 28 1898, p5

In other words, Jackett’s ‘job’ probably didn’t involve much actual work. We can add to this assertion some bitter demands from Penryn that his appearance for Penzance was

…a matter for the county committee to sift!

Cornishman, October 6 1898, p2

Then there’s the courtroom testimony of Caroline Over’s mother²². She claimed that Jackett told her he made money “footballing”, but at Penzance

…she did not know how much he earned.

Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 14 1901, p3

Of course, it was against the RFU’s strict amateur codes for any player to be paid to play the game, but the inference is that Jackett did indeed quietly receive some boot money to go to Penzance.

His father played sport – yachting – for cash. Jackett himself cycled competitively for trophies or prizes²⁴.

Why should playing rugby be any different? Although Jackett didn’t exactly have a working-class background, it had long been common practice for the working classes to play sport, or team games, for rewards²⁵. And rugby, in Cornwall at least, had evolved into a working-class game.

Whatever the truth behind his brief dalliance with Penzance, by November 1898 Jackett had returned to Falmouth. He helped them beat Camborne²⁶.

Maybe he’d made a point.

On the Waterfront

Of far greater controversy was Jackett’s signing for the powerful Devonport Albion club in late 1900. Albion had a reputation for luring talent away from their native clubs, it apparently being common knowledge in Wales that

Any good footballer can secure a berth in the Devonport Dockyard…One of the Swansea forwards was offered…£100 a year…and would consent to play for the Albion club…he need not be too clever at his work so long as he played good football.

Qtd in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, December 8 1900, p8

Albion weren’t the only ones. Poaching was known to be

…rife in Devon…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 13 1900, p5

By October 1900 John Jackett was white-hot. His poor showing against Keyham College in 1898 was avenged, with

…his running, fielding and kicking being faultless. He played with excellent judgement…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 13 1900, p5

Falmouth began to play him at 10, with predictable results against Camborne. A cross-kick (or was it a kick-pass?) put his wing in for a try, and then Jackett broke through on a mazy run to set his outsides up for another²⁸.

What a player. What an asset. Devonport had already acquired Falmouth’s skipper, Syd Skinner, and now they made a bid for the star player. An attempt to “induce” Jackett was made, but his

…decision to stand by his old team has given great satisfaction.

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 20 1900, p8

Not for long. Albion reached out to Jackett with another ‘inducement’, and there was uproar in Falmouth when he left. There were calls for the RFU to launch an enquiry, and for a change to the codes:

Better to have recognised professionalism than unfair work of this kind.

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 20 1900, p4

An incensed Falmouth RFC took their grievance to the Cornwall RFU. Messrs. Prior, Miller and Lake strode into the committee room of their sport’s governing body.

For all their high talk about the depletion of smaller clubs hastening the death of Cornish rugby, the CRFU were hamstrung. Falmouth had no hard evidence of Jackett (or Skinner) receiving money to play.

They might have claimed that Skinner was losing days at his actual job by travelling to play in Devon, and that the Albion were surely recompensing him. Or they could assert Jackett had uttered something like

…he was going to the Devonport Albions to see what they could do for him…

Cornish Echo, December 7 1900, p8

…but to no avail. Not even one strongly-worded letter left Cornwall bound for Devonport. Falmouth were left to seethe.

Jackett would later state that he was only legitimately paid travel expenses, and nothing else²⁹. The RFU belatedly caught up with Devonport Albion in 1912. During the aftermath of the abortive Westcountry Northern Union movement, they suspended practically all of Devonport’s 1st XV for breaches of anti-professionalism laws.

One of the players was Jackett’s old team-mate from Falmouth – Raphael Jago³⁰.

By May 1901 however, Jackett had left Devonport, and England, for South Africa. He was back by June 1902³¹.

Before the start of the 1902-3 season, Falmouth acted quickly to secure his services. In August they appointed him club secretary,

…to which he will be able to devote the necessary time to ensure the smooth workings of the club’s affairs.

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, August 23 1902, p4

This meant he would be playing for them too. Making a key player a secretary was a “common way”, one historian states, for the said player

…to be paid for playing while retaining their amateur status.

Tony Collins, A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009, p26

If this was Falmouth’s ploy to keep Jackett to themselves, it didn’t last. By September 1903, “rumour” was “rife” as to his intentions³².

And the rumours proved correct. Jackett signed for Plymouth RFC, who then went on to beat Falmouth that season at South-Devon Place. A Jackett cross-kick (which must have been a feature of his game) set up one of the home XV’s three tries³³.

He returned to Falmouth for the start of the 1904-5 season. The club elected him skipper; clearly they weren’t going to make him secretary again. But by January 1905, Jackett had joined Leicester³⁵.

However, it was while playing for Falmouth in 1904 that John Jackett was named as Cornwall’s Captain…³⁶

1908 and all that

There’s no other way to put it. Cornwall’s rugby team were crap. They’d first entered the South Western Division (joining Devon, Somerset and Gloucestershire) of the County Championship in the 1892-3 season, and for some years following had been the region’s whipping boys.

From that inaugural year up to the start of the 1900-01 season, they’d played 23 matches…and lost each one³⁷.

In the press, resignation was prevalent. Before the 1893-4 fixture against Devon, ‘Spectator’ had already thrown in the towel:

Victory will undoubtedly rest with the Devonians…

Cornish Post and Mining News, November 24 1893, p3

Spectator was correct. At Exeter, Devon stuffed Cornwall 38-3, majorising four of an eyewatering six tries³⁸.

That said, Cornwall were in a tough draw. After the formation of the Northern Union in 1895 had broken the dominance of the Lancashire and Yorkshire XVs, Rugby Union’s power-base switched to the West Country. In the years John Jackett played for Cornwall (52 times from 1898-1911), Devon won the Championship in 1899, 1901, 1906 and 1911. Gloucestershire won in 1910³⁹.

Cornish insularity, hostility to the CRFU and inter-club rivalry were contributory factors to Cornwall’s poor showings too.

On the eve of the Devon match mentioned above, two Penzance players were named in the line-up⁴⁰. In the event, the club withdrew their players’ services in protest at the CRFU’s decision to move the venue of the forthcoming fixture against Gloucestershire from Penzance to Redruth, their committee arguing that

…the removal has been done improperly and illegally.

Cornish Telegraph, November 30 1893, p5

Although 1897’s campaign was another whitewash, the journalist ‘Impartial’ (who was anything but) saw a glimmer of hope – and an opportunity to have a sly dig at Devonport Albion. Cornwall had

…shewn a bolder front to their opponents. With a few big industries (a dockyard for instance) we shall be able to cope with the adjacent shires…

Cornishman, April 21 1898, p6

Was it time to be bolder? Blood some youth? What did Cornwall have to lose?

By October 1898, John Jackett was a Cornwall player⁴¹. The upturn in the side’s fortunes was far from immediate. Cornwall only registered their maiden Championship victory, against Somerset in the 1900-01 season. 3,000 in Redruth witnessed the two tries to nil win. Jackett played a prominent role:

…the Falmouthian did all that was required of him in a style unequalled by any custodian turned out by Cornwall…Jackett…came out of the ordeal with flying colours.

‘Touch’, Cornish Telegraph, November 14 1900, p8

(Also playing well that day was a young fly-half from Redruth, James ‘Maffer’ Davey.)

This victory however was a false dawn. Cornwall didn’t win another Championship fixture until the 1904-5 round, when they beat Gloucestershire 18-9 in Bristol⁴².

It was Jackett’s first game as captain. It was also the beginning of a new era for Cornish rugby. Belief. Flair. Success.

And it was John Jackett who threw down the gauntlet. Here’s his opening statement – at 10 – in that match. There was

…a sensational incident, for from the first scrimmage J. Jackett slipped past Butcher and found a clear field in front of him, save for the full back. On reaching the latter, he punted, and then ensued a foot race for the line…

‘The Bounder’, Cornish Echo, November 4 1904, p2

It didn’t, alas, result in a try, but Gloucestershire were stunned. Cornish XVs didn’t normally play with such gay abandon. Jackett gave his men confidence, coupled with a fast, open game plan based on what he’d seen at Devonport Albion and would shortly experience with Leicester. This is how it’s going to be.

With handling “worthy of a first-class Welsh team”⁴³, Cornwall were easy winners, Jackett kicking the crucial three goals which bested the home XV’s three tries.

He’d been given the tools for the job too. The CRFU had picked a team based

…on form, instead of reputation…

‘The Bounder’, Cornish Echo, November 4 1904, p2

And four of those form-horses that day would be with Jackett in 1908: his brother Dick, the wing Barrie Bennetts (Penzance and Richmond), and two more forwards, Nick Tregurtha of St Ives and John G. Milton of Camborne School of Mines. (Bennetts and Milton would also win international honours⁴⁴.)

They went on to beat Somerset, but came unstuck against Devon. Jackett, maybe not a natural 10, was criticised in both games for demonstrating the fly-half’s cardinal sin: greed⁴⁵.

Cornwall reached the playoffs, did the double over Somerset, but once more Devon proved the stumbling block. Jackett’s men had failed to win the South West Division, but Cornwall had notched up their most successful Championship to date⁴⁶.

They were no longer the South West’s makeweights. They were competitors. But it was Devon, always Devon, that thwarted them. In 1905-6 they lost 19-0 in Devonport; in 1906-7 they were on the wrong side of an agonisingly tight 8-6 scoreline at Camborne⁴⁷.

Cornwall had never beaten Devon in the Championship. If they wanted to progress, they would have to overcome one of the strongest XVs in the whole Championship.

*

The 1907-8 campaign started well. Somerset were hammered 25-6 in the opener at Taunton. Jackett by now had reverted to 15, with cross-kicks that held The Cidermen back. A youngster from Redruth, Bert Solomon, was a constant threat in the centre. Also, a Leicester team-mate of Jackett, as big and physical as brother Dick, who claimed he was Cornish and said his name was Fred Jackson, kicked five goals (more on him to come)⁴⁸.

But then it unravelled in Plymouth against their old nemesis, Devon, who won 17-8 in atrocious conditions. Their pack dominated, which gave the Devonians’ scrum-half, Raphael Jago, an open invitation to make a real menace of himself. Starved of decent possession, Maffer Davey, recently returned from the Transvaal⁴⁹, had a game to forget at 10. Bert Solomon’s partner at centre failed to create space for the wunderkind to work his magic.

Jackett was one of the few to finish the game with any credit. Cornwall were gutted. Not another season as bridesmaids.

There was a glimmer of hope: if Somerset lost to Devon, and The Pasties beat Gloucestershire, the latter three XVs would have to meet again to determine the South West’s champion⁵⁰.

In a roundabout way, it was at this point that Cornwall’s luck began to change. A frozen Redruth pitch postponed the Gloucestershire fixture. Gloucestershire appealed to the RFU, arguing that, as Cornwall had failed to protect their pitch, they (Gloucestershire) ought to be given home advantage for the rearrangement.

They weren’t, and the postponement meant that Jackett, at first doubtful, could make the rearranged date. On Saturday January 25 1908, a crowd of 5,000 in Redruth watched Cornwall hand the reluctant visitors a 34-10 beating⁵¹.

To the playoffs. Devon were coming to Redruth.

It’s one of those fixtures where you wish you had been there with the other 6,000 fans to watch, or at least be lucky enough to stumble across some archive footage of the match at Kresen Kernow. For Cornwall finally realised

…the ambition of years – to thrash Devon…

West Briton, February 17 1908, p3

Jackett, as was his wont on winning the toss, elected to play uphill in the first half: let them come at us, then we’ll have a crack later on. His display overall was described as “faultless”. Fred Jackson’s kicking saw him carried off the field by a delirious mob. Maffer Davey was a general at 10. And yes, Bert Solomon scored that try:

He feinted to send Bennetts in, and the latter was so perfectly deceived that he actually proceeded to dive for the line…Solomon then with a clear course coolly romped over…

West Briton, February 17 1908, p3

Cornwall 21, Devon 3. No longer world-weary harbingers of doom, the Press were talking up the Cornishmen as likely winners of the whole Championship. What of Gloucestershire, next victims in the playoffs?

…[they] will have to show a vast improvement on their form of a fortnight ago to make even a draw of it.

West Briton, February 17 1908, p3

And what of Middlesex, potential opponents in the semi-final? They were dismissed as mere

…Varsity men and public school boys, who will probably crack up when opposed to the hurricane tactics of the Cornishmen…

West Briton, February 17 1908, p3

Not only were Cornwall going to win, they were going to rough up some toffs. The Cornish rugby identity was already resolutely working class – and proud of it.

Gloucestershire lost at home 15-3, giving Cornwall the South West Division⁵². The CRFU won the toss to decide the venue of the semi against Middlesex. Cornwall would have home advantage. The burning issue was, which club would have the honour of hosting? The CRFU’s Hon. Secretary, W. Dennis Lawry (a Penzance man), proposed Redruth.

A Falmouth representative proposed his own club, stating

…Redruth had had its share.

Cornishman, February 27 1908, p4

Falmouth threatened to boycott the CRFU when their proposal was dismissed. Redruth’s representative, William Hichens⁵³, played the martyr. Getting the ground ready for such a big fixture was a “great amount of work”, but

…they should do everything for the team…He would sink his own feelings and take on the work again.

Cornishman, February 27 1908, p4

Furthermore, John Jackett

…had said that he knew every inch of the [Redruth] ground, and that was a very important thing…

Cornishman, February 27 1908, p4

Redruth’s slope fitted his gameplan.

Camborne grumbled too, and expected to host the Final – nobody seemed to doubt Cornwall would make it. But for now, Middlesex would come to Redruth. Hichens made a show of rolling his sleeves up…and doubtless afforded himself a smug grin in private⁵⁴.

Jackett won the toss, and made his team play uphill first. After a tight initial forty, it was a try apiece. However,

Gradually the homesters wore down the visitors…

Cornish Echo, March 13 1908, p8

John Milton, a South African-born, six-foot, 15-stone beast of a forward, took two Middlesex men with him over the line. Shortly after, swift passing ignited by Maffer Davey put Bennetts in on the wing. Another try in the closing minutes was the coup de grace.

Cornwall 19, Middlesex 3. It might have been closer, were it not for John Jackett. He was judged

…a tower of strength…he saved his side as no other full back in England could possibly do…

Cornish Echo, March 3 1908, p8

This set up the Final, against Durham.

Cornwall’s XV for the Final contained seven men who had been, or would shortly be awarded, international honours. It also contained four from Devonport Albion, which amply demonstrates how ‘attractive’ a club it must have been. Wing Barrie Bennetts, scrum half Tommy Wedge and Bert Solomon all represented England. John Jackett, Maffer Davey and John Milton all played for England and toured with the British Lions. Fred Jackson, though not capped by England, went on the same 1908 Lions Tour as Jackett and Davey⁵⁵.

Additionally, Dick Jackett had been an international trialist, and is reckoned to be the best player never to win recognition by England⁵⁶.

This is surely the greatest Cornwall XV. It needed to be. Durham boasted six internationals themselves, and ‘The Monkey Hangers’, as they were known, had been County Champions in 1900, 1902, 1903 and 1905 (they shared the title with Devon in 1907)⁵⁷.

This was the game of the season. The two best sides in the land. Today’s equivalent would be the Gallagher Premiership Final.

As with the Middlesex match, Cornwall had drawn home advantage. Predictably, within the CRFU debate raged as to which club would host the great occasion.

Charles Bryant, of Camborne RFC, proposed his ground. Improvements had been made to the facilities, and besides,

To have four matches at Redruth and none at Camborne is not a fair nor a proper thing.

Cornubian and Redruth Times, March 19 1908, p3

Clearly Bryant couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about the hopes or merits any other rugby club in Cornwall had of being hosts. William Hichens stamped all over his proposal. Gone was his feigned reluctance to preside over yet another county match:

They [Camborne] did nothing until they saw everything was going successfully at Redruth…such a puerile argument…

Cornubian and Redruth Times, March 19 1908, p3

Hichens claimed to have the players’ interests at heart, but Bryant was far from pacified:

You take it we shall not continue members of this Union if you have all the matches at Redruth…

Cornubian and Redruth Times, March 19 1908, p3

This was not the last time Bryant and Hichens locked horns, nor the last time Camborne threatened to quit the CRFU⁵⁸.

Ultimately, Hichens and the team’s sentiments held sway. Jackett had been approached on whether the venue ought to be changed for the Final. His response was succinct:

Certainly not…

Cornubian and Redruth Times, March 19 1908, p3

Redruth it was. The West Briton‘s big game preview ran profiles of the Cornwall XV. Here’s what ‘The Celt’ said of John Jackett:

He is perhaps the soundest full-back that has represented England in recent years for he possesses great kicking power, fine judgment, and is a deadly tackler…

March 26 1908, p3

This match would be the pinnacle of his four years as leader of Cornwall. He’d taken them from tournament also-rans to being one victory away from the accolade of The Best in the Land. Yes, he’d played for England. Yes, he’d led his Cornish XV against the All Blacks and the Springboks (which will be discussed in due course). He was doing great things at Leicester.

But in a few months, John Jackett would be thirty. Not the young gun anymore. There surely wouldn’t be many more chances, if any, to lead Cornwall in a Cup Final, to win some silverware. To be the first.

He must have wanted it badly.

So did his team. So did the 17,000 spectators shoehorned into hastily-erected stands in Redruth, easily the club’s biggest gate until the 1969 Final. Then, an estimated 23-25,000 were packed in to watch Lancashire win 12-9. As we have seen, county matches regularly drew crowds of between 3-6,000, but this was off the scale⁵⁹.

Not that they were all there to cheer on Cornwall. A member of the Durham contingent displayed their mascot – a lynched toy monkey – on a very visible gallows: the crossbar of one of the goalposts.

For balance, a pasty in a paper bag was strung up on the ‘posts at the opposite end of the pitch. The ground was firm, which suited Cornwall’s fast play.

The reporters present (and here we can imagine ‘Impartial’, ‘The Bounder’, ‘Quidnunc’ et al) suffered the indignity of having some railings crash on them, suspending play for a time. Finally, all was ready.

Durham had won the toss, and elected to start downhill. Jackett gave his best poker face. Fine with us, boy.

From the get-go, he was on it. Cornwall’s tactics – indeed, Jackett’s own – were to absorb pressure in the first half and catch their opponents on the break. It required balls of steel, and a full back up to the task.

That was Jackett. His trademark (said trademark being a great distance) kicks relieved the pressure. His tackles kept Durham honest, and their scoreboard quiet. Rushes were stopped. Dribbles cleared up. And, when the opportunity came, the flair men were waiting. Durham cleared messily, and Bennetts pounced, putting Solomon in for a try. Jackson failed to majorise.

More pressure from Durham. More last-ditch efforts from Jackett. Another Durham attack – and Solomon intercepted, drew the 15, and put in Bennetts for a second try. Jackson walloped over the conversion.

Excitement was mounting. Is it our day?

Jackett was punishing Durham, his kicks covering half the pitch. Time and again the visitors’ heavy forwards had to turn and trudge back up the slope after another Jackett bomb had sailed over their heads.

Half time. Cornwall led by a goal and a try to one penalty.

The second half followed the first, except Durham were now playing against the gradient, and had to chase the game. Jackett by now was torturing the Monkey Hangers, his punts keeping them exclusively in their own 25.

And then it happened.

Solomon broke from a Davey pass, with Bennetts outside him. In a similar situation, previously Solomon had passed to his wing, but not this time. The dummy. The swerve. The acceleration. The uproar in Redruth as Solomon ghosted over the line, a brace of Durham defenders trying in vain to halt a phantom. A photographer was on hand to immortalise the event.

Although Nick Tregurtha bagged another try late on, Solomon’s score put the result beyond doubt. Durham had barely got to the half-way line in the second half – thanks to John Jackett.

Cornwall 17, Durham 3. History had been made. Jackett was more than aware of his XV’s monumental achievement. In Cornwall, he later said, rugby is

…not of the first class…[teams] are composed mostly of miners and fishermen, and the way they make up their fixture lists is to play each other three or four times a season…So you can well see why Cornwall should always be more or less a weak rugby county…

Yorkshire Evening Post, February 3 1912, p3

As we shall see, in an era when the RFU was consciously trying to eradicate working-class influences from the game, Cornwall’s victory with ‘miners and fishermen’ was a sweet kick in the face of The Establishment. Jackett, in flagging up his players’ backgrounds and the circumstances of Cornish rugby, realised this.

How great this achievement was is borne out by the fact that it would be over eighty years before Cornwall took another Championship.

Fred Jackson might have kicked 38 points in the competition prior to the Final⁶². The Final itself might be remembered as Bert Solomon’s match, and he was indeed the “outstanding star” on the day⁶³.

But John Jackett gave

…an International display…No one knows better than the forwards what an advantage such a sound touch-finder is…Time after time he gained three parts of the field with his kicking…

West Briton, March 30 1908, p4

Add to this his tackling, his nous, his leadership, and you begin to realise that Cornwall could not have done it without him.

If you think this presumptuous of me, in 1909 Cornwall were the Championship Finalists again. Again, their opponents were Durham. This time, however, the venue was Hartlepool.

This time, Cornwall lost, 12-0. This time, Jackett played through injury. This time, as a result, his kicking wasn’t up to scratch.

But no matter. At the post-match dinner it was anticipated that the two XVs would line up in next season’s Final, and that Cornwall would win…⁶⁵

A below-par Jackett was also evident when Cornwall played Australia at the White City Stadium in the 1908 London Olympics.

The whole tournament was something of a farce. Only two XVs – Cornwall and Australia – entered, with France failing to raise a side. Thus only one match was played. Cornwall lost 32-3, but were guaranteed silver medals.

Jackett, along with Maffer Davey, had only recently returned from New Zealand with the British Lions. His play, for once,

…was a disappointment and seemed stale…

Cornish Telegraph, October 29 1908, p8

No doubt he was exhausted, and out of condition after weeks spent at sea. Lest we forget, he was Leicester’s star full back too.

You are cordially invited

Thanks to the industry – and wallet – of Secretary Tom Crumbie, by the early 1900s Leicester were the biggest club in the Midlands. By 1905, Crumbie had made Leicester a ‘play by invitation only’ club, and managed to procure the cream of rugby talent from all over the country. Think Devonport Albion, minus the dockyard⁶⁹.

Just what these invitations amounted to was an immediate cause of suspicion, the 1908 RFU investigation into Leicester’s activities being the culmination of this ill-feeling. Many Midlands’ clubs were jealous of Leicester’s prestige and ability to attract players. What, they all asked, exactly was the attraction? Many jumped to the cynical conclusion: Leicester’s boys were on the take⁷⁰.

The RFU, however, were always reluctant to take Leicester on:

…should Leicester switch allegiance to the rival code [the Northern Union] as was likely if the Rugby Union moved against them, then it could instigate another split within the game as catastrophic as the 1895 one.

Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery: Who Really Was F. S. Jackson? London League Publications, 2012, p20

Leicester’s suspected recruitment/inducement policies put the RFU in a lose-lose situation. Fail to investigate, and the sport’s governing body lost face and made their laws against professionalism a joke. If they did act, Leicester might very well throw in their lot with the Northern Union, thus further reducing the Union’s homelands in England to the West Country and the Home Counties.

The RFU had recently lost the North. Did it want to risk losing the Midlands too?

One of the big names Leicester acquired the services of was, of course, John Jackett. The man himself put down some serious roots in Leicester, meeting – and marrying – Sallie Chapman there. We know he played a bit of cricket for Waterhouse Reynolds & Co., a local corset manufacturing business⁷¹.

He also worked, the 1911 census noting he had a job as a cycle agent, possibly with the up-and-coming firm in Leicester, Halford. How demanding an occupation (or indeed, any other form of employment he might have had) was this?

Probably not very. A handsome, charming, well-known member of the big local rugby club could not help but be an asset to a business looking to sell bikes – and Jackett would have had knowledge of the machines too. We could draw a parallel here with the cycling star of the 1940s and 50s, Reg Harris, whose role on the board of any firm was

…to simply serve as a celebrity face of the company whose sheer presence alone would impress potential customers.

Robert Dineen, Reg Harris: The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Greatest Cyclist, Ebury Press, 2013, p264

Similar to Harris, we can be sure that, if Jackett needed time off to play rugby for Leicester, or Cornwall, or England, or nip off to tour New Zealand for several months with the British Lions, there was never an issue.

Besides his Cornish and International commitments, Jackett made over 180 appearances for Leicester, from 1904 to 1911⁷³.

He started as a centre and was prominent in Leicester’s victory over Nottingham to win the Midland Counties Cup in 1905⁷⁴. Quickly, however, Jackett took over at 15, with customary elan:

Never have I seen a more perfect display…

Leicester Journal, November 10 1905, p6

In 1909 Leicester took the Cup again, with Jackett’s touch-finding starving Coventry as much as it did Durham in 1908⁷⁵.

In the 1910 final (a repeat of 1909’s edition), he was being outplayed by his opposite number – “out-Jacketted”, in fact. Leicester were struggling.

But it’s all about having a good scriptwriter. A Jackett field goal drew the scores level. Coventry drew ahead with a penalty. Leicester scored with minutes left to even matters up again. A successful conversion would mean victory, and another trophy. Who do you throw the ball to? Who else?

Jackett kicked it⁷⁶.

His performances for Leicester became as celebrated as his exploits for Falmouth, or Cornwall. Even in the late 1950s he was being compared to the current poor crop of Leicester players as a

…legendary full back…By comparison, the present outfit look like pussy-cats…

Daily Mirror, October 24 1957, p21

Jackett belonged to Leicester as much as he did to Falmouth, or Cornwall. But controversy continued to follow him.

In 1908 the RFU opened investigations into Leicester RFC. Accusations had been made that the club had knowingly signed Northern Union men (thus in turn professionalising themselves and anybody who played a game of rugby union with them), of paying players, and of offering cushy jobs to those they wished to recruit.

One of the Leicester players interviewed by the investigative committee was John Jackett, who was alleged to have

…been obtained by the Leicester club in violation of the professional laws.

RFU statement, Lake’s Falmouth Packet, February 5 1909, p7

There was ample evidence of unaudited accounts, sparse balance sheets, off-the-book expenses and payments for ‘refreshments’, a usefully vague term if ever there was one.

But, somehow, Jackett talked his way out of trouble (there are suggestions that players were told to refund any payments made to them), and so did Leicester. The RFU found no evidence that he, and the other players implicated had been acquired by the club in breach of their laws.

Leicester pretended they hadn’t been aware that the Northern Union players were NU men on signing for them, and the RFU pretended to believe them. Four former NU players, including Jackett’s Cornwall team-mate, Fred Jackson (whose story we shall return to), were suspended. Leicester, for pleading their surely-feigned ignorance, were exonerated.

Rowland Hill, Secretary of the RFU⁷⁷, went on the record as believing that to expel Leicester

…would be to practically break up the union.

Qtd in: A Social History of English Rugby Union, by Tony Collins, Routledge, 2009, p40

Disgusted, the then-President of the RFU, C. A. Crane, resigned in protest⁷⁸.

Another old comrade of Jackett’s, James ‘Maffer’ Davey, was also embroiled in the investigation. His new club, Coventry, were found to have been footing his lavish hotel bills when he was up in the town. Davey was suspended, and never played another game of rugby (Union or otherwise) again⁷⁹.

Even when a Northern Union player, Jackett would still stress that

Any suggestions which are made reflecting upon the amateur bona fides of the club are, you can take it from me, most unjustifiable.

Yorkshire Evening Post, February 3 1912, p3

C. A. Crane might have disagreed.

*

John Jackett was a brilliant rugby player. So brilliant was he, in fact, that many clubs looked to secure his services by fair means or foul. Jackett himself was probably always amenable to a little extra pocket money, or the offer of an undemanding job.

If you believe this to be speculation on my part, at the time the activities of the big clubs, and Jackett himself, were practically an open secret.

On the eve of his England debut against the 1905 All Blacks, a journalist noted his recent switch to Leicester, recalled the furore with Devonport Albion, and knowingly described him as

Jackett, a modern Bartram…

Evening Mail, December 1 1905, p6

In the final post of In Search of John Jackett, we shall examine the man’s unfulfilled international career, and his time as a Northern Union star. Read all about it here…

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. Excerpts from: Cornishman, October 6 1898, p2, and Lake’s Falmouth Packet, December 8 1905, p5.
2. Image from: Rugby’s Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football, by Tony Collins, Frank Cass, 1998, p50.
3. Calculations from: https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php
4. From: Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p49-51.
5. From: The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, by Tom Salmon, CRFU, 1983, p45.
6. https://www.falmouthrugbyclub.co.uk/150th-Anniversary. 2022 also saw the inaugural year of the John Jackett Cup, a friendly cricket match played between a Falmouth RFC XI and a Seaview Old Boys XI. See: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/20595147.falmouth-rugby-john-jackett-cup-seaview-old-boys/
7. Though a Leicester player, he turned out for his old club in late 1905. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 6 1905, p6.
8. Cornish Echo, April 21 1899, p7. A ‘Jackett’ is listed as playing for Penryn, but as no initial is given, it could have equally been John’s brother Dick.
9. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, November 21 1896, p8.
10. See: Bert Solomon: A Rugby Phenomenon, by Allen Buckley, Truran, 2007.
11. Image from: https://cornwallyesteryear.com/cornish-rugby-once-a-way-of-life-by-michael-tangye/
12. Image from: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/penzancenewlynrfc/photos/626409/20050760.html
13. Image from: http://www.rugbyrelics.com/Museum/exhibitions/NR125/03.htm
14. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
15. Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p6.
16. For example, Lake’s Falmouth Packet, March 12 1898, p8. For a fuller explanation of the convoluted history of Rugby Union scoring, see: https://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/scoring.htm
17. Cornishman, October 6 1898, p2.
18. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 8 1898, p5.
19. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 1 1898, p5.
20. Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 7 1898, p5.
21. Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 21 1898, p5.
22. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Two: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/06/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-two-the-artists-model-the-coastguards-daughter/
23. Image from: Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p119.
24. See In Search of John Jackett, Part One LINK HERE
25. From: Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p32, also p29-66.
26. Cornishman, December 1 1898, p6.
27. That Jackett and Jago both took the pitch for Falmouth is noted here: Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 23 1899, p3. In 1902 he was in the Cornwall squad; by late 1903 he was playing for Devon: Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 31 1902, p7; Brixham Western Guardian, November 12 1903, p5. He had joined Devonport Albion for the 1902-3 season: Royal Cornwall Gazette, September 11 1902, p3. So keen was Jago to assert his Devon roots to the Cornish public he wrote to Lake’s Falmouth Packet on the subject: December 9, 1904, p8. He was born in Bridport, Dorset, in 1882 (England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index 1837-1915, vol. 5a, p378), and stated as such in the 1911 census. He was a blacksmith by trade.
28. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 20 1900, p8.
29. Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 14 1901, p3; See also In Search of John Jackett, Part Two here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/06/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-two-the-artists-model-the-coastguards-daughter/
30. See my post on the 1912 breakaway movement here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
31. See In Search of John Jackett, Part Two here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/07/06/in-search-of-john-jackett-part-two-the-artists-model-the-coastguards-daughter/
32. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 5 1903, p4. See also the Cornubian and Redruth Times, September 4 1903, p4.
33. Western Morning News, September 14 1903, p3.
34. See my post on the 1912 breakaway movement here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
35. Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 8 1904, p4; Lake’s Falmouth Packet, January 6 1905 p6, January 20 1905, p6. Jackett’s appointment as Falmouth’s captain was announced in the Cornish Echo, September 23 1904, p2.
36. Cornish Echo, November 4 1904, p2.
37. Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p115.
38. Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p115.
39. For the full list of winners, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Championship_(rugby_union)
40. Cornish Post and Mining News, November 24 1893, p3.
41. He took part in a trial in October; by November, he was making his debut against Devon – as a Penzance player. Cornish Post and Mining News, October 21, p5, and November 3, p5.
42. For the results, see Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p115.
43. ‘The Bounder’, Cornish Echo, November 4 1904, p2
44. For more on Barrie Bennetts, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrie_Bennetts. For more on Milton, see: https://www.bedfordschool.org.uk/head-masters-assembly-values/. For more on Tregurtha, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Tregurtha
45. Cornish Echo, November 18 1904, p6; West Briton, November 28 1904, p3.
46. Cornishman, March 30 1905, p6.
47. Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p116.
48. Cornubian and Redruth Times, November 7 1907, p3.
49. For more on Davey, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Davey_(rugby_union)
50. Cornish Telegraph, December 12 1907, p3.
51. The CRFU had to front Gloucestershire’s expenses as a slap on the wrist for neglecting the Redruth pitch – but must have been mighty glad to retain home advantage. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, January 24 1908, p6; Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 30 1908, p7.
52. West Briton, February 24 1908, p4.
53. Hichens was formerly President of the CRFU from 1896-1905, and also President of Redruth RFC from 1893-1903. Not renowned for his diplomacy in CRFU meetings, another taste of his style can be seen in an article of mine here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
54. Cornishman, February 27 1908, p4.
55. For more on Barrie Bennetts, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrie_Bennetts. For more on Milton, see: https://www.bedfordschool.org.uk/head-masters-assembly-values/. For more on ‘Chicky’ Wedge, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wedge_(rugby_union). For more on Davey, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Davey_(rugby_union). For more on Solomon, see: Bert Solomon: A Rugby Phenomenon, by Allen Buckley, Truran, 2007. For Fred Jackson’s amazing story, see: Rugby’s Greatest Mystery: Who Really Was F. S. Jackson? by Tom Mather, London League Publications, 2012.
56. See his obituary in the West Briton, July 28 1960, p4.
57. For a grisly explanation of the ‘Monkey Hanger’ moniker, see: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Hanging-of-the-Hartlepool-Monkey/. For a full list of County Champions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Championship_(rugby_union)
58. See my post on the subject here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/02/03/the-great-cornish-rugby-split/
59. Unless otherwise stated, the narrative of the Cornwall-Durham Final is taken from the West Briton, March 30 1908, p4. The information on the 1969 Final is from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Championship_(rugby_union)
60. Image from: Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery, p26.
61. Image from: Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years, p6.
62. West Briton, March 26 1908, p3.
63. West Briton, March 30 1908, p4.
64. Image from: https://worldrugbymuseum.com/from-the-vaults/club-rugby/durham-countys-golden-era
65. West Briton, March 29 1909, p3. As of 2024, Cornwall have won the Championship in: 1908, 1991, 1999, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2022. They have been runners-up on eleven occasions. Information from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Championship_(rugby_union)
66. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_City_Stadium
67. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_1908_Summer_Olympics
68. Image from: The Tigers Tale: The Official History of Leicester Football Club 1880-1993, by Stuart Farmer and David Hands, ACL & Polar, 1993, p258.
69. Stuart Farmer, The Tigers Tale, p19.
70. Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery, p15-41.
71. Leicester Daily Post, July 12 1909, p6. Jackett married Sallie in 1909. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915, Vol. 7a, p579.
72. Image from: Stuart Farmer, The Tigers Tale, p263.
73. Stuart Farmer, The Tigers Tale, p153-4.
74. Leicester Daily Press, April 3 1905, p6.
75. Leicester Daily Mercury, April 3 1909, p4.
76. Leicester Evening Mail, April 4 1910, p4.
77. For more on Hill, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Rowland_Hill
78. From: Tony Collins A Social History, p39-42, and Tom Mather, Rugby’s Greatest Mystery, p35-45.
79. Coventry Herald, October 1 1909, p5.

(If you missed Part One, click HERE…)

Reading time: 25 minutes

…SHE YIELDED TO HIM…SUCH A BASE DECEIVER…

~ John Jackett becomes the boy that daughters are warned about¹

Life in 1898 and for part of 1899 must have been pretty good for the young John Jackett. In Henry Scott Tuke he had an employer who was more a friend than a boss. Posing as a model in several of Tuke’s paintings earned Jackett extra money, and started gaining him recognition.

Furthermore, the avuncular Tuke appears to have allowed Jackett ample time to compete as a track cyclist and play rugby. As a full-back, his rise through the ranks was rapid, and he had made his debut for Cornwall in November 1898². Doubtless Tuke was a spectator.

In cycling, he was already Cornish Champion over the One Mile, and had won numerous other prizes. At Falmouth in 1899 he took possession of a 60 guinea silver cup (worth around £6,500 today) for winning a prestigious five mile race – but had to return it to the officials at the end of the season³. He had an all-or-nothing racing style that made him a crowd favourite.

He may not have wanted a career in his father’s boatbuilding business, but he was making a decent, if somewhat chancy fist as a sportsman, an occupation at which he worked hard and dedicated countless hours to. He swore off alcohol – though enjoyed the odd cigarette – and was one of the fittest men around. He’d be one of the fittest men around now. He was also one of the best-looking.

Local girls, impressed with Jackett’s achievements – and his looks – would visit his father’s house, ostensibly to admire the burgeoning silverware.

Perhaps inevitably, one girl caught John Jackett’s eye.

Very soon, he was in the Press for all the wrong reasons.

A Very Victorian Melodrama

Breach of promise actions, though not officially abolished until 1970, enjoyed their greatest frequency in law courts during the 1800s. By the time Over v. Jackett appeared at Bodmin Assizes in early 1900, a breach of promise case was, by the standards of the day, a media extravaganza⁵.

There are several reasons for this Victorian proliferation of breach of promise cases. The majority of actions were initiated by upper working- and lower middle-class women, a social group not normally afforded a voice or platform at that time. (Caroline Over, Jackett’s lover-turned-accuser, vanishes from view at the conclusion of the case⁷.) Indeed, male fears of feminine power in using or exploiting the breach of promise act

…became increasingly shrill as the century wore on.

Ginger S. Frost, Broken Promises, p7

There’s no denying that breach of promise cases were heavily biased in favour of the female plaintiff and therefore, in the view of many males, threatened gender roles. However, it was their ultimate reaffirmation of Victorian society’s hierarchy that sustained their longevity.

Courtship and marriage implied middle-class respectability; to break off that courtship and engagement (to break your promise), was an act of subversion punishable by law. In other words, it was illegal to shun

…the value of companionate marriage and romantic love…

Ginger S. Frost, Broken Promises, p8

Breach of promise cases reinforced Victorian gender roles as well. Men had to take responsibility for their actions, as well as keep their promises. A man’s word is his bond. Women were to be chaste (most of the time), respectable and industrious. They must also, in the prevailing culture of the time, want a husband. If that opportunity was taken away, compensation through the court could be sought.

The 1753 Marriage Act secularised breach of promise cases, allowing for greater publicity. With the newspaper boom of the 1800s, crime coverage grew exponentially, and contributed to a reinforcement of the social order⁸. Crime also sold newsprint, and a breach of promise case had journalists sharpening their pencils with glee.

The Royal Cornwall Gazette ran Over v. Jackett with the following melodramatic headline:

The Cornishman went for the tabloidesque

The Cornish Echo promised its readers a “full and special report” of the events in Falmouth that had superseded

The [Boer] War as a topic of conversation…

February 2 1900, p7

A breach of promise case was a Victorian soap opera. Everyone knew the script, but everyone could wallow in the entertainment (and think themselves lucky it wasn’t them in the dock, having their linen examined).

Prosecuting lawyers would portray the woman as an innocent, pathetic maiden, and the man as a heartless lothario with a capacious wallet. Counsels for the defence would tell juries – and packed public galleries – that the man was a poor, hapless bachelor, and the woman a husband-hunter on the make.

Due to the private nature of courtship, judges would accept circumstantial evidence and hearsay. Analysis of breathless declarations of love, the reports of exchanged gifts and recitations of (very) personal love-letters ensured that

…the trials were very popular as entertainment.

Ginger S. Frost, Promises Broken, p25

Juries were selected from the local populace; packed public galleries would have been familiar with both plaintiff and defendant. Shameless titillation was on the menu.

There would be tears, jeers, laughter, brow-beating barristers and moralising judges. Everybody had their allotted role.

All of which means that, discovering the truth behind the media obfuscation of Caroline Over and John Jackett’s relationship is rather difficult.

The truth, the whole truth…

Caroline Amelia Over was born in 1876, in Mevagissey. In the 1890s the Overs moved to Portscatho, where her father was a coastguard¹⁰. Caroline, described as a

…young woman of respectable and somewhat prepossessing appearance…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

…met Jackett in around early 1897. (Where and exactly when is unknown; it’s mere speculation on my part to assume she was one of the girls who visited the Jackett household to admire the crack cyclist’s trophies.) The two became a couple, visited each others’ homes, and exchanged letters.

In January 1899, they slept together, and Caroline became pregnant. The baby boy, John Jackett Over, sadly died aged three months in December¹¹. Thomas Jackett had advanced Caroline £50 for his grandson’s upkeep.

As regards their relationship, the above is all that can be concluded with anything like 100% reliability. Anything else you may wish to infer depends on whose version of events you trust.

The following letter from Jackett to Caroline was read aloud in court. Jackett (we are told) joined in the gales of laughter from the gallery, but he must have been cringing inside:

…I could live with you all my life, but I fear it could not be done at present…I get no kisses from anyone but you, I don’t know why, but I suppose it is my face that stops them…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Such missives, including one that allegedly illustrated Jackett’s intentions for them to live in Mevagissey, were taken as gospel by the prosecution that the couple were engaged by 1898.

(Over’s lawyer couldn’t resist the opportunity to upbraid Jackett’s supposedly false modesty as regards his looks, much to the gallery’s hilarity. I wonder if he laughed along with that one.)

Jackett stated that his letters can be interpreted

…as you like…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

And, Jackett went on,

Never in my life…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8

…had he contemplated marriage. Miss Over must have gotten the wrong end of the stick. As for living in Mevagissey, your honour? Well, that was another misunderstanding. We were planning to visit a relative there.

As Mandy Rice-Davies once said, Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Of course, these letters-as-proof-of-engagement were written by Jackett when he was twenty – before his legal coming of age. Any promise of marriage made by an immature Jackett could not be held against him in a court of law.

However, a precedent had existed since the 1880s that stating ‘I will marry you’ again, after coming of age, constituted a new – and legally binding – promise. This new promise was not a mere ratification of the earlier promise¹³.

Caroline Over and her family, if they wanted damages

…for the pain, grief, and disappointment which plaintiff had suffered…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8

…needed a 21 year-old Jackett to have proposed marriage.

In July 1899 Caroline wrote to Jackett, inviting him to meet her at Portscatho Regatta. Jackett declined. Undeterred, Caroline appeared at Thomas Jackett’s house with her sister Susan, who seems to have been no friend of John Jackett.

His and Caroline’s relationship had cooled over the past months. Apparently this was the first time Jackett had seen her since she fell pregnant.

Susan Over would later state that she accosted Jackett on the street, as he was returning from a bike ride:

Well, Jackett, the best thing you can do is marry her…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8

We can imagine her standing indignantly, arms folded, onlookers with mouth agape. Her sister, her head bowed in shame over the indisputable evidence of her relations with Jackett. And the man himself, caught off-guard, looking desperately for a way out.

It’s an irresistible image. According to Caroline, Jackett said,

My God, what shall I do. I can’t marry you now, Carrie, but I will do so. Don’t worry…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

By the time of the Portscatho Regatta, Jackett was twenty-one. The Overs had their proof of a mature, legally-binding, promise of marriage.

Jackett denied making the above statement, saying that Susan Over’s attempt at a shotgun wedding in fact elicited the following response from him:

That is the last thing I should do.

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Indeed, Jackett’s plea rested on the assertion that he had only made a promise of marriage before coming of age. Caroline Over’s testimony pretty much sealed a guilty verdict.

But the hearing went on. Caroline gave the court the impression Jackett was earning well, up to £1 as an artist’s model, and had secured £150 worth of prizes as a cyclist (her lawyer claimed he was a professional racer).

She also stated Jackett made money as a professional rugby player, but more on that to come.

For his part, Jackett either denied or played down these claims. He was an amateur rugby player. He was an amateur cyclist – this was certainly true. He was unsure how much he’d won in prizes. He only got 8s a week with Tuke, something that was scarcely believed, with Tuke being

…an artist of great eminence.

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Jackett also claimed that he only worked for Tuke seven months in every year; the other five months he was free to do little else but play rugby and cycle.

The Overs wanted a wealthy Jackett, a high-earning pro sportsman and model, who could more readily afford the damages that was surely coming his way. Jackett tried to project an image of himself as a modest live-in servant, who played sport for fun. Doubtless, he’d been briefed on this.

Where does the truth lie? Similarly, Caroline’s father claimed Jackett was a regular visitor to their house. Jackett said he had only visited once or twice. For this last refutation, the judge threatened him with perjury, which may give you an indication as to where the court’s sympathies lay.

Jackett’s lawyer’s final address is surely one of the most callous speeches in legal history. Caroline

…was a girl who was older than the defendant, and who knew what she was doing…provision would have been made for her baby, but happily for the girl that was dead…it was better for her not to marry a lad who was earning eight or nine shillings a week…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Over’s counsel cut this line of argument to ribbons. Caroline had

…lost what was of more value than money, and unfortunately money was the only thing that could give her any consolation for her loss, and he hoped the damages would be substantial…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Caroline had lost her fiance, her child, her prospects and her honour. Jackett had ruined her.

Heartstrings successfully tugged, there was only going to be one verdict. Caroline was awarded £150 damages (that’s £15K today), with costs, to be paid by Jackett.

Scoundrel

Regardless of whether Jackett was deliberately modest about his income in court, the verdict cleaned him out. Besides, Tuke had already advanced him £50 (£5K today) of his wages to cover the cost of the trial¹⁷.

Allied to this, his reputation must have been shredded. Just recently, he had been the darling of Cornish sport, the coming man. On a bike, it had been written of him that his

…staying powers for a young rider are somewhat remarkable…

Western Morning News, June 20 1898, p6

As regards rugby, the pundit ‘One of the Crowd’ rejoiced

…to see that he [Jackett] has been selected to play for his county. I look forward to his acquitting himself with credit…

Cornish Telegraph, October 27 1898, p4

Not any longer. Now John Jackett was a

…base deceiver…a scoundrel…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

He had led a young girl astray, failed to heed any warnings from his father, and now look at the result¹⁸.

The news travelled far and wide. London’s Cycling magazine picked up the story, with some wag noting that

Miss Over gained her suit, but lost her Jackett.

February 10, 1900, p42. With thanks to Victoria Sutcliffe and Danny Trick of Falmouth RFC for showing me this

People would have looked at him differently. Maybe they avoided him. One shudders to think of the smart-mouth remarks he may have endured in various changing-rooms. The strain must have been immense.

It must be said, though, that John Jackett didn’t exactly cover himself in glory with this particular episode. Put bluntly, it looks like he got a girl pregnant, then abandoned her.

There is also a suggestion that Caroline Over may have been one of many, part of a

…Galaxy of young lady admirers…

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

How many girls, like Caroline, had been taught by Jackett to ride a bicycle¹⁹? As his mother, Emmeline, told Caroline,

Don’t you think he is completely laughing at you?

Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7

Jackett’s wife, Sallie (they married in 1909), was more than aware of her husband’s adventurous youth:

Of course John has had 1001 girl friends…[he] had plenty of noes and plenty of yesses…

Qtd. in Henry Scott Tuke 1858-1929: Under Canvas, by David Wainwright and Catherine Dinn, Sarema Press, 1989, p60

To which observation Tuke himself is supposed to have ruefully replied that

…that was the real Johnny I knew…

Qtd. in Henry Scott Tuke 1858-1929: Under Canvas, by David Wainwright and Catherine Dinn, Sarema Press, 1989, p60

The real Johnny Jackett was saddled with debts he couldn’t pay.

So he didn’t pay them.

Cigarette money

Approximately a year later, Jackett was hauled into Falmouth County Court for non-payment of damages²².

Caroline Over was unwell and could not attend, but her mother testified against Jackett. The image she paints is that of a mercenary professional sportsman and braggart:

…when he went footballing at St Austell he had £1 5s a week, but he only looked on that as cigarette money. He looked for more at Plymouth, and she did not know how much he had at Penzance.

Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5

Jackett, Mrs Over claimed, was earning 7s a day for Tuke, had cash in the bank, and could always make himself some extra tin at his father’s boatyard.

Jackett denied all this. He’d never said £1 5s was mere spare change for fags. He was strictly an amateur footballer. He had never played for St Austell (which was true). He had always played for Falmouth (which was untrue; he was currently with Devonport Albion and had also played for Penzance).

Furthermore, he didn’t work with his father, and currently earned only three shillings a week with Tuke – and that for only seven months in the year.

The Overs’ lawyer was flabbergasted – and he probably wasn’t alone:

Mr Dobell: Twenty-two years of age, and three shillings a week (Laughter). These five months how do you manage to keep yourself in cigarette money?

Jackett: Get it from my father…

Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5

Mr Dobell further asserted that Tuke allowed Jackett time to cycle and play rugby, and surely paid him bonuses as a model:

I think I have seen your face and figure represented in a picture?

Jackett: No, sir.

Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5

Doubtless, Mrs Over was exaggerating Jackett’s income. If we are to assume that to be the case, then we must also assume that Jackett was reverting to the role of near-pauper he played in the previous trial.

Unluckily for him, Jackett was over-egging it. His claims to live on 3s/week (albeit with bed and board thrown in) are utterly unbelievable.

To put this into some perspective, in 1889 a miner at Dolcoath could expect to earn £4 a month²³. If, as Jackett claimed, he earned nothing all year except the 3s/week for the seven months Tuke employed him, then his annual income was a mere £4 2s.

If this was an enquiry into allegations that Jackett earned money as a sportsman, then surely something like the following question would have been asked:

What is a top rugby player and champion cyclist living off, given he’s unemployed five months of the year, and earns a pittance the rest of the time?

Who’s paying for his cigarettes?

Fortunately for Jackett, the hearing was only to assess his ability to pay the damages Caroline Over was due. He needed to prove his income was, indeed, as pitiful as he claimed. The more pitiful his income, the more chance he had of the impact of the £150 demanded of him being in some way alleviated.

So he played his ace.

Henry Scott Tuke. An ‘artist of great eminence’. A gentleman of some standing.

And Tuke, not for the last time, came to his aid²⁴. Jackett indeed only earned 3s/week when he was employed by him; after all Tuke had advanced him three years’ wages to cover the cost of the first trial.

Thomas Jackett provided further weight. Swallowing his parental pride, he stated that it was true his son didn’t work for him. He hadn’t the aptitude.

Dobell might have been prepared to browbeat and mock John Jackett, but you don’t look down your nose at men of the status of Henry Scott Tuke and Thomas Jackett. The prosecution can’t have liked it, but Jackett opening his wallet and casually thumbing out £150 in cash wasn’t going to happen.

John Jackett was ordered to pay 5s/month to the Overs, until the £150 – and costs – were cleared.

*

Although a frequent sight in courts across the land during the 1800s, many breach of promise cases didn’t result in the bumper payouts many female plaintiffs hoped for. As one historian notes,

…probably a large number of defendants never paid damages…

Ginger S. Frost, Promises Broken, p35

There were many ways to avoid paying an ex-lover. One of the more common methods was for the man to escape abroad and lie low until, hopefully, the whole sorry mess had blown over²⁵.

John Jackett went to South Africa. He signed up for three years.

The Run Home

The Attestation Papers of over 5,000 men who joined the Cape Mounted Police before, during and after the Boer War (1899-1902) are held in the Western Cape Archives, Cape Town.

It is not known how many sets of Papers have been lost. Those that have survived are in a poor state, often with pages missing. At some point, they were boxed up in a seemingly random order²⁶.

Mercifully, a volunteer, Adrian Ellard, has indexed and digitised what Papers remain. To him I am incredibly grateful.

Luckily for us most of 1014 Trooper John Jackett’s Attestation Papers still exist.

One can learn a lot from such records.

We know he took an oath of allegiance to Edward VII (or rather, one of his representatives) on June 1, 1901 at Kimberley (the training camp for new recruits).

We know he enrolled and underwent a medical examination (now, cough…) in London on May 10. Because of this we know he thought he was born in 1879, not 1878. He was 5ft 8″, with blue eyes, dark hair, and a scar near one of his eyes.

We also have his original application form, submitted in Falmouth on April 18. We know that Tuke supplied a letter of reference, that he was single, could shoot, weighed 11 stone and he had rather neat, stylish handwriting.

We also know he lied on this form, declaring that he had no convictions.

He also underwent a medical in Falmouth. His chest was measured at 37″ – and he was free of venereal disease.

On May 10, he signed the Articles of Agreement in Westminster. John Jackett was now a Private, 3rd class, of the Cape Police, 2 District. He was given free passage to Cape Town and thence by rail to Kimberley. The Articles stipulated three years service.

He would be provided with his own horse, money for uniform, and would earn 7s/day.

All of which is very interesting. But none of these precious documents give us the answers to two very important questions:

What did he actually do in South Africa?

Why did he quit the Police after only a year?

We can infer that, as his application was submitted on April 18 – the deadline day specified in the Royal Cornwall Gazette (above) – Jackett’s decision to take the new King’s shilling was a last-moment one, that may have caused some hand-wringing.

His signing-up almost certainly cannot be borne from a sense of duty or patriotism. After all, the Boer War had been fought since 1899, and was about to enter its most unpopular and bitter phase with the British public. It divided Cornish loyalties between the Boers who had welcomed them to the diamond mines, and Britain’s imperial interests and and prestige²⁷. One can only conclude he left because of the cloud he found himself under regarding Caroline Over.

Jackett would have had no problem proving his fitness, nor his aptitude on a horse. In May 1900, he had faced Falmouth’s populace on horseback, albeit in disguise. The dual-celebrations of Queen Victoria’s birthday and the relief of Mafeking saw Jackett impersonate the siege’s hero, Lord Roberts, for the crowd’s amusement²⁸.

We also know that, if Tuke supplied a suitable reference for Jackett’s application, he also saw his friend off. He treated Jackett and three rugby-playing comrades who also joined up (Christophers, Toy and Coleman) to an evening out in London and a slap-up meal at Gatti’s, Tuke’s joint of choice whenever he was up in Town²⁹.

Jackett’s own recollections of his tour of duty are contained in two newspaper interviews. The first was for Lake’s Falmouth Packet, given shortly after his return to Falmouth on June 7, 1902³¹.

The second was for the Dewsbury Reporter of March 3, 1928³². His nephew, Ivor Jackett was due to play for Cornwall against Yorkshire in Bradford for that season’s County Chamionship. As Uncle John played no small part in the last time Cornwall lifted the trophy in 1908, a Dewsbury stringer had sought him out.

Both interviews must be approached with caution. If Jackett lied in his application to the Police, what did he falsify or exaggerate for the Press?

That said, one thing can be confirmed in his interview for Lake’s. Shortly after arriving in Kimberley, Jackett contracted pneumonia. Though he blithely put his recovery down to an iron-clad, teetotal constitution, it was serious enough to see him hospitalised for two months. Four other recruits who fell ill died.

Tuke heard of this back in Cornwall, and was seriously emotionally affected. Plagued by dreams (or nightmares) of his stricken friend, he was moved to paint The Run Home:

Tuke painted himself as the figure at the helm, guiding the young Jackett (lying prone and staring out of the canvas at the viewer) to safety. It has been argued that

…Tuke launches a rescue mission in his painting. He recovers Jackett and brings him home to Falmouth. Tuke did not see the point of losing in South Africa another man, a beautiful inspiration for his art and desire.

Jeremy Kim Jongwoo, “Naturalism, Labour and Homoerotic Desire: Henry Scott Tuke”, in: British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives, ed. B. Lewis, Manchester University Press, 2013, p46³⁵

Overall, though, Jackett described his time as a Policeman as “dreary”, and he certainly emphasises this.

Holed up in a cramped blockhouse near Kimberley all day, going on the odd patrol, and doubtless eating sweaty bully-beef out of a tin, you’d wonder there was a war on at all.

Sport, Jackett informs the wide-eyed reporter, kept him from dying of boredom. He played rugby for the local Police XV, and turned out for the nearby De Beers Mine team. (The De Beers Group had been founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes; both his actions and his mine contributed to the war’s outbreak³⁷.)

He also won cycling races, and was even prominent in various sporting events during his voyage home. There is a report of him playing a game of Association football in Kimberley, and a belief has also developed that he turned out for Transvaal against the 1903 British Lions, but this can’t have happened. He was already back in Cornwall³⁸.

Jackett is keen to present a certain image of himself to the public, a public that was by now largely opposed to a war fought by scorched earth policies and concentration camps³⁹. Although debate raged as to the reality of the conditions in the camps⁴⁰, there’s little doubt that measles and other diseases made

…camp life in winter fatal to a large number of children and weakly persons.

Daily News (London), November 7 1901, p10

As one historian has observed, during the Boer War

Almost 50,000 innocent people lost their lives in concentration camps due to overcrowding, malnutrition and rampant levels of diseases.

Sharron P. Schwartz, Cornish Mineworkers in South Africa⁴²

Lest we forget, there was one such camp at Kimberley. Located on De Beers land, it housed 5,000 inmates, not enough tents, lots of whooping cough and rudimentary medical knowledge⁴³.

By not mentioning if he ever saw duty as a guard there (and we may never know the truth), Jackett in his interview is putting distance between himself and the horrors of the Boer War. Such unpleasant goings-on were not part of his experiences.

No, he’d been abroad, got a tan, gained a few pounds, and played sport, all for a decent wage.

That was all he would tell Lake’s – and it may have been all Lake’s wanted to hear.

By the time we reach the Dewsbury Reporter interview of 1928, Jackett has honed his story. He had “ran away from home” with friends, after being

…enamoured of a wandering life…

Once reaching South Africa, he

…indulged in sport to his heart’s content…

He won a prized trophy in a championship cycle race organised by De Beers. A bigwig of the mining corporation, a fellow Cornishman, had also offered him a “good position” on the firm. This last is almost certainly a fiction. Jackett was never a mining engineer, and much less a miner.

He never told that tale in Cornwall because nobody would have believed him. He also told the Reporter that his mother eventually

…bought him out of the mounted police…

Which may very well be true. Jackett’s discharge papers show that someone bought him out for £10, or just over £1,000 today:

We can also conclude that, whatever Jackett’s duties may have been, he wasn’t especially diligent in executing them. These papers tell a very different story of Jackett’s war than the one he himself liked to tell.

He was docked a day’s pay for neglect of duty, and given three weeks’ additional guard duty for being caught out of barracks, out of uniform, and without permission. Who knows what he was up to, but you certainly couldn’t ‘play sport to your heart’s content’ if you’ve extra duties to carry out.

Besides the pneumonia, he also suffered an infected toe, a bashed-up elbow, and another old injury apparently flared up too.

The sparse official record of Jackett’s time in the Cape Mounted Police suggests a very different experience than the one he described himself.

Certainly one thing neither Lake’s or the Reporter mention is the scandal involving Caroline Over. He may have agreed to talk to Lake’s on condition it wasn’t mentioned, and the Reporter obviously had no knowledge of the business.

In fact, the £150 damages he owed to Caroline are never mentioned in public again. You like to believe that, on his good Policeman’s pay, he could afford to make things right in that regard. But that’s a question that cannot be answered.

Until South African newspaper archives become more easily available (or someone commissions me to spend two weeks in Cape Town), we will never definitively know what Jackett’s duties in the Boer War were. We can say, however, that the rosy picture he painted for the Press doesn’t bear much close scrutiny.

But now, the carefree, sport-loving John Jackett was back. Back, and ready to devote his energies to what he was probably best at.

Playing rugby.

Read all about his stellar – and controversial – Rugby Union career in In Search of John Jackett, Part Three by clicking HERE…

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. Excerpts are from the Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8, and the Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7.
2. Cornish Post and Mining News, November 3 1898, p5.
3. Western Morning News, August 4 1903, p7. This seems to have been common practice for such expensive trophies – and important race events. Previous winners had travelled from Bristol and Oxford University to compete for the five mile cup in Falmouth, and to own it in perpetuity you had to win the race over three seasons.
4. Image from: https://thepoly.org/history-archive/item/23/edward-john-jackett
5. Informing this section is Ginger S. Frost’s Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Gender in Victorian England, Virginia University Press, 1995.
6. Image from: https://thisivyhouse.tumblr.com/post/160526080358/connoisseur-art-richard-borrmeister-lovers
7. In the 1901 census, she appears as a parlour-maid at a residence in St Marychurch, near Torquay. Possibly, aged 41, she married a David W. Evans at Bristol in 1917. England and Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index 1916-2005, Vol. 6a, p421.
8. See: Bethany Usher, Journalism and Crime, Routledge, 2024, p98-133.
9. Image from: http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/projects/FS/Series/Breach%20of%20Promise%20Series.htm
10. England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index 1837-1915, Vol. 5c, p139. The Overs’ move to Portscatho, and the rest of the narrative in this section, is taken from the Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8, and the Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7.
11. England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index 1837-1915, Vol. 5c, p85.
12. Image from: http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/projects/FS/Series/Breach%20of%20Promise%20Series.htm
13. Frost, Promises Broken, p22.
14. Image from: http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/projects/FS/Series/Breach%20of%20Promise%20Series.htm
15. Image from: https://racingnelliebly.com/fashion-forward/victorian-couples-embraced-romance/
16. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama
17. Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7.
18. Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1 1900, p8.
19. Cornish Echo, February 2 1900, p7.
20. Image from: https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/05/26/the-bicycle-is-humanitys-most-underrated-invention
21. Image from: https://rugby-pioneers.blogs.com/rugby/2012/02/my-entry.html
22. The narrative for this section is taken from: Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5 and March 8 1901, p4; Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 14 1901, p3.
23. Information from: “Rational Choice and a Lifetime in Metal Mining: Employment Decisions by Nineteenth-Century Cornish Miners”, by Roger Burt and Sandra Kippen, International Review of Social History, Vol. 46.1 (2001), p45-75.
24. As we saw in Part One, Tuke saved Jackett from drowning in 1905. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
25. Frost, Promises Broken, p35-7.
26. Information from: https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/south-african-units/310-cape-mounted-police?start=1
27. For more on the Cornish in South Africa, see Sharron Schwartz’s essay here: https://www.cousinjacksworld.com/cornish-mine-workers-in-south-africa/
28. Royal Cornwall Gazette, May 31 1900, p7. For more on Lord Roberts, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mafeking, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Roberts,_1st_Earl_Roberts
29. From: “Naturalism, Labour and Homoerotic Desire: Henry Scott Tuke”, by Jeremy Kim Jongwoo, in: British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives, ed. B. Lewis, Manchester University Press, 2013, p44.
30. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Gatti_%28restaurateur%29
31. Lake’s, June 14 1902, p5. With thanks to Danny Trick and Victoria Sutcliffe of Falmouth RFC for showing me this.
32. With thanks to Mr John Jackett of Falmouth for providing me with this article.
33. Image from: https://www.crfu.co.uk/home/gallery/. See also: West Briton, March 12 1928, p2.
34. Image from: https://imagearchive.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk/fine-art/run-home-henry-scott-tuke-1858-1929-18975858.html
35. Of course, this reading of The Run Home only works if it is indeed Tuke at the helm of the boat. Elsewhere it is asserted that the helmsman is in fact a man called Hingston, a lifeboatman from Falmouth. See: https://imagearchive.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk/fine-art/run-home-henry-scott-tuke-1858-1929-18975858.html
36. Images and information from: https://www.angloboerwar.com/other-information/16-other-information/1844-blockhouses
37. For more information, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid
38. For the soccer match, see the Cornish Echo, October 11 1901, p6. Jackett’s supposed appearance for Transvaal is mentioned in: The Tigers Tale: The Official History of Leicester Football Club 1880-1993, by Stuart Farmer and David Hands, ACL & Polar Publishing, 1993, p154.
39. For a brief overview of the various phases of the Boer War, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War
40. For example, the Evening Mail (London), August 28 1901, p6.
41. Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps
42. Find the article here: https://www.cousinjacksworld.com/cornish-mine-workers-in-south-africa/
43. See: https://www2.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/bccd/Histories/Kimberley/
44. Image from: https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/south-african-units/310-cape-mounted-police?start=2

Reading time: 25 minutes

Tackle firmly and strongly; kick hard and safely; field the ball smartly and unhesitatingly…Play the game and do your best!

~ John Jackett offers some youngsters sage advice

I think I have seen your face and figure represented in a picture?

~ A lawyer at Falmouth County Court narrows his eyes at the young man before him in the dock

Of course John had 1,001 girlfriends…

~ Jackett’s wife, Sallie nee’ Chapman, is under no illusions

Jackett, a modern Bartram…

~ A journalist makes a loaded statement before Jackett’s England debut¹

Many figures in Cornish history I choose to write about have a singular occupation, or significant characteristic that piques my interest. Richard Holloway was a lawyer; Beatrice Small a fortune teller; Joseph Burnett a peace officer; Paul Rabey an immoral rogue².

The above-named quartet have one thing in common: nowadays they are all-but forgotten. Edward John Jackett (1878-1935) is different. His achievements and accolades made him renowned in his own lifetime, and celebrated even now. Indeed, the surname ‘Jackett’ is so synonymous with the town of Falmouth that the pathway John and other members of his family took to his father’s prosperous boatyard is memorialised with the following sign:

It is John Jackett’s exploits on the rugby field for which he is primarily remembered, and these are of formidable historic import. But the man had talent to burn and the physique to match, and was a ‘crack’, as the Edwardians used to say, at any game he had a mind to try, be it bicycling or billiards.

But that wasn’t all. It must be stated that John Jackett also happened to be one handsome devil:

He posed as a model in some of Victorian Cornwall’s most loved paintings, whose artist, Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) gained a lasting reputation as having done so much to

…popularize Cornwall as a land of sunshine and health.

Cornish Echo, April 16 1909, p5

Youngsters were in awe of him. His peers admired him. His elders respected him. Women swooned – and so did a few men. You might say he was idolised, and he certainly was⁴.

But idols can be false, and Jackett was not above spinning the odd yarn to present himself in a more acceptable light – and he had reason to.

Plus there was one aspect of his character that Jackett, certainly during his years as a Rugby Union player (from the late 1890s to 1911), preferred not to have brought up.

Quite simply, he often played rugby for money. If caught, under the RFU’s amateur codes of the time, he would face suspension and, as a high-profile star, scandal. I’m not referring here to just the well-known RFU investigation of his signing for Leicester. From Jackett’s earliest seasons, a question mark as to his amateur bona fides regularly hovered nearby.

Of course, there’s no concrete proof, no smoking gun. Rugby Union clubs of the early 1900s could probably show today’s sharpest Wall Street sharks a thing or two about cooking the books. But every now and then, you come across a recalled conversation, an insinuation or a rumour that all was not as it seemed.

His signing with the professional Northern Union club Dewsbury in late 1911 was seen cynically by some as his attempt to cash in on his reputation whilst he still had some gas in the tank⁵. In truth, Jackett had always gone where the money was.

Jackett’s era was also the era of the great middle-class amateur sportsman, where victory on the playing field, if it came at all, had to be carried off with a certain elan:

To achieve success with the appearance of minimal effort was as important to the century-maker at Lord’s as it was to the student with a first from Balliol.

Tony Collins, A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009, p31

Jackett’s apparently effortless dominance of the games he played hides the hours, days, weeks of dedication and graft he devoted to honing his many crafts.

How did he find time to do it? What drove him on? What was he trying to prove, and to whom? This four-part series of posts seeks to provide some answers to these questions.

Jackett’s Steps

Thomas Jackett epitomised the outdoor, maritime life. A shipwright since his teenage years, he later struck out on his own, manufacturing vessels out of the Victoria Boatyard until the 1930s. The steps I mentioned earlier – Jackett’s Steps – descended from Falmouth’s High Street, past Jackett’s yard and on to the beach. Quiet nowadays, like many of Cornwall’s industrial relics the steps leave little suggestion of what a noisy, busy and commercial place this must have been⁶.

With Jackett Senior at the helm, the Victoria Boatyard thrived. In 1896 he signed a contract to manufacture a craft for £230 – that’s £25K today⁸. So knowledgeable of his trade, and so seaworthy were his vessels, that some are still around:

Life must have been comfortable enough for Thomas to indulge his passion: sailing. A member of Falmouth Sailing Club, in 1900 he built Marion, an 18-foot class yacht, for the main purpose of racing her¹⁰.

And he was successful. In 1902, for example, Marion won her class in the St Mawes Regatta, Thomas lifting a trophy worth £5, or £500 now¹¹. The Marion was feared for her speed, and was described as

…the fastest boat in her class for many years.

Thomas Jackett’s obituary in the Cornishman, July 7 1938, p2

Such was Jackett’s reputation that in 1911 he accepted a best-of-three-race challenge from a Southampton man who fancied his 18-footer Flatfish to be the fastest on the South Coast.

The two men competed for bragging rights, prestige…and money. Both gentleman-sportsmen chipped in £10 for a £20 prize, or £2K in 2023. One can only speculate as to what was laid down in bets. The Flatfish and her owner arrived in Cornwall by train, and great was the hubbub that ensued.

Billed as ‘The Championship of the South Coast’, it raced out of Falmouth Harbour and over to Pendennis. Jackett was an easy victor, his lasting reputation as a sailor secure. It must have been a long trip back to Southampton¹³.

Jackett was something of a local hero too; over the course of his life he was known to have saved five people from drowning. On one of these occasions, his son was called on to assist, and as no name was given, it’s impossible to know which of Thomas’s offspring was given such hands-on tutelage in saving lives at sea¹⁴.

For Thomas and his wife Emmeline had five male children: William, John, Dick, Fred and Frank. All were more than proficient sailors and rowers, and as their father obviously wasn’t the kind of grizzled old salt who scorned the activities of effete landlubbers, all five took to rugby football with a will¹⁵.

Three sons – William, Dick and Fred – followed Thomas into the boatbuilding trade, with Dick taking over the business in the 1930s. Frank found a career from a young age as a public health inspector, and stuck with it¹⁶.

The odd man out in this respect was John Jackett. As Thomas remarked, in a courtroom and under oath, John

…did not work for him…he might come in the shop…but he did not work there…John never took to it…

Cornish Echo, March 8 1901, p4

Was John a disappointment to his father in this regard? If he’d been the only son, perhaps so. Leaving speculation aside, John’s lack of aptitude for the life of a shipwright must have been evident from an early age. The 1891 census tells us that, at the age of 12, he was working as a butcher, and this can’t have lasted long.

Fortunately for the young John Jackett, he had several things in his favour: an amazing sporting ability, a propensity to work hard at things he enjoyed, a keen eye for a financial opportunity (surely a gift bestowed on him by his father), and matinee-idol looks.

Looks first, as it’s these that gave him his start in life.

‘Tuko’

Youth standing sweet, triumphant by the sea,
All freshness of the day
And all the light
Of morn of thy white limbs, firm, bared and bright.

From Tuke’s Sonnet to the Sea, published anonymously in The Artist and Journal of Home Culture¹⁸

Thomas Jackett was possibly pondering the future of his second son when opportunity came knocking in the early 1890s.

The Impressionist painter Henry Scott Tuke had recently moved to Swanpool from Newlyn. Being as mad-keen a sailor as Jackett himself (Tuke later became Commodore of Falmouth Yacht Club; the two men would also compete together in regattas¹⁹), Tuke needed some repairs carried out to his yacht, which is why he visited Jackett’s boatyard. He was also on the lookout for a servant who knew something about sailing, with bed and board thrown in²⁰. Thomas’s ears pricked up. As he was later to state,

…he put him [John] with Mr Tuke.

Cornish Echo, March 8 1901, p4

It was the beginning of a lasting friendship.

While Tuke’s sexuality was probably an open secret, there was never any suggestion of impropriety, with Jackett or any other local lad who posed for his paintings. Tuke was always careful to seek permission from a potential model’s parents before proceeding to employ them²¹. In many ways, working as a model for Tuke was the ideal ‘seasonal’ job for a teenage boy: you got to row boats, play cricket, swim in the sea, and occasionally pose for a painting. Easy money. As one of Tuke’s models, Tom White, remarked.

I earned altogether about £80 [£3,400] which I used for buying furniture when I got married later in London…he was a great guy!²²

Tuke and Jackett’s relationship ran deeper than this. Jackett himself remarked that

Mr Tuke was everything that was wonderful…

Qtd in Henry Scott Tuke 1858-1929: Under Canvas, by David Wainwright and Catherine Dinn, Sarema Press, 1989, p60

How could he say otherwise, when Tuke himself had once saved Jackett from drowning? John was sailing with another man when the boat capsized; his companion, a non-swimmer, held fast to the upturned vessel whilst Jackett calmly treaded water. Tuke swam out and hauled Jackett’s companion to land, assuming John would make it to shore under his own steam. However a tethered fish hook had pierced Jackett’s bare foot when the boat went over – he was trapped. Tuke swam out again, and somehow got both man and boat back to the beach, where the hook was (painfully) extracted²³.

(Of course, Tuke had already stepped in to extricate his wayward model from a tight situation several years before this event – but more on that later.)

Tuke for his part seems to have relied on Jackett’s calm, reliable demeanour, his ingrained knowledge of sailing, and the fact that some of his best work featured his servant and friend. Tuke’s art was exhibited in Falmouth as recently as 2021²⁵.

The Swimmers’ Pool (1895), one of Tuke’s first paintings where Jackett appears, originally sold for £600 – that’s a whopping £65K today²⁶.

August Blue (1893-4), with Jackett’s modesty covered by means of a towel, is Tuke’s most famous piece. On his death in 1929 it was reproduced in Cornish newspapers²⁷.

Tuke appreciated Jackett’s looks (and physique) so much as to paint his portrait:

Whether Tuke’s work with Cornish, amateur male models reflects his class-consciousness and social commentary, or if it highlights his desire

…to reintroduce the lost [Greek] tradition of the homoerotic adoration of youths into the fabric of working-class reality…

Jeremy Kim Jongwoo, “Naturalism, Labour and Homoerotic Desire: Henry Scott Tuke”, in British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives, ed. B. Lewis, Manchester University Press, 2013, p40

…is a question I shall leave to art historians and queer theorists. That said, 1890s intellectual culture was permeated by a (of necessity) clandestine homosexual movement centred around Oscar Wilde and known as The Uranians³⁰.

Tuke’s association with these somewhat louche figures is well-known. The eminent historian and Uranian Horatio Brown (1854-1926) had his portrait painted by Tuke in 1899, and he evidently found the appearance of the artist’s assistant worth commemorating in verse³¹:

Hie! Johnnie Jackett!

Ho! Johnnie Jackett!

Young Johnnie Jackett,

Come and live wi’ me;

For life may be a folly,

But we two will make it jolly,

If we sail and swim together, and can live like you and me.

Horatio Brown, “Johnnie Jackett”, from Drift, 1900. With thanks to Donna Westlake, Falmouth Art Gallery

Jackett’s beauty was also versified in John Gambril Nicholson’s (1866-1931) very privately published volume A Garland of Ladslove in 1911³².

What Jackett, or indeed Tuke made of all this is unknown. Although Jackett was subject to unwanted advances from at least one (that we know of) Falmouth man, his relationship with his employer and friend remained just that³³.

In any case, Tuke and Jackett had something much more in common: sport. The emergence of ‘modern’ sports in the 1850s which supplanted more traditional, plebeian forms of recreation (cudgelling, hurling, bareknuckle boxing etc) has been seen as the need for

…an institution of social fatherhood to provide training in manly pursuits – war, commerce, government…The popularity of sport expressed this shift from belief…to the man-made, knowable and material world of human endeavour and the body…

Varda Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport, University of Toronto Press, 1999, p45, 76

Moreover, in Britain the rise of physical culture was in part a reaction to a realisation in the 1890s that the sun might finally be beginning to set on the Empire. It was time to harden yourself against decadent temptation (as exemplified in the Uranian movement), and prepare for imminent conflict³⁵.

Recreation can take many forms. Not only a keen sailor, Tuke had one of his studios converted to a billiards room³⁶, and doubtless taught Jackett how to play the game. Jackett, naturally, proved more than handy with cue in hand³⁷.

The model Tom White also recalled that Tuke had a practice area for cricket set up behind another one of his studios. Tuke had learnt the game in Middlesex, and was acquainted with such Victorian giants of whites and willow as C. B. Fry, Prince Ranji and W. G. Grace. He even had his own banal cricketing nickname: ‘Tuko’³⁸.

Jackett was playing in matches as early as 1896. Throughout the 1900s, he and ‘Tuko’ played for Falmouth Church Institute CC, with Jackett heading the batting averages for the 1907 season⁴⁰.

As to the more manly pursuits, Jackett was to state in an interview that he was a “clever” boxer⁴¹, and he may well have been. However, I can find no report of him ever having fought an organised bout. That’s ‘organised’. When he squared up on the streets of Falmouth to a burly prizefighter from Plymouth whose dog had been worrying his, Jackett came away minus a tooth, and a jaw one good clout away from being broken⁴².

As his features earned him money, Jackett may have concluded that having them rearranged by someone’s knuckles was financially ill-advised, and equally painful⁴³.

Although they cycled together, and Tuke tried to watch every rugby match he played, Jackett’s job with Tuke was genuinely seasonal⁴⁴. As he was to state,

I am only with Mr Tuke seven months in the year. He is five months in London, and the rest of the time I live on my father…

Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5

(We will be examining the truthfulness of how much Jackett ‘lived on his father’ in due course.)

When he was in Tuke’s company, though, the young Jackett must have learned a valuable lesson: that of the sheer single-minded devotion one must have to excel in your chosen field. When an interviewer remarked on the seemingly easy rapidity with which Tuke produced his wonderful pictures, the artist replied,

Only after long practice in the open, on top of six or seven years’ grinding at the Slade and in Paris.

Black and White, August 12 1905, p12

In the lengthy hours Jackett must have posed for Tuke, conversed with him, or merely just watched the man at work, the lesson must surely have been absorbed. If you want to be the best, you have to put in the graft.

As Jackett himself would later write whilst in New Zealand with the British Lions,

…nothing tends to promote combination and judgment more than constant practice…

Evening Star, January 13 1908, p8

Even by 1899, the Vice President of Falmouth RFC stated that John Jackett was an example to all players,

…being always in strict training…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, November 18 1899, p5. Emphasis mine

Realising that what you do off the pitch is as important as what happens on it, Jackett took care of his health too. When interviewed in 1902, he stated that his powers of recovery were due to

…the fact that he is a teetotaller.

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, June 14 1902, p5. With thanks to Victoria Sutcliffe and Danny Trick of Falmouth RFC for showing me this.

Building boats wasn’t for him. His brothers held good jobs. For practically half the year, he had no income, excepting his father’s good grace. Necessity was about to collide with willpower.

John Jackett picked something he was good at, and tried to make a living from it.

That thing was a sport. It was fast, exciting, risky, and brought its champions fame and ready money.

Track cycling.

Palmares

Bicycle racing is

…an excellent example of a new mass-spectator sport in the mid-19th century, during which there was an urge to both market and consume a novel spectacle.

Andrew Ritchie, “The Origins of Bicycle Racing in England: Technology, Entertainment, Sponsorship and Advertising in the Early History of the Sport”, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 26.3 (1999): p489-520

The advances made in mass-manufacturing methods made development and production of machines easier; entrepreneurs saw a new money-spinner; riders naturally wanted to pit their wits against each other, and people with expendable income and leisure time felt moved to witness the thrills and spills.

Without the Industrial Revolution, recreational cycling and/or bike racing would not have become the phenomenon it was. The invention in the 1880s of the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre made cycling a more practical and comfortable prospect. Although in the 1890s a high-end machine could set you back £30 (£3,200 today), factory-line production made bikes affordable for members of the upper working-class. Mirroring the rise of modern football (Association, Union and Northern), cycling clubs appeared all over the country and, sure enough, competitions were held⁴⁷.

The development in many towns of multi-purpose sports and recreation grounds meant that, when in 1890 the National Cyclists’ Union banned racing on open roads, an infrastructure existed to accommodate track cycling⁴⁸.

All this happened in Cornwall too. And John Jackett was one of the first Cornish cycling stars.

In the sport’s earliest years, meets were often an adjunct of a well-established local event. The first report of an organised bike race in Cornwall (that I can find) was held at Falmouth Regatta in August 1869⁵⁰.

In 1871 Penryn Regatta held, with Penny Farthings and narrow thoroughfares, the terrifying spectacle of a mass street race pell-mell around the town. By 1875 the organisers of Zelah Feast had moved with the times, its cycling competition being the “chief attraction” of the festivities⁵¹.

It rapidly became apparent that race meets were an event in themselves. 3,000 watched the day’s thrills and spills at Plymouth in 1878, which featured riders from Cornwall⁵³. Newspapers increased their coverage, which of course fed the publicity mill. In the 1890s, the Cornishman‘s dedicated cycling columnist rejoiced in the pseudonym ‘Inflatable’, while Lake’s Falmouth Packet‘s man contributed under the guise of ‘Pneumatic’⁵⁴.

Clubs formed to accommodate and regulate the new craze. Launceston could boast one as early as 1878; hot on its heels (or wheels) was the Penzance ‘First and Last’ Club, certainly in existence by 1879⁵⁵.

The mining district’s ‘One and All’ club was at first inaugurated in 1881 for riders of both Camborne and Redruth. Perhaps predictably, the unity was short-lived, and by 1883, with no sense of irony, Redruth had its own One and All Club…as did Camborne⁵⁶.

Open-air velodromes began to appear in the 1880s. New recreation grounds and sports fields provided ideal locations, plus the owners could demand an entry fee – you couldn’t very well charge people admission when they’re stood on a pavement hollering at a road-race. Penzance had a (much criticised) grass track circling its cricket pitch from 1886⁵⁸. Falmouth’s Recreation Ground on Dracaena Avenue opened in 1889 with a state-of-the-art cinder track, unashamedly described in a local ‘paper as

…the best cinder track in the South of England…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, August 1 1891, p5⁵⁹

The Redruth One and All track, by contrast, was lambasted for being

…a rough and hilly field…

Cycling, January 16 1892, p443

To be sure, there were no regulations or stipulations for velodromes at this time; Bodmin’s track was grass too⁶⁰.

All this goes to show that, by the time John Jackett began to make his mark in the sport, Cornish track racing was an established and popular element of the sporting year. It had its own calendar of events, its own venues, its own following and a multitude of riders.

Jackett was the pick of the bunch.

He was still a teenager when he began to make a name for himself in local meets, and barely eighteen when he travelled to North Cornwall for the “auspicious” annual athletics meet of Launceston Harriers⁶¹.

In between events, the 1,500-strong crowd (most of whom patronised a purpose-built grandstand) were entertained by Launceston Volunteer Band. Prizes totalled over 30 guineas, or north of £3K now.

Like practically all the meets Jackett appeared in, this one recognised the Amateur Athletics Association and National Cyclists’ Union, thus

…totally barring the professional element.

Cornish and Devon Post, June 27 1896, p8

This was a competition for the gentleman-amateur, who wouldn’t tolerate any shortcomings on the track being laid bare by a socially inferior being. Losing to a Bank Manager or a lawyer, say, would have been acceptable, but having to cough on the dust of a former miner-turned-pro? The indignity…⁶²

Jackett won the mile race by a yard, but crashed in the three-miler.

When he starred in the August Bank Holiday meet on his home turf, the cycling pundit ‘Pneumatic’ observed that

…he was in fine form, and was responsible for much high pressure…all his wins were popular…

Lake’s Falmouth Packet, August 8 1896, p8

He took the mile prize, the club two-mile contest, and came second in the half-mile championship of all Devon and Cornwall. Falmouth’s Mayor singled out his “plucky riding”⁶³.

Jackett took the three-mile prize at a meet of the Truro Church Insititute, with the trophy being presented to him by Truro’s MP, Edwin Lawrence.

Though Jackett was keen to stress his amateur status, in 1901 he himself estimated that he had won over £150 in prizes, or £15K today⁶⁵.

Considering he had only been racing competitively since 1896 (and his peak years can be judged to be from 1897-99, before his rugby career genuinely took off), this is impressive. For example, his earnings from a single day’s racing at St Austell in 1898 were £5 5s, or over £540 nowadays⁶⁶. At Sidmouth in 1897 he was presented with a set of gold studs for winning the mile handicap which, to modern eyes, was the most edifying award on offer: other victors could hold aloft a cigarette case, or a box of fine cigars⁶⁷.

If not a professional cyclist, Jackett certainly took a professional attitude. We have already noted his diligence in honing his rugby skills, and he was similarly dedicated to his bike. In 1896 he and another rider spent

Every night for the week…practising hard on the Recreation Ground track, and with excellent results…

Lakes Falmouth Packet, August 1 1896, p5. With thanks to Victoria Sutcliffe and Danny Trick of Falmouth RFC for showing me this.

He raced as frequently as he trained, and in 1897 had a full programme⁶⁸:

Date	Location	No. of races	Wins
April 18	Falmouth	2	0
May 28	Bodmin	1	0
June 7	Plymouth	2	0
June 16	St Austell	2	0
June 20	Falmouth	3	1
July 9	Falmouth	4	2
July 15	Camborne	2	1
August 2	Falmouth	3	2
September 4	Exeter	1	0
September 7	Sidmouth	1	0

At Falmouth on July 9th, he took the One Mile County Championship, being “a popular winner by a few feet” in a two-horse race for the finish⁶⁹.

At Camborne, in front of a “commodious” grandstand containing the well-to-do, his cycling was a “revelation”. He was also (erroneously) noted as being the Cornish three-mile champion⁷⁰, and further stoked his own myth by casually remarking to a reporter that he intended to break the Camborne to Penzance record⁷¹.

His local ‘paper was sure to list his palmares, or achievements over the 1897 season: 8 firsts (I can only find 6), 5 seconds, and 7 thirds – plus the One Mile Championship⁷².

What we are not told is how Jackett found the time, and the funds, for all his training, travelling (on a train, with a bike) and racing. Would a gentleman-amateur be present at most, if not every, major cycling meet in Cornwall and South Devon over the course of a season? Was Jackett not in the employ of Mr Tuke? (Tuke, it seems, kept his servant on a pretty loose rein⁷³.) Surely the Devon meets would have involved overnight stays?

We do know something of his racing style, however. In May 1898, at Home Park, Plymouth, he came third in a one-mile race, the victim of his own impetuosity. The riders began so slowly as to be booed and catcalled by spectators thirsty for action, and Jackett reacted, kicking on to attempt to win in a blaze of glory, but ultimately blowing himself out⁷⁴.

He had guts too, and was prepared to mix it in a tight finish. At the opening of Camborne Recreation Ground in June 1898, the five-mile race boiled down to a thrilling sprint finale between the front three riders – none of whom made it past the line. Jackett was one of the three, flung all over the track in a nasty pile-up⁷⁶.

The new cinder track at Camborne was criticised for its shallow banking, it being observed that this hindered Jackett’s tactics⁷⁷. In other words, he preferred to use the high banking on a track (which Falmouth’s possessed), and swoop down unawares on his opponents from behind, hoping to catch them off-guard.

John Jackett must have been box-office.

How good a racer was he? Is it possible to measure Jackett’s track prowess and ability over a hundred and twenty years after he rode? In a way, we can.

In June 1898 at Falmouth, he won a gold cup worth £4 (£430 today) for taking first in the 25-mile race. He was timed at 70 minutes 45 seconds⁷⁸. This gives us an average speed of 21.2mph.

21.2mph, for 70 minutes, on a rather cumbersome steel-framed machine with no gears. Falmouth’s cinder track would have been heavy going too, and Jackett would have worn (at best) cotton breeches and a cotton jersey. I put the question to Richard Pascoe, ex-professional cyclist and now Team Principal of Saint Piran Pro Cycling:

Judging by the size of his chest and the strength of his limbs as illustrated in Tuke’s paintings, it’s plain to see the man had an ‘engine’, as we call it, and would have been successful in any sport. I’d say Jackett was a very fine athlete, and certainly possessed the minerals required to be the best. Falmouth’s cinder track was not a fast one, and that speed under those conditions is very impressive. Had there been a Saint Piran’s pro cycling team in that era, he would have certainly been on my books!

Given a modern machine, track conditions, training and clothing, Jackett had the physiognomy to match today’s pros. But then, all the Jackett boys had decent engines. John often rowed competitively with his brother Dick, who was a five-time Cornish champion⁷⁹. However, in the Jackett household, John was the sole cyclist.

Although he continued to race sporadically into the 1900s, and even guested (doubtless for a small consideration) at a meet in Leicester⁸⁰, Jackett’s glory years as a cyclist were relatively short-lived.

Maybe he concluded the risks outweighed the rewards. He crashed, punctured or simply ran out of steam easily as often as he won or placed, yet his reputation as a champion with amazing powers of stamina endured. At Camborne in 1900 he was the rider selected to demonstrate to the crowds an exhibition of being paced behind a motorbike⁸¹.

Cycling had brought John Jackett recognition, prestige and an (irregular) income. It also brought him something else: a fanbase.

Local girls would visit his father’s house, ostensibly to admire Jackett’s trophies, but probably to grab a glimpse of the handsome young buck too⁸².

Very possibly, one of these young ladies who came calling was a Miss Caroline Over.

She and John Jackett became friendly. Very friendly.

The serious consequences of their relationship will be revealed in In Search of John Jackett, Part Two, which you can read by clicking HERE.

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. Jackett wrote an article on fullback play for Fry’s Magazine of Sport, Travel and Outdoor Life, Vol 11.7, 1911, p45-8. Judge Granger’s remarks are recorded in the Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5. Sallie Jackett is quoted in Henry Scott Tuke 1858-1929: Under Canvas, by David Wainwright and Catherine Dinn, Sarema Press, 1989, p60. The journalist’s observation about Jackett is from the Evening Mail, December 1 1905, p6.
2. Read about Holloway’s career here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/09/06/murder-debt-riot-richard-holloway-redruth-solicitor/; Small’s exploits here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2021/12/20/the-notorious-beatrice-small-fortune-teller/; Burnett’s murder here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/03/23/gallows-bell-the-murder-of-joseph-burnett/; and Rabey’s complex scams here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/03/20/they-died-with-their-shoes-on-the-career-of-paul-rabey-the-younger-part-one/
3. Image from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-9019-1-4-4-7/e-a-osborne-postcard-photograph-of-johnny-jackett#0
4. An interview with Jackett in the Dewsbury Reporter of March 10, 1928 alludes to this.
5. Certainly that is the view of the Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 4 1912, p3.
6. Information from the 1871 census, and the following piece on Jackett’s yard: https://falmouthhistory.wordpress.com/victoria-boat-yard-burts-yard/
7. Image from: https://falmouthhistory.wordpress.com/victoria-boat-yard-burts-yard/
8. Cornish Echo, March 21 1896, p5.
9. Image from: https://www.falmouthclassics.org.uk/participating-boats-2024/curlew/
10. Information from: https://www.stmawessailing.co.uk/fleets/18-foot-restricted/
11. Royal Cornwall Gazette, September 11 1902, p2. Cornish newspapers of the early 1900s are littered with examples of Jackett’s sailing prowess.
12. Image from: https://www.falmouthharbour.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/FH_Then-Now.pdf
13. Cornish Echo, May 26 1911, p7, and August 4, p5.
14. Cornish Echo, May 12 1905, p5.
15. Emmeline Medlin was born c1859, she and Thomas Jackett married in 1874. Information from Ancestry. That all five brothers played rugby is stated in Dick Jackett’s obituary, West Briton, July 28 1960, p14. Thomas Jackett’s obituary in the Cornishman (July 7 1938, p2), notes he was a life-member of Falmouth RFC. The Cornish Echo (August 15 1902, p5), states he was also a Vice President of the junior Falmouth One and All RFC, along with Henry Scott Tuke.
16. Information from 1901 and 1911 census, and Dick Jackett’s obituary in the West Briton, July 28 1960, p14.
17. Image from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/tuke-henry-scott-head-of-johnny-jackett–741897738608095578/
18. Quote from: https://fortyfoot.livejournal.com/34942.html. For more on The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist_and_Journal_of_Home_Culture
19. Tuke’s election as Commodore is reported in the West Briton, September 14 1911, p4. For example, Thomas Jackett and Tuke both raced in the Portscatho Regatta (West Briton, August 18 1904, p2), and the Mylor Regatta (Commercial, Shipping and General Advertiser, August 26 1899, p3).
20. Henry Scott Tuke 1858-1929: Under Canvas, by David Wainwright and Catherine Dinn, Sarema Press, 1989, p56-60.
21. Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p56.
22. Tom White’s recollections of his summers with Tuke are available here: http://www.artcornwall.org/features/Tuke/Henry_Scott_Tuke_Tom_White.htm
23. Cornish Echo, July 20 1906, p5.
24. Image from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-9019-1-4-6-5/photographer-unknown-photograph-showing-henry-scott-tuke-and-johnny-jackett-on-tukes-yacht
25. Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p56-60. For more information on the 2021 Tuke Exhibition, see: https://www.falmouthartgallery.com/Exhibitions/2021/1738~Henry_Scott_Tuke. I am grateful to Donna Westlake of Falmouth Art Gallery for her assistance.
26. From Henry Scott Tuke: A Memoir, by Maria Tuke Sainsbury, Martin Secker, 1933, p114.
27. The painting was described as such in Tuke’s obituary, Cornishman, March 14 1929, p7. August Blue was reproduced in the West Briton, March 21 1929, p10. The Daily Mirror of May 8 1914 (p16) shows a photograph of Tuke painting a naked Jackett on the beach.
28. Image from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tuke-august-blue-n01613
29. Image from: https://www.paintingmania.com/johnny-jackett-269_54834.html
30. For more on The Uranians, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranians, and “The Cult of Homosexuality in England 1850-1950” by Noel Annan, Biography, Vol 13.3, 1990, p189-202.
31. For more on Horatio Brown, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Brown. His portrait can be seen here: https://www.tate-images.com/MB8353-Register-of-paintings-by-Henry-Scott-Tuke-Print-of.html
32. Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p60. For more on Nicholson, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gambril_Nicholson. Putting it bluntly, nowadays we would describe Nicholson as a paedophile.
33. Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p57.
34. Marriage information from Ancestry. Images from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-9019-1-4-2-24/photographer-unknown-photograph-of-henry-scott-tuke-standing-with-johnny-jackett-seated, and https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-9019-1-4-2-10/photographer-unknown-glass-negative-photograph-showing-henry-scott-tuke-and-johnny-jackett. Sallie’s memories of Tuke are mentioned in Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p57.
35. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987, p302-327.
36. Sainsbury, Tuke: A Memoir, p123.
37. A concert held for the Falmouth Liberal Club saw Jackett come second in a billiards tournament. Cornish Echo, April 19 1901, p7.
38. See Tom White’s memories here: http://www.artcornwall.org/features/Tuke/Henry_Scott_Tuke_Tom_White.htm. Tuke’s love of cricket is recalled in Sainsbury, Tuke: A Memoir, p141-52.
39. The image is from Tuke’s diary, which can be viewed here: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-9019-1-1-1/diary-of-henry-scott-tuke/3
40. Cornish Echo, May 30 1896, p5, and September 20 1907, p8.
41. Dewsbury Reporter, March 10, 1928.
42. Cornish Echo, July 25 1896, p4.
43. Wrestling didn’t suit Jackett much either. Another youth dislocated his shoulder when he was ten. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 22 1888, p5.
44. Wainwright and Dinn, Under Canvas, p60. An avid rugby fan, Tuke was Vice President of Falmouth One and All RFC. Cornish Echo, August 15 1902, p5.
45. Images from: https://www.tate-images.com/preview.asp?item=MB8827&itemw=4&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=44, and https://www.falmouthartgallery.com/Collection/2015.8.111
46. Image from: https://saintpiranprocycling.com/news-stories/2020/3/9/saint-piran-2020-team-launch
47. Summarised from: Andrew Ritchie, “The Origins of Bicycle Racing in England: Technology, Entertainment, Sponsorship and Advertising in the Early History of the Sport”, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 26.3 (1999): p489-520, and David Rubinstein, “Cycling in the 1890s”, Victorian Studies, Vol. 21.1 (1977), p47-71.
48. See: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/search/article/bc-50th-The-Story-behind-British-Cyclings-formation
49. For more on the birth of Camborne Rugby Club, see: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/08/26/cambornes-feast-day-rugby/
50. Cornish Echo, August 21 1869, p1.
51. Commercial, Shipping and General Advertiser, August 19 1871, p4; Royal Cornwall Gazette, May 8 1875, p5.
52. Image from: https://cornishnationalmusicarchive.co.uk/content/cornish-tea-treats-across-the-patch-t-z/
53. Cornish and Devon Post, June 15 1878, p5.
54. For example, Cornishman, December 19 1895, p7; and Lake’s Falmouth Packet, August 8 1896, p8.
55. Cornish and Devon Post, June 15 1878, p5; Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 29 1886, p7.
56. Cornish Telegraph, March 17 1881, p5, and June 2 1883, p7. For more on the Camborne-Redruth rivalry, see my post here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/09/02/camborneredruth-the-oldest-continual-rugby-fixture-in-the-world-part-one/
57. Image from: https://www.oldvelodromes.co.uk/HTML%20tracks/625.html
58. Information from: https://www.oldvelodromes.co.uk/BookSmall.html. The Cornish Telegraph took issue with Penzance’s track on August 1 1889, p5.
59. Cornish Telegraph, August 1 1889, p5.
60. As noted in the Western Morning News, April 7 1896, p5.
61. The report of this meet is in the Cornish and Devon Post, June 27 1896, p8. Jackett’s name starts to appear in reports of cycle races from 1894: Cornish Echo, May 18 1894, p7.
62. To be sure, amateurs would not have raced with professionals – the gulf in quality would have probably been embarrassing. For more on the Victorian caste (or class) system of amateur and professional sportsmen, see: Andrew Ritchie, “The Origins of Bicycle Racing in England: Technology, Entertainment, Sponsorship and Advertising in the Early History of the Sport”, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 26.3 (1999): p489-520.
63. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, August 8 1896, p8.
64. Image and information from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Durning-Lawrence
65. Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5.
66. Western Morning News, June 9 1898, p7.
67. Devon and Exeter Gazette, September 8 1897, p5.
68. Information from: Cornish Echo, April 23, p5; West Briton, May 6, p6, July 15, p10, July 22, p3, August 5, p7; Western Morning News, June 8, p6, June 17, p6, June 23, p7; Exeter Flying Post, September 4, p8; Sidmouth Observer, September 8, p5.
69. West Briton, July 15 1897, p6.
70. Cornishman, July 22 1897, p3.
71. Cornishman, September 9 1897, p3.
72. Cornish Echo, February 8 1901, p5.
73. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, October 2 1897, p4.
74. Western Evening Herald, May 3 1898, p4.
75. Image from: https://www.greensonscreen.co.uk/argylehistory.asp?era=1902-1903_1
76. Cornish Post and Mining News, June 30 1898, p7.
77. Cornish Post and Mining News, July 7 1898, p7.
78. Cornish Echo, June 17 1898, p5.
79. See Dick Jackett’s obituary, West Briton, July 28 1960, p14. The brothers competed in the Portscatho Regatta: West Briton, August 18 1904, p2.
80. Leicester Daily Press, May 28 1906, p7.
81. Cornishman, September 6 1900, p6.
82. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, February 3 1900, p8.

Reading time: 40 minutes

…I have sat in my living-room with my mother and father at home and seen a rugby league representative take sheafs of pound notes out of his pocket…but…I have never wanted to be paid for playing rugby…

~ Gareth Edwards, Gareth: An Autobiography, Stanley Paul & Co., 1978, p91. As Edwards makes clear in The Autobiography (Headline, 1999), his 1978 book professionalised him in the eyes of the WRU and he was barred from coaching.

…when I went, I said the right things in the Press…I ‘needed a new challenge’…that was bullshit…I needed security for my family…

~ Jonathan Davies, The Rugby Codebreakers, BBC documentary, 2018

In a parallel universe

It’s December 26, 2023. Camborne Town RLFC are hosting their traditional Boxing Day clash with arch-rivals Newton Albion RLFC. Today’s edition marks 110 years of the fixture, which kicked off back in 1913. Both Western Super League teams are at full strength, and the Town Stadium carpark (once a recreation ground), is jam-packed. A capacity crowd of 20,000 is anticipated.

Before the 26 players take the field, Sky’s Brian Carney and Jenna Brooks interview the teams’ coaches pitchside in front of a film crew. Over in the Bill Biddick Stand (Biddick being of course the legendary Town skipper who led them to their first Challenge Cup victory in 1927), one gnarled old-timer turns to his mate and asks,

Didn’t Town used play another team on Boxing Day, years ago?

To which his pard replies,

…Yeah, used be Redruth, but that’s going way back now…

Camborne haven’t played Redruth RFC since 1912…

Of course, none of the above is true. Camborne RFC has only ever played Rugby Union. ‘Newton Albion’ never existed. The Boxing Day game between Camborne and Redruth is part of Cornwall’s most famous – and bitter – sporting rivalry¹.

Yes, it’s fiction. I made it up. But, once upon a time, Camborne strongly considered leaving the RFU and throwing their lot in with the Northern Union (from 1922, The Rugby Football League) to become a professional sporting body. They would have joined what was known as the ‘Western League (Northern Union)’, an entity based in Devon.

Therefore, something like the little fantasy above may very well have happened. ‘Camborne Town RLFC’ may have actually existed, mainly because of the antics of two Camborne players, back in 1912…

The day their lives changed

It’s Saturday, April 13, 1912. Cornwall’s rugby season is drawing to a close. Redruth are the Cornish Champions. So are Camborne – obviously, the Press couldn’t decide who should be awarded the title. There was nothing to split the two deadly enemies on the field either; after three fixtures, both had a victory apiece, with one draw².

The only thing for it was a deciding rubber, to be played today, in Redruth³.

In front of a crowd of several thousands, Redruth went on to win, 6-0. Before he had even stepped on the pitch, Camborne’s big (6ft, 14st⁴), fiery enforcer-style forward, Tom Morrissey, was subjected to what we would term racist abuse. Though he was a miner from Beacon, his father hailed from Tipperary, and the Redruth faithful in the grandstand let him have it:

Morrissey, you _______ Irishman…

West Briton, April 29 1912

Such barracking was sustained throughout the game. Morrissey was only recently back from a two-week suspension for rough play⁵, and had been reported to the Cornwall RFU (CRFU) three times in the last four months, but he wouldn’t tolerate that. To the shock and horror of many, he bared his arse to the grandstand.

Female spectators left in disgust. A local man of the cloth vowed he’d never watch rugby in Redruth again.

The President of Redruth RFC, S. H. Lanyon, later stated that the heckling that day had been relatively unexceptional.

One of Morrissey’s team-mates was Sam Carter, a miner from Barripper who had worked in America and British Columbia. A talented forward with enough handling skills to pop up in the threequarters (he started life as a back), Carter had scored 16 tries for Camborne that season, and twice for Cornwall⁶.

Both Carter and Morrissey had turned out for Cornwall with Redruth’s John Menhennett, a USA-born miner from Four Lanes⁷.

However, that didn’t in any way make the three men friends.

Whilst allegedly gouging Morrissey’s eyes in a ruck (accounts vary), Menhennett was dragged to his feet by Carter. Menhennett then squared up to Carter, who teed off and got away one roundhouse above Menhennett’s eye that knocked him cold. (Menhennett would still be receiving treatment for the wound weeks later.)

The referee, W. Dennis Lawry, threatened to send Carter off the pitch. Carter, in the heat of the moment, told the official that

If you order me off, I will _______ half kill you.

Western Daily Mercury, April 22 1912, p3

He wisely (and rapidly) apologised for his remarks, and was allowed to play on.

But that wasn’t the end of it. After Lawry had blown no-side, Morrissey and Menhennett were still knocking lumps out of each other on the pitch, and were joined by several hundred fans in what deteriorated into a mass brawl.

In those days, after a match both XVs would walk back to Tabbs Hotel on Fore Street to change, headed by Redruth Town Band.

Morrissey family legend maintains that Tom and another Camborne man (very possibly Carter, or a brother of Tom) walked back to Tabbs with their boots over their fists, daring anyone in the hostile, vocal crowd accompanying the teams to come ahead. They got no takers.

Redruth immediately cancelled the charity match that was to be held in Camborne the following Saturday.

W. Dennis Lawry, the referee, was a Penzance man. He was also Honorary Secretary of the CRFU⁸.

There was going to be trouble. In fact, Carter and Morrissey never played a game of Rugby Union again.

Kangaroo Court⁹

The verdict of the CRFU Committee on the behaviour of Carter, Morrissey and Menhennett was read at Tabbs Hotel, Redruth, on April 25.

From September 1 – the start of the 1912-13 season – Menhennett was given a one month ban. Carter, three months. Morrissey was not permitted to play rugby union for two whole years.

Even a member of the committee thought the sentencing drastic, if not draconian. That said, the judgements of the CRFU must be seen against a background of increasing instances of on-pitch violence and bad language prevalent in Cornish rugby, and Camborne-Redruth derbies were notorious in this regard. One commentator observed that

These are the best two Rugby teams in the county, and included in them are men who have donned the county colours with credit, but the rivalry between the two clubs has sometimes produced a feeling that does harm to sport, and the sooner this lesson is learnt the better it will be for Cornish Rugby Football.

‘Argus’, West Briton, April 29 1912, p2

There’s little doubt that the three players – Carter and Morrissey especially – were made examples of.

The prime mover in this was the CRFU’s Honorary Treasurer, Dr William Hichens (or Hitchins), formerly President of the CRFU from 1896-1905, and also President of Redruth RFC from 1893-1903¹⁰. Indeed, the length of the bans were originally his motion.

Hichens so dominated proceedings one might be forgiven for thinking he was still President. The incumbent in 1912, Henry Vercoe, a Camborne man, is utterly silent in the reports¹¹.

Hichens threatened resignation unless stern measures regarding the unsavoury events in Redruth were taken. At one point he admonished his colleagues for acting, in his enlightened opinion, like a bunch of women.

Suffice, Carter and Morrissey had few friends in the room. Those that were in their corner – Camborne’s President, Charles Bryant, and committeeman Albert Chenoweth - had little room to manoeuvre.

When Bryant attempted to suggest that the Redruth crowd’s barracking had provoked Morrissey to act as he did, Hichens slapped him down:

I am astonished, Mr Bryant. No provocation would justify the action of Morrissey.

West Briton, April 22 1912, p3

Lanyon, Redruth’s President, did in fact try and preach lenience regarding the subject of Morrissey’s gesture, but only on the grounds that he thought Morrissey was “uneducated”, and knew no better¹².

This remark may tell you more about anti-Irish stereotyping than it ever will about the personalities of either Lanyon or Morrissey. Indeed, only a few years before the latter’s birth in 1889, the Camborne area was subject to vicious anti-Irish riots. Morrissey himself spent many a Saturday night brawling with those who sought to mock his roots¹³.

Let’s just say this: Lanyon was lucky that Morrissey wasn’t anywhere within earshot when he opened his mouth, and nobody questioned the mental faculties of those who had taunted him from the stands.

Carter, despite having a previously unblemished disciplinary record, would receive no reduction of his sentence either, despite Bryant’s pleas for forbearance.

Exasperated, Bryant moved that Carter’s and Morrissey’s bans be permitted, but only if a Redruth player recently reported for rough play received a similar duration of suspension. But Hichens held sway.

Chenoweth, outraged, said that

…the committee appeared to rule one team with an iron hand…Excuses were made for the conduct of any Redruth man, but when a Camborne man was before them…

West Briton, April 29 1912, p4

Chenoweth also moved to have the Redruth ground suspended, for provocation. It wasn’t seconded.

But there was further grist to Camborne’s mill. Bryant, on hearing how long his players were going to be out of the game, observed that they had been the very verdicts contained in rumours doing the rounds in Camborne, before the actual meeting.

Whether this is true or not, the ruling of the CRFU stood.

The immediate reaction of Camborne RFC was to cancel all fixtures with Redruth for the coming season¹⁴.

Neither Carter nor Morrissey bothered to attend their own hearing; hence the personal thoughts and reactions of both men are lost to us.

There’s little doubt, though, that they viewed the length of their suspensions as excessive in the extreme. If they wished to further their rugby careers – and they obviously had ambition to match their talent – there was really only one route open to them.

A recurring theme of the history of Rugby Union (and this post) is that, in the frequently heavy-handed enforcement of its own stringent regulations, the RFU (here represented by the CRFU) inadvertently pushed its own players toward the Northern Union (NU)¹⁵. Such a thing was to happen in the case of Sam Carter and Tom Morrissey.

It’s possible they may have been considering (or negotiating) the option before the events of April 1912. But, over the summer, either they approached the Northern Union, or the NU collared them.

Carter and Morrissey eventually signed contracts with the NU’s Rochdale Hornets. Miners no longer, they were now professional sportsmen. Both men, Morrissey with a young wife in tow, arrived in Rochdale on Wednesday, September 4, 1912¹⁶.

The CRFU had given them both a two-fingered salute; Carter and Morrissey gave the CRFU – and by extension, the RFU – one in return. The draconian suspensions handed to them by the CRFU essentially put them on the train north, into the hands of the NU.

Sam and Tom knew there was no going back. As the RFU’s Bye-Laws and Laws of the Game for the 1911-12 season made quite clear,

Professionalism is illegal.

p75

One of the myriad acts of professionalism as defined by the RFU was “signing any form of the Northern Union”, the consequences of which would see you

…expelled from all English clubs playing Rugby Football, and [you] shall not be eligible for re-election or election to any club.

p78-81. Courtesy of the RFU Museum, Twickenham

Sam and Tom had utterly burned their bridges. They knew they could never play Rugby Union again, join or visit an RFU Club, or speak to a Rugby Union player. They may not even see Cornwall again. But they had done it on their own terms.

Camborne RFC, seething with the CRFU at the senseless loss of two star players, very nearly declared for the NU as well.

Cornish codebreakers and veiled professionals

You won’t find much on Morrissey, Carter or others like them in official histories of Cornish rugby. Both men are very briefly mentioned in Camborne RFC’s standard history, in a list of players capped for Cornwall¹⁸. Abandon the RFU for the NU and, Soviet-style, you were written out of history.

From the moment the NU splintered from the RFU in 1895 (and just why this happened need not concern us here¹⁹), the latter’s Secretary, Rowland Hill, decreed that

…no club belonging to our Union will be permitted to play matches with any club which is in membership with the Northern Union.

Qtd in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 14 1895, p3²⁰

From the get-go, then, the NU, its clubs and its players were “outside the pale of Rugby football”²¹.

The RFU cultivated a rigidly amateur, public school persona in the early 1900s, whereas the NU projected an image of not caring how you spoke or where you came from. How you played was what mattered, and the game was played by working-class men, and run, by and large, by men with similar backgrounds. Furthermore, if you played under the auspices of the NU, generally speaking, you got paid.

By the time Sam and Tom signed with Rochdale Hornets, the NU was a fully professional organisation. Already, it had evolved into the game of ‘Rugby League’ that we recognise today. Professional teams from the Antipodes, playing under NU rules, had already toured the North, and the NU, in return, sent a representative side Down Under²².

The NU’s clubs were replete with talent scouts and agents. They targeted players from the Westcountry, particularly labouring men and miners²⁴.

The explanation for this is obvious. The RFU’s County Championship, then the yardstick of the country’s Union talent, was dominated by Westcountry XVs from the years 1901-1913²⁵. This made the region a priority for NU recruitment, and throughout the history of Rugby League its officials have always attempted to prise working men away from their communities:

…usually it’s a working-class type of fella who takes the bait – or makes the right decision…

Unidentified Rugby League representative, The Rugby Codebreakers, BBC documentary, 2018

Playing sport for prizes – or cash rewards – had long been a feature of working class culture²⁶. The notion of going to where you would get the best return for your efforts and talent was reinforced in Cornwall by the tradition of the ‘tribute’ mining system, where miners would negotiate the terms of their contract with the Captains. Add to this the history of Cornish migration in the face of economic hardship, and it’s easy to understand why Cornwall nurtured, and even sympathised with men who went North to seek their fortunes on the playing field²⁷.

And Cornish rugby was a working-class game. Though admittedly a small sample, look again at the Camborne side of 1910-11:

Of the players’ occupations that I’ve been able to trace, seven were miners (both Lovelocks, Mills, Eustice, Morrissey, Carter and Stephens), and two (Lance, Bath) were engineers or fitters. Of the management, only the President, Charles Bryant, had a middle-class occupation, that of Bank Manager. John Buddle was an explosives agent, Albert Chenoweth a painter/decorator, and William Trounson a carpenter²⁸.

Carter and Morrissey didn’t need to look far for inspiration to join the NU either. In August 1911, their team-mate, Plymouth-born Cornwall full-back Harry Launce, signed for Salford. Launce lived to be 80, his 40-year involvement with the amateur Langworthy Reds club in Salford memorialised annually with a game played for The Harry Launce Memorial Trophy²⁹.

The NU’s agents, or “poachers” for “players of note” were at work in Cornwall from as early as 1900³¹. In 1920 one poacher had a real coup in signing the Redruth and Cornwall star forward Tommy Harris to Rochdale Hornets for £300 (that’s £11K today). He and Sam Carter would play together³². What the Cornish rivalry meant to both men whilst in Lancashire is anyone’s guess.

Although the official RFU policy toward such men was to banish them forever, the reaction of Cornish people to those who signed with the NU could be summarised thus:

Good luck…

Cornubian and Redruth Times, November 30 1900, p7. A Penzance player called Triggs had signed for Rochdale

One might add, ‘and well done’. William Trembath, a Newlyn man who also joined Rochdale, had an interview published in a Cornish ‘paper, the tone of which was overwhelmingly positive³⁴. Tommy Harris’ selection for the England Rugby League team was noted with pride³⁵. When Sam Carter married a Rochdale girl, Bessie Winnard, in 1914, it was written that the

…event will be received with much gratification by his numerous sporting friends in Camborne.

Cornish Telegraph, June 4 1914, p3

Even post World War II, both Carter and Morrissey were noted as “fine players” in both codes, with Carter being described as “magnificent”³⁶.

No doubt, many a Cornish rugby club will have stories of those who ‘went away’, and it’s important to remember that the players I’ve described here are the high-profile signings. How many miners with a love of sport left Cornwall to work in the northern collieries, and found themselves playing Rugby League?

People in Camborne must have regretted the departure of Sam Carter and Tom Morrissey, but they would have understood why they left.

I mean, imagine the furore if they’d done the unthinkable and signed for Redruth…³⁷

Quality rugby players in the Westcountry, then, were a much sought-after commodity – on both sides of the game’s divide. Union clubs knowingly broke their own governing body’s laws on professionalism to keep their teams’ sweet, and to lure a big name into their fold.

As far back as 1899 Torquay Athletic were suspended for offering players a financial incentive to sign on³⁹. In 1907 an RFU Commission was investigating charges of professionalism against Devonport Albion and Plymouth RFC, with evidence helpfully provided by representatives of the NU – covert NU policy being to sow discontent in the ranks of the RFU⁴⁰.

The transfers of two of Cornwall’s 1908 County Championship XV, John Jackett (Falmouth to Leicester), and James ‘Maffer’ Davey (Redruth to Coventry), were always viewed cynically⁴¹. Jackett and his new club were exonerated after an investigation, but the verdict caused the President of the RFU, C. A. Crane, to resign in disgust⁴². Coventry had been discovered paying Davey’s lavish hotel bills when he stayed in their town, and both were suspended in 1909⁴³.

It’s important to remember that ‘veiled professionalism’, as it was known, was possibly more widespread than these investigations suggest. How many clubs managed to cook their books so effectively the RFU commissioners found nothing? How many RFU commissioners forgot their holier-than-thou principles when a burly clubman quietly offered them some ‘boot money’ of their own? That said, would any club be foolish enough to risk bribing the RFU’s Untouchables?

Sam Carter and Tom Morrissey, therefore, were two of many. It’s rather ironic that, as they were making their preparations to leave, it looked as if Camborne were going to commit to the NU game.

Rugby’s Kerry Packer?

Plymouth man Edwin Henry Searle had a vision, and he wanted to make money – maybe making money was his vision. He succeeded in acquiring wealth; on his death in 1927 he left £914, or £47K today. This was certainly a worthy effort for a humble commercial traveller, the kind of man George Orwell identified as being condemned to a thankless life of transient door-to-door drudgery⁴⁶.

Searle was also Hon. Secretary of the Plymouth Grounds and Stands Company, which owned South Devon Place – the home of Plymouth RFC.

The company had a problem: Plymouth RFC wasn’t paying⁴⁸. Falling attendances due to the success of Devonport Albion RFC and Plymouth Argyle FC had saddled the club with debts it couldn’t pay. In April 1912 the Devon RFU (DRU) gave them two weeks to cough up, or face suspension.

The Plymouth Grounds and Stands Company decided to abandon Plymouth RFC, and the club folded that summer⁴⁹.

Not wanting to lease their ground to a club that was broke, Searle and his cohorts had started to look elsewhere to put bums back on seats, and cash in their coffers. They needed as big a draw as soccer, they needed novelty, and they needed spectacle. They wanted something they thought was better than Rugby Union. They wanted

Brighter and more spectacular football.

Gloucestershire Chronicle, August 17 1912, p9

They wanted the Northern Union. Now they had to convince the Westcountry that it wanted the NU, and the NU that it wanted the Westcountry.

In late April 1912 a “well-known Plymouthian” travelled to an NU conference in Manchester, the result of which was

…said to have completely paved the way for the introduction of professional Rugby in the West.

Western Daily Mercury, April 22 1912, p3

The Plymouth man, though unnamed, must have been Searle – he was a travelling salesman, after all. Doubtless he talked big when given the opportunity – he may have even fed the above line to the Press – and the NU decided to take a gamble.

The NU, for their part, must have been overjoyed. It was a win-win situation. If Searle & Co could establish a pro ‘Western League’ under Northern Union rules, they (the NU) would have a toehold in the region and opportunity for expansion. If it all came to naught, the RFU would doubtless suspend or expel any player associated with the movement, who would then be compelled to travel north for their rugby.

For the time being, then, everyone conveniently forgot that Plymouth was a helluva long way from Wigan, or Hull.

On Saturday May 11 1912, 10,000 people filled South Devon Place to watch an NU exhibition match between Oldham and Huddersfield, the latter winning 31-26. Searle and the other owners of the ground must have been grinning behind their cigars. 10,000 was easily their biggest gate all season⁵¹.

By July, it was announced that South Devon Place had been acquired by an NU club, which was in fact the hastily-formed Plymouth NU club. It goes without saying that the Plymouth Grounds and Stands Company would have done well out of this arrangement. Indeed, Searle was on the committee of the new club⁵².

It was looking promising. But there was one big obstacle: they only had one team, Plymouth, and probably very few players. The NU’s secretary, Joseph Platt, had stipulated twelve Westcountry clubs to constitute a league. Get twelve teams, and the NU would give them prized Welsh asset Ebbw Vale.

From his home on Grafton Road, Searle cast his net. He didn’t merely write to twelve clubs pitching his big idea, he probably wrote to every club of note in the Westcountry.

Searle’s definition of ‘Westcountry’ was incredibly inclusive. Cinderford, up in the Forest of Dean, received (and publicly repudiated) his missive⁵⁴. Likewise Bath RFC, who wanted to avoid an investigation by the RFU for allegedly associating with the NU. The “letter shall lie on the table”, Bath announced, and the Club, rather fawningly,

…had no idea of forsaking its loyal allegiance to the Rugby Union.

Bath Chronicle, August 17 1912, p7

All of which begs the question: did Camborne receive a letter? Alas, the committee minutes for the 1911-12 season do not survive but, as a premier Cornish club, and one known to be discontented (to say the least) with its own Union, it’s inconceivable that Searle didn’t write to them.

Camborne were certainly linked to the movement from an early stage, as were Redruth and, later, Falmouth⁵⁵. That said, every senior club in the Westcountry was associated with the movement at one time or another, mainly because Searle contacted them all. As with the ‘Rebel’ Cricket Tours to South Africa in the 1980s, you never knew for sure who was going until they stepped aboard the plane.

Redruth opted out early. So did Devonport Albion, who described the whole affair as “utterly impracticable”⁵⁶.

And Camborne? W. Dennis Lawry, Hon. Secretary of the CRFU, had sounded out an “official” of Camborne RFC. Any notion that the club was going over, stated Lawry,

…is not true.

Western Echo, July 27 1912, p2

Camborne, Lawry was assured, were ploughing forward with the forthcoming Union season.

We can accept the Camborne official’s statements to Lawry at face-value. Or, we can bear in mind the RFU’s tough policy on clubs known to be flirting with the NU, and recall that Lawry had refereed the fateful match that saw Carter and Morrissey suspended.

Of course the official was going to deny all knowledge, especially to a representative of the CRFU. The Press weren’t overly convinced:

…those who have a strong feeling against the Cornish Union would favour the introduction of the Northern Union or any other game.

West Briton, July 29 1912, p3

Camborne fit the bill perfectly. One resident stated that everyone in the town was

…yearning for the new code.

Western Evening Herald, December 7 1912, p4

Friday August 30, 1912, may have been one of the biggest dates in the history of Camborne RFC. The club was “unofficially represented”⁵⁷ at a meeting of the NU movement in Newton Abbot. Also present were men from Plymouth and Torquay, and doubtless several other clubs. It was tense.

Camborne – and any other Cornish teams present – needed the Devon clubs to go over. Devon needed Cornwall. Torquay wouldn’t commit unless Newton Abbot did so first.

And Newton Abbot did commit. The Western League was on. Cheroots were lit. Pipes stuffed. Trebles all round. The hawks in the room wanted the movement made public there and then.

Suddenly, it was all off again. Newton Abbot did a complete volte face; the promoters (Searle and Co) had only managed to secure six teams, too small a number to constitute a league.

Camborne chivvied Torquay to force the issue, but it was all for naught. Ultimately the movement was too small, and the clubs too mistrusting of each other, to make it a reality.

Searle didn’t have the network, the force of character, or the bank balance, of Kerry Packer⁵⁸.

Then the Union backlash began.

The Purge

Firstly, Camborne were in a parlous financial state, despite a slim profit for the 1911-12 season of £35 (£3,000 today). A demand from the CRFU in the form of a letter that they cease issuing cheques was ignored. No fixtures with Redruth had been arranged for the 1912-13 season, which meant a big loss in revenue. As the committee minutes held at Kresen Kernow make clear, it wasn’t until April 1913 that Camborne were prepared to open talks with Redruth.

It was agreed that the 1912-13 programme be run with a reduced fixture list, on a tight budget. Now was not the time to commit to the NU⁵⁹.

On Saturday September 21st, the DRU summoned a number of officials from Devon clubs (Plymouth, Brixham, Torquay, Teignmouth and Newton Abbot) to the Globe Hotel in Newton Abbot. The DRU then suspended seven of them, without hearing, for their involvement with the NU.

But the seven men, with Searle in an observatory/inflammatory role, wouldn’t go quietly. As one historian has observed,

Rather than ‘throttling the hydra’ of professionalism, the RFU found that severing one head had only resulted in the creation of more.

James W. Martens, “They Stooped to Conquer: Rugby Union Football, 1895-1914”, in Journal of Sport History 20:1 (1993), p30

So it proved here. Searle produced a letter from Arthur Havill, the Exeter skipper, expressing interest in recruiting for the Westcountry movement. Searle’s intimation was that the DRU ought to be investigating more.

A. E. Bryant, one of the seven and a key figure in the nascent Plymouth NU club (see the image above), went further. He condemned the actions of the DRU Secretary, T. Stanley Kelly. Kelly, an Exeter man, had met with the NU reps too and, like Havill, had given the impression that his old club was all for switching. In fact, Kelly had been gathering information for the DRU all along. Bryant’s verdict on the public-school, former Harlequins and England captain was the most damaging that any gentleman amateur could bear. Kelly was

…unsportsmanlike…

Western Daily Mercury, September 23 1912, p3

Bryant then went public with more accusations of payments made to players by several Devon clubs, including weekly wages and win bonuses, urging the RFU to put their own house in order⁶².

Bryant’s call to expose the allegedly rampant ‘shamateurism’ in the Union game put the RFU in an invidious position. Do nothing, and they would be hoisted by their own clubs’ hypocrisy. Yet if they acted and found Bryant’s case carried weight, the inevitable suspensions would play into the NU’s hands.

Put another way, Bryant had the RFU by the balls. One man present at The Globe that day predicted that

…Northern Unionism would be established within a month.

Western Daily Mercury, September 23 1912, p3

The RFU decided to come down heavily. By October a commission, headed by RFU President A. M. Crook, was ensconced at the Rougemont, Exeter. There was a Press blackout. The investigation was deemed to be “the most important of its kind”⁶⁴.

Besides upholding the suspensions made by the DRU, the RFU summoned W. Dennis Lawry of the CRFU to provide that Union’s accounts. Ditto T. Stanley Kelly for the DRU. Evidence needed to be sifted. Witnesses sought.

Exeter were exonerated. Torquay Athletic were suspended, as were practically all of Devonport Albion’s 1st XV. This latter included a Cornishman, Fred Gilbert, and a Devon and England scrum-half who had begun his career at Falmouth, Raphael Jago. In all, 23 officials were suspended, and 17 players⁶⁵.

The RFU didn’t conclude its investigations into the CRFU and its clubs until June 1913. After digging as far back as 1901-2, the commission found…nothing.

The RFU then charged the CRFU £40 expenses (£3,800 today) for the privilege⁶⁶.

Opinion was divided on the RFU’s actions. One ‘paper called it “the finest step that could have been taken for rugby in Devonshire”⁶⁷. Another reckoned that

…the commission…has played into the hands of the Northern Union disciples.

Cornish Echo, December 6 1912, p7

As the Echo had feared, the Western League decided to grimly battle on. Coventry played Plymouth under NU rules at South Devon Place on Christmas Day 1912⁶⁸, but overall the movement was a failure.

Five clubs (Plymouth, Teignmouth, Paignton, Torquay (NU, that is, Torquay Athletic remained separate) and Newton Abbot) stubbornly played a few NU matches. Attendances were poor, and players thin on the ground. Torquay had to make up numbers for one match by filching men from their fellow NU teams⁶⁹.

Camborne, even at this stage, were approached. Torquay wrote to them in early 1913 requesting fixtures in the new code, but the committee decided that, this time, they

…could not entertain their proposals.

Minutes and Team Selections, Camborne Rugby Club, 1912-1915. Kresen Kernow, ref: X1280/1/2

Although Plymouth and Torquay also entertained St Helens, and England NU played Wales at South Devon Place before 7,000 in February 1913, it was all over by April.

The Plymouth NU committee, Searle included, resigned that April. South Devon Place was put up for let. The NU, it was written, had been “cracked” in the Westcountry⁷¹. Its players went north, or faded away.

For a few, short, tantalising months, the history of Rugby in Devon and Cornwall looked very different. Northern Union/Rugby League wasn’t seen again in the Westcountry until 1947, when Leigh and Barrow played a series of exhibition matches⁷².

In the meantime, Sam Carter and Tom Morrissey were making their marks for Rochdale Hornets. A Rugby League historian believes both men held fire on moving north until Camborne’s non-involvement with the Western League became a certainty, but makes no mention of their suspensions in April 1912. It’s more likely they began canvassing for Northern Union interest shortly after their harsh sentences were passed. The NU actually paid lip-service to one of its own bylaws in requesting of the CRFU information on why they had been suspended, but true to form the CRFU ignored it. One gets the impression that, throughout 1912 and early 1913, masses of letters sat on various committee room tables, never to be acknowledged⁷³.

The Hornets’ new signings were free to play…

Ginger Morrissey

There’s a question every young sportsperson must ask themselves when they first turn professional, and that question goes something like:

What if I don’t make it?

It’s a shame to write, but Tom Morrissey didn’t make it – largely through no fault of his own.

The Hornets made quite a fuss of his and Carter’s signing. Like prominent Americans defecting to the USSR, it was a propaganda coup. Of Morrissey it was written that he

…is a big, lusty fellow, who should make his mark in the Northern Union game…He has a splendid reputation as a scrimmager in the West Country.

Rochdale Times, September 4 1912, p7

His height, weight (at 14st, it was noted that he would be heftiest in the Hornets’ squad⁷⁴) and ginger hair would make him an instant hit with the fans, not to mention his aggressive, in-your-face style.

But it didn’t quite work out like that. Getting capped for Cornwall was easier than getting a regular slot for Rochdale’s Chiefs.

Tom’s appearances until spring 1914, by and large, were limited to the ‘A’ team. He couldn’t quite force his way up to the top level. Whenever he did get a chance, such as over Christmas 1912 when Rochdale pulled off a shock victory over St Helens, he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory.

In that particular match, his old Camborne pal Sam Carter scored a nifty try; Tom himself knocked on at a crucial moment⁷⁵.

While Sam flourished, Tom languished in the ‘As’⁷⁶. A chance came in February 1914. A good performance for the ‘As’ against St Helens put him in the running. Hornets Chiefs, having lost heavily on the same day to Barrow, were short for the next game at home to Dewsbury. Tom got the nod. He had to make the most of it⁷⁷.

8,000 spectators turned up to watch what must have been one of the worst games of professional rugby in history, if the reports are to be trusted⁷⁸. A nil-nil draw left the Hornets’ faithful looking very much like the irate gentleman below:

Although Dewsbury lost a player on account of him having some ribs broken, the game is noteworthy for its significance in the story of Tom Morrissey. It was the last game of rugby he ever played.

A knee injury sustained in the match via an opponent’s stud became violently inflamed. Septic poisoning had set in, and Tom required an emergency operation:

…it is a question whether Morrissey will be able to play for a considerable time.

Rochdale Times, March 4 1914, p7

Family history maintains that the presence of arsenic in a weedkiller infected Tom’s knee. Whatever the cause, he was desperately unlucky. The leg was left permanently stiff.

For a time, he remained in the Hornets’ fold, organising and selling match programmes. By 1939, he and his wife, Rita, were living in Moss Street, Rochdale, and Tom was an iron driller with Petrie and McNaught, a job he had been holding since at least 1921⁷⁹.

He visited Cornwall in 1950, and is remembered as a big, yet quietly spoken man.

Tom Morrissey died in 1953, aged 64⁸⁰.

Tom’s rugby career is a classic case of what might have been, on two counts. With the Northern Union, had he secured a regular first team berth, glory awaited. Had he remained in Union, his size, ability up-front and reputation suggest he could have been spoken of today in the same breath as the likes of Camborne and Cornwall legends Gary Harris, Paul Ranford or Chris Durant.

Get Carter

Sam Carter made it. A forward who fancied himself as a threequarter was an object of derision in Cornish rugby⁸¹, but a man with skill and versatility was a welcome asset for Rochdale Hornets.

Carter became a back-row forward in NU, but that was only a starting-point. He could deputise on the wing, at least in his early years⁸². He could scrum. He could tackle. He could pass. He could dribble – an important facet of the game in those days. He had vision. What’s more, he could make it difficult for the opposition. Even late in his career, the man replacing him in a match was judged

…not equal to Carter as a breaker-up and worrier.

Rochdale Times, May 7 1919, p4

A player-profile of the time said he was

…one of the finest loose-forwards…Quick away from the scrums (as visiting half-backs know to their cost)…always quick to sense an opening, often combines with the backs and is a consistent try-getter.

Courtesy Rochdale Hornets Heritage Archive

During what was probably his peak season, 1913-14, he played 38 of 39 fixtures for the Hornets, and was in with a shout of international recognition, if the illustration above is any yardstick⁸³.

Sam is standing, second from the right. Note the broad shoulders, bull neck and lantern jaw – a player in his prime. To his right is Tom Morrissey, in his final season of rugby.

Had international NU matches continued despite the war, it’s arguable that Sam would have been capped by England, such was his form. But here, he was unfortunate⁸⁴.

By the time the Hornets won their first (and to date, only) Challenge Cup in 1922, Sam was 34 and past his best.

However, he was still part of the squad, and played two of the five games of Rochdale’s campaign. This included a 54-2 mauling of Broughton Moor in the first round, and an eyewateringly tight 5-2 quarter-final win over Oldham. This last saw a record gate for a Hornets match – 26,500⁸⁵.

But, for the crunch games, younger and faster men were preferred, such as Tommy Harris and the Cardiff-born Corsi brothers. Before the final versus Hull at Headingley, the Rochdale Times ran profiles of the Hornets’ squad. Sam was described as a versatile player, being

…the safest with his hands of any of the forwards. Has an old head on him which stands him in good stead.

April 26 1922, p7

‘Old head’ sounds worryingly close to ‘veteran’. Sam (like Tom) missed out on Hornets’ glorious – and narrow – 10-9 victory in front of 35,000 spectators⁸⁶.

To be honest, by 1922 Sam was perhaps thinking about life beyond rugby; indeed, he only played 19 games that season⁸⁷. The 1921 Census tells us he was already landlord of the (now long demolished) Golden Fleece on Oldham Road.

Sam, as noted earlier, wasn’t lacking ambition. As he himself said,

…Rochdale had been good to him, and it was his desire to do something for the town of his adoption.

Rochdale Observer, October 26 1932, p4

Thus in 1932 he stood as the Conservative candidate for Rochdale’s Castleton East district. His qualifications were drawn from

…the school of experience, and he considered that that experience fitted him to represent a working class ward.

Rochdale Observer, October 26 1932, p4

He wanted improved hospital services, clean streets, better housing, public baths and unemployment schemes. He opposed the unpopular Means Test⁸⁸ as a tool for men who

…made the misfortunes of the unemployed an excuse for reaping political advantage.

Rochdale Observer, October 29 1932, p6

He lost. Though an immensely popular man with his heart in the right place, politics was perhaps not his game, and Depression-era Rochdale, with 10,000 cotton operatives on strike, not the easiest place to embark on such a career⁸⁹.

A Hornets player-profile noted that Sam was “a general favourite and no wonder”:

…he is a thorough gentleman…Another characteristic is his cheerfulness…

Courtesy Rochdale Hornets Heritage Archive

Sam’s character was put to the test. The 1939 Register notes that he and Bessie were both unemployed, and living in Buersil Avenue. Maybe the time had come for him to return to Cornwall. After all, as of one of an astounding thirty-two siblings, Sam would have plenty of support in the Westcountry⁹⁰.

The Carters took up residence in Treswithian Road, Camborne – the house was named ‘Buersil’. Though out of work in Rochdale, they must have been comfortable. Sam’s estate on his death in 1967 was valued at £4794 (£73K today). Bessie followed him in 1980⁹¹.

Did Sam ever visit his old Union club? Officially, as a one-time professional, he would have been barred and, knowing this, he probably stayed away. Certainly nobody I’ve spoken to from those times remembers him, though a younger brother, James, was a regular spectator.

An old man deserved better, especially one who, to the best of my knowledge, remains the only Camborne player to be capped for Cornwall and win the Rugby League Challenge Cup.

With special thanks to Jim Stringer of the Rochdale Hornets Heritage Archive, Professor Tony Collins, Adrian Wallace (a relative of Sam Carter), and Jean Charman and Reg Bennett (relatives of Tom Morrissey).

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. See my posts on the rivalry here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/09/02/camborneredruth-the-oldest-continual-rugby-fixture-in-the-world-part-one/
2. The Cornish Post and Mining News (April 4 1912, p7) gives it to Redruth. The Cornish Echo (March 15, 1912, p6), plumps for Camborne. Certainly Redruth’s playing record that season was formidable: P30, W24, D3, L3, F518, A79 (Cornish Post and Mining News, April 18 1912, p7). Camborne believed they’d won it at a meeting in September (West Briton, September 12 1912, p5).
3. The main narrative for this section, unless otherwise stated, is from reports in the following newspapers: Royal Cornwall Gazette, April 18 1912, p3; Cornish Post and Mining News, April 18 1912, p7; Western Daily Mercury, April 22 1912, p3; West Briton, April 22 1912, p3, April 29 1912, p4; Cornishman, May 2 1912, p3; Lake’s Falmouth Packet, May 3 1912, p6. The biographical details of Morrissey, Carter and Menhennett, unless otherwise stated, are from the 1911 Census.
4. On signing for Rochdale Hornets, Morrissey’s and Carter’s vital stats were recorded. For the record, Carter was 5ft 9″ and 12st 7lbs. Rochdale Times, September 4 1912, p7. The team photograph that heads this section illustrates how big, for the time, Morrissey was.
5. Noted in the Cornishman, March 29 1912, p3.
6. From the Cornubian and Redruth Times, November 16 1911, p10, and the Rochdale Times, September 4 1912, p7. Carter’s working overseas is mentioned in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 6 1912, p2. Jim Stringer of the Rochdale Hornets Heritage Committee informs me that Sam worked in Bute City and Idaho, and that his earliest playing position in Union was fullback.
7. The three men’s involvement with Cornwall is noted in the Western Times, November 16 1910, p3, and the Western Echo, October 22 1910, p4.
8. Lawry’s Penzance connections are noted in the Western Echo, November 30 1907, p3. For a list of past and present officials of the CRFU, see: https://www.crfu.co.uk/home/officers-patrons/
9. As previously, the main narrative for this section, unless otherwise stated, is from reports in the following newspapers: Royal Cornwall Gazette, April 18 1912, p3; Cornish Post and Mining News, April 18 1912, p7; Western Daily Mercury, April 22 1912, p3; West Briton, April 22 1912, p3, April 29 1912, p4; Cornishman, May 2 1912, p3; Lake’s Falmouth Packet, May 3 1912, p6.
10. For a list of past and present officials of the CRFU, see: https://www.crfu.co.uk/home/officers-patrons/
11. For Vercoe’s connections to Camborne, see: Western Echo, July 5 1913, p3.
12. Cornishman, May 2 1912, p3.
13. For the riots, see: Louise Miskell, “Irish Immigrants in Cornwall: the Camborne Experience, 1861-1882”, in Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds.), The Irish in Victorian Britain: the Local Dimension, Four Courts Press, 1999, p31-51. Morrissey’s family maintain he retaliated swiftly to any expressions of prejudice as regards his Irishness. Certainly he was arrested and fined for fighting on more than one occasion. See: Cornishman, December 31 1908, p5.
14. Noted in the Cornish Post and Mining News, July 4 1912, p5.
15. Regarding the suspension of both men, the CRFU and the RFU were complicit. Camborne RFC appealed to the RFU, but the original ruling was upheld. See the West Briton, May 23 1912, p7.
16. Morrissey had married Rita Tonkin in Camborne earlier that summer. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915, 5c, 314. Their arrival was noted in the Rochdale Times, September 4 1912, p7.
17. See: https://cornwallrlfc.co.uk/news/graham-paul-the-cornish-express/, and https://hullkr.co.uk/graham-paul-calls-it-a-day/
18. For example, The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, by Tom Salmon, CRFU, 1983, or Rugby in the Duchy: An Official History of the Game in Cornwall, by Kenneth Pelmear, CRFU, 1959, and The Story of a Proud Club: Camborne RFC Centenary Programme 1878-1978, by Philip Rule and Alan Thomas, 1977.
19. Those wanting to know why there are two different forms of Rugby Football are directed to the following books by Tony Collins: Rugby’s Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football, Frank Cass, 1998, and A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009, p29-47.
20. For a brief overview of Hill’s career, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Rowland_Hill
21. As observed in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 14 1895, p3.
22. See Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p196-230. The only aspect missing from the modern game of Rugby League was limiting the number of tackles a team in possession of the ball could have. Four tackles was introduced in 1966, and six in 1971. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_rugby_league
23. From: https://orl-heritagetrust.org.uk/player/harry-glanville/, and the Western Morning News, January 28 1950, p8.
24. Harry Edgar, “The Best From the West”, Rugby League Journal, Spring 2005, p22-3. Courtesy Tony Collins.
25. Devon won the title in 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1912; Gloucestershire won in 1910 and 1913; and Cornwall, of course, won in 1908. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Championship_(rugby_union)
26. Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split, p29-66.
27. For more on the tribute mining system, see John Rule, Cornish Cases: Essays in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Social History, Clio, 2006, p98-115. For the story of Cornish migration, see Philip Payton, The Cornish Overseas: The Epic Story of the ‘Great Migration’, Cornwall Editions, 2005.
28. Information from the 1911 census.
29. West Briton, August 17 1911, p6; Cornishman, August 17 1911, p7; Manchester Evening News, December 20 1980, p4 and August 8 1992, p9; Salford City Reporter, 28 April 1994, p87. Injury truncated Launce’s playing career for Salford, though he was still a ticket inspector at the ground until the 1950s: Green Final (Oldham Evening Chronicle Sports Edition), March 8 1958: https://orl-heritagetrust.org.uk/app/uploads/2019/12/greenfinal_1958-03-08.pdf, and https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/the-willows-salford-reds-field-of-dreams-853738
30. From: https://www.thereddevils.net/the-club/the-story-so-far/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Salford_Red_Devils_players
31. Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 30 1900, p3.
32. West Briton, December 2 1920, p4.
33. See: Manchester Evening News, December 1 1920, p3, Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 30 1924, p6, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Harris_(rugby)
34. Cornish Telegraph, December 19 1900, p5.
35. West Briton, December 2 1920, p4.
36. West Briton, June 12 1947, p2.
37. Working-class communities in Wales, by contrast, tended to shun anyone who left to play Rugby League, as the 2018 BBC documentary The Rugby Codebreakers makes clear. Players who switched allegiances between Camborne and Redruth RFC have found themselves ostracised by their original clubs and followers. In fact, the treatment of such men is not dissimilar to that of how the RFU dealt with defectors to the NU. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/09/09/camborneredruth-the-oldest-continual-rugby-fixture-in-the-world-part-two/
38. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gregory_(sportsman)
39. Western Daily Press, January 7 1899, p6.
40. Lake’s Falmouth Packet, May 10 1907, p6.
41. See: West Briton, June 1 1908, p2, and Western Echo, January 16 1909, p3.
42. See: James W. Martens, “They Stooped to Conquer: Rugby Union Football, 1895-1914”, in Journal of Sport History 20:1 (1993), p25-41, and Lake’s Falmouth Packet, February 5 1909, p7.
43. Coventry Herald, October 1 1909, p5, and Lake’s Falmouth Packet, November 26 1909, p2.
44. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jackett, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Davey_(rugby_union). Images from: https://www.trelawnysarmy.org/ta/Pictures/cornwall-team-1908.html. John Jackett’s extraordinary career may be enjoyed here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2024/06/29/in-search-of-john-jackett-king-of-cornish-sport-part-one/
45. Image from: Graham Williams, “How the West Was (Almost) Won!”, in Open Rugby, 51 (1983), p29. Courtesy Tony Collins.
46. George Orwell, “The Road to Wigan Pier” in Orwell’s England, ed. Peter Davison, Penguin, 2001, p57-61. The information on Searle is from the 1911 census, and the England and Wales National Probate Calendar 1858-1995, 1928, p239.
47. Image from: https://www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/mary-evans-prints-online/new-images-august-2021/comic-postcard-marriage-proposal-commercial-23455214.html
48. Unless otherwise stated, the main source of the narrative for this section is: Graham Williams, “How The West Was (Almost) Won!”, Open Rugby 51 & 52, Mar-Apr, 1983, courtesy Tony Collins. I give Searle much more prominence than Williams’ articles. The Western League is also briefly mentioned in: James W. Martens, “They Stooped to Conquer: Rugby Union Football, 1895-1914”, in Journal of Sport History 20:1 (1993), p25-41.
49. As noted in the Portsmouth Evening News, September 7 1912, p2.
50. Images from: https://www.greensonscreen.co.uk/argylehistory.asp?era=1902-1903_2, and https://www.plymouth.gov.uk/astor-park. See also Western Morning News, July 24 1914, p5.
51. Williams, “How the West Was (Almost) Won!”, and the Western Times, May 13 1912, p3.
52. Yorkshire Evening Post, July 26 1912, p3; West Briton, August 1 1912, p3. That Searle was on the committee of the Plymouth NU team is noted in the North Devon Journal, December 5 1912, p3.
53. See: https://www.rugby-league.com/article/23654/joseph-platt-added-to-the-rfl-roll-of-honour
54. Gloucestershire Chronicle, August 17 1912, p9.
55. Western Daily Mercury, August 1 1912, p3; West Briton, February 6 1913, p3.
56. Western Daily Mercury, August 1 1912, p3 and August 10 1912, p3; quote from the West Briton, August 1 1912, p3.
57. Western Echo, August 3 1912, p3. Redruth RFC’s historian Nick Serpell informs me that, on the very same day, Redruth held their AGM. It was stated that they had a received a letter regarding the Western League, but would have nothing to do with the matter.
58. From: Lake’s Falmouth Packet, September 6 1912, p2.
59. From: West Briton, September 2, p3; September 12, p5; September 26, p8. Kresen Kernow, Minutes and Team Selections, Camborne Rugby Club, 1912-1915. Ref: X1280/1/2.
60. Image from: https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/devon/newtonabbot_globe.html
61. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kelly_(rugby_union)
62. From: Western Daily Mercury, September 23 1912, p3.
63. Image from: http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_pubs/rougemont.php
64. Western Times, October 19 1912, p3.
65. See: Western Times, October 19 1912, p3; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, October 21 1912, p4, and December 12, p4; Western Times, December 3 1912, p6; West Briton, December 5 1912, p7; North Devon Journal, December 5 1912, p3.
66. Cornishman, June 3 1913, p4.
67. Graham Williams, “How The West Was (Almost) Won!”, in Open Rugby #52, April 1983, p36. Courtesy Tony Collins.Devon and Exmouth Gazette, January 13 1913, p4.
68. Sporting Life, December 19 1912, p1.
69. Teignmouth Post, April 3 1913, p4.
70. From: Graham Williams, “How The West Was (Almost) Won!”, in Open Rugby #52, April 1983, p36. Courtesy Tony Collins.
71. Quote from the Western Times, June 2 1913, 3. See also: Western Guardian, February 13 1913, p7 and April 17, p3; Wigan Observer, March 4 1913, p3. For a sample of the few matches that were played, see: Western Times, January 20, 27 and February 3 and 10, all page 3; Teignmouth Post, April 3 1913, p4.
72. West Briton, June 12 1947, p2. The report noted that the teams wowed the crowd with their deft handling skills, but felt a proper Cornish rugby fan yearned for a good hard scrummage.
73. Graham Williams makes the assertion in “How The West Was (Almost) Won!”, in Open Rugby #52, April 1983, p36. Courtesy Tony Collins. The CRFU’s stance is noted in Lake’s Falmouth Packet, December 27 1912, p6. Rochdale Hornets played both men in an “A” match in October 1912 whilst the NU was still investigating the circumstances of their Union suspensions. Adopting a holier-than-thou attitude, the NU fined the Hornets £2 (£189 today) for playing men under suspension by another body, and then forgot all about it. From: Rochdale Times, October 9 1912, p5.
74. Hull Daily Mail, September 3 1912, p8.
75. See: Rochdale Times, December 25 1912, p5. Tom’s ‘A’ appearances are noted, for example, in the Wigan Observer, November 5 1912, p3; and the Leigh Chronicle, November 22 1912, p7.
76. In early 1914, whilst Sam was having a star game for the Chiefs, Tom was still plugging away in the second-string outfit. Rochdale Times, January 4 1914, p6.
77. Rochdale Observer, February 11 1914, p5 & 6.
78. Rochdale Observer, February 18 1914, p6; Yorkshire Post, February 16 1914, p4.
79. 1939 Register, 1921 Census.
80. England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index 1916-2007, Vol. 10d, p81.
81. As observed in the Cornubian and Redruth Times, November 16 1911, p10.
82. Rochdale Times, October 20 1915, p4.
83. Sam’s tally of matches for the season is noted in the Rochdale Times, April 15 1914, p7.
84. See Tony Collins’ essay on Northern Union rugby during World War One here: https://tony-collins.squarespace.com/rugbyreloaded/2014/8/5/rugby-league-in-world-war-one
85. From the Rochdale Times, March 1 1922, p6, and March 29, p5 & 6.
86. The Hornets beat Leeds in the second round, and Widnes in the semis. See the Rochdale Times, March 15, p6, April 12, p6, and May 3, p6.
87. Sam’s total appearances are noted in the Rochdale Times, May 3 1922, p6.
88. The Means Test was introduced in 1931 as a means to cut expenditure on dole money. Households were assessed on their ability to support an unemployed member of the family. Many found their benefits reduced on account of their being a child in part-time employment, or a grandparent living in the house rent-free, and caused much social unrest. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z86vxfr/revision/2
89. The Labour candidate observed that, while there may not be a better sportsman that Carter, there were certainly better politicians. See: Rochdale Observer, October 29 1932, p6, and November 2, p5. The strike of the cotton operatives is mentioned on page four of the latter edition of the Observer.
90. Sam’s 1911 census entry makes mention of this remarkable feat in a note, and is confirmed by Adrian Wallace, a relative of Sam.
91. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858-1995, 1968, p73, and 1980, p441.