Sports and Pastimes
This extract is taken from the introduction to Cassell’s
Book of Sports and Pastimes:
“The benefits of athletic and other manly exercises, from
an educational as well as a recreative point of view, are now
very generally recognised. There is no better means of promoting
a healthy action of the body or of bidding defiance to the doctor
than a moderate indulgence in sports and pastimes.”
Throughout the Victorian period, sports and recreation in general
became hugely popular for both men and women. Newly available leisure
time and greater prosperity in the second half of Victoria’s
reign meant that people needed to find activities to fill their
time, and a social world started to develop around sports, paving
the way for today's sport-loving nation. Many of our most famous
football clubs originated around this time, including Aston Villa
and Everton, which were started by churches to attract more visitors,
and Arsenal, which was created by a group of factory employees;
and the FA cup was first played in 1871. Cricket was hugely popular,
and large crowds gathered to see the Grace brothers play in a celebrated
test match between England and Australia in 1880 (England won).
Some sports were restricted to the wealthy, like hunting or shooting,
but almost everyone could afford to cycle. The bicycle, made widely
available between 1870-90, allowed people to travel outside of cities
at weekends to the countryside beyond, and to form cycling clubs.
These trends were officially encouraged because “not only
are these exercises of supreme importance in maintaining a vigorous
state of health in our boys, they have also a peculiar and decided
value in what may be called a moral sense.”
However, this sense of morality and fair play, which football in
particular was thought to promote, was perhaps a little hopeful:
free kicks and penalty shootouts were introduced (in 1877 and 1891
respectively) to stop cheating! Many sports like boxing, cricket
and football, had been around in one form or another for centuries,
but the Victorians applied strict and sometimes bizarrely detailed
rules to all, refining them into the games we know today.
You can find out about the games your ancestors may have enjoyed
in the free downloads below from Cassell’s Book of Sports
and Pastimes. Some of the sports you will recognise, although the
rules may have changed somewhat; others are very different and some
you may not have heard of! And if you’ve ever wondered how
to ride a penny-farthing bicycle, you can find out by clicking the
bicycling link.
All the documents are in Adobe .pdf format and you will need the
free Adobe Reader. If you haven’t already got it, you can
download it free of charge by clicking on this link:
Free Downloads
If you have Adobe Reader set to open within your browser, simply
click the link. Alternatively, right-click the link, choose ‘Save
As...’ and save it to your hard disk for viewing.
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