592. Mad Victorian Sport

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Café Bustelo está aquí. Some years since, the feat of walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours was considered next to an impossibility.
But here, we have to record the wonder doubled. This has been accomplished on the Surrey Cricket Ground, Kennington Oval, by Richard Manx, whose feats of walking present instances of the capability and endurance of the human frame altogether unparalleled.
Manx commenced this feat on Friday, the 26th of last September, but, being suddenly attacked with diarrhea, he was compelled to give up on the Monday following, after having walked 129 miles. His surgeon ordered Manx to rest for a time, to recruit his health and strength.
This the pedestrian reluctantly yielded to, and for a fortnight he remained under medical treatment. On Friday the 10th of October, he recommenced his great task.
Starting for the first mile at four o'clock in the afternoon, on he went, full of spirit, completing his first hundred miles at 43 minutes 15 seconds after five o'clock in the afternoon, on he went, full of spirit, completing his first hundred miles at

43 minutes 15 seconds after five o'clock on Sunday evening the 12th of October, his second 100 miles at 44 minutes 10 seconds past seven o'clock on Tuesday the 14th of October, and finally, after completing another 799 miles,

going for his thousandth mile at half past 11 o'clock on Friday morning, October the 31st, Manx has been heard to declare that never again will he attempt such a frightful feat. So that was the Illustrated London News, November 1851.
And Tom, it is recording one of the supreme feats in the history of sport. A triumph over adversity, over adverse conditions, over the landscape, and over diarrhea.
It's a feat that deserves to live in the legends of sport, but has been almost completely forgotten tragically it has and i like to think that the rest of history is nothing if not a vehicle for resurrecting great sporting feats that have been forgotten and i think obviously one of the reasons why it's been forgotten is it did happen a very long time ago so it happened before the first olympics of the the modern era in Athens in 1896, before the establishment here in England of the Football League in 1888, before the founding of professional baseball in the United States way back in 1869. So, I mean, that's a very good reason why Richard Manx is no longer a household name.
But I guess it's also because the sporting field in which he established

himself as the GOAT, the greatest of all time, namely pedestrianism. I mean, it no longer exists.
Nobody, you don't see pedestrianism on Sky Sports. No, no, but people still walk.
They do, but they're not doing it as part of a very complicated sporting infrastructure, are they? No, they're not. And in that, it's unlike other sports that were starting to flourish in the early 19th century in Britain.
So horse racing, I mean, that's been going on for a long time. Cricket, that dates back to the 17th century.
Boxing, again, a very long history. But sadly, pedestrianism hasn't made it into the modern era so it might in that sense seem a kind

of you know historical artifact yeah but i think the reason for zooming in on this topic is that

his incredible feat at the kennington oval in 1851 even as it reminds us of a sporting world

that we have lost i think it is also anticipating the future And you can see lots of ways in which it anticipates the future in that report that you read from the Illustrated London News. So the fact that the report exists at all, right? So we did a story, lots of listeners will remember one of the great episodes we did on history's greatest monkeys.
And we covered another sporting fixture, which was the encounter between jacko macaco and puss the dog in the westminster pit and that was a window into the unknowability of the past because there weren't really reliable newspaper reports of what happened in this great sporting encounter but here you know we have a very detailed report with very very precise timings yes perhaps overly precise yes exactly 43 minutes and 15 seconds after five o'clock but the thing is that's what people love in sport isn't it of course it is the statistics plus the media plus the reportage that's key to the sporting phenomenon isn't it it absolutely is and also i think the other thing that points to the future is the way that innovations have been introduced at this great sporting occasion to boost attendance, to get spectators in through the turnstiles. So one of these is reported not in the Illustrated London News, but in another paper covering this occasion, the Morning Advertiser.
And the journalist writes, a number of variegated lamps have been placed in the most conspicuous parts of the course and one placed on each of the stakes that hold the ropes that form the ring and these are set up on the final night where manx is approaching the finishing line because so many people want to come and see it and obviously he's walking through the night yeah and it's dark i'm just going to go on record here people say there's no such thing as progress in history, but a world in which people would get up in the middle of the night to watch a man basically walking down the road is demented. Absolutely.
I mean, it is progress because, to quote the sports journalist Dominic Utton, who's written a fascinating article on this, these lamps made Max's display of pedestrianism on the final night of his great feat at the Oval, the world's first floodlit sporting event. Wow.
You know, and all of this contributes to the buzz. Yeah.
So by the time that Manx finally gets to cross the finishing line, the Oval is absolutely full to capacity. All 3,000 seats, 3,000 seats, incredible.
And there are massive, massive queues outside. All the streets around the Oval are kind of filled to overflowing.
It's the talk of London. I can't help thinking a lot of those people are going to be disappointed.
But they're not, though. I mean, that's the thing.
The sense of occasion is incredible. And I think that's precisely what makes it such a kind of pivotal moment in the history of sport, that it's midway between between the future a future with floodlight sporting occasions and press coverage and all of that but also a past that reaches way way back into the pre-modern world and i know you're passionate about this particular sporting venue so the oval in itself is a harbinger of what's to come isn't it because it's it's the ancestor in some ways, or it's an ancestor of the sports stadiums, you know, Villa Park, Molyneux, the great stadiums of football or crickets or American football or baseball or whatever it might be.
Yeah. So the Oval had been founded six years earlier in 1845 in Kennington, which is in South London.
And it's catering to the southern reaches of London, which by this point is the world's largest city, in the same way that another and even older cricket ground, namely Lourdes, caters to its northern reaches. And these two grounds are physical emblems of sport as a new kind of entertainment, an industrial form of entertainment, because it is serving an industrial megalopolis.
So London is sprawling, it's rich, it's teeming with inhabitants. And these inhabitants, lots of them now, are consumers who have both the time and the money to sit down and watch a man walk around a field.
Yeah. As well as a host of other occasions.
So it reflects the development of leisure as much as anything else. And also suburbanism, right? Because these are effectively what would then have been called suburban grounds.
Yes. And that's interesting because Kennington is now a suburb of London.
It's being absorbed into the kind of the mass of the city. But previously, it had been a common, which is a vast expanse of open public land.
That's why it's called a common. Because it was close to London, it had provided Londoners with a place of public recreation.
It's where you would go out to breathe fresh air. And the recreation you could find there included sports of all kinds.

And as London expands and the common starts to vanish beneath brick, the Oval is founded to ensure that there would be at least some open ground where people could continue to play cricket or, as we will see, football as well. And in that sense, the Oval is not just looking forward to the future.
It is a reminder of the role that commons had played in providing recreation for people in England and indeed other countries as well. And these are kind of forms of entertainment that reach back to the medieval past.
So there may be some listeners who are sort of thinking, oh gosh, I wish they were doing, you know, the War of the Spanish Succession or something, because sport isn't really history. But of course, sport is history.
It's part of the texture of life for millions of people who were here before us. And this week, we've got a guest coming on, haven't we? Robert Coles, who is going to be talking about boxing.
And he's written a brilliant book, This Sporting Life. And he makes the point, doesn't he, that historians, perhaps because they're often quite nerdy people, they tend to neglect sport or to slightly condescend to it when they write about it.
They don't treat it with the importance that it deserves as a kind of specimen of social history. You agree with him, don't you? Because obviously you've written about sport in the Greek and Roman worlds or chariot racing, I guess, in Constantinople.
Yeah, I think that what people do in their leisure time is fascinating. And sport in the modern world is such a huge part of people's lives, but it's also a huge part of the global economy.
I mean, it's absolutely become a way for not just individuals anymore, but entire states to project their prestige and their power. So I think the story of how that has emerged is really significant.
And so in that spirit, why don't we try and place this great feat of Richard Manx at the Oval in its proper historical context? I'd love that. We can do that first by looking at the history of pedestrianism, this kind of mad sounding sport, now pretty much forgotten, but one that was a topic of obsessional interest in the first half of 19th century Britain.
It becomes a complete national obsession. And then by looking at the significance of the venue where he does this feat, this incredible achievement of walking a thousand miles in 500 consecutive half hours, so namely the Oval, why was it built where it was and how did it subsequently influence the development of professional sport as we would recognize it today?

Sounds brilliant.

And I think that answering these questions, I hope, will make the case for the Oval as perhaps one of, if not the most historically significant of all modern sports grounds.

Kind of the prototype for so much that follows.

Okay.

But Stephanie up there with the ground that invented European football, which is let us start with pedestrianism though so you compare it in your notes with boxing and cricket so a sport that is basically born of the 18th century

obsession with gambling yes so people are betting money on people walking around a track or down the street or whatever, which seems mad, but we know that the Georgians love to bet. So that's actually pretty plausible.
Yeah. And the thing is that it's something that appeals both to the upper classes, to the very highest echelons of society and to the vast mass of people.
And actually foot races, so not people running but just walking have been a feature of kind of fairs and public celebrations since at least the restoration back in the 17th century oh they knew how to have fun they really did the merry monarch nothing but fun but noblemen were better on these right absolutely so it's completely part of the climate of aristocratic gambling. So it's not just happening in fairs.
It's happening in the kind of gentlemen's clubs where you go to give talks about yourself. So in the 18th century, famously, this saw kind of aristocrats in their clubs bet on all kinds of mad things.
So would a pigeon leave a window ledge within a given time? Yeah. Or perhaps the most notorious one, there's a bet that one of the gamblers would be able to have sex, and I quote, in a balloon 1,000 yards from the earth.
Right. So these are the kind of things, oh dear, I've just lost Shropshire, that kind of thing.
Yeah. Because the pigeon has flown off or his lordship hasn't managed to get in the hot air balloon with a strumpet.
All of that. But they will use their servants, won't they? So is that right they'll race their footmen yes and again this reaches back to the restoration so samuel peeps of course i mean he loves his pleasures and so he's a big enthusiast for footman racing so on the 30th of july 1663 he reports how the town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot race run this day on banster downs between lee the duke of richmond's footman and a tailor a famous runner and lee has beat him though the king and duke of york and all men almost did bet three or four to one upon the tailor's head so the king the duke of york i mean you know doesn't get higher than that wow and so this is an enthusiasm that runs through the 17th century through the 18th century, into the Napoleonic Wars.
And in the fight against France, the fight against Napoleon, the craze for gambling on foot races starts to merge with something else that we've talked about a lot in connection, say, with Nelson. And this is a relish for displays of heroic manliness.
Right. And people believe that you can prove your mannerness by walking.
Is that right? Yes, they do. They do.
And when you contemplate the feats that are achieved, I mean, you'd see why. So the guy who blazes the path for this emerging sport of pedestrianism in the first decade of the 19th century is a Scotsman called Robert Barclay olodyce and he, and he's universally known as Captain Barclay.
And he comes from a very old and distinguished Scottish family. He's a descendant, I think, of a cousin of the founder of Barclay's Bank.
He's a military man, so hence Captain Barclay. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and he is an archetypal sportsman.
So when he's not off serving with His Majesty's Army, he is training and supporting boxers and himself engaging in boxing. But his main claim to fame is his stunning feats of what come to be called pedestrianism.
And he seems to kind of have worked up to this by every so often doing some kind of mad feat. So in 1801, it's a very, very muddy day.
Right. And he thinks, oh, mud, brilliant.
There's a challenge. And so he walks 110 miles in under 19 and a half hours along these muddy lanes just to show that he can do it.
I'm going to go on record. I don't believe you could guarantee that all 110 miles would be muddy.
I think you could talk up the mud, but I believe that parts of that track would be just less muddy. Okay, Dominic.
That's the bracing scepticism for which you are renowned. Yeah.
1805. I don't know whether you're going to be sceptical about this.
He has his breakfast and then he thinks, I'll go for a walk. He walks 72 miles and then he sits down for dinner.
No, I believe that because I'm doing something similar because I'm walking around the Welsh coast, as you know, with my mates, James and Tim from school.

And how far have you got with that?

A lot of miles, a lot of miles.

We started in the top North Wales,

which is quite grim, if I'm completely honest.

In about 2040, we'll be in the nice bit

with all the beaches and stuff.

But we're doing absolutely Herculean feeds.

People are very welcome to come and watch.

I'd love that, actually.

I mean, maybe you could sell the rights to some sporting channel. Why have Goldhanger not snapped us up? Mad.
Yeah. So you and Captain Barkley both absolute heroes of pedestrianism.
And it's in 1809 that Captain Barkley really puts his name on the map. So this is a feat that rings down the ages.
the times cover gives a full report to it and it happened on the 12th of july 1809 the times report runs two days later on the 14th of july and it comes from a circuit at newmarket so here is the times the gentleman on wednesday completed his arduous pedestrian undertaking to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours at the rate of a mile in each and every hour. He had until four o'clock p.m.
to finish his task, but he performed his last mile in the quarter of an hour after three with perfect ease and great spirit amidst an immense concourse of spectators. So pluck and spectators, everything that you'd want in a sporting occasion.
Let me just work this out. He started this on the 1st of June and he finished it on the 12th of July.
So for 42 days, he walked every hour of every day. Surely even the most obtuse listener will have spotted some potential drawbacks when does he eat when does he sleep when does he go to the toilet how does that work so what he does is he walks back to back miles so he he will walk a mile at the end of one hour and then carry on into the next hour which then kind of frees up time so he has kind of 90 minute intervals where he could go to the toilet or snatch a few few minutes sleep so he walks in every hour but he doesn't walk for the whole hour basically no so he has to walk a mile every hour right and then once he's done it then he can have a rest the sleep is a big issue i think he has kind of 90 minute bursts where he can have sleep and then he gets woken up for 42 days.
That's bonkers. Yeah.
I mean, it's tough. And this is why it's so celebrated.
And it features on, you know, in all the newspapers alongside kind of news of British victories and the Peninsular War and so on. And in fact, the maddest thing of all is that five days after he's completed this walk, Captain Barclay is sailing with his regiment for the Low Countries.
And it goes disastrously wrong. but captain barclay is sailing with his regiment for the low countries and it goes disastrously wrong but captain barclay continues to be hailed as a kind of absolute model of british manhood and proof that even though the british army may not be able to defeat the french in the sporting fields of the low countries we could outwalk them we can absolutely outwalk them because this is not something the French are getting up to.
No, of course not. So a great cause of patriotic pride.
But also, Captain Barclay, you're presenting him as this sort of selfless incarnation of British manhood. But am I not right in saying he's making a lot of money from this? Well, I don't think that that diminishes his pluck and manhood.
OK. But yes, he's very, very well remunerated.
And again, the Times covers this. Fascinating.
This also is a way in which it seems so modern that the sporting feats are celebrated, but there is an obsessive interest in how much money is being generated. So the Times puts it, Captain Barclay had a large sum depending upon his undertaking.
The aggregate of the bets is supposed to amount to £100,000. I mean, that's a lot of money at the time.
And so it's not surprising that in the years that follow Barclay's great feat, there are lots of pedestrianists who attempt not just to emulate it, but to surpass it. So in 1815, you have an Essex man named Josiah Eaton, who goes just that little bit better than Barclay by undertaking a walk of 1,100 miles in 1,100 hours.
And he does this going round and round Blackheath, which is a common in Southeast London. And he completes that on Boxing Day.
And it must have been scheduled because they would have worked out when he would finish it. And this, again, is a pointer to the great British tradition of sport on Boxing Day.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

And indeed in Australia, so football and cricket.

Yeah.

And then the sport goes from strength to strength, doesn't it?

So by the late 1830s, you're really into a golden age of pedestrianism.

1838, the golden year of pedestrian feats.

So that year, you have one pedestrian who walks 1,250 miles in successive 1,000 hours.

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cricket there's a bit like cricket there's A bit like cricket, there's quite a lot of maths involved in pedestrianism. Then another succeeds in walking 1,500 miles in 1,000 hours.
And then later in the year, he completes 1,750 miles in 1,000 hours. So in other words, you're having less and less time to complete your miles.
But it is Richard Manx in 1851, this extraordinary feat, who passes the ultimate test. So Dominic, who is Richard Manx, this great forgotten British sportsman? So people know that actually there are two great sporting heroes in British history.
One is Steve Bull, Wolverhampton Wanderers, who was from the West Midlands. And Richard Manx, there's no coincidence, is also from the West Midlands.
He's a bricklayer, isn't he, from Solid Hull. And the bricklaying is key to this, isn't it? Yeah.
People say that basically he's used to toiling for hours and hours. Yeah.
And bricklaying has given him tremendous endurance, stamina and strength. Yes.
And before he takes up pedestrianism, he's been a runner, a middle distance runner, then a long distance runner. And he ends up with a splendid nickname of the Warwickshire Antelope, which is actually red.
I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, Dominic, before, but my great uncle, Charles Holland. Yeah.
I was an Olympic cyclist and was known as the Midlands Rocket so another Midlands athlete yeah I think this is about the 40th time on the podcast but it's lovely to have him back well we've got Steve Bull my great uncle and and Richard Manx and so Richard Manx enters the history books of pedestrianism in 1851 this is his Annus marie balis so in june that year he goes to a cricket club in sheffield and i will quote derrick martin who's written a great book on this a short history of the barclay match so the barclay match is you know the thing that he established and again apologies there's quite a lot of maths here so this is what he does in sheffield he'd walk a thousand quarter miles in a thousand consecutive quarter hours i.e 250 miles in 10 days and 10 hours then immediately a thousand half miles in a thousand consecutive half hours i.e 500 miles in 20 days and 20 hours dominic's face followed immediately by a conventional barclay match i.e that is the thousand miles in a thousand consecutive hours. And this would amount in all to the monumental

total of 1,750 miles in 72 days and 22 hours. And as if this were not enough, he would begin

walking his quarter miles at the beginning of each quarter hour, the half miles on the half hour and

the miles on the hour. So in other words, he is going beyond what Barclay had done.
He's not giving

himself time to have lengthy sleeps or anything. When he's doing the quarter miles i mean you know he's having to snap five minute ten minute snatches of sleep so really tough i have to say the reporting of this reminds me of baseball or indeed cricket tom as in it's obsessed with stats and it sucks all the joy out of this swashbuckling sport.
Well, obviously opinions on that will differ, but this is, this is why he's building up to the ultimate challenge, which is what he does at the Oval. He has to walk a thousand miles in a thousand half hours.
I.e. has to walk a thousand miles in 500 hours.
Right. So that's unbelievably demanding.
A thousand miles in 500 hours. I mean, actually, when you think about it, walking a thousand miles is is bonkers.
I mean, any time. But to do it in 500 hours.
Yeah. And this is a massive sporting deal, right? This is a massive public occasion.
People in London are obsessed with this, are genuinely obsessed with it. I think it is seen as being the Everest of pedestrianism.
Once it's been scaled, no one will ever be able to kind of rival it. And people must have been really looking forward to it.
Like, will Messi ever win the World Cup? It's that kind of thing, right? Will Manx pull off this amazing feat? Yes, the sense of occasion is absolutely massive. And as with any kind of great sporting event, the details are kind of lovingly preserved and cherished and become part of sporting folklore.
So things like, you know, what is he eating while he's doing this? So the London Illustrated News reports, he ate around 10 times each day, a diet of game and poultry, roast beef, mutton and chops, washed down with strong beef tea. Old ale was his favorite restorative.
While through the night, he drank tea fortified with brandy. Then there are kind of occasional moments where he seems to to wobble perhaps on the verge of giving up so the 28th october it rains all day and it's reported that this gets him down the following day somebody goes to wake him up after he's snatched you know five minutes sleep and he wakes up and punches the guy in the face he's so angry and upset and then on the final day of the walk it's reported at half past two o'clock on friday morning so dead of night he refused to rise cried like a child and said to the timekeeper i shall walk no more asking do you want to kill me but at length he was induced to persevere unto the finish that's mad that on the last day he's obviously a broken man by that point I mean that's it

that's mad that on the last day he thought of dropping out he's obviously a broken man by that point i mean that's it that's why it's such a great sport dominic you know will he do it will he manage it will he get up will you punch someone in the face he's been doing it for 999 miles and then another thousand he says actually i've enough. I wish I'd never started.
But that's precisely the tension. And you know, the maddest thing of all, and this is noted by Dominic Hutton, Manx completes his 1,000th mile.
You know, it's been measured out around the outfield of the Oval. And then it gets properly measured.
And they discover that he'd actually walked 12 miles further than he'd needed to. Oh, my word.

Imagine, you'd be gutted, wouldn't you? I mean, thank God it wasn't 12 miles less. Yeah, that would have been terrible.
That would have been terrible. So a huge success for Richard Manx.
But it's also a great success for the ground that staged it, the Oval. Okay.
Because it's generated massive media and public interest. It's generated massive crowds.
and above all and the most important thing from the perspective of the consortium that owns the ground is generated massive amounts of cash right and his feat of pedestrianism is drawing on traditions of spectacle and gambling that reach back hundreds of years on kennington common. But of course, as we've said, it's also looking forward to this new era of stats and professionalism and the monetization of what is increasingly coming to be thought of as organized sport.
And Dominic, you've heard me say it before. You're about to hear me say it again.
I think there is no stadium in the world that better illustrates how we went from kind of pre-modern entertainments to modern sport than the Oval. And that's why in the second half, I hope you will allow me to stress test that proposition.
Okay, so join us after the break when Tom considers one of the most intriguing questions in all history. This episode is brought to you by The Long Walk, which is out in cinemas on the 12th of September.
This is an adaptation of Stephen King's very first book. He wrote it in 1967, when the Vietnam War was tearing America apart and thousands of American boys were being conscripted to fight in the war.
And he it in 1979 and the premise is brutally simple you have 50 boys and basically you just have to keep walking and if you stop then you get shot and the whole reason for doing it is that at the end if you are the one boy who survives then you get untold riches but of course to get these riches you have to outwalk the other 49 so it's directed by francis lawrence who is behind several films in the hunger game series and it stars the bafta rising star david johnson it stars cooper hoffman and of course my favorite actor mark hamill who supports wolfampton wanderers so you can watch the long walk exclusively in cinemas from the 12th of september and you can book tickets at the long walk movie.co.uk this episode is brought to you by indeed now speed can be very very important at times yeah speed's massively important tom a great inspiration for me is the battle of capes and vincent in 1797 when horatio nelson really made his name he went out of the line to attack the spanish his ship got entangled with a spanish ship he jumped onto the spanish ship and captured it and then he realized they become entangled with a second spanish ship and he leapt onto the next spanish ship captured that one as well a tremendous example of quick thinking, saving the day. And if you're hiring, it's also important to act fast.
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Visit Disney Plus Hulu HBO Max Bund bundle plans starting at 16.99 a month all these and more streaming soon visit disney plus hulu hbo max bundle.com for details an affectionate remembrance of english cricket which died at the oval on the 29th of august 1882 deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, R.I.P. N.B., the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.
So, Tom, that's the most famous obituary in sporting history, and it was published in the Sporting Times on the 2nd of September, 1882. And I know you're a big cricket fan.
There are none bigger. So would you like to explain to our more sceptical listeners, especially our American listeners, what on earth is going on? So it commemorates a humiliating defeat of the England national cricket team by the Australian national cricket team four days earlier at the Oval.
And it's that phrase, the ashes will be taken to Australia that will have an enduring afterlife because the following winter, the England national cricket team go to Australia and the captain vows before he leaves England that he's going to recover those ashes. And the notion that England and Australia, whenever they play each other at cricket, are competing for the Ashes very rapidly catches on.
And today the Ashes remain probably the most celebrated, the most enduring international rivalry in cricket, if actually not all sports. So the Ashes will be competed for later this year in Australia.
And it all begins at the Oval, which is hardly surprising because of course the Oval was founded as a cricket ground and it remains one to this day. But your scepticism would be justified if I was merely talking about cricket, but I'm not because the impact the Oval has on the evolution of professional sport is not confined to cricket.
So we've seen the role that it played in pedestrianism, in the career of Richard Manx, the Warwickshire Antelope. But of course, pedestrianism fades away, perhaps because once Richard Manx has completed that feat, there's nowhere for the sport to go.
But the Oval provides a stage not just for cricket, but also for two sports that in the second half of the 19th century are exploding in popularity and are destined to have a much brighter future than pedestrianism and Dominic the first of these is a sport that you are particularly fond of yeah it's football association football so obviously people have been playing football various kinds of football for a long time but there's a great vogue isn't there in the middle of the 19th century codifying games. And this is really born out of another subject we've done on the rest of this history, which is public schools, boarding schools.
So in 1863, a group of, I think they're largely ex-public schoolboys had gathered to codify the rules of association football, as it was called. So that's why Americans call it soccer.
Basically so that people who'd been to different schools and had learned slightly different rules of the game could have a nationally standardized version of the game and then of course it really takes off and then the other game rugby union so famously emerges at rugby school hence the name and the thing there was that the boys who played football there since the 1830s have been picking up the ball which is obviously in association football you're not allowed to do unless you're the goalkeeper and the backstory here is that picking up the ball had been outlawed in those football association rules so some of the clubs had broken away and the schism between the two codes association football and rugby football was formalized in 1871 by the foundation of the rfu the rugby football union so basically now you have what was originally one sport turning into two and of course rugby will then divide even further and so from the ovals point of view i guess this is wonderful because they have codified sports that actually not just rich and well-connected boarding school boys but also vast crowds of working men are very enthusiastic about, which means a lot of opportunities for charging ticket prices. Yes, and for staging not just kind of local sporting events, but international ones.
And the mad thing is that England against Australia at cricket is not the first international sports fixture to be staged at the Oval. Because in fact, by 1880, which is when the first cricket international test matches, as they're called, to be played in England is staged at the Oval, the ground has already hosted internationals in both football and rugby.
It has also hosted athletics meetings. And even in 1889, it goes on to host a baseball between the chicago white stockings and an all-american team and this is big big news in london loads of celebrities come to watch it the prince of wales turns up wg grace who's this huge kind of barrel chested hirsute cricketer one of the most famous men in late victorian england they all go but inevitably this being england it gets rained off of course it does and sadly baseball doesn't really take off as a result so of course the oval is a cricket ground but it's absolutely not just a cricket ground and you know in the mid 19th century this lack of specialization is reflecting kind of two influences and one is its roots in the pre-industrial culture of kennington common which plays host to every kind of conceivable sport but it's also a reflection of the fact that its owners want to make as much money as possible and that of course is looking forward to today's culture of hyper professional sport so let's start by looking backwards.
So you said the pre-industrial culture of Kennington Common.

So Kennington common so kennington kinnington the king's estate basically the king's farm or whatever so it had belonged to the crown we know that edward the third gave it to friend of the rest his history the black prince in the 14th century and from that point onwards it had traditionally belonged to the heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales.

Yes.

So it has a kind of very strong royal connection, but it's also set amid the people's open

space.

So it's a common, an area where tenants of kind of various manors, including the Prince

of Wales is at Kennington, have a right to pasture their animals.

And anyone familiar with London, particularly South London, will know that it's covered with commons. So Clapham Commons, Streatham Commons, Wimbledon Commons, so on.
But the thing about Kennington is that of all the commons, it's the closest to the City of London and to Westminster. And over the course of the 17th and then into the 18th century, the City of London and Westminster are kind of congealing and conjoining to become one vast urban sprawl.
And as a result of that, by the 18th century, Kennington Common is becoming the place where people from Westminster and the city are going to play sport. So you have the earliest recorded cricket match there is 1724, and it's London against Dartford, of course, the home of Mick Jagger, great cricket fan.
So that's good to know. But it's also the home throughout the 18th century of a very famous sports club called the Gymnastics Society, which despite its name, actually, it organises wrestling, but is best known as a football club.
And in fact, is often described by football historians as the first football club to be organised as such on a kind of coherent basis. And there's another sport, isn't there, that's played there, which is the regular encounters between criminals and the hangman.
Yes. Isn't that right? Yeah, and this is kind of viewed as, I mean, it's not exactly a sport, but it's certainly an entertainment similar to sport.
But if you think about a spectrum, Tom, of public spectacles and cricket is at one end and, you know, bull baiting or cock fighting is at the other. Public executions do kind of sit on that spectrum a bit because they're big spectacles and there's lots of hawkers and people selling pies and kids go and all of this.
So it is part of that world. Yes.
Yes. And it means that the place where the gallows is situated is very strongly associated with public assemblies and people having fun.
And the gallows stands on what today is St. Mark's Church, directly outside what is now the Oval Tube Station on one side, and on the other side, Goldhanger Towers.
Yeah, the offices of our production company. Our production company.
They would have been able to look out of the window and watch people being hanged yeah so it would have been great fun whereas now theo can watch us executing history on zoom or whatever very good so it's basically the south london equivalent of tyburn hill what's now marble arch and the most celebrated highwaymen to be hanged there do have something of the status of great sporting heroes. There are people who display great charisma, great self-confidence, great self-control.
And the most famous of all is a guy called Jerry Abashore, who was a very notorious highwayman, absolute lad, who is hanged there in 1795. And so someone records his progress to the gallows a bit like they're describing i don't know a batsman going to the wicket or something he kept up an incessant conversation with the persons who rode beside the car frequently laughing and nodding to others of his acquaintances whom he perceived in the crowd which was immense so you can imagine him kind of pointing to them and giving thumbs up and up.
And then after his death, he's hung in chains on a gibbet on Wimbledon Common. So he's the last highwayman to suffer this fate.
And it's meant to be a humiliation. But in a sense, it's a marker of his fame.
You know, this is someone who people want to go and see even once he's dead. But sadly for fans of public hangings, the age of executions as entertainment starting to pass and the last execution on kennington common takes place in 1799 and this is partly for kind of squeamish hand-wringing woke reasons right but it's also because kennington common is increasingly vanishing beneath brick and so people start to worry that not only hangings but also opportunities to do wrestling and football and cricket and so on will vanish completely from this great public area of congregation for people from london and this is why local businessmen spot an opportunity so in march 1845 a consortium headed by a chemist from Brixton Hill, I'm proud to say

where I live, and this is a guy called William Houghton, they buy the lease for a new cricket

ground on Kennington Common. And they call it the Oval because there is a river called the Ephra,

which is now completely culverted and covered up, but it curves. And so the Oval is situated

in that curve and it forms an Oval. It's not a great area, very, very smelly.
So there's a report that it's in a most ruinous condition and from the effluvium arising from decayed vegetables, a nuisance and a source of ill health. So they have to bring in 10,000 lumps of turf from Tutankhamun, kind of cover up this rotting vegetation.
And the other problem with Oval is that Houghton, this chemist from Brixton Hill, turns out to be involved in all kinds of dodgy real estate deals. And this is the guy who books the pedestrianism event, Manx's Great Feet.
Makes lots of money, but not enough. And by 1854, he's in such financial problems that he essentially has to hand the consortium over to his brother.
And the following year, he declares bankruptcy. And the risk is that his financial misadventures will drag down the oval.
It will have to be sold off to developers. And there will be nowhere for people in Kennington to have sport at all.
And that's a very familiar story to anybody who follows sport today. To our American listeners, the listeners you know the way that nfl franchises move from city to city and there's always arguments about the stadiums and whatnot so what happens so it doesn't get sold off local enthusiasts again a very familiar story you know effectively local fans step in to save the the ground yes if these are members of what's called the surrey.
And these are basically the people who organised cricket clubs across the county of Surrey, which Kennington is a part of. And in 1845, so that's the same year that Houghton had set up the Oval, a hundred of these members from these various cricket clubs meet in a pub around the corner from the Oval.
And the Sunday Times reports what happened, that it was proposed to form a cricket club for the county of Surrey, the objects of which would mainly be to seek out and to bring together the playing strength of the county with a view of placing Surrey in the prominent position it had for many years in days long since past held in the cricket world. So this is a kind of classic Victorian manoeuvre.
You've got sports enthusiasts meeting in pubs founding clubs drawing up rules and as with the guys who meet to draw up the fa football association yeah yeah so with these guys meeting in the pub round from the oval it's not just that they set up a cricket club for surrey in the long run surrey will become part of a broader championship, a county championship. So counties playing cricket across England, which is still going strong to this day.
So this is the kind of the popular end of sport, the sense of local fans, local organizers, people who have a commitment to their local club. But there is also something that will also be very familiar

to people who follow sport today,

which is the engagement of those who are very, very well connected,

very rich, and in lots of cases,

thinking of certain football clubs today, actually royal.

So in the case of the Oval back in the mid-Victorian period,

I mean, it couldn't be more Victorian

because the person who also steps in to save the Oval is none other than the husband of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert. And he is acting on behalf of the young Prince of Wales, so the future Edward VII, who is the landlord of the Oval, ultimately.
And Prince Albert refuses to allow the Oval to be sold to developers. And he gives his backing to the Sur Surrey committee and it's this that enables them in 1845 when it looks as though the oval will have to be sold to step in and take over control of the ground and is this because the future edward the seventh is a big cricket fan i mean prince albert presumably doesn't give a damn about cricket no he doesn't particularly and nor does prince albert but i think they see it as prince albert's a great enthusiast for manliness and outdoor activities and all that kind of thing and he thinks that it would be good for the working masses to have this ground fresh air yeah yeah and to this day the prince of wales is the oval's landlord so prince william is the landlord of the oval even though obviously he'd rather i think be the landlord of villa park than the than the Oval.
He knows a lot about football, actually. There was an interview with him.
Tom, dare I say, I think he knows a tiny bit more than you do. Well, he hangs out on Aston Villa kind of Reddit groups and fan forums and so on.
Does he? Yeah, he does. He's very, very knowledgeable.
Right. I think less interested in cricket, although the badge of Surrey is the three feathers that is the badge of the Prince of Wales, which ultimately comes from the Black Prince and his great feet at the Battle of Cressy.
So the saving of the oval, and indeed the creation of the oval at all, you could see sort of stepping back. It's part of a wider process, isn't it? Not just in sport, actually, but in Victorian social and leisure life generally, which is all about codifying, structuring, professionalizing, kind of taming the disruptive energies of things and sort of streamlining them and sorting them all out.
And once you've got grounds and you've got clubs, I mean, the Victorians love a club, but once they've got clubs, they then love a league, don't they, or a cup competition. We're very familiar with that now, and we take it for granted, but granted but they basically invent that model yes because once you have leagues and cups it's not just a matter of arranging one-off matches or sporting events yeah you can have kind of continuous income flow because you have match after match after match and it's all kind of predicated right and this today is the infrastructure that professional sport completely depends upon and as you, we take it for granted.
But to Victorian sports entrepreneurs in the second half of the 19th century, I mean, it's like stumbling on a gold mine. No one had ever thought of doing this before.
And suddenly they're thinking, brilliant, we could just make so much money here. And so I think it's not surprising that the administrators at the Oval, which effectively is the first great sports ground to have transformed itself into a business, so much more overtly say than Lords, which is the posh people's ground.
It's not surprising that they blaze the path. And there is one person in particular who does this with a kind of exhausting display of energy and enthusiasm.
It seems almost kind of stereotypically Victorian. And this is a guy called Charles W.
Alcock. He couldn't be more Victorian.
He has a moustache. He has a cravat.
He's got kind of great shoulders honed by sport at public school. And it's basically just exhausting to contemplate his career, I think.
Yeah think yeah it's incredible he is the classic example of an industrialist son who goes to a private school and ends up in a completely different sphere from you know his horny-handed father so he's born in sunderland like that other great football enthusiast jonathan wilson friend of the show yeah and he goes to harrow and at Harrow, he plays football and cricket and he absolutely loves it. And his basic feeling is when he leaves his public school, why should he have to give up sport? He wants to carry on with it.
So he makes a living as a sports journalist covering football, covering cricket, covering athletics. But it turns out his real genius is for sports administration.
So in 18 he becomes not just the secretary but the treasurer of the fa the football association and then two years later he becomes secretary of surrey county cricket club which is based at the oval so he doesn't just like sport he loves committee meetings he does he does and he loves to organize fixtures and then to play in them.

Right.

So he has the best of both worlds. And the thing is, you'd approve of this, Dominic.
His real game, even though he's kind of based at the Oval, isn't cricket, but football. And he's a very famous figure in the history of football.
Anormously famous. When you read the early history of football, he's everywhere.
He's kind of in every page. Yes.
So in 1863, he founds a side that to begin with is full of old Horovians.

So Walcock's ch of in every page. Yes.
So in 1863, he founds a side that to begin with is full of old Horovians. So Alcock's chums from his public school called the Wanderers.
And they play what is called the combination game in which you actually pass the ball rather than just dribbling it. You know, this again is looking forward to the future.
And in 18 alcock sets them up at the oval so the oval becomes their their home so you play cricket through the summer and then you play football through the winter and in 1872 he institutes a cup competition for the football association the fa cup and inevitably he arranges for the final to be held at the Oval. And also inevitably, he captains the team and the Wanderers win.
Yeah, of course they do. So they win 1-0 and Alcock had actually scored a goal, but it gets disqualified because there'd been a handball.
Oh no. So kind of prototype for VAR, I guess, kicking in and spoiling and spoiling things right and the wanderers go on to win the fa cup in 1873 as well and then again they win in consecutive years in 1876 1877 and 78 and all three of those consecutive victories are won at the oval and in fact the oval stage is 19 fa cup finals in all and interest to both of us so this includes the first victory won by aston villa in the fa cup in 1887 and then two years later in 1889 dominic wolves's first appearance in an fa cup final yeah first appearance people didn't win we lost 3-0 to preston very disappointing very sad but also international sports right you know we're so used to the of international sport now, but you could argue it was invented by this bloke, Alcock.
Yes. So in 1879, you know, he set up the FA Cup and then he thinks, well, why don't we get England to play Scotland? And the match is held, of course, at the Oval.
And of course, Alcock captains England. And the result is a one-all draw.
Sadly this match isn't recognized by fifa because the scottish team is drawn from scotsman living in london oh and this includes gladstone the prime minister's son really but they don't have people actually from scotland because it seems as being too far for them to come all the way down right so that's why it's not recognized so that's a great shame there's one other sport we talked about earlier which was rugby he also organizes the first rugby international as well at the oval england scotland again 1872 yeah i mean it's just astonishing and then of course there is cricket and inevitably again it's alcock who's the presiding genius behind setting up international test matches between England and Australia. And this is the series of matches that in due course will give birth to the Ashes.
So Alcock, he's clearly of international standard of football, less so at cricket. He does play county cricket, but doesn't play for England.
But he makes up for this by being the first person in England to recognise how much money there might be in international cricket. So international cricket has been played in Australia.
England has played Australia there. But people in England think, oh, we're above this.
I mean, it's kind of vulgar. It's a showy spectacle.
We're not going to bother with it. But Alcock recognises that if it can make money in Australiaralia then why not in england so in 1880 he manages to stage the first test match to be played in england at the oval and it's a tremendous success so wg grace this great bearded kind of sports star he scores a century england win and the match is a complete sellout so ka-ching and then in 1882 the australians come back and this is the notorious england defeat or glorious if you're an australian listener that inspires the obituary in the sporting times and again it's a tremendous sporting occasion and the hero this time is an australian called fred spoffoth who has an absolutely magnificent australian fast bowler's moustache kind of drooping down past his chin.
Excellent, yeah. He's called the Demon.
So from that point on, all fast bowlers are called demons. He takes 14 wickets, which for people who don't know about cricket is very, very good because the maximum you can take is 20.
England lose very, very narrowly. And again, a bit like with Max's feet of pedestrianism, the ground is absolutely full.
Streets outside are heaving. People sit there chewing their way through umbrella handles.
It's so tense. People have heart attacks, all that kind of thing.
And it's an enormous success. And I think that a match like that, matches like the FA Cups, the first rugby international, they kind of establish a romance around these sporting events that endures to this day and that's why you know whether it's the ashes or whatever it's one of the great achievements of the victorian era that they establish templates that people still are inspired by to this day yeah absolutely um what happened to pedestrian? That's the real question.
Well, what's interesting is that it fades out in Britain, but it becomes very popular in the second half of the 19th century in America. Really? Yeah, I guess because there is something novel.
So right the way through the 19th century, New York becomes the new great centre for pedestrianism. And then at the end of the 19th century, it fades away too.
But I think if there's anyone, any sports administrators or involved in sports media listening to this, a revival of pedestrianism is long overdue. Right.
The irony that today there are great swathes of the United States, where if you walk down the street, the police will pull over and arrest you for not driving. Why don't you rediscover your love of pedestrianism, American listeners? Sort yourselves out.
So, Tom, this is not the only sporting podcast of the week, is it? Because we'll be delving back into sporting history on Thursday. Do you want to tell people all about that? Yeah.
So in that show, we will be looking not at a team sport, but at boxing. and we'll be looking specifically at one of the most celebrated, extraordinary and influential sporting contests of all time.
And it's a boxing match that is held in a field in rural Hampshire in 1860 between the rival champions of England and America. Well, Tom, that was a pedestrian, that was a positively pedestrian episode.

Yeah, a pedestrian performance worthy of Richard Manx himself.

Thank you very much.

And on that bombshell,

we will see you for the fight of the century next time.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.