The Bristol Rovers History Group. |
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Edwin Joseph Aldin.
Born, 1878, Gloucester. Died, 1945, Birmingham. Début: 25.3.11 v Queen’s Park Rangers Career: June 1910 Bristol Rovers (to 1911). Possibly the son of Edwin Aldin (1849-1911) and Mary Ann Hughes (1850-87), Edwin Aldin played at right-half in a goalless draw in his sole Southern League appearance. The following calendar month, he was in the Rovers side which lost 1-0 at home to Bristol City in the Gloucestershire Cup Final. He may be the man who married Rose Charlesina Pitman (1887-1953) and had three daughters, followed by three sons. Research into this player has proved difficult as the surname is variously written Alden and Aldin, although the latter is given on Football Association records. A William Aldin joined Southern League Mardy on 4th September 1909 and Merthyr Town on 9th May 1910, before joining Coventry City on 16th May 1911, whilst Ernest James Eldin joined Mardy on 27th October 1911. |
Arthur Benjamin Appleby.
Born, 13.6.1877 Burton-upon-Trent. Died, 22.10.1961, Clifton, Bristol. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: Trinity Strollers; Shobnall Albion (trial); Beeston Rovers (trial); 2.10.97 Burton Wanderers; May 1899 Derby County (trial); May 1899 Chatham; 31.7.00 Burton Swifts [33,5]; 7.5.01 West Bromwich Albion [1,0]; 1903 Bristol Rovers; 1908 Leighton (Gloucester) (to 1915). Following nine games and one goal at Southern League Chatham, Ben Appleby played for West Brom against Glossop in September 1901 and won a Birmingham League championship medal with the Albion reserve side. However, his career took off at Eastville, where he was a stalwart of the side for five years, totalling 180 Southern League games and nine goals. An ever-present in the side which secured the Southern League championship in 1904-05, he also scored the opening goal at home to Brighton in the penultimate home fixture as Rovers closed in on the title. On the opening day of the following campaign, his 65th-minute goal was Rovers’ sixth in a large win over Northampton Town at Eastville. He had, however, also missed a penalty against Swindon Town in February 1905 and did so again in the 1905-06 season against both Plymouth and West Ham. Earlier in his career, he had played alongside the great Herbert Chapman (1878-1934) in the Chatham side which played Rovers two days before Christmas 1899 in the Southern League. His younger brother, Thomas George Appleby, signed for Burton United in February 1903 and, although he never appeared in the League, played in two FA Cup-ties. Ben Appleby lived at “Applegarth” in Church Road, Yate with his wife, Emily Mary Lester (1877-1955), whom he married on 18th February 1903, and worked as a School Attendance Officer and later as a grocer; he lived to the age of eighty-four. Their daughter Vera was baptised at St Thomas’, Eastville on 10th May 1905. |
William Edwin Beats.
Born, 13.11.1871, Wolstanton, Staffordshire. Died, 13.4.1939, Reading. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: Porthill Victoria; Port Vale Rovers; September 1891 Port Vale; 29.5.95 Wolverhampton Wanderers [199,67]; May 1903 Bristol Rovers; 3.5.06 Port Vale [110,39]; 24.8.07 Reading (to 1910); 1911 Bristol Rovers (trainer); 1914-17 Reading (trainer). Captain of Rovers’ successful Southern League championship side of 1904-05, Billy Beats was a veteran centre-forward with a considerable reputation. His three seasons with Rovers as a player brought great success, led from the front by their swashbuckling talisman. Three days after Christmas 1903, Beats scored a first-half hat-trick as Rovers ran up five goals before the interval in defeating Wellingborough 7-1 in the Southern League and he scored two goals in a match in that competition on no fewer than eight other occasions. “Beats shoots with accuracy”, the Scottish press had reported in alarm, as the tough Englishman prepared to face them on the international field. Five feet seven inches in height and weighing in at ten stone twelve pounds, he had won two full England caps, against Wales in 1901, when Steve Bloomer (1874-1938) scored four times in a 6-0 win at Newcastle, and at Ibrox Park against Scotland in April 1902 on the day of the disaster in which 25 spectators sadly lost their lives. He had also represented the Football League on five occasions between 1896 and 1899, scoring an equaliser in the 2-1 defeat against the Scottish League at Villa Park in April 1898. His considerable goal tally at Wolves was 74 in 218 matches in all competitions, a figure which includes the 1896 FA Cup Final, which was lost 2-1 to Sheffield Wednesday, Beats not scoring on this occasion, but shooting narrowly over the bar shortly before half-time, without troubling goalkeeper Jimmy Massey (1869-1960). He was also in the Wolves side in October 1895 when his team-mate David Wykes (1867-95) died of typhoid after the game. Earlier in his career, Beats had bizarrely missed Port Vale’s first ever Football League game; missing the train to Birmingham, he left Vale with only ten men and they crashed 5-1 to Small Heath. His twenty League goals in the 1893-94 campaign included a hat-trick against Small Heath and he also scored three times in a Staffordshire Cup-tie against his future club, Wolves. After 94 Southern League games and 44 goals with Rovers, and ending the 1903-04 season as the club’s top scorer, he scored five times in 27 Southern League matches with Reading, one of these in Reading’s 5-0 victory over Rovers in the 1907-08 campaign, before running the Truro pub in Castle Street, Reading until his death in 1939. “Good man, Beats”, reported the Reading Standard (31.8.07), “always in training and the right man in the right place”. Arguably his best goal was disallowed; a shot two minutes from half-time of a goalless draw with Millwall in October 1904 was a “perfectly fair strike and beautifully obtained, the hardest of luck to have such a goal struck off by a decision that was palpably incorrect”, as the local press reported it. The fourth of six children to slater and later stone miner Edwin Beats and his wife Amelia, Billy Beats married in 1898 Elizabeth Paulina Cousens (1876-1971) and they had three sons and two daughters; they lived at 62 Bristol Road, Wolverhampton and later at 95 Grovelands Road, Reading. Their second son Eddie Beats (Edwin Beats, 1906-65, who married Kathleen Pibworth) was an England schoolboy international. |
Thomas Becton.
Born, 2.1.1878, Preston. Died, 8.11.1957, Fulwood, Lancashire. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United. Career: 22.12.96 Preston North End [4,0]; August 1898 New Brighton Tower [24,7]; May 1899 Sunderland [14,7]; 7.8.00 Kettering Town; 14.6.01 Bristol Rovers; 31.10.02 Kettering Town; September 1903 Accrington Stanley; 27.10.05 Oswaldtwistle Rovers; 1.12.05 Colne; 25.5.06 Rossendale United; 13.11.09 Leyland. Tom Becton was the third of five sons to Martin and Margaret Becton, his father being a bricklayer and his mother a packer at a cotton mill. Five feet seven inches tall and weighing eleven stone four pounds, he appears in the 1901 census at 19 Channing Street, Kettering where, as the club’s top scorer in 1900-01, he contributed seven goals in 48 Southern League matches in two spells. His three goals in 25 Southern League matches for Rovers included a brace as New Brompton were defeated 2-1 at Eastville over Christmas 1901 and he had hit the post with a low shot against Wellingborough two months earlier. Prior to this, he had scored in a 2-1 victory in September 1899 over Burnley at Roker Park on his first Sunderland start in Division One and also appeared in the home game with Derby County two months later which was abandoned in thick fog. He had also scored the winning goal when, wearing blue and white halves, New Brighton Tower had defeated pale-blue-shirted Gainsborough Trinity 3-2 in September 1898 in their first ever Football League fixture. Later, he was to play in all three of Accrington Stanley’s FA Cup fixtures in 1903-04. In 1914 he married Annie Smith (1880-1941) in Preston. Tom and three of his brothers, Martin, John and Frank, all played League football, with Frank (1873-1909) winning two full caps for England. |
(Harry) Henry Bennett.
Born, 1878, Fishponds, Bristol. Died? Début: 14.4.06 v West Ham United. Career: Staple Hill; 04 Bristol Rovers; Fry’s Athletic; 1.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 1906 Fishponds United; 1908 Staple Hill (to 1909). An outside-left in his sole Southern League appearances, Harry Bennett was a cocoa maker, who is recorded in the 1901 census as living at 7 Eastville Road, Fishponds with his widowed mother Matilda (1853-1933) and younger sister Maud. His father, Charles Bennett, had died in 1899 at the age of fifty-five. In 1953 Harry Bennett was resident at 53 Grove Park Terrace, Fishponds. |
Hubert Henry Bennett.
Born, 1890, Oldbury-upon-Severn. Died, 22.7.1968, Bristol. Début: 10.2.12 v Watford. Career: Thornbury Grammar School; 11.12.11 Bristol Rovers (retired, 1915); 6.12.19 Douglas. Joining Rovers from school, “Bert” Bennett played in 101 Southern League games for his only club before war interrupted his career. Once in the side, he proved difficult to replace and the side only conceded six on two occasions in his first hundred games, both times at West Ham, before Rovers crashed 7-0 at Cardiff in his final match in November 1914. He had been a member of the side that defeated League side Notts County in an FA Cup-tie in January 1913. A versatile player, Bennett was also twice called on to appear in goal for Rovers, replacing the injured Harry Stansfield in a Southern League game at Coventry in April 1913 and the incapacitated Peter Roney in an FA Cup-tie at Preston nine months later. The son of Charles Bennett, he married Ellen Rosina Webb, daughter of George Lane Webb (1866-1910) and Mary Ann Mayes (1866-1953), on 11th April 1914 at St Paul’s in Portland Square, Bristol. |
William Joseph Blunt.
Born, 1889, Stafford. Died, 29.9.1935, Stafford. Début: 7.9.12 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: Stafford Wesleyans; 1.5.06 Stafford Rangers; 19.11.08 Wolverhampton Wanderers [58,38]; 12.6.12 Bristol Rovers; 5.9.13 Stafford Rangers; May 1920 Hednesford Town; July 1921 Stafford Rangers. Brought up at 18 Castle View, Stafford, third of seven sons with two sisters to a railway engine driver George Blunt and his wife Ann, Billy Blunt had three spells with his home-town club. He scored four goals as Wolves defeated Leicester Fosse 4-1 in Division Two in December 1909 and added a hat-trick against Bolton Wanderers the following September. Yet, despite his success at Wolves, he struggled to get a game at Eastville, his three Southern League matches bringing just one goal, a consolation strike in a 3-1 defeat at Portsmouth in March 1913. He did, however, score a second-half hat-trick when the reserves defeated Clevedon Town reserves 10-0 in January 1913. |
Thomas Alfred Boucher.
Born, 1874, West Bromwich. Died? Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Hamstead; February 1893 Redditch Town; 1.5.94 Stourbridge; 2.5.96 Notts County [79,32]; 4.5.99 Bedminster; 7.5.00 Bristol Rovers; 1.8.01 Bristol City [51,14]; May 1903 New Brompton; 4.10.05 Maidstone United. Ten goals for Rovers in Tom Boucher’s 27 Southern League matches included two in the 4-0 win at Gravesend United in September 1900 and another as Rovers ran in ten without reply in the return fixture. Making his début at Sheppey United in September 1899, he had earlier scored seven times in 23 Southern League fixtures with Bedminster, playing against Rovers in September 1899, and played in Bristol City’s first Football League fixture, the September 1901 clash with Blackpool. He later added 39 games and seven goals in the Southern League with New Brompton, playing in both their fixtures against Rovers in 1903-04. Earlier in his career, he had played top-flight football with Notts County, his 22 goals in 1896-97 helping ensure the Second Division title was secured, and he scored a hat-trick in the 4-1 victory at Burton Swifts in January 1897. “An excellent man for feeding his wings”, as a contemporary reporter described him, he weighed eleven stone and stood five feet six inches tall. A West Midlander (Hamstead is near Handsworth), it is possible that he is the Tom Boucher who left London for Sydney on 4th July 1913 or that he was the Thomas Boucher living in 1932 at 13 Beech Road, Horfield. |
William John Boulton.
Born, 1879, Keynsham. Died, 1912, Keynsham. Début: 28.9.01 v Watford. Career: Fishponds; 7.5.00 Bristol Rovers; 26.7.02 Aberaman Athletic; July 1903 Brighton; 29.8.04 Bristol East; September 1905 Bristol City; 11.10.05 Staple Hill; October 1907 Aberdare: 1908 Paulton Rovers (to 1909). Just six Southern League games for Brighton was the career after Rovers for Billy Boulton, the eldest child of William and Mary Ann Boulton of 7 Prices Bank, St George. These six matches included the 2-2 draw at home to Rovers in September 1903, when Brighton clawed back a 2-0 half-time deficit. Prior to this, he had played at full-back in three away defeats for Rovers in the Southern League. He made his club début in the Western League game with Southampton in February 1901 and played regularly for Rovers’ reserves during the 1901-02 campaign. The son of James Boulton and Mary Ellis, he was baptised on 6th June 1882 at St Mary’s, Tunstall, and married Emily Barnes (1876-1930) in 1902, but died aged just 33. |
Riba Boxley.
Born, 1888, Stourbridge. Died, 1943, Birmingham. Début: 11.9.12 v Watford. Career: Cradley Heath St Peter’s; Cradley Heath St Luke’s; August 1910 Kidderminster Harriers; 2.5.12 Bristol Rovers; 1.9.13 Kidderminster Harriers; 1914 Wellington Town; 16.10.19 Cradley Heath St Luke’s. Six games at full-back in the Southern League comprised Riba Boxley’s Rovers career, all lost save the 2-2 draw at Southampton in his second appearance. A son of Henry Boxley (1834-1912) and Mary Ann Martin (1855-1907), he was brought up in Cradley with two brothers, a sister and four further half-siblings from his father’s first marriage; his parents had married six months after the death of Henry’s first wife, Sarah Brettell (1837-77). Riba Boxley married in 1916 Alice Grove (1889-1959) and they had a daughter, Rose, and a son, Robert. His signature appears as a witness at Rovers team-mate Harry Stansfield’s marriage to Constance Gillott in 1913. |
Albert George Boyce.
Born, March 1875, St Phillips, Bristol. Died, 1951, Huntingdon. Début: 24.11.00 v West Ham United. Career: February 1899 St Phillip’s United; 14.9.00 Bristol Rovers (to 1901). In Dick Gray’s absence, Albert Boyce deputised for the 2-0 home win against West Ham in the Southern League. Brought up at 76 Albert Terrace, Boyce was the eldest of six children to a labourer, George Boyce (1838-91), and Maria Ollis (1849-1937, the seventh of ten children to a Keynsham couple, William Ollis 1814-86 and Maria Williams 1816-85), who later cared for her children at 49 Grafton Street. He was baptised at St Silas’ Church, Bedminster on 12th May 1875. Boyce worked as a refrigeration engineer and married Rose Rockett in Bristol in the autumn of 1908. Their sons Fred and Eric were born in Cape Colony but, by the time of the 1911 census, they had returned to live at 24 Mortimer Road, Kensal Drive. He died at the age of seventy-six. |
Fredrick Wilfred Boyle.
Born, 18.1.1884, Lincoln. Died, 4.1.1934, Middlesbrough. Début: 21.9.10 v Luton Town. Career: September 1906 Darlington St Augustine’s; Cambridge House; July 1908 Darlington; 6.5.09 Gainsborough Trinity [14,0]; May 1910 Bristol Rovers (professional, 7.9.10); 8.12.10 Sheffield United; 21.11.11 Heckmondwike; 6.12.12 Goole Town; Sheffield Wednesday (coach); Middlesbrough (coach). Brought up in Middlesbrough by his widowed mother Isabella (née Stanton), Fred Boyle was the youngest of three sons; their father is generally listed as John O’Boyle. Prior to Eastville, he had scored one North-Eastern League goal, as Darlington defeated South Shields Adelaide 3-1 in March 1909, the former Rovers player Isaac Owens also scoring in that game. After just one Southern League game for Rovers, as a left-half in a 4-0 defeat, he became a noted coach at two very successful clubs. He married Katherine Carlill (1889-1975) in 1910 and, at his premature death, left a widow and five children. |
Patrick Boyle.
Born, 6.9.1883, Paisley. Died, 8.7.1923, Oddicombe Beach, Babbacombe, Devon. Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: Neilston Victoria; Cambuslang Hibernian; 12.2.03 Port Glasgow Athletic; 16.11.04 Arthurlie [12,0]; March 1905 Port Glasgow Athletic; 9.9.05 Aberdeen [53,2]; 21.5.07 Bristol Rovers; 8.5.08 New Brompton; 24.9.09 Chatham; March 1911 Llanelli. Following some success in Scotland, full-back Paddy Boyle made his début as Rovers opened the 1907-08 season with a resounding 9-1 victory at Eastville. He was to play in 29 Southern League games for the club, scoring the opening goal in the 2-1 home win against Reading on his fifth appearance from the penalty spot after a debatable spot-kick was awarded for a foul by William Walker on Harry Buckle. He later played in 39 Southern League games for the club now known as Gillingham, without scoring, including both fixtures against Rovers that season. Boyle’s Arthurlie début had come in the Second Division in a 1-0 victory over Falkirk in November 1904 and he could add six cup-ties to his Scottish League appearance tally at Dunterlie Park. He subsequently played regularly at Aberdeen, scoring their opening first-half goal with “a fast, hard drive” in a 2-0 victory over Falkirk at Christmas 1905 and a consolation penalty in the 3-1 defeat at his former club Port Glasgow Athletic three months later. He was born at 4 West Street, Paisley, thirty minutes after midnight. A bricklayer by profession and the son of an Irish mason’s labourer Patrick Boyle and his Scottish-born wife Jane Bonnar (the daughter of an Irish couple, Daniel Bonnar and Jane Mitchell), who married in Paisley on 9th February 1875, Boyle met Lottie Saye (1887-1964) during his time with Rovers and, although they never married, they had three children, Margaret Gladys (1909-75), Kate Lilias Doris (1911-86) and Harry Patrick (1913 -70), living in 1911 at 17 Cowell Street, Llanelli. Lottie spent the war years doing a Bristol bread round on Dolly the horse and married Erick Wiltshire (1888-1935) in 1920, with whom she had two sons. Patrick Boyle also fathered a son, also Patrick, in around 1907 by Elizabeth Simpson, the teenage daughter of Aberdeen director, Peter Simpson. The former Rovers man lived in Bristol and in Kent, but was working as a bricklayer for Stevens and Sons of Exeter and living at 39 Princess Street, Babbacombe, when he suffered a cardiac arrest whilst bathing in the sea at Oddicombe Beach near Torquay, and died aged just thirty-nine; he fell from a partly submerged rock in full view of hundreds of beach-goers and never regained consciousness. |
Martin Bradley.
Born, 5.10.1886, Goldenhill, Staffordshire. Died, 1958, South Kirkly. Début: 9.9.11 v Crystal Palace. Career: 14.9.06 South Kirkby Colliery; 16.4.08 Grimsby Town [28,6]; 18.5.09 Mexborough; 13.4.10 Sheffield Wednesday (£110 plus Teddy Glennon, 1889-1926) [2,0]; 30.5.11 Bristol Rovers (£50); 8.6.12 South Kirkby Colliery (to 1921). A regular at Grimsby for a season, Martin Bradley made his Wednesday début at Bury in October 1910 as a stand-in for the injured Harry Chapman (1880-1916), younger brother of Herbert Chapman (1878-1934). He was second highest scorer, with twelve goals, for the Wednesday reserve side which finished the 1910-11 season as runners-up in the Midland League. Five-feet-eight-inches tall and weighing in at twelve stone, he was to appear for Rovers in eight Southern League games during his season at Eastville, scoring in a 1-1 draw at Reading. He served with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in World War One and later worked as a colliery hewer. One brother was James Bradley (1877-1961) who won a League championship medal in 1905-06 with Liverpool. Martin’s son, Jack Bradley (1916-2002) played for Swindon Town, Southampton and Bolton Wanderers prior to and during World War Two. |
(Tom) William Thomas Brandon.
Born, 25.5.1893, Blackburn, Died, 1.5.1956, Liverpool. Début: 6.9.19 v Swindon Town. Career: 22.10.09 Blackburn Rovers; 16.8.10 Rossendale United; January 1911 Darwen; 29.9.11 South Liverpool; 20.5.13 West Ham United; 20.8.19 Bristol Rovers; 10.6.20 Hull City [56,3]; June 1922 Bradford Park Avenue [85,0]; May 1925 Wigan Borough [8,0]; October 1926 Bootle Borough. With Rovers early in an illustrious career, Tom Brandon underwent a knee operation whilst at Eastville but still managed 26 scoreless Southern League appearances for Rovers following 34 at West Ham; his Hammers début had been at Eastville in September 1913, a game Rovers lost 2-1. Bizarrely, his Hull City début was then at West Ham in August 1920; a long career thereafter at Bradford included an appearance in the 7-1 crushing of Ashington in Division Three (North) in December 1924. He had been baptised at St Paul’s, Blackburn on 6th August 1893. The son of Tom Brandon of Blackburn Rovers (1869-1921), who secured one full cap for Scotland against England in 1896 and won the prestigious Powderhall Sprint in 1918 at the age of forty-nine, and of Elizabeth, his was an illustrious footballing family, as his father and his uncles Jim and Bob (1872-1920) were all with Sheffield Wednesday in 1890, alongside their cousin Harry Brandon. Tom Brandon married Elsie Williams (1894-1968) in the autumn of 1913. |
James Edward Brogan.
Born, 1889, Burnbank. Died, 1974, Hamilton. Début: 1.10.10 v Watford. Career: Larkhall United; 1910 Maryhill; 1.10.10 Bristol Rovers (trial); 1911 Bristol Rovers; 17.9.15 Royal Albert; August 1916 Hamilton Academical; 21.9.18 Airdrieonians [15,0]; 14.8.19 Bathgate; 14.10.20 St Bernard’s [15,3] (to 1922). Twenty-four goals in 107 Southern League appearances is an impressive return from this Scottish inside-forward from his five seasons at Eastville. Lodging in Bristol with John Rankin and Jim Jones, he contributed four goals in five games over Easter 1912 and then hit four goals in one match, as Merthyr Town were defeated 7-1 at Eastville on Boxing Day 1912. In addition, he was in the Rovers side which defeated First Division Notts County in an emotional FA Cup-tie at Eastville in January 1913. Top scorer at Rovers in 1912-13, he also scored the only goal of the game, at home to Swindon Town in April 1915, in his final appearance in a Rovers shirt. He later returned to Scotland, playing his first match for Royal Albert against Stevenston United and lived in Petershill. When war was over, he played in ten Central League games, scoring four goals, for Bathgate in 1919-20 and also represented that club in six Qualifying Cup matches, again scoring twice. His first appearance for Bathgate was in a 2-1 home defeat to Alloa Athletic and he was “the pick of the visitors’ forward line” when the side lost 1-0 at Clackmannan in September 1920. Brogan scored a dramatic late winning goal in a 4-3 victory over Cowdenbeath on his St Bernard’s début in October 1920, his side recovering from a three-goal half-time deficit. James Brogan had made his name at Maryhill Juniors, for whom he equalised in a 2-1 defeat at Vale of Clyde’s Germiston Park in August 1910, before making his Rovers bow under the alias “Scott”, as he was still registered north of the border at that time, perhaps with Cambuslang Rangers. |
George Bromage.
Born, 17.1.1893, Derby. Died, 1983, Derby. Début: 27.4.12 v Stoke. Career: 1911 Bristol Rovers (to 1912); October 1913 Leicester Imperial; May 1914 Shirebrook; 1919 Derby County; 1920 Doncaster Rovers; 12.5.21 Sheffield United [5,1]; 1924 Buxton; 1925 Shirebrook. With Ted Long unavailable, George Bromage played at outside-left in Rovers’ 3-1 defeat at Stoke on the final day of the 1911-12 Southern League campaign. Brought up at 322 Stockbrook Street, Derby, George Bromage was the fifth of seven children to John Bromage (1862-1940) and Eliza Jane Blore (1860-1940). He played for Sheffield United, for whom his brother Billy Bromage (1881-1960) had appeared in the reserve side some fifteen years earlier before becoming trainer at Derby County. He was also the elder brother of Enos Bromage (1898-1978), who played briefly for Derby County, West Brom and Nottingham Forest and was outside-left in Gillingham’s side for both their Division Three (South) fixtures against Rovers in 1927-28. Their uncle was the Derby goalkeeper Enos Bromage (1865-1947), who had played in the inaugural Football League season, 1888-89. |
George Ernest Brown.
Born, 1874, Bath. Died, 1948, Bristol, Début: 2.3.95 v Bristol South End. Career: 1894 Eastville Rovers; February 1899 Aberdare Athletic; 31.8.99 Bristol Rovers; October 1900 Ebbw Vale; 12.5.05 Workington; 9.10.09 Ebbw Vale; 1.9.10 Cwm Albion (to 1913). Regular in Rovers’ side between 1894 and 1895, scoring 25 goals in 72 matches prior to his move to Aberdare in 1899, George Brown’s career pinnacle came in 1895-96, when his twelve goals in twenty appearances included a hat-trick in a 3-0 win against St Paul’s in November 1895. This performance was all the more remarkable for the three goals came in a five-minute spell in which, the Bristol Mercury mused, “something like a record was created”. Earlier, he had first appeared when Rovers recorded a 5-2 victory over South End in heavy, muddy conditions, scoring once alongside Bob Horsey’s hat-trick before a crowd of 600. He also scored twice as Rovers lost a Western League fixture 7-3 at Trowbridge Town on a hot, humid afternoon in September 1895. George Brown’s career total includes sixteen goals in 34 Birmingham and District League fixtures; he appeared in thirteen games as a wing-half, without scoring, in Rovers’ first season in the Southern League. He died in Bristol at the age of seventy-three. |
Robert Brown.
Born, 27.11.1869, Liverpool. Died? Début: 1.9.98 v Bristol City. Career: 6.9.90 Denton; 2.9.91 Rossendale; 15.2.93 Nelson; 6.9.93 Accrington FC (£6 5s); July 1894 Burton Wanderers [84,19]; 8.5.97 Southampton; 14.5.98 Bristol Rovers; 19.7.00 Swindon Town; 14.11.01 St Helens Town; October 1902 Earlestown; July 1903 Stalybridge Rovers; 1920s Caerphilly (trainer). “Daddy” Brown enjoyed a productive season with Rovers in 1898-99, when his sixteen goals in 47 games included eleven in 32 Birmingham and District League matches. An “average type of player” at inside-forward, according to the Southampton press, his three Southern League goals for Rovers in 24 games during 1899-1900 included one in the 7-2 victory at home to Swindon Town in November 1899. Against Aston Villa reserves in January 1899, he went off injured early in the game, leaving ten-man Rovers struggling against strong opposition. He also missed a second-half penalty in the FA Cup-tie against Cowes in November 1899. At Burton Wanderers for all three seasons of their brief Football League status, he shared with Charlie Brentnall (1871-1934) the distinction of playing in both their first and last Football Lerague matches. In addition, he played in all eight of their FA Cup-ties and helped Wanderers win the Staffordshire Cup, Kettering Cup and Bass Charirty Cup. Thereafter he scored twice, in home fixtures in April 1898 against both Gravesend and Northfleet, in twelve Southern League matches in a season with Southampton, as well as an identical tally of games and goals in the United League, making his first appearance in September 1897 against Spurs. Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing tens tone nine pounds, he also played in the FA Cup semi-final replay against Nottingham Forest in a blizzard over Easter 1898. Twenty-four Southern League fixtures and three goals with Rovers in 1899-1900 preceded a matchless season and one goal in 22 Southern League appearances for Swindon Town early in 1901-02. Brown was one of six children born to a Scottish father and a Liverpudlian mother. His first wife Julia Parkinson died in early 1901, aged only 22, leaving a two-year-old Southampton-born son Robert; returning to Liverpool from Swindon late in 1901, “Daddy” married secondly Henrietta Phenna, a Liverpudlian ten years his junior and they lived at 244 Upper Mann Street, Toxteth, where he worked as a painter and decorator, often based in New Brighton. It is believed that Bill Brown, who played in three League games with Loughborough in 1895-96, was his younger brother. |
Thomas Edward Brown.
Born, 1895, Bath. Died? Début: 8.2.13 v Gillingham. Career: Weston-super-Mare; 1912 Bristol Rovers (to 1913). After a début at right-half, Tom Brown played six times at right-back as the 1912-13 Southern League season drew to a close, but Rovers were not able to win in any of his seven matches. He renewed his professional contract on 18th April 1913 but left Rovers soon afterwards. |
Henry Redmond Buckle.
Born, 6.3.1882, Belfast. Died, 2.1.1965, Cork. Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: Cliftonville Casuals; Cliftonville Olympic; May 1901 Cliftonville; 8.11.02 Sunderland [43,14]; 11.5.06 Portsmouth; 4.5.07 Bristol Rovers; 29.6.08 Coventry City (manager, 1909-11); 1.8.11 Belfast Celtic; 1914 Glenavon; September 1917 Belfast United (player-manager); September 1922 Fordson’s (player-manager, 1926; retired, 1927). One of several débutants, Harry Buckle scored twice as Rovers opened the 1907-08 season in style by defeating New Brompton 9-1 at Eastville. The first goal was a tap-in after half an hour and the second proved the final goal of a one-sided game. He was to contribute nine goals in his 33 Southern League appearances for the club. A Catholic, he represented the Irish League three times and the Southern League once, in addition to winning three full caps for Ireland between 1903 and 1908. When Ireland drew 1-1 with Wales in April 1908, his last-minute pinpoint cross almost led to a late Irish winner and the Belfast-born forward showed “pretty combinations in his opening phases”. In addition to his time at Roker Park, Buckle made sixteen Southern League appearances for Pompey and, top scorer in both 1908-09 and 1909-10, contributed 42 goals in 113 Southern League matches for Coventry City, this tally including a hat-trick as Portsmouth were defeated 5-3 at Highfield Road over Easter 1909. “An exceedingly valuable player”, as he was described in 1903, he scored in three of his six Southern League matches for Coventry against Rovers and also led Coventry to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1909-10, defeating top flight Preston North End and Nottingham Forest en route. Later, he scored the opening goal of the Gold Cup Final of 1912 against Glentoran in Belfast Celtic’s distinctive green-and-white-hooped shirts, in a 2-0 victory at Grosvenor Park before a crowd of 9,500. Buckle was five feet ten inches in height and weighed eleven stone. In wartime, he returned to score four times for Rovers in the unofficial 1918-19 season; into his forties, he won an Irish Cup winner’s medal with Cork-based Fordson’s in 1926, having lost the 1924 final. He was living in Spamount Street, Dock Ward, Belfast at the time of the 1901 census. He may also be the Harry Buckle who married Mabel Garratt (1881-1961) in 1910 and later ran the Post Office Tavern in Stapleton Road from 1914 to 1937, Mabel taking over from 1938 to 1944. Harry Buckle’s great-great-grandson now lives in the States. |
Walter Giles Bullock.
Born, 22.11.1891, Bristol. Died, 1955, Bristol. Début: 18.10.19 v Crystal Palace. Career: 4.9.19 Horfield United; 17.10.19 Bristol Rovers; 3.7.20 Douglas; 2.10.20 Welton Rovers; June 1921 Jennings Timbers. Scoring the consolation goal in a 5-1 defeat on his Rovers début, Walter Bullock played in four consecutive Southern League fixtures in the autumn of 1919, one being a second 5-1 defeat, this time at Norwich City, and was recalled for the 7-1 thrashing at QPR in January 1920. These proved to be the only five senior games of his career. The son of Richard Bullock and Elizabeth Turner, he was baptised at St Simon’s Church three days before Christmas 1891. He married Lily Sweet (1891-1956) in Bristol in 1914 and they had four children, Walter, Alfred, Gwendoline and Douglas; Alfred married Annie Wilkins and fathered two sons and two daughters, whilst Doug was chairman of Southmead Sports in the 1960s. |
Joseph John Caddick.
Born, 4.7.1884, Aston. Died, 1956, Worcester. Début: 5.9.14 v Crystal Palace. Career: 13th Worcestershire Regiment; 7.12.08 Worcester City; 28.4.14 Bristol Rovers; January 1915 13th Worcestershire Regiment; 14.8.19 Bristol Rovers; 10.12.19 Worcester City (later Club Steward); May 1925 Worcester Early Closers. Towards the end of World War One, serving as a Company Sergeant Major in the King’s Own (Royal Lancashire Regiment), as number 28437, Joe Caddick was hit by a sniper’s bullet and spent two years in hospital. Prior to this, he had captained Worcester City during their hugely successful 1913-14 season, scoring nineteen of their 128 goals in the Birmingham and District League that campaign. During his spell at Worcester, who had spotted him whilst stationed at Norton Barracks, the side had secured the Worcestershire Senior Cup every season and he was awarded a benefit game against Brierley Hill Alliance in January 1914, City winning 8-1. The match programme was fulsome in its praise for the outside-right: “Caddick’s fine qualities as a sportsman were too well-known; he plays as usual his unpretentious game, ever active, always in the thick of the battle”. Joe Caddick and his twin sister Mary were the children of Edward Caddick and Lizzie Williams, who both married twice, and were brought up in Wolverhampton at Oxford Street Court and later at 2 Pump Yard in Cleasland Street. Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing eleven stone, his seven goals in 27 Southern League games for Rovers, many alongside Charlie Payne, his erstwhile right-wing partner at Worcester, included a brace at home to Norwich City in October 1914. A noted header of the ball, he represented Portsmouth in wartime and he scored on his sole appearance for Arsenal in wartime football against Clapton Orient in February 1916, converting Fred Tyler’s fourth- minute cross from close in but, brought down to win a penalty ten minutes from time, subsequently spent six weeks in hospital with a leg injury. He married Alice Brookes in 1911 (they had a daughter Stella before the war and a son John afterwards) and worked for thirty years as a steward at the Unity Club in Lowesmoor, Worcester. |
Arthur Cartilidge.
Born, 12.6.1880, Stoke-on-Trent. Died, 11.5.1922, Stoke-on-Trent. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United. Career: Penkhull Victoria; Market Drayton; 9.5.99 Stoke [10,0]; 3.5.01 Bristol Rovers; 14.4.09 Aston Villa [52,0]; March 1911 Stoke; 15.7.12 South Shields; 31.1.13 Tunstall Park; 30.4.13 South Shields; 25.11.13 Tunstall Park; 15.1.20 Stoke Half Holiday. The proud holder of a League championship medal with Aston Villa in 1909-10, goalkeeper Arthur Cartlidge had earlier played in 257 Southern League games for Rovers and, after losing his place at Villa Park to the former Rovers reserve keeper Brendel Anstey (1888-1933), he was to appear in 22 more with Stoke. Six feet half-an-inch in height and weighing fourteen stone, he was an imposing figure in goal and no other Rovers player represented the club in as many games during the 1899-1920 era. An ever-present as Rovers secured the Southern League championship in 1904-05, his dependability was such that he only conceded six goals in a fixture on four occasions and just one in each game as Rovers played out three epic FA Cup-ties with Arsenal in December 1903. Indeed, contemporary reports sing his praises with regularity, “Cartlidge was the salvation of his side”, being one such phrase after the game with Wellingborough in December 1902. He was injured after 47 minutes of the 1-0 home victory over New Brompton in January 1909 and played no further part in the game, wing-half Frank Handley taking over between the sticks. Selected to play in the prestigious Professionals of the South against Amateurs of the South at White Hart Lane in January 1904, he also played for the South against the North before an 18,000 crowd at Plumstead that same month and at Ashton Gate in February 1905. The son of Thomas Cartlidge (or Cartledge, 1856-84) and Hannah Elizabeth Mullett, who had married in 1878 (she married Joseph Powell after being widowed), Arthur Cartlidge trained as a joiner and died at the age of just forty-one at the Wellington public house on London Road, Stoke-on-Trent. |
(Jackie) John Chalmers.
Born, 14.8.1884, Rutherglen. Died, 5.7.1947, Glasgow. Début: 24.10.08 v Watford. Career: Rutherglen Glencairn; November 1904 Rangers [1,0]; August 1905 Beith; 27.1.06 Stoke [40,19]; 13.5.08 Bristol Rovers; 18.11.08 Clyde; 3.10.10 Arsenal [48,21]; 28.2.12 Morton (£500) [40,17]; 29.8.13 West Stanley; 10.2.14 Clyde [64,35]; August 1914 Shelbourne; 1915 Cadzow St Anne’s; August 1917 Cambuslang Rangers; 1920s Clyde (coach). During his long career in Scotland, England and Ireland, Jackie Chalmers played primarily in the top division and his goal return was remarkably positive. Five feet nine inches tall and weighing eleven stone six pounds, he scored for Rangers’ reserve side against Celtic reserves in February 1905 and was Arsenal’s top scorer in Division One in 1910-11, registering braces against Forest, Bolton and Middlesbrough. He had earlier scored in both his Scottish Cup matches with Rangers, against Ayr Parkhouse and Beith in 1905. Arriving at Eastville after Stoke’s relegation, his Rovers career, though, was brief, and the big-occasion forward characteristically scored in a 4-1 defeat in his only Southern League appearances. Most notably at Clyde, he made his mark, from a début against Rangers in November 1908, a winning goal at Celtic Park on Boxing Day that year, through to hat-tricks against Falkirk in the League and Dykehead in the Scottish Cup. “There was always danger when Chalmers was on the ball”, purred The Scotsman. He was Clyde’s top scorer in his first season, with thirteen goals in just twenty-two matches as the Bully Wee finished third in the First Division. A losing Scottish Cup semi-finalist in 1909, he played for Clyde against Dundee in the 1910 Cup Final. Chalmers in fact gave Clyde the lead both in the 2-2 draw (thumping the ball home before a 60,000 crowd at Ibrox, after an earlier effort had hit the crossbar) and after just three minutes of a second replay eventually won by Dundee. Only Willie Culley and Josh Ginnelly, of Rovers players, have since scored in the Scottish Cup Final. Subsequently, he was Morton’s top scorer in 1912-13. Noted for the spectacular goal – “scored a lovely goal with an express angular shot” (August 1910 against Hibernian) – his acclaimed return to Clyde brought two goals in a rainstorm at St Mirren on Valentine’s Day 1914 and he scored ten times in only twelve matches in his second spell at Shawfield. “Not a brilliant player, but …. fast, nippy and plucky” was how one contemporary report described him. Married at Rutherglen on 28th June 1912 to Helen, Jackie Chalmers died at home at 173 Rosebery Street, Glasgow, across the road from Clyde’s Shawfield ground, at the age of sixty-two and leaving grandchildren. |
William Percy Channing.
Born, 1886, Bristol. Died, 1968, Bristol. Début: 27.12.10 v Exeter City. Career: Sneyd Park; 1.11.10 Bristol Rovers (to 1911). The son of Frederick Channing (1857-1936) and Emily Eliza Townsend (1857-1942), Percy Channing lived to the age of eighty-one. He married in Bishopston on 20th December 1913 Lavinia Rosalind Kerslake Pounsford (1889-1975), the daughter of Charles Thomas Pounsford and Ada Agnes Partridge (1864-1960). After they divorced, Lavinia re-married in 1923 Francis Woodcock (1894-1959). Percy Channing played twice for Rovers in the Southern League over Christmas 1910; both matches were lost. He signed professional forms for Rovers again on 1st September 1911, but soon left the club. It is possible that he was the P Channing on the books of Downs League club St Andrew’s in April 1906. |
Samuel Fredrick Channon.
Born, 18.2.1895, Bristol. Died, 18.6.1920, Bristol. Début: 1.5.20 v Gillingham. Career: Fry’s Athletic; 1919 Bristol Rovers; May 1920 Wolverhampton Wanderers (trial). At the tender age of twenty-five, Fred Channon died suddenly of acute pneumonia, a left-over from having been gassed in Italy during World War One, leaving a young pregnant wife. This goalkeeper was the eldest of six children to Samuel Frederick Channon senior (1872-1930) of 34 Dale Road, a rugby forward for Bristol on 95 occasions and for England, and Rosina Dalling (1872-1957); he married Eliza Jane Crumpton (1895-1972) in December 1919, the youngest child of James Crumpton (1855-1918) and his first wife Eliza Jane Holder (1856-1907). Fred Channon served in France and Italy with the 1/6th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment as Private Frederick Channon 265777, and was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in Italy in December 1918, this award appearing in “The London Gazette” on 29th March 1919. Given one game in goal, a 2-2 draw in Rovers’ final ever Southern League fixture before the division was moved en masse into the Football League, he worked as a cocoa manufacturer’s warehouseman and had lived for a while at Llantrisant, near Pontypridd. Eliza, widowed at twenty-five, gave birth to a son, Raymond Frederick Channon being born on 3rd March 1921 at 49 Pennywell Road, but sadly he died shortly afterwards and she later re-married Thomas Francombe (1867-1951) a year after Fred’s early death, and later John Walker (1873-1953). He is distantly related to the former Rovers inside-forward Tom Roberts and former Rovers chairman Geoff Dunford (1951-2017). |
David Cleland Clark.
Born, 21.5.1878, Sligo. Died? Début: 2.9.05 v Northampton Town. Career: April 1902 Northampton Town (amateur); 27.5.02 Glossop [67,7]; 30.6.04 Bristol Rovers; 10.4.07 West Ham United; 6.5.09 Bradford Park Avenue [7,0]; 18.8.10 Southend United; 20.7.11 Bristol Rovers (coach); September 1921 Edgbaston Wednesday. Five feet eleven inches and weighing thirteen stone, goalkeeper Dave Clark could not make the grade at Northampton and his nine Southern League games for Rovers included a 5-1 home defeat at the hands of Plymouth Argyle, following a début against his former club. After 38 games for Southern League Southend United in addition to a further seventeen with West Ham, playing in the goalless draw with Rovers in March 1908, he returned to Eastville but could not regain his place in the side. |
William Clark.
Born, 25.3.1881, Whifflet, Lanarkshire. Died, 17.3.1937, Bristol. Début: 3.9.04 v Northampton Town. Career: Strathclyde; 16.8.01 Port Glasgow Athletic [44,10]; 3.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 4.5.08 Sunderland [41,4]; 21.10.10 Bristol City [24,1]; 10.6.11 Leicester Fosse [6,1] (to 1912). Seemingly a late developer, Billy Clark, who “has lightsome heels … brings the ball into quick subjection”, enjoyed four seasons in the Football League around his thirtieth birthday. Five feet seven inches tall and weighing ten stone exactly, he “knows the whereabouts of the goal posts”, as one contemporary commentator reported. After two campaigns with Sunderland, who beat Dundee to his signature, he made his Ashton Gate début in October 1910 against Bury but suffered relegation from the top flight, and first appeared at Leicester away to Gainsborough Trinity in September 1911. His solitary goal for Bristol City was the third as Nottingham Forest were defeated 5-1 at Ashton Gate in Division One in April 1911. The son of an engine fitter, John Clark, and his wife Mary Boyd, Billy was born at home in Mills Lane, Whifflet and his return for Port Glasgow Athletic included 26 games and three goals in the Scottish First Division in 1903-04, scoring a seventieth-minute winner in the 1-0 win against Morton in September 1903 and two goals, after twenty and ninety minutes, as Kilmarnock were defeated 4-1 that December. Indeed, he had played in Athletic’s first ever Scottish First Division fixture, a 2-2 draw against St Mirren in August 1902. A successful three campaigns at Eastville brought 35 goals in 133 Southern League matches, Rovers becoming champions of that league in 1904-05; he was still at the club in 1907-08, contributing one of the goals and hitting the bar in the 9-1 opening day massacre of New Brompton at Eastville. He also contributed two hat-tricks for the reserves in December 1906, in a 4-3 defeat at QPR and a 4-0 home victory over Reading on Christmas Day. Adept at “putting forth an effort”, his success south of the border earned a call-up for the Anglo-Scots who were to play the Home Scots at Cathkin Park in March 1906, but injury forced his withdrawal; he did, however, play alongside a former Rovers player in Jimmy Lyon in the Anglo-Scots’ 3-0 victory over the same opposition two years later. Clark later ran the Clifton Wood Wine and Spirits Vault and died at Bristol General Hospital, aged fifty-six. |
William (Darkie) Gibb Clarke.
Born, 3.3.1878, Mauchline, Ayrshire. Died, 21.1.1949, Tunbridge Wells. Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: 1895 Kelburn; 1896 Crown Athletic; 4.6.97 Third Lanark; 10.9.98 Arthurlie; August 1899 East Stirlingshire; 23.8.00 Bristol Rovers; 18.5.01 Aston Villa [42,6]; 2.5.05 Bradford City (£200) [92,15]; 31.12.09 Lincoln City [35,1]; 13.9.11 Croydon Common (retired, May 1912). Five feet eight inches tall and weighing twelve stone, Willie Clarke was the first black professional in Scotland, one of the first players with black heritage to appear in the Football League and certainly the first with Rovers, through his Guyanese paternal grandmother, Cecilia. “Darkie” as he was referred to in the contemporary press, was the eighth of twelve children, and the youngest of four boys, to Alexander Clarke (1842-96), a railway engineer born in Georgetown, British Guyana, who had come to Scotland as a teenager. The son of Duncan Clarke (1820-63) and Cecilia Hutton (1820-64), he is found in the 1861 census as a student at Barr Schoolhouse in Argyll. Alexander Clarke married on 9th March 1864 Jemima Ferguson Cunningham (1847-1900), the eldest of seven children to James and Agnes Cunningham of Thomson Street, Kilmarnock and their twelve children were brought up at 89 Cathcart Street in Glasgow, Willie being the seventh. Willie was sometimes known by the name of William Gibb Clarke, although this name does not appear on birth or death records and may have been used to distinguish himself from others of similar names. “A very promising player, …… he shoots on the run with great force”, reported “The Scottish Referee” on the Crown Athletic player called up for the March 1897 Scotland v Ireland junior international. After three games and one goal for Thirds in the Glasgow League, his career was interrupted by a broken collarbone sustained in a reserve tie at Hampden Park against Queen’s Park Strollers and Clarke was later a member of the Arthurlie side which lost the Qualifying Cup Final 4-1 to East Stirlingshire at Hampden Park in December 1898. Without a Scottish League game under his belt, he moved south of the border and, joining Rovers, settled in Freemantle Street, Eastville. After three goals in twenty Southern League ties, as well as a second-half hat-trick as non-league Weymouth were trounced 15-1 in the FA Cup in November 1900, his second being a spectacular long-range strike, outside-right Clarke played First Division football at Villa Park, the Villains coming second in the League in 1902-03, during which season he scored home and away against Middlesbrough. “I know of few men in the Football League to equal him …. his turn of speed should mean many goals”, reported William McGregor (1846-1911), the Chairman of the Football League. Willie Clarke won a Second Division championship medal in 1907-08 and registered Bradford City’s first ever top-flight goal, against Bury in September 1908; however, he was also suspended for five weeks for disciplinary indiscretions. His Lincoln goal proved the winner in a 1-0 victory over Stockport County in March 1910 and was with Southern League Croydon Common from September 1911, whilst his 44 games and seven goals at Croydon Common included three strikes in seventeen Southern League Division Two fixtures. In 1901 he married Ada Charlotte Higginbottom (1882-1906), the youngest of eight children to train driver John Higginbottom (1845-1916) and Mary Atkin Hurst (1846-95) and the sister-in-law of Rovers’ Bob Horsey, but she died very young, leaving two daughters, Florence Edna May Clarke (1902-88) and Dorothy Alexandra Clarke (1903-75), whilst the family was living at 30 Norwood Avenue, Shipley. Clarke married Annie Emmeline “Nancy” Brown (1894-1969) on 25th October 1914 at South Beddington, near Croydon and their son Richard Claude Clarke (1915-93) was born within a year, the eldest of five sons and a daughter from this second marriage. They lived for many years in Whitefield Road, Tunbridge Wells and he worked as a carpet fitter. Willie Clarke died aged seventy at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in the town after a long illness and is buried in Tunbridge Wells Cemetery. His brother Edward played for Ayr Parkhouse and Girvan Athletic. |
Frederick Corbett.
Born, 1880, Canning Town. (often given as 1.1.1881) Died, 15.4.1924, Brentford. Début: 29.4.05 v Tottenham Hotspur. Career: 8.8.99 Thames Ironworks; May 1900 West Ham United; 14.12.01 Bristol Rovers; 1903 Bristol City [49,14]; 3.4.05 Bristol Rovers; 22.5.05 Brentford; 19.6.08 Bristol Rovers; 29.9.11 Worcester City; 10.11.11 New Brompton; June 1912 Merthyr Town; 7.11.13 Tranmere Rovers; 16.3.14 Croydon Common; 1.11.19 Winsford United. Three spells at Eastville earned Fred Corbett a tally of 139 Southern League appearances and 52 goals for Rovers; he was the only player to top fifty goals for the side during the Southern League era. This tally included hat-tricks in the 3-0 home win against Kettering Town in February 1902 and when Exeter City were defeated 5-1 at Eastville seven years later. He could have had more goals, too, for he missed penalties against Swindon Town and Southampton in the autumn of 1902. Nevertheless, Corbett “led [Rovers] with admirable discretion”, according to the “Villa News and Record”. An East Londoner by birth, he had earlier scored twice against Rovers in 1901, on both occasions contributing the opening goal of a 2-0 win, whilst he also scored a hat-trick for the Hammers against Wellingborough in September of that year. In the Southern League, he was to score thirteen times in 33 games for West Ham, 39 goals in 91 matches for Brentford and twice top scorer (although four Southern League games against Rovers yielded no goals) and six times in 22 games for modern-day Gillingham, this figure rendering him the club’s top scorer, before two goalless matches with Merthyr. The Western League, though, proved a different story, as he scored a first-half hat-trick at Eastville in November 1905, ending up with all four as Brentford defeated Rovers 4-0. He was in the Gillingham side which won 1-0 at Eastville in the Southern League in February 1912. His greatest success, though, arguably came at Ashton Gate, for his thirteen goals in Division Two in 1903-04 included four strikes before half-time in a 6-0 victory over Stockport County in February 1904, having earlier made his League bow at Old Trafford. Fred Corbett, eleven stone six pounds in weight, was five feet eight inches tall; he appears to have acquired the middle name Herbert at some stage later in his life. |
(Fred) Arthur Crossley.
Born, 17.12.1893, Radcliffe, Lancashire. Died, 20.3.1965, Burnley. Début: 15.11.19 v Merthyr Town Career: Heaton Park; February 1914 Heywood United; 9.5.14 Norwich City; April 1915 Manchester United; December 1916 Bury; 12.11.19 Bristol Rovers; 1920 Chorley. Known to his team-mates as “Fred”, this versatile player was the middle of five sons to James Henry Crossley (1870-1938) and Sarah Ellen Hartley (1872-1953) of 13 Young Street, Radcliffe and followed his father and brothers into the iron moulding industry. Five feet seven-and-a-half-inches in height and weighing eleven stone five pounds, he made no Football League appearances, but played for Norwich City in four Southern League games, scoring twice in their 4-0 victory over Gillingham on Boxing Day 1914, as well as in two for Rovers in November 1919. Norwich had signed him following his nine goals in just twelve Lancashire Combination matches with Heywood United and he had previously scored 27 goals in the same league that season with Heaton Park. He played in four wartime matches for Manchester United, scoring against Oldham Athletic, Stockport County and Manchester City. In July 1914 the “Rochdale Observer” reported that Crossley had saved the life of a young boy who, whilst fishing, had fallen into the river at Radcliffe. |
James Henderson Dargue.
Born, 1882, Blantyre. Died, 3.5.1937, Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Début: 5.9.08 v Exeter City. Career: Earnock Rovers; Burnbank Athletic; August 1904 Hamilton Academical; 9.12.05 Glossop [7,0]; January 1906 Chelsea (trial); 25.6.06 Airdrieonians [30,8]; 8.5.07 Heart of Midlothian (£250); 4.5.08 Bristol Rovers; September 1909 Royal Albert; 25.8.11 Wishaw Thistle; 1912 Burnbank Athletic; 8.10.13 Hamilton Academical [27,8]; January 1914 Heart of Midlothian (£275) [41,9]; 1930s Hamilton Academical (scout). Marking his début against St Bernard’s with “a beauty of a goal from fifteen yards out” (The Scotsman), James Dargue scored three goals in his first two Scottish League matches for Hamilton. He also added a penalty as Dykehead were defeated 3-0 in the Lanarkshire Cup Final of May 1905. Thereafter he enjoyed a varied career, primarily in the top division in Scotland but also in Division Two with Glossop as well as the Scottish Union with Royal Albert, and had two spells at each of Hearts, where his first appearance came in a 1-0 home victory over Kilmarnock in August 1907, and Hamilton. “Dargue was full of running in the second half”, reported the newspaper, “Scottish Referee” after Hearts had lost at home to Rangers in February 1908. An outside-left, he played for Rovers in 37 Southern League matches, scoring in the home games against Millwall, Southampton and Crystal Palace, but also hitting the post against Coventry City in February 1909. Married to Joan Fisher, James Dargue died in Glasgow at the age of fifty-five and his funeral took place in Earnock Street, Burnbank two days later, starting at 4pm. |
Thomas William Darke.
Born, 25.12.1879, Bristol. Died, 20.11.1938, North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. Début: 19.12.03 v Reading. Career: Staple Hill; Eastville Athletic; 20.9.02 Bristol Rovers; 12.8.04 Bristol City [3,2]; July 1905 Staple Hill (to 1906). Tragedy befell Bill Darke prior to his signing for Rovers, whilst he was captain at Eastville Athletic. He had married a teenage Somerset girl, Lucy Hales in 1900 and they moved to 38 Stafford Road, St Werburgh’s, but their young son died aged just a few weeks. By 1911, though, they were living in Canada, their son Bill junior, who was born in Bristol, dying there in July 1947. Bill Darke senior scored the opening goal as Rovers reserves, two goals ahead early on and 7-2 behind at half-time, lost a remarkable game 7-4 at Paulton Rovers in October 1904. A hat-trick for the reserves in a 7-1 Bristol Charity League win over Cotham in March 1903 had brought his name into focus and he was to play in three Southern League fixtures for Rovers, before scoring on his Second Division début for Bristol City against Chesterfield in January 1905. Astonishingly, when Staple Hill travelled to South Bank in January 1906 to face Manchester United in the FA Cup, with Darke playing in the forward line, they took an unexpected fifth-minute lead before succumbing to the perhaps inevitable 7-2 defeat. He and Bill Savage scored twice each for Staple Hill in April 1906, in a 6-0 Western League Second Division demolition of Salisbury City. One H Darke played for St George in the 1901-02 season. |
William Hornby Davies.
Born,1874, Blackley, Lancashire. Died, 11.7.1929, Bolton. Début: 27.10.10 v Swindon Town. Career: Bolton Acme; Henley; 10.5.97 Halliwell Rovers; 19.5.98 Bolton Wanderers [21,0]; 5.5.99 Bedminster; 20.8.00 Bristol Rovers; 28.10.04 Staple Hill. After a brief Football League career, Bill Davies’ Bedminster début came in a Southern League fixture against Sheppey United in September 1899. Having played on three occasions against Rovers amongst his 22 Southern League and five Western League appearances for the South Bristol club, he subsequently played for Rovers in 51 Southern League matches without scoring. He also appeared in the Rovers side which trounced Weymouth 15-1 in an FA Cup-tie in November 1900. “Davies did good work and much of it”, purred the reporter against Pompey in September 1903, whilst his “stinging shot” a week earlier against Brighton had been headed off the line and he almost scored again, when the reserves defeated Warmley 6-0 later that month. “Fast, resolute and clever”, as a 1903-04 who’s who described him, he owed his unusual middle name to his paternal grandmother Alice Hormby, who married Christopher Davies in 1850 in Bolton. His parents, pointsman Robert Davies and Elizabeth Anne Hewitt, brought up three sons and three daughters at 2 Clough Street, Bolton, the eldest two children being Bill and his brother Robert Hamer Davies (1876-1954), who played for Bolton Wanderers and Bristol City and later lived in Blackpool. A wood craftsman by trade, Bill Davies married Hannah Ottley (1872-1947) at St Matthew’s, Bolton on 20th June 1896 and they had three sons and three daughters, the third child (Walter Robert Ottley Davies, a grocer who married Rhoda Taylor and had a son, Trevor) being born in Bristol in 1903. Latterly at East Bank, New Church Road, Smithills, Bolton, Bill Davies died in 1929, leaving £3,824 in his will to his widow, who survived him by eighteen years. |
George Alexander Anthony Davison.
Born, 1890, Tynemouth. Died, 1962, Co Durham. Début: 5.9.14 v Crystal Palace. Career: Swalwell; Blyth Spartans; 9.5.13 Coventry City; 28.4.14 Bristol Rovers; 21.7.20 West Stanley. Centre-forward George Davison completed a hat-trick against Watford in his penultimate Spartans game and drew the attention of Coventry, for whom he was top scorer in 1913-14, with eighteen goals in 38 matches as they finished at the foot of the Southern League table. This tally included a goal at Eastville, as Rovers defeated City 3-2 in February 1914 and a hat-trick two months later as Watford were defeated 3-1 at Highfield Road. He scored on his Rovers début and contributed twenty goals in 57 Southern League matches either side of World War One; the club’s top scorer in 1914-15, he scored his last goal for the club on Good Friday 1920 against Exeter City. He did, however, miss a penalty as Rovers were thrashed 7-0 at Cardiff City in November 1914. That he was able to play at all was perhaps due to a 1915 penny in his trouser pocket for, struck by a bullet at The Somme whilst serving in the Durham Light Infantry, the coin ended up with a hole in the middle and George Davison walked free. Brought up at 12 Stoney Row, Wallsend, he was the eldest child of a carpenter William Albert Davison and Mary Eleanor Archer, whilst his cousin Joe Watson also played for Blyth Spartans. George Davison’s great-great-grandsons are celebrated cricketers, Joe Root being selected as England’s Test match captain in 2017, and his brother Billy playing with the MCC. |
(Bill) William Demmery.
Born, 9.3.1877, Kingswood. Died, 28.12.1955, Bristol. Début: 25.1.09 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: 1894 Warmley; 1897 Staple Hill; 1898 Warmley; 1899 Bristol East; 5.4.02 Aberavon; 18.5.02 Bristol City [38,0]; 23.1.1909 Bristol Rovers; 1910 Douglas; 10.8..10 Treharris; 12.9.11 Aberdare Athletic; 6.9.12 Mid-Rhondda United (player-coach); 4.9.13 Treharris; June 1914 Mid-Rhondda United; 9.12.14 Treharris; 5.8.19 Douglas. The fourth child of shoemaker George Demmery (1839-1927), son of Thomas Demmery (c.1811-1873) and Hannah Hendy (died in 1891), and Martha Flook (1844-1916) of 151 Zion Place, Kingswood, goalkeeper Bill Demmery worked as a boot-maker but later ran the Horseshoe pub in Downend. Married at St Philip and Jacob on 21st January 1901 to Annie Phipps (1875-1945), he was the father of a son and two daughters and had two grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Having helped Warmley secure both the Western League championship and Gloucestershire Cup in both 1895-96 and 1896-97, he played for the side in two Southern League games in 1898-99. His career with Warmley included opposing Rovers in an FA Cup-tie in October 1895 and the Gloucestershire Cup Final of the following April, and he left them when they folded mid-season during 1898-99. Five feet ten inches tall and twelve stone in weight, he played for Bristol East against Rovers in the Bristol Charity Cup in January 1900 and against Rovers reserves as late as November 1901. Demmery made his Bristol City début against Manchester United in December 1905 and, even though in the shadow of Harry Clay (1881-1964), added thirty games in City’s first ever top-flight season, 1906-07. He conceded an own goal in January 1906, when City won 5-1 away to Glossop in Division Two and he saved a penalty from Sunderland’s Ephraim “Dusty” Rhodes (1882-1960) in a 1-1 draw at Ashton Gate in Division One in January 1907. At one point he appeared close to an England cap, the Birmingham Sports Srgus of 27th April 1907 claiming that he “should prove a threat to Sam Hardy in the England team if he retains his form”; Hardy (1882-1966), then of Liverpool and later a double FA Cup winner with Aston Villa, won 21 England caps. Following a benefit game against Rovers in October 1908, he made seven appearances for Rovers in the Southern League. Following the family line as a boot-maker, Bill Demmery lived at 12 May Street, Kingswood. |
(Spider) Thomas Dixon.
Born, 19.11.1882, Cramlington, Northumberland. Died, June 1941, Cramlington. Début: 19.4.13 v Brighton Career: Bedlington Star; Netherton; Bedlington United; 31.1.07 Middlesbrough [27,8]; 24.6.11 Watford; 16.4.13 Bristol Rovers (£100); 29.7.14 Blyth Spartans; 25.1.15 Bedlington United. “Spider” Dixon scored twice in his second game for Rovers, a 3-2 win at Coventry City in April 1913 and totalled three goals in seventeen Southern League fixtures in his time at Eastville. He also scored a last-minute winner, allegedly with his hand, as Rovers beat Watford, who had taken the lead in the first minute, 2-1 in the Southern League in October 1913. A north-easterner by birth, he scored twice as Boro defeated Chelsea 3-1 on New Year’s Day 1908, the legendary Steve Bloomer (1874-1938) scoring the other goal, and in a 5-2 victory over Arsenal in September 1909. Subsequently, he was top scorer in both his seasons with Watford, with a final tally of 21 goals in 72 Southern League matches for the Hornets. This figure included a brace against Reading in March 1913 and he also scored twice in an FA Cup-tie against Brentford in December 1912 before financial worries at Watford caused them to sell several of their players, Dixon included. One report suggests that his wife died around Easter 1914, prompting his return to the north-east; if this is the case, it may be that he first married Margaret Proudlock and later lived with his second wife Jane at Forsters Cottage, Alnwick, where he worked as a roadstone quarrier. |
George William Dodsley.
Born, 1892, Basford. Died, 1939, Nottingham. Début: 3.9.10 v Norwich City Career: Basford United; June 1908 Notts County (amateur); January 1909 Basford United; 11.1.10 Denaby United; 6.5.10 Bristol Rovers; 27.10.10 Denaby United (trial). Five-feet-eight-inches in height and weighing eleven stone, outside-left George Dodsley played in the first five games of the 1913-14 season and in Rovers’ 3-0 defeat at Brentford in January 1914; Rovers lost all six of his Southern League appearances, the side only scoring once in those 540 minutes. He was brought up at 313 Quarry Road, Bulwell by his mother Hannah and step-father David Warner. |
Levi William Draycott.
Born, 15.2.1869, Newhall, Burton-upon-Trent. Died, 16.6.1943, Luton. Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: September 1889 Stoke; 1890 Port Vale; June 1891 Stoke [2,0]; June 1894 Burton Wanderers [50,3]; 9.5.96 Newton Heath [81,6]; 4.5.99 Bedminster; 14.7.00 Bristol Rovers; 21.8.01 Wellingborough; 1.11.02 Luton Town (trainer, 1903). Five feet seven inches in height and weighing twelve stone three pounds, Bill Draycott was the second child to a coalminer Levi Draycott (1841-1915) and his wife Emma Pickering (1847-86); Emma had been twenty years old when their first child, George, was born in 1867 and the 1881 census reveals four sons and three daughters of their marriage. One brother, John, was a professional at Newhall Red Rose in 1895-96 but Bill spent his childhood largely in Hanley and then Stoke. In the Vale side that shared the North Staffordshire Charity Cup in 1891, Bill Draycott played in two Midland League games, scoring against Warwick County in February 1891, before being part of the Stoke side which lost 9-3 at Darwen in October 1893. Burton Wanderers’ regular right-half for two years, making his first appearance against rotherham Town in September 1894, he helped the side secure the Staffordshire Cup, Kettering Cup and Bass Charity Cup. He later played for the club which was to become Manchester United, scoring in a 9-0 victory over Darwen on Christmas Eve 1898, before representing four Southern League sides. Five Division Two goals in the 1896-97 campaign, including one in the 6-0 thrashing of Loughborough that February, helped propel Newton Heath to a promotion play-off game with Sunderland, which was lost. “An extremely fast man and a good worker …. not overburdened with science”, as a contemporary reporter described him, he appeared in 27 Southern League and five Western League fixtures for Bedminster, four of these against Rovers, fourteen games for Rovers, thirty for Wellingborough and one for Luton, all without scoring. The solitary Luton appearance was a 2-1 defeat at Wellingborough on Valentine’s Day 1903. He was in the Rovers side which defeated Weymouth 15-1 in a one-sided FA Cup-tie in November 1900. Bill and his wife Maude Jeanette Draycott, a distant relative (1877-1928), lived at 22 Gloster Road, Eastville during his spell with Rovers and they had nine children, four sons and five daughters. After Maude’s death, Bill Draycott re-married in Luton in 1939 to Nellie Payne (1874-1952); he worked there in the hatting industry. |
Albert Edward Dunkley.
Born, 29.7.1877, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire. Died, 15.1.1949, Northampton. Début: 3.9.04 v Northampton Town. Career: Earls Barton Wesleyans; 4.9.96 Rushden Town; 16.7.97 Northampton Town; 4.5.00 Leicester Fosse [11,0]; 28.2.01 Northampton Town; 11.7.01 New Brompton; 1903 Queen’s Park Rangers (trial); May 1903 Blackburn Rovers [4,1]; 13.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 25.8.06 Blackpool [16,3]; 19.9.07 Earls Barton Wesleyans; 6.2.08 Northampton Town; 30.10.11 St Michael’s Thursday (Northampton) (to 1914). A speedy outside-left in Northampton Town’s first ever side, Albert Dunkley was their top scorer that season in the Northants League and embarked on a long career in football. Indeed, he scored twice past his own brother in the Cobblers’ second ever match, a 4-1 victory over Earls Barton. He scored eight goals in thirty Northants League games, Northampton securing the title of that division in 1898-99, and nine times in 24 Midland League matches. The second son of Abel Dunkley (1855-1936) and Mary Ann Spencer (1850-1931) of 53 North Road, Earls Barton, he was baptised in the village church on the day he was born and worked locally as a shoe clicker, whilst his cousin Fred Dunkley played for Northampton Town and England at amateur level before running a pub at Earls Barton. His Football League début was for Fosse against Stockport County in September 1900 and he scored at Small Heath on his Blackburn Rovers début. Ironically, his Rovers début came against his former club and he also scored twice against Northampton twelve months later. In Southern League circles, he scored six times in 37 games for New Brompton, playing in both fixtures against Rovers in 1902-03 and scoring twice in the FA Cup-tie against Ilford in November 1901; later he played nine times in 54 appearances for Rovers, helping Rovers to the 1904-05 Southern League championship. Five feet eight inches in height and weighing eleven stone five pounds, he contributed two of Rovers’ goals when they thrashed his former club Northampton Town 6-0 at Eastville on the opening day of the 1905-06 season. Retiring after two knee operations, he ran the “Old House at Home” pub on Wellingborough Road, Northampton from 1908 until the 1940s. He married Mary Ann Elderton (1876-1950) in 1901 and, living at 216 Wellington Road, Earls Barton, had a son Ronald and two daughters, Grace and Janet. |
Hugh Abernethy Dunn.
Born, 8.1.1874, Paisley, Renfrewshire. Died, 1947, Preston. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United. Career: Gordon Highlanders; Minerva; August 1893 Johnstone; January 1894 Preston North End [164,0]; 15.5.01 Bristol Rovers; 12.5.06 Port Vale [27,0]; May 1907 Staple Hill. A tall, dominant full-back, Hugh Dunn arrived at Eastville as Rovers’ captain and with a wealth of Football League experience. Five feet eleven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing thirteen stone six pounds and the son of Shearer Dunn and Elizabeth Kerr, he played in 155 Southern League games for Rovers, his sole strike being the early opening goal in a 4-1 home victory over Luton Town in November 1902. He did, however, add two further goals for Rovers in the FA Cup as well as a penalty in the Gloucestershire Cup Final. He was a dependable and reliable ever-present in the Rovers side which became Southern League champions in 1904-05 and played alongside Billy Beats at Port Vale. Also an ever-present with Preston in 1899-1900, Dunn married a Preston girl, Ann Hall (1875-1950) and he died in the Lancashire town at the age of seventy-three. He should not be confused with the former West Brom wing-half, Archie Dunn (1876-1943), who was briefly on Rovers’ books in 1901 before playing for Millwall, Grimsby Town and Wellingborough. |
Thomas George Edwards.
Born, December 1889, Hanley, Staffordshire. Died? Début: 6.2.15 v Northampton Town. Career: Welton Rovers; 30.12.14 Bristol Rovers (loan) Wartime restrictions forced Rovers to play a succession of players, Tom Edwards appearing in the 2-0 defeat at Northampton Town. He could be the trialist called Edwards who scored five times when the reserves won 6-0 away to Weston-super-Mare in November 1913. |
George Elmore.
Born, 1880, Northwich, Cheshire. Died, 1.7.1916, France. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: YMCA; Witton Villa; 1897 Northwich Victoria; 1898 Broadheath; 1899 Winnington Park; 1900 Witton Albion; August 1902 Broadheath; September 1902 Burton United (trial); December 1902 Manchester United (trial); January 1903 West Bromwich Albion [4,1]; August 1903 Bristol Rovers (£40); 9.9.04 Witton Albion; 10.11.04 Altrincham; 25.10.07 Glossop [35,16]; 25.5.09 Blackpool [34,7]; 25.8.10 Partick Thistle [52,18]; 3.6.12 St Mirren [62,17]; 25.8.14 Witton Albion; August 1915 St Bernard’s; 22.10.15 Broxburn United. A travelling footballer, George Elmore scored on his West Brom début against Sheffield United on Valentine’s Day 1903 and his five goals in 21 Southern League matches as Rovers’ inside-right included a brace at Upton Park in October 1903. A labourer in the salt trade in Northwich, he had won the Crewe and District Cup in 1901 with Witton Albion and the Cheshire Senior Cup the following year, Elmore scoring in the final as Sale Holmfield were defeated 2-1. Against Kettering in January 1904, he ignored a whistle from the crowd and, as hesitant defenders around him stopped, calmly scored what proved to be Rovers’ winning goal. Some records credit him with a hat-trick against West Ham in October 1903, scoring after fifteen and twenty-five minutes – the sixtieth-minute third, though, is often credited to Daniel Wilson. When a leg injury curtailed his time at Eastville, he headed back to Cheshire, scoring a hat-trick in Altrincham’s away win at Oughtrington Park and helping his side win the Cheshire Senior Cup two years in succession. Elmore was top scorer in both 1904-05 and 1905-06, hitting four goals in a 6-0 victory over Newton Heath Athletic and was made club captain at Altrincham before returning to the Football League with Glossop and Blackpool. “Quick and skilful with fast feet”, his Partick Thistle début in a 2-1 victory over Motherwell at Firhill in August 1910 preceded several years north of the border, which incorporated a hat-trick as his future club St Bernard’s were defeated 7-2 in the Scottish Cup in January 1911. On one occasion, he played in front of a crowd of 58,000 for a Glasgow Cup-tie which Thistle lost 1-0 to Rangers. Subsequently he added four Eastern League games and one goal for St Bernard’s. One of 550 men who enlisted for the Royal Scots at Northwich in December 1914, he left Britain in January 1916, landing at Le Havre. George Elmore rose to the rank of Lance Corporal in the 15th Battalion and died in the theatre of war, one of almost 60,000 British men killed or wounded in the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. |
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Thomas (Tot) Farnall.
Born, 1874, Birmingham Died, 1927, Birmingham. Début: 1.9.97 v West Bromwich Albion reserves. Career: Bristol Rovers; August 1893 Small Heath; 3.6.97 Bristol Rovers; 6.5.99 Small Heath [45,2]; 25.7.00 Watford; 21.5.01 BR; 12.5.02 Watford; May 1903 Bradford City [25,1]; 9.11.05 Walsall; 19.5.06 Barrow; 1907 Gloucester. Only Ian Holloway, Gary Penrice, Fred Corbett and right-half Tot Farnall have played for Rovers in three separate spells. Farnall scored on his début and on eight occasions in 87 appearances for Rovers between 1897 and 1899, 56 of these games and all eight goals coming in the Birmingham and District League. In December 1897 he was one of seven scorers as Rovers ran up an 11-3 win against Singer’s at Eastville. He went on to play twenty times for Rovers in the Southern League, without scoring, and add one goal in thirty Southern League games in his two spells with Watford, the goal coming in a 6-1 loss at Aldershot in his first appearance. Sacked by Watford in December 1902, he later ran away from Bradford City in September 1905. He played in top-flight football with Small Heath in two spells, scoring in Second Division wins against Arsenal in November 1896 and Loughborough Town in October 1899, and his sole Bradford City goal came at Ashton Gate in January 1904. With Walsall he appeared in two Birmingham League defeats, at the hands of Aston Villa reserves and Stafford Rangers. The third of four children to William Farnall (1841-99), a gun-maker born in London, and Sarah Ann Chaplin, who died in childbirth when Thomas was five, Tot was brought up at 73 Theodore Street, Birmingham; the 1901 census lists him as a boarder at 126 Estcourt Road, Watford, the home of 62-year-old Staffordshire-born widow Elizabeth Nicholson. Tot Farnall died aged fifty-three. |
William Fisher.
Born, 19.11.1873, Stevenston, Ayrshire. Died, 1910, Stevenston. Career: 55,28 Début:1.9.98 v Bristol City. Career: May 1894 Dalry; June 1895 Kilmarnock [17,9]; May 1896 Derby County; October 1897 Burton Swifts [23,4]; 7.5.98 Bristol Rovers; June 1900 Derby County [11,5]; December 1900 Stevenston Thistle (to 1902). How do you win instant popularity with Rovers supporters? Bill “Wully” Fisher, the son of Peter Fisher and Grace Hamilton, scored the only goal of the game on his début, as Bristol City were defeated 1-0 at Eastville. In April 1900, “amidst tremendous enthusiasm” he added the only goal of the game as City were defeated 1-0 again at Eastville. An Ayrshire coalminer, five feet eight inches tall and weighing twelve stone two pounds, Fisher scored 21 goals in 31 Birmingham and District League matches for Rovers in 1898-99, totalling 43 games and 23 goals in all competitions, and added twelve matches and five goals in Rovers’ inaugural Southern League campaign of 1899-1900. This impressive goal return included hat-tricks against Kidderminster Harriers in November 1898 and West Bromwich Albion reserves in March 1899. Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing twelve stone four pounds, he added strength and determination on the left-wing. Kilmarnock’s top scorer in their first ever season in the Scottish League, his tally included a brace in the 4-2 home victory over Renton in September 1895 and in the victory at Linthouse in February 1896, when Killie came from 2-0 down at half-time to win 3-2. He had also played in an FA Cup semi-final whilst at Derby County, his three goals in earlier rounds paving the way for a game against Everton at Stoke in March 1897, which was lost 3-2. By the time of the 1901 census he had returned to Stevenston, where he and his wife Susan had two young children, but he was to die aged just thirty-seven. |
William Bertram Floyd.
Born, 1885, Frodingham, Lincolnshire. Died, 21.2.1932, Worksop. Début: 5.9.08 v Exeter City. Career: Lindsey Star; 24.6.04 Gainsborough Trinity; 10.5.05 New Brompton; 11.5.08 Bristol Rovers; 3.7.09 Gainsborough Trinity [96,3]; 2.9.12 Worksop Town (to 1920). Bill Floyd was brought up at the home of his grandmother, Mary Gowsell (1837-92), and later by his uncle Parish Chapman (1848-1909). The second of four children to a widowed furnace labourer, William Floyd, he married Ethel Brown (1886-1961) in Gainsborough in 1907 and had a son Bertram and a daughter Irleen. By the time of the 1911 census the family was living with his parents-in-law, Charles and Mary Brown at 21 Cecil Street, Gainsborough. Ethel’s father Charles had been one of four brothers to play for Gainsborough Trinity, the eldest Arthur (1885-1944) going on to represent England. Bill Floyd played in 88 Southern League games for New Brompton without scoring, appearing six times against Rovers including the 9-1 defeat at Eastville in September 1907. In December of that year, he had conceded a first-half own goal as New Brompton found themselves 5-2 down away to Bradford Park Avenue in a Southern League encounter; the game incredibly finished 5-5. He played alongside Rovers players in Walter Marriott and Bobbie Walker and was also in the side which recorded an historic 3-1 victory over Sunderland in the FA Cup in January 1908 and held Manchester City to a draw at Maine Road in the following round. When his former club New Bromtpn played Rovers in September 1908, Floyd was debited, in some sources, with an own goal, although this strike is normally credited to Bert Powell (1885-1957). He managed 36 goalless games as Rovers’ regular left-back in 1908-09 and left Trinity when they lost their Football League status in 1912. A right-hand batsman, he represented the Lincolnshire side which became cricket’s Minor Counties champions in 1911. |
James Joseph Fortune.
Born, 1888, Dublin. Died, 1944, Dublin. Début: 26.9.14 v Southampton. Career: Herbert Park (Dublin); 12.8.09 Shelbourne; 30.4.10 Distillery; July 1911 Leeds City [1,0]; 1912 Shelbourne; 5.3.13 Barrow; 6.5.13 Queen’s Park Rangers; 20.5.14 Bristol Rovers; 1915 Shelbourne; 14.8.19 Stalybridge Celtic; August 1920 Pembroke Dock; July 1921 Pontypridd; February 1925 Pembroke Dock. Outside-left Jimmy Fortune played in four Southern League games for Rovers in succession in the autumn of 1914 and a fifth at Plymouth in February 1915; all five games were lost. He also appeared in eight Southern League games for QPR, without scoring (four of these games were goalless draws), in addition to his solitary Football League appearance, whilst living in Saddleworth, as an outside-left who “showed a good deal of intelligence”, when Leeds City drew 0-0 at home to Chelsea before a 15,000 crowd in September 1911. Fortune is known to have scored a hat-trick in Barrow’s 10-0 Lancashire Combination victory against Denton in March 1913. |
Hugh M Gallacher.
Born, 15.10.1891, Milton, Glasgow. Died, December 1920, Glasgow. Début: 20.12.13 v Exeter City. Career: Rutherglen Glencairn; 11.8.13 Partick Thistle; November 1913 Bristol Rovers; 1.3.16 Aberdeen [9,0] (to May 1916). Scottish centre-forward Hugh Gallacher, the son of John Gallacher and Mary Dougherty, played for Rovers in six consecutive Southern League games over Christmas 1913, scoring twice when Swindon Town were defeated 5-2 at Eastville on Christmas Day itself, prior to reappearing at centre-half for two further games early the following campaign. Early football at Glencairn had been sufficiently impressive that he missed the September 1912 fixture with Parkhead to play in the Glasgow League side which lost 3-0 to the Irvine and District League. In fact, it took until January 1913 for Glencairn to win a Glasgow League fixture that season, the victory finally being achieved 2-1 over Benburb when Gallacher curled in a late winning goal direct from a free-kick. In three months at Firhill, he had been unable to break into Thistle’s Scottish First Division side. The 1914 Athletic News reported that Gallacher had “shown much promise last year”, but he was to appear just briefly in the Scottish League with Aberdeen, his final appearance being the goalless draw with Rangers in April 1916. He did, however, help his new side secure the 1915-16 Robertson Cup, before he served in both the Footballers’ Battalion and the Gordon Highlanders during World War One. |
John Wilfred Gange.
Born, 14.2.1888, Bristol. Died, 9.8.1972, Poole, Dorset. Début: 22.4.11 v Northampton Town. Career: Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital School; York House; Easton Rovers; Greenbank Rovers; 4.5.09 Bristol Rovers; 22.11.12 Weston-super-Mare. Home defeats against Northampton Town, after Easter 1911, and Watford, in the autumn of 1911, constituted the Southern League career of Jack Gange, born in a snow blizzard at the family home of 20 Little George Street, the eldest son in a family of four boys and six girls to a Lancashire-born railway wagon lifter, John Gange (1861-1913, son of George Gange) and his wife Mary Ann Taylor (1867-1940, daughter of Joseph Taylor). When his mother and eight surviving siblings emigrated to Winnipeg between 1907 and 1913, Jack remained in Bristol. In addition to his Southern League experience, he appeared at left-back as Rovers lost the Gloucestershire Cup Final 1-0 to Bristol City. Later he was to return to Eastville and appear for the side briefly in wartime football during the 1916-17 season. Baptised at St Philip and Jacob on 18th March 1888, Jack Gange married Marie Rose Sharp (1891-1981) on 13th July 1918 and they had two sons, Peter, who married Margery Brennan, and Donald, who married Valerie Rees, their sons having three children each. |
(Jasper) Alfred Geddes.
Born, March 1871, West Bromwich. Died, 4.10.1927, Bristol. Début: 5.10.01 v Tottenham Hotspur. Career: Christ Church School, West Bromwich; Bratt Street School, West Bromwich; Causeway Green Villa; May 1891 West Bromwich Albion; March 1894 Clapham Rovers; 11.4.95 West Bromwich Albion (loan) [73,25]; 26.4.95 Millwall Athletic; 11.5.99 Bedminster; 31.10.00 Bristol City [13,4]; 24.9.01 Bristol Rovers; 1902 Bristol City. Four minutes into the 1892 FA Cup Final, from England international Billy Bassett’s (1869-1937) cross, Jasper Geddes scored to set West Brom on the way to a 3-0 victory over local rivals Aston Villa. A temperamental, greedy yet enthusiastic winger, Geddes also played in The Baggies’ record 12-0 First Division win against Darwen in April 1892, scoring once, and re-joined in 1895 in time to score three goals in the final two games and stave off relegation. Reputedly, Millwall’s first professional player, he added 38 goals in 83 Southern League matches, as Athletic won successive championships in 1894-95 and 1895-96. He also registered a hat-trick as Millwall, six goals head at the interval, defeated Reading 7-1 at Elm Park in a Southern League fixture in October 1896. Five feet four inches and ten stone, he was a speedy if lightweight forward, but he continued to score goals everywhere he played. A Bedminster début against Sheppey United in September 1899 was the first of 28 Southern League games, which yielded eight goals and included three games against Rovers; on the day Rovers scored fifteen against Weymouth, he made his City début against Millwall Athletic, his former club, and his four goals in 13 Southern League matches at Ashton Gate included a hat-trick against Chatham and three more games against Rovers; he played seven times at outside-left for Rovers during 1901-02 and scored a hat-trick for the reserves in a 5-1 victory over Weston-super-Mare in April 1902. Six weeks old in the 1871 census, Alf “Jasper” Geddes was the second of six children to William Geddes (1843-1900) and Sarah Ann Underwood (1847-1914) of 19 Cranhill Street, West Bromwich; his father, a labourer, had left Scotland in search of employment. Alf married Ada Elizabeth Hopkins (1875-1949) in 1895 and they had five children, Alfred, Doris, William, Fred and Ida. |
William Walter Webber Gerrish.
Born, 28.12.1884, Bristol. Died, 8.8.1916, Guillemont, France. Début: 21.4.06 v Fulham Career: Eastville Board School; Freemantle; 1.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 14.4.09 Aston Villa (£200) [55,17]; 25.5.12 Preston North End (£250) [3,0]; 30.11.12 Chesterfield Town. Pam and Ken Linge’s 2015 book “Missing but not Forgotten” and Alexandra Churchill’s 2016 offering “Somme: 141 Days, 141 Lives” both feature chapters on the life of Billy Gerrish, who lost his life in the theatre of war. The dashing forward, a Bristol boy, had left Rovers to win a League championship medal with Aston Villa in 1909-10, for whom he scored a hat-trick against Chelsea in Division One in September 1909. Unable to retain his place in the side the following season, his career took him to Preston and Chesterfield, where he suffered a broken leg, before enlisting as F/936 in the Footballers’ Battalion, the 17th Middlesex Regiment. The former England international Frank Buckley (1882-1964), who coached the Footballers’ Battalion team, described Gerrish as “a splendid soldier, most willing and brave”. In February 1915, when in military hospital, he had heard another patient was dying through blood loss and offered to have some of his blood pumped into the patient “who was ever after grateful for the extension of his own life by about a year”, as his former Rovers team-mate Peter Roney wrote from the trenches. Sent to The Somme on 17th November 1915, he survived Delville Wood, but was shot in the legs on the morning of 8th June 1916. He was last seen, casually smoking a cigarette whilst waiting in vain for stretcher-bearers; his body was never recovered or identified. One of 52 soldiers in his regiment killed that morning, Gerrish is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing on Pier and Face 12d/13b. Prior to this sad end, he had broken into Rovers’ side at the age of twenty-one, establishing himself in the side and becoming a lynchpin during the 1908-09 season, when his two goals set up a 4-1 victory over a very strong Southampton side. These were but two of eleven goals in 49 Southern League appearances for the Eastville side; he is said to have once smashed a shot into the Eastville net so hard that it broke through the back and careered out onto the main road. Five-feet-nine-inches in height and weighing thirteen stone, he later represented Chesterfield in eight Midland League games without scoring, as his club finished second in the table, and breaking his leg in his first appearance, a 6-0 victory over Grimsby Town reserves in December 1912. The extended Gerrish family lived for many years on the corner of Whitehall Road and Gordon Road, in a house demolished in 1925, and nearby Gerrish Avenue bears their name; Billy Gerrish was one of twelve children born to Wesley Charles Gerrish (1848-1916) and Florence Webber (1854-1940) of 664 Stapleton Road and fathered a son called Horace (1911-39). His brother Howard Gerrish (1885-1969) was on Rovers’ books during the 1904-05 Southern League championship season but, unable to break into the side, moved away and was reported to be at 6 Cardiff Road, Glanllyn, Taffs Well in 1953. |
John Glendenning.
Born, 1.10.1884, Bedminster. Died, 23.4.1957, Bristol. Début: 9.10.09 v Watford Career: Ravenswood School, Bedminster; Merrywood Old Boys; Bedminster YMCA; Verriers United; Staple Hill; 21.4.09 Bristol Rovers (to 1911). Autumnal defeats against Watford in 1909 and Clapton in 1910 constituted the entire career of central defender Jack Glendenning, the sixth of nine children to an engine driver, William Glendenning (1848-1928), the son of Samuel Glendenning (1818-49) and Mary Nation (1814-82), and his first wife Martha Bray (1852-93) of 30 Cotswold Road, Bedminster. A letter-press printer, he was single and boarding at 18 Priory Road, Knowle by the time of the 1911 census. Prior to his experience with Rovers, he had represented Bristol Wednesday League side Verriers United and later Staple Hill. Jack Glendenning married in 1912 Ada Schofield (1888-1961) and they had no children; they emigrated to South Africa, returning to the United Kingdom in 1956. |
William Gould.
born, 5.8.1884, Burton-upon-Trent. Died, 1965, Burton-upon-Trent. Début: 1.9.06 v New Brompton Career: Sydney Star; November 1903 Burton United [38,8]; 19.6.05 Leicester Fosse [6,1]; 10.5.06 Bristol Rovers; 6.5.07 Glossop [33,6]; 18.9.08 Bradford City [18,2]; 20.5.09 Manchester City [8,2]; 17.7.12 Tranmere Rovers (to 1915); 1930s Burton Town (trainer). An ever-present at Eastville in 1906-07, outside-left Willie Gould enjoyed an extensive Football League career elsewhere. Initially, he had joined his home-town club from Burton Junior League side Sydney Star and made his first League appearance against Leicester Fosse. He arrived at Leicester, having also scored against them in the FA Cup in the 1903-04 season, and registered his only League goal for the Foxes at Orient in December 1905, the opener in a 2-0 victory. In 38 Southern League and four FA Cup appearances for Rovers, his only goal came in the 6-1 thumping of Northampton Town at Eastville in March 1907. During his time at Glossop, he scored a hat-trick in the FA Cup, in a 3-0 victory over West Stanley which set up a tie against his future club, Manchester City. Having registered top-flight goals for Bradford City, where he was a team-mate of “Loo” Williams, against Bury and Aston Villa in the autumn of 1908, he scored for Manchester City in Second Division fixtures at his former club Glossop and at Burnley in April 1910; City were Division Two champions in 1909-10. Gould helped Tranmere win the 1913-14 Lancashire Combination and he scored once in the club’s record FA Cup win, a 13-0 victory over Oswestry Town in October 1914. Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing ten stone two pounds, he was brought up at 53 Mosley Street, Burton-upon-Trent, the second of seven children to Andrew Gould and Eliza Keen (1856-1921); his father, a brewer’s labourer, was Andrew Nicol Gould (1857-1915), the eldest son of Thomas Gould (1837-1907) and his wife Martha Nicol (1840-1890). As late as 1950 he was still working as a waterworks district inspector and living at 5 Eton Road, Burton-upon-Trent. |
John Lang Graham.
Born, 7.8.1881, Dalry, Ayrshire. Died, 15.5.1965, Saltcoats. Début: 18.10.02 v New Brompton. Career: Rugby XI; 11.6.00 Kilmarnock [37,14]; 3.5.02 Bristol Rovers; 23.4.03 Celtic [4,0]; 17.5.04 Millwall Athletic; April 1905 Accrington Stanley; September 1905 Alloa Athletic; 13.10.05 Brighton; March 1906 Kilwinning Eglinton; December 1906 Hamilton Academical [1,1]; 2.8.07 Clyde [7,1]. In addition to two Southern League games for Millwall and one for Brighton (a 3-1 home defeat against Southampton in October 1905), John Graham scored four times in seventeen Southern League appearances for Rovers, including goals in successive large home wins in November 1902. The son of Ann Jane Lang Graham from Dalry, he enjoyed even greater success, though, north of the border, having scored fourteen top-flight goals in two seasons with Kilmarnock. Two of these strikes came when Dundee were beaten 4-0 at Rugby Park in the Scottish First Division in November 1901, Graham hitting the second and fourth goals with Jimmy Howie, another future Rovers man, scoring the third. He also scored twice against Queen’s Park in December 1900, when Killie led 5-0 at half-time only to draw a ten-goal thriller, and against Rangers in the League and Partick Thistle in the cup the following campaign. Joining the Green and Whites alongside “Sunny Jim” Young and Bobby Muir, he later made his Celtic bow in a 2-0 victory over Hibernian before a 10,000 crowd in September 1903, although he struggled to dislodge the celebrated Jimmy McMenemy (1880-1965) at Celtic Park. A solitary appearance for Hamilton came in January 1905, Graham heading home the third goal in a 3-1 home victory over East Stirling on the stroke of half-time. “Graham makes a capital pivot and his inclusion in the attack makes for strength”, argued the Scottish Referee in August 1907, yet he only played in their side until late October 1907, scoring from close range against Hearts that August and losing his place after heavy defeats against Dundee and Port Glasgow Athletic. |
(Bert) James Archibald Gray.
Born, 1875, Keynsham. Died, 1937. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town Career: Cadzow Oak; 2.6.96 Abercorn [13,0]; July 1899 Clyde [5,2]; 18.8.00 Royal Albert; 18.7.02 Clyde; August 1903 Bristol Rovers; 11.5.04 Aston Villa [7,0]; April 1905 Rangers [58,0]; 23.5.07 Tottenham Hotspur; 10.6.08 Leyton; October 1911 Bristol Rovers; October 1919 Bristol City (trial). “Bert” Gray, locally born, returned to Rovers after enjoying football north of the border. In 32 Southern League games, he contributed three goals, at Brighton and Northampton and in the 7-1 home win against Wellingborough over Christmas 1903. “A thorn in the flesh to the home forwards”, when Rovers visited Wellingborough for the return fixture, he was also accused by the local press of “playing to the gallery”, when Rovers ran five goals past a beleaguered Kettering defence in March 1904. That season he also played in all three of Rovers’ epic FA Cup-ties against Arsenal. Brought up in Longwell Green by his parents Thomas Gray, a stonecutter, and Harriet Neads, he was the third of four children and his cousins, the children of his father’s brother James, lived next door. After his father’s death, he set off to Scotland where he played top-flight football for three clubs. Abercorn won just one game in the entire season, 1896-97, but it was Gray who set up the last-minute winner for John McKimm (1875-1929) in that 3-2 victory over St Mirren in October 1896. At Royal Albert he narrowly missed claiming a major scalp, when his shot rebounded off the bar during a Scottish Cup replay in December 1900 which was lost 1-0 to St Johnstone. He later played for Spurs in fifteen Southern League fixtures and scored three goals in 123 Southern League appearances for Leyton, but made no further appearances on his return to Eastville in the autumn of 1911. |
Richard Gray.
Born, 3.2.1877, Derby. Died, 22.6.1968, Burton-upon-Trent. Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: Derby Athletic; December 1895 Burton Swifts [93,3]; 8.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 5.5.01 Burton United [50,0]; October 1903 Gresley Rovers (to May 1906); 1907 Sherwood Foresters; 1908 Burton United (player-manager, 1909-10). Rovers’ regular goalkeeper for three seasons, Dick Gray had previously made his name as the first goalkeeper to register a goal in the Football League. In fact he scored three: penalties at home to Leicester Fosse in November 1897 (he saved a penalty in the same game), Small Heath in September 1898 and Loughborough Town in January 1899. During the 1898-99 season he also scored in an FA Cup tie at home to Coalville Town in October 1898. Five feet eight inches tall and weighing eleven stone, it was noted that “in clearing the ball he is very quick”. He was “dashing, full of nerve and at times brilliant in the extreme, the clever manner and sometimes audacious way in which he clears his goal have won him encomiums from the highest authorities”, reported the local Burton press, “but Dick is at times apt to grow a little careless”. The fourth child of Samuel Edward Gray and Ann Oakley of 100 Boyer Street, St Werburgh, Derbyshire, he arrived at Eastville in time for Rovers’ inaugural campaign in the Southern League and appeared in 53 matches in that competition, as well as the remarkable 15-1 FA Cup trouncing of Weymouth in November 1900. During Rovers’ first Southern League season he was in goal for the 7-2 victory over Swindon as well as the 8-2 defeat at Portsmouth and he was still in the side for the 10-0 home victory against Gravesend United in December 1900, before returning to his Staffordshire roots. When Rovers lost 6-0 at Spurs in a Western League fixture in December 1900, Gray became the third Rovers player ever to be sent off, receiving his marching orders after kicking the ball in anger out of the ground, Rovers at that stage being 5-0 down, three of the goals coming from the penalty-spot. Prior to Rovers, Gray had been “the fearless goalkeeper” at Burton, making his League bow in an inauspicious 7-0 thrashing at home to Liverpool in February 1897. Although dropped thereafter, he was to play in 92 consecutive League games later on, also helping Swifts secure the Bass Charity Vase. Returning later to Burton, he played regularly for United, despite missing a few games after breaking three ribs in an FA Cup-tie in November 1901 and he later played 78 times over three seasons for Gresley Rovers, captaining the side in the final two. Gray recalled that one FA Cup performance for Burton United against Manchester United in 1903 impressed the crowd so much that he was showered with coins when he returned to the field after half-time. A Chelsea and Leicester scout, he “discovered” George Harrison (1892-1939), who later played twice for England when on Everton’s books. A boot maker inspector in the 1930s, he set up his own business in Camden Street, Derby before running several public houses in Burton (the Robin Hood in Moor Street, the New Inn in Lichfield street and the Uxbridge Arms in Branston Road) and Derby (the Stockbrook Tavern). Married in October 1897 to Caroline Olga Causer (1878-1951), he died at his home in Kings Street, Burton-upon-Trent, aged ninety-two, and was cremated at Perry Barr Crematorium, Birmingham. |
Arthur Griffiths.
Born, 16.3.1879, Aston. Died, March 1921, Aston. Début: 13.10.97 v Bristol City. Career: Park Mills; Lozells; February 1897 Aston Villa (trial); 15.10.97 Bristol Rovers; May 1903 Notts County [163,1] (to May 1912). A dependable, long-serving left-back and unrelated to the forward Henry Griffiths, Arthur Griffiths was the grandson of John Griffiths from Newport, Shropshire, and the sixth of seven children to a shoemaker Charles Griffiths and Ann Maria Harrison, who had married in 1864 in West Bromwich. Prior to 1899, the year he married Walsall-born Jenny Prinsep (1878-1958), he played in 49 Birmingham and District League games for Rovers, without scoring; his 105 Southern League matches for Rovers from 1899 constitute a figure surpassed by only thirteen players during Rovers’ Southern League tenure, and he played in the 15-1 FA Cup triumph over Weymouth in November 1900. One report stated that Griffiths “was very reliable and bids fair to make a very fine back” (Bristol Evening News, 7.10.99); a contemporary handbook lists him as “a most conscientious player, clever and enthusiastic”. “Never make-believe, he never makes a fuss”, purred the Bristol Evening News (6th September 1902). Five feet nine inches and eleven stone six pounds, he also scored one goal, a penalty in a 1-1 draw with Reading at Eastville in February 1903 and missed penalties against Portsmouth in September 1901 and Southanpton in March 1903; at this time he lived at 30 Gloster Street, Eastville. Arthur Griffiths was awarded a benefit game, when Rovers defeated Millwall 4-0 in the Western League in December 1902. He remained at Meadow Lane even longer, leaving in 1912, and again scoring once – in a 4-2 defeat at his old stamping ground, Villa Park, in November 1904 - but this time in 163 League matches. He died aged just forty-one (some sources suggest he may have died in Nottingham on 5th September 1953). |
Henry Griffiths.
Born, 29.11.1875, Aston. Died, 1950, Birmingham. Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Park Mill; Lichfield Leomansley; Redditch Excelsior; 7.5.98 Burton Swifts [68,23]; 3.5.00 Bristol Rovers; 2.5.01 Reading; May 1903 Nottingham Forest [8,1]; 3.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 6.10.05 Millwall Athletic; 9.12.05 Kidderminster Harriers. Unrelated to his namesake at left-back, Henry Griffiths scored Rovers’ opening goal after just three minutes against Weymouth in the FA Cup in November 1900 and added the thirteenth goal near the close as the non-league side was outclassed by fifteen goals to one. Having impressed in Division Two, he was an ever-present in 1900-01 and completed 47 Southern League appearances and fourteen goals in two spells at Eastville. Prior to this, Griffiths was an ever-present for two seasons with Burton Swifts and leading scorer in both campaigns. Five feet seven inches tall and weighing eleven stone, he was in the Reading side which defeated Rovers 4-0 in a Western League fixture in April 1902. Top scorer in both his seasons at Reading with 37 goals in 56 Southern League appearances, he completed hat-tricks against Swindon Town in October 1901 and Wellingborough Town in January 1902. Perhaps fortunate to retain his place in the side after a conviction for being drunk and disorderly following Reading’s Christmas 1901 party, he added further hat-tricks the following season against Swindon again and Watford, as well as the only goal in a cup shiock, the Berkshire side putting Burnley out of the FA Cup. Having scored against Forest in the FA Cup, a spell at top-flight Forest included a goal as Derby County were defeated 5-1 at The County Ground in March 1904. Griffiths later scored twice in three Southern League appearances with Millwall. |
Joseph Leonard Griffiths.
Born, 1890, Blakenhall, Wolverhampton. Died, 1973, Manchester. Début: 14.9.12 v Southampton. Career: 9.9.09 Wolverhampton Wanderers; 8.5.11 Dudley Town; 2.5.12 Bristol Rovers; 9.5.14 Dudley Town; 26.6.19 Bristol Rovers; 6.5.20 Bury [12,0]; 22.1.21 Stockport County [50,3]; May 1924 Tranmere Rovers [8,0]; July 1925 Mossley (to 1927). Before his League career took off, outside-left Len Griffiths managed 44 Southern League games for Rovers either side of World War One as well as six wartime matches. His only goal for the club came in a 4-1 away victory at Southend United in October 1919, more than seven years after his first game for the club. He later scored for Stockport against both Leeds United and Nottingham Forest in the spring of 1921 and in a 2-0 victory over Orient in March 1924, before playing in both Tranmere’s League fixtures against Doncaster Rovers the following campaign. He added two goals in twelve Northern League matches for Mossley during the 1926-27 season and scored against Manchester North End in the semi-final of the Ashton Challenge Cup. Len Griffiths married Violet Scarfe (1895-1928) in 1913 and their daughter Vera was born in 1927. |
(Harry) William Henry Grubb.
Born, 1889, Bristol. Died, 2.5.1943, Bristol. Début: 30.8.19 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Hanham Athletic; Clifton St Vincent’s; 30.12.14 Bristol Rovers; 1920 Bath City. Goal-scoring goalkeepers are something of a collector’s item; Harry Grubb was a keeper who scored hat-tricks. In wartime football, he scored three times in a 5-0 win against Renown in April 1917 and three more in February 1919, as Rovers drew up a remarkable 20-0 victory against Great Western Railway. The paucity of contemporary newspaper reports means it is feasible he was playing outfield in those games; he was certainly in goal for thirteen Southern League fixtures in 1919-20, one of four custodians used in Rovers’ final season prior to acceptance into the Football League. The second son to a wheelwright George Grubb (1863-1936) and his wife Jane Rundle, Harry Grubb was brought up at 11 Brixton Road, St George and married Beatrice Mabel Macey (1882-1944) in Bristol in the spring of 1914; she was the daughter of Henry Macey (1839-1909) and Lucy Ann Rendall (1844-1908). He died at home at 50 Robertson Road, Eastville, aged fifty-three, Beatrice also being in poor health at that time. |
John Alfred Hardman.
Born, 26.5.1889, Miles Platting, Lancashire. Died, 19.11.1976, Bristol. Bristol Rovers Début: 31.10.14 v Norwich City Career: Longfield; 30.12.10 Oldham Athletic (professional, 24.3.11) [2,0]; 20.8.12 Pontypridd (£10); 30.8.13 Derby County [14,0]; 28.10.14 Bristol Rovers. Professional football beckoned for John Hardman, the eldest child of teenage parents, John Hardman, who worked as a carter, and his wife Sarah Ann Joby. Having made his League début for Oldham at Sunderland in October 1911, John Hardman suffered relegation from the top flight with Derby in 1913-14 and made one appearance the following campaign as The Rams were promoted back. A fast left-half, five feet seven in height and weighing eleven stone six pounds, who had been baptised at St Luke’s, Miles Platting on 9th June 1889, he played 23 times for Rovers in the Southern League before being conscripted. A wages and costings clerk, who lived at 19 Harewood Road, Bristol, he married Beatrice Annie Oldland on 4th July 1915. His grandson Andy Hardman, the son of their third and youngest son Cliff and his wife Gwenneth Iles, was on Rovers’ books as a youth before playing for Bristol St George from 1974 to 1977. |
George H Andrew Harget.
Born, 1883, Bilston. Died, 19.12.1946. Sydney, Australia, Début: 5.3.03 v Kettering Town, Career: Bristol St George; August 1902 Bristol Rovers; 8.8.03 Bristol City [3,0]. Apparently a Boer War veteran who had served at Spion Kop and at the Relief of Ladysmith, George Harget played briefly for Rovers during the 1902-03 campaign. Two Southern League games at left-back for Rovers preceded his Second Division début against Chesterfield at Ashton Gate in January 1905. He had earlier appeared in the St George side which lost 7-0 to Rovers’ reserve team in November 1902 and scored twice for City’s reserve side against Rovers’ reserves in October 1903. His brother, Andrew Stephen Harget (1879-1952), scored three goals in sixteen League games for Bristol City between 1903 and 1905, having scored twelve goals in fifteen Western League games for Bedminster between 1896 and 1898, and joined Bath City in November 1908. Both brothers later emigrated to Australia. |
George Harris.
Born, 1874, Clifton. Died? Début: 18.4.00 v Gravesend United. Career: June 1897 Bristol St George (professional, 6.7.98); 25.8.99 Bristol Rovers; 10.10.01 Bristol East. Both George Harris’ Southern League games were at Eastville over Easter 1900 and he scored the only goal of the game against Queen’s Park Rangers on his second appearance. Taking a ball from Tom McInnes, he finished with aplomb, midway through the first-half. Formerly with the St George club and a boot-maker by profession, Harris and his three elder sisters were brought up at 6 Arthur Street, St George, by their mother, Cowlin Harris, a laundress. |
Harry Harris.
Born, 1891/92, Worcestershire. Died? Début: 11.9.12 v Watford. Career: Blackheath Juniors; Dudley; 12.9.10 Kidderminster Harriers; 2.5.12 Bristol Rovers; 7.6.13 Kidderminster Harriers; 1914 Verity’s Athletic; August 1919 Newport County; 31.10.19 Wednesbury Old Athletic; 1921 Brierley Hill Alliance. Five feet nine-and-a-half-inch centre-half Harry Harris, who weighed in at twelve stone four pounds, played in thirteen Southern League fixtures for Rovers, scoring in a 4-0 home win over Stoke City in March 1913 and later scored once in eight Southern League matches with Newport County. From 1920 both Rovers and County were in the Football League, but Harris never made the transition. It is likely that he is the Harry Harris, son of Henry Harris and Jane Griffiths, who was baptised at St Martin’s, Worcester on 6th June 1891. |
Charles Edward Harvey.
Born, 1875, Bristol. Died, 1949, Cheltenham. Début: 9.11.01 v Kettering Town. Career: 29.10.01 Bristol Rovers (to 1902). Tom Becton’s injury enabled reserve forward Harvey to make one Southern League appearance, in the goalless draw at Kettering, where his shot just before half-time was saved by goalkeeper George Cooch. A regular for the reserve that season with at least twelve goals to his name, he scored four times, including a first-half hat-trick, when the second string side defeated Trowbridge Town 8-0 at Eastville in January 1902, and added a brace in the 6-1 victory over Swindon Town reserves in October 1901 and three goals when St George were defeated 6-1 the following spring. He could be the Charles Edward Harvey, who was living at 71 Church Road, St George in 1902. |
David Harvie.
Born, 1887, Saltcoats, Ayrshire. Died? Début: 3.9.10 v Norwich City. Career: Stevenston United; Kilwinning Rangers; 28.6.10 Bristol Rovers (retired, April 1920); June 1921 Stevenston United. “Hit-him Harvie”, a no-nonsense full-back from Ardrossan was a hero of the Eastville crowd for a decade and racked up 219 Southern League appearances for Rovers. An ever-present in 1910-11, 1913-14 and 1914-15, and living in St George, his only goal for the club was a penalty against Brighton over Easter 1912. In addition, he was in the Rovers side which defeated First Division Notts County in an emotional FA Cup-tie at Eastville in January 1913. His departure, though, was in slightly dubious circumstances, when the club released him after he had apparently sold his landlady’s piano without her permission. He and Bill Westwood had both lodged at 38 Colston Road, Easton with Ernest William Miller (1870-1953) and Rhoda Alice Bishop (1863-1926), a childless couple who had married in 1897. |
George Hastie.
Born, 13.1.1892, Kelvin, Glasgow. Died, November 1982, Florida, USA. Début: 15.10.10 v Southampton. Career: Govan Glentoran; July 1906 Glasgow Ashfield; May 1909 Kilmarnock; 13.10.10 Bristol Rovers; August 1911 Bath City (trial); 24.11.11 Kilmarnock [11,0]; 17.8.12 St Johnstone; 2.11.12 Abercorn; 19.12.13 Huddersfield Town; 10.7.14 Leicester Fosse [17,1]; October 1915 Belfast United; February 1916 Arthurlie; September 1916 Stevenston United; June 1918 Airdrieonians (trial); 1919 Belfast Celtic; July 1920 Abercorn; September 1920 Johnstone (to 1921). Six goals in twenty Southern League games at Eastville was a decent return for this Scottish inside-left, who had earlier represented his country in a junior international. He was to win a Scottish Qualifying Cup winner’s medal with Abercorn in 1912-13, playing in all three games as Arbroath were finally defeated 4-1 in a second replay, suffer a season when Leicester struggled at the foot of Division Two, having made his League bow against Lincoln City in September 1914, and score at Ibrox when Airdrie were defeated 4-1 by Rangers in January 1919. His solitary Football League goal was Leicester’s second in a 3-2 victory at Lincoln in April 1915. Johnstone were Western League champions in Scotland in 1920-21, although Hastie had left the club before they joined the newly re-formed Second Division that summer. A template maker by profession, George Hastie sailed from Glasgow to New York on the “Columbia” on 13th May 1922, settling in Hartford, Connecticut before moving to Luzerne, Pennsylvania. On the death of his wife in the 1970s, he moved to Florida and lived to the advanced age of ninety. There was an Isaac Hastie, perhaps related, who also played with St Johnstone and Airdrieonians, whilst John Hastie was with Bathgate in 1906-07. |
James Haxton.
Born, 1886, Lochgelly. Died, 29.12.1967, Lochgelly. Début: 30.9.05 v Millwall. Career: Lochgelly Juniors; August 1902 Lochgelly United; 4.5.04 Motherwell [24,10]; 10.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 6.6.06 Aberdeen [7,1]; 31.1.07 Lochgelly United; 30.4.08 Buchanhaven. A brief sojourn south of the border saw Jim Haxton score three times in eight Southern League games at Eastville. The three games in which he scored, at Plymouth and at home to West Ham and Brighton, all resulted in 2-1 wins. In addition, he scored a hat-trick against Staple Hill in a Gloucestershire Cup semi-final in April 1906, which was won 4-0. Earlier he had scored three times on the occasion of his first game for Lochgelly United, an 8-2 victory at Reid’s Park over Forfar Athletic, the first of four hat-tricks he was to contribute for the Happylanders in the Northern League. Making his Motherwell début in a 3-2 defeat at Airdrie, he had suffered relegation that season, his ten goals including two in a 4-3 defeat at Third Lanark, for whom the former Rovers wing-half Jack Neilson scored. He scored the third goal in a 4-2 victory over St Mirren before a crowd of 5,500 at Pittodrie on his Aberdeen début in September 1906. It is possible that he is the man who married Annie McLean (1889-1958), the daughter of James McLean and Margaret Hogg. |
James Thomas Henderson.
Born, 8.6.1894, Darlington. Died, September 1973, Cleveland. Début: 27.9.19 v Newport County. Career: Everton; Bootle; 26.8.13 Derby County; 20.3.14 Glossop [23,7]; 1915 Liverpool; 27.9.19 Bristol Rovers; 5.12.19 Exeter City; March 1920 Everton (trial); July 1920 Caerphilly Town; September 1923 Penrhiwceiber. Jim Henderson enjoyed a Football League career at Glossop and scored three times in six Southern League games at Exeter, against Southampton, Luton Town and Swansea Town, all in January 1920. His sole game for Rovers was a 2-1 win at home to Newport County, when a crowd of 10,000 saw Rovers win through two George Davison goals. |
(Sandy) Martin Higgins.
Born, 1879, Consett, Co Durham. Died, June 1938, Newcastle. Début: 5.9.08 v Exeter City. Career: Bishop Auckland; 25.6.04 Grimsby Town; 4.5.08 Bristol Rovers; 14.6.09 New Brompton; 23.8.11 Grimsby Town [96,8]; 4.11.12 Scunthorpe United; 5.7.13 York City; 8.10.14 Grantham Town. Left-half in the Bishop Auckland side defeated by Sunderland in the Durham Challenge Cup semi-final, Martin Higgins enjoyed two spells with Grimsby, scoring twice in a 3-1 home victory over Chesterfield in December 1904, and represented Rovers in five different positions. His 28 Southern League games at Eastville included two goals, both from the penalty spot, against Luton Town and Swindon Town on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 1908. However, in March 1909 his last-minute penalty against Southampton was tipped over the crossbar by goalkeeper Harry Lock (1887-1957). His 73 Southern League games and one goal (against Brentford in September 1910, although he also scored in a 9-1 FA Cup victory over Oxford City in November 1909) alongside Bob Strang for New Brompton included four fixtures against Rovers and, marking his October 1912 début with a goal against Rotherham Town, he added three goals in twelve Midland League games with Scunthorpe United. |
(Harry) Henry James Horsey.
Born, 29.8.1867, Eastville, Bristol. Died, July 1938, Bristol. Début: 15.3.84 v Right against Might. Career: 1883 Bristol Rovers (to 1900), later director, chairman. Quite clearly, Bristol Rovers could never have developed as a football club without the enormous input of Harry Horsey. A founder member of the Black Arabs, he and his brother Bob were mainstays of the side for a considerable time. Harry’s eight goals from inside-forward for the club in 60 known appearances included the winner against Gloucester City in January 1886, a second-half strike as Rovers won 1-0 in what was their opponents’ first recorded fixture as well as a first-half brace against St George in deep snow in January 1887 and he served as outfield player, goalkeeper, director and latterly chairman of the club. He even refereed Rovers’ fixture at Swindon Wanderers in September 1894. A regular as captain of the reserves in 1899-1900, scoring twice in successive fixtures against Coventry City and against Small Heath reserves in April 1900, he even managed one appearance in the Southern League and represented St Simon’s at both rugby and cricket. The eldest of eight children to a carpenter Henry Horsey (1840-1900) and Jane Stitch (1846-98), he had lived with his parents and his grandmother Sarah Stitch (c.1803-78) before being sent as a boarder to Colston’s School; the family lived at 16 Freefield Road and at 16 Wood Street. On Christmas Day 1890 Harry Horsey married Alice Maud Mountain (1865-1915) and their only child Ethel was born in 1892; they lived at 4 Dove Street, St George – Ethel later married Ernest Hopes and had a daughter Joyce, who married Hugh Walker. Widowed young, he later married Clara Thomas (1879-1944). A commercial clerk and later managing director of Octavius Hunt Ltd, match makers, he retired to 14 Victoria Park, Fishponds and died shortly before his seventy-first birthday. |
(Jimmy) James Howie.
Born, 19.3.1878, Galston, Ayrshire. Died, 13.12.1962, Willesden, London. Début: 6.9.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Galston Athletic; 11.5.98 Kilmarnock [61,28]; 9.11.00 Galston Athletic; 1901 Kettering Town; 16.5.02 Bristol Rovers; May 1903 Newcastle United (£300) [198,69]; 8.12.10 Huddersfield Town (£675) [82,18]; 19.11.13 Queen’s Park Rangers (manager, to 1.3.20); April 1920 Middlesbrough (manager) (to July 1923). In his day, Jimmy Howie was one of the biggest names in British football. The holder of three caps for Scotland, playing against England in 1905, 1906 and 1908, he won three League championship medals at Newcastle and appeared in three FA Cup Finals. His first cap came at Crystal Palace where Scotland, resplendent in “primrose and rose hoops” lost to a goal six minutes from time; twelve months later, as Scotland won 2-1 at Hampden Park, “Howie put in a useful afternoon’s work” (The Scotsman) and scored ten minutes before half-time from Liverpool full-back Bill Dunlop’s (1874-1941) free-kick; the April 1908 game was a 1-1 draw before a crowd given at the time as 130,000. Yet he was also a Rovers player, top scorer at Eastville in 1902-03 with eleven goals in 26 Southern League games. His brace in the 2-0 home win over Wellingborough in December 1902 were vintage Howie strikes. “Gentleman Jim” made his Kilmarnock début against Airdrie in August 1898, won a Scottish Second Division championship medal that season, played at Rugby Park alongside the future Rovers player John Graham and represented the Scottish League against the Irish League in 1901. He scored four goals as Kilmarnock defeated Linthouse 8-0 in a Scottish Second Division fixture in November 1898 and a hat-trick against Port Glasgow Athletic the following month. Having left Rovers, he went on to help Newcastle become English champions in 1904-05, 1906-07 and 1908-09. His luck ran out, though, in FA Cup Finals, for those of 1905, 1906 and, as a team-mate of Dick Pudan, 1908 were all lost, although Howie scored the seventy-second-minute consolation goal in the 3-1 defeat against Wolves in the final of 1908, forcing the ball home from England international Jock Rutherford’s (1884-1963) corner, after goalkeeper Tommy Lunn (1883-1960) initially palmed the ball against the post. That season he had scored twice as Newcastle trounced Fulham 6-0 in the FA Cup semi-final. He later became the former Rovers full-back Dick Pudan’s first signing at Huddersfield, to replace the former Rovers forward Sandy McCubbin and scored a brace in their 3-0 victory over Blackpool at Leeds Road in December 1912. After some years in management, which included QPR’s first game at Loftus Road and Boro finishing eighth in Division One in both his first two seasons, Howie retired to run a tobacconist shop in London. A younger brother, David Howie (1886-1930), played for and managed Bradford Park Avenue. Jimmy Howie married Jeanie (1878-1945) and, at the time of the 1911 census, was living at 9 Windsor Avenue, Gosforth, with two young children, David and Lilias. |
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Archibald Morris Hughes.
Born, 3.2.1885, Neilston, Renfrewshire. Died, 6.2.1972, Newton Mearns, Renfrewshire. Début: 9.9.11 v Crystal Palace. Career: Barrhead Fereneze; August 1905 Arthurlie; September 1906 Millwall; August 1907 Arthurlie; 29.8.08 Bury [6,3]; 14.5.09 Manchester City; May 1910 Exeter City; 16.2.11 Bristol Rovers; 18.10.13 Galston; 2.1.14 Stevenston United. Outside-left Archie Hughes scored three times in 21 Southern League games for Rovers and also scored in the FA Cup against Portsmouth. He marked his final home game with a goal against Reading. Bury were drawn to his attention by his two goals in a Scottish League game in his second spell for Arthurlie, at Albion Rovers in August 1908, and he enjoyed a brief Football League career at Gigg Lane, scoring at Newcastle and Leicester as well as at home to Everton. Prior to his arrival at Eastville, he scored seven goals in eighteen Southern League fixtures with Exeter, including one each in the two Christmas 1910 games with Rovers, and had played in four Southern League fixtures with Millwall. “Wonderfully fast off the mark and there were plenty of goalkeepers who could bear testimony to his shooting ability”, he had also been in the Arthurlie side which lost 7-0 at Glasgow Rangers in a Scottish Cup-tie in January 1906. Married, he left his family in Scotland and boarded at 15 Argyle Street, Eastville, whilst with Rovers; he lived to the age of eighty-seven. |
Clarence Leslie Hughes.
Born, 2.1.1896, Cardiff. Died, May 1989, Weston-super-Mare. Début: 27.9.19 v Newport County. Career: Sneyd Park; February 1915 Bristol City (amateur); September 1919 Bristol Rovers; 20.12.19 Bristol City [2,0]. Five Southern League matches for Rovers included a brace of goals against Northampton in October 1919 when he was played at centre-forward. Leslie Hughes had earlier made his Football League début for Bristol City against Barnsley in February 1915 at right-half. The second of four children to Henry Hughes and his Indian-born wife Ena (Helena Moore, 1878-1934), he married a Bristol girl, Edith Euphraiza Skinner (1896-1967) and they had two sons, Gordon and Albert; they settled in Weston-super-Mare, where he died in May 1989, at the age of ninety-three. Only five Rovers players have lived to a more advanced age. |
John Harvey Hughes.
Born, July 1889, Bridgend. Died? Début: 2.9.11 v Norwich City. Career: Cardiff Corinthians; 1911 Bristol Rovers; 1912 Bath City; Sneyd Park. A Welsh amateur international during his time with Cardiff Corinthians, John Hughes won a Military Cross in April 1916, an honour only created two years earlier. Prior to that, he had appeared in three Southern League matches for Rovers, scoring the winning goal in a 2-1 home victory over Luton Town in November 1911 in his final game. The son of John William Hughes (1862-1920) and Sarah Catherine Bateman (1867-1937), who had married in Holywell in 1886, he was baptised on 18th August 1889 at Newcastle, Glamorgan and brought up at Beamaris on Anglesey. He appears to be the man who married Daisy Mary Hooper (1882-1964) in 1911, their eldest child Daisy marrying Arthur Llewellyn in 1931. |
Joseph Arthur Hulme.
Born, 18.12.1877, Leek, Staffordshire. Died, 3.10.1916, France. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United Career: 2.11.96 Macclesfield; 23.6.97 Lincoln City [29,12]; 13.5.98 Gravesend United; April 1899 Wellingborough; 24.4.01 Bristol Rovers; 11.8.02 Brighton; 1907 Denton; 3.7.08 Macclesfield; 1910 Hooley Hill. A Corporal in the 7th Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment (G/4581), Joe Hulme was one of over a million men of all nationalities killed during the Battle of the Somme and is one of the 72,195 names to those whose bodies were never found, inscribed on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. His name is inscribed on Pier and Face 7c. Ostensibly a defender, his Southern League return had been 22 games for Gravesend, top scoring for the club in 1898-99 with nine goals, two goals in 101 matches at Brighton and, unable to break into the side at Wellingborough, four games with Rovers. He was in the Brighton side which faced Rovers in seven separate Southern League encounters. Having played in twelve Combination matches, scoring four times, in his first stint with Macclesfield, he scored nine times in 29 Manchester League games during his second spell at the club, including the penultimate goal in his final game as Newton Heath were defeated 6-0 in February 1910. “A dashing player who did fine work”, as a contemporary handbook described him, he stood five feet seven inches tall and weighed in at eleven stone four pounds. Joe Hulme married Mary Ellen Lilley (1877-1955) in 1905 and they had two daughters, Doris and Ethel and a son, Joseph and lived at 5 Copley Street, Tunstall. |
(Ben) Walter Edwin Hurley.
Born, 11.10.1892, Avonmouth. Died, 8.12.1975, Manchester. Début: 29.10.10 v Coventry City Career: Fairfield Grammar School; 22.8.10 Bristol Rovers; 1911-14 Bristol University; 1919 Blandford. When Rovers played their annual trial game in August 1910, the teenage Walter Hurley caught the eye and he went on to appear in fifteen Southern League matches in 1910-11, his five goals including a brace as QPR were defeated 2-1 in November 1910. His sixth goal, the final one in the 3-1 home win over Croydon Common on Easter Tuesday 1915, was his final strike in 23 Southern League matches in a Rovers shirt. He was to reappear for Rovers in wartime football between 1915 and 1917, his fifteen goals including a hat-trick when Rovers played Newport County in September 1915, one strike either side of half-time being followed by a late penalty. The elder child of Edwin James Hurley (1869-1955), a dock labourer originally from Watchet, and his wife Emma Jane Parsons (1868-1912) from Bridgwater, Walter Hurley was brought up at 29 Richmond Terrace, Shirehampton. A keen sportsman, he won full colours for football and athletics, played for Bristol Boys at rugby between 1905 and 1907 and scored the only try when England Boys played Wales in March 1907; “Hurley dashed up and fielded very cleverly and, running the whole length of the ground, scored between the posts” (Evening Express and Mail). Indeed, having come top in the recent Oxford Local Examinations, the Fairfield Grammar School magazine for Christmas 1908 reported “this student is a good example that good sport and success can go on together”. He graduated from Bristol University in 1914 with a first in Physics and taught at Anthony Gells Grammar School in Wirksworth, Derbyshire from 1914, then at Gillingham Grammar School in Dorset from 1916, teaching Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and serving latterly as Senior Master until his retirement in 1960. On his departure, the Gillingham School magazine refers to his fine singing voice and eagerness to participate in local amateur operatic work; he was “one of the safest catchers in the long-field and a bat who could be relied on to knock a too successful bowler off his length”; a colleague Ron Best said “most of you have heard of Stanley Matthews. It has been my privilege to see him play. I think it is no exaggeration to say that the greatest impression I felt … was that he was just a second WE Hurley”. Walter Hurley later moved to the Alexian Brothers’ Nursing Home in Manchester, outlived his wife Elsie May Richings (1897-1961), whom he married at St Andrew’s, Avonmouth on 8th August 1920, and was survived by their two sons, Edmund and Brian. |
Harold Bonthron Hutchison.
Born, 25.3.1883, Carstairs, Lanarkshire. Died, 16.1.1950, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Début: 1.9.06 v New Brompton. Career: Blantyre Victoria; 18.6.04 Everton; September 1905 Morton; 30.5.06 Bristol Rovers; 2.5.07 Norwich City; January 1909 Morton [4,0]. Thirty games at wing-half for Rovers in the Southern League and a goal in the 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace in April 1907 preceded 28 Southern League matches for Norwich City. Unable to make the grade at Goodison Park, Harold Hutchison made his Morton début in a 2-1 defeat at Partick Thistle in October 1905 and played three times in the Scottish League that season. The sole game in his second spell came at Celtic Park, where the former Rover Jimmy Young was in the opposition; Celtic’s 5-0 win came courtesy of four first-half goals from Jimmy Quinn (1878-1945) and a fifth late on from Jimmy McMenemy (1880-1965). Hutchison emigrated to Chicago and is buried in the Evergreen Park Cemetery in Cook County. Graves alongside him there include those of Robert Hutchison (1926-80) and Frank Hutchison (1934-2016). |
Thomas E Huxtable.
Born, 1880, Barnstaple. Died, 1915, Newton Abbot. Début: 7.4.06 v Brighton. Career: St Paul’s (Cardiff); 1902 St Vincent’s (Cardiff); 1903 Pontlottyn Town; 3.4.05 Bristol Rovers (professional, 10.4.05); 1906 Cardiff City; 1907 Llanbradach; 17.9.09 Cardiff City; 11.12.09 Pontlottyn Town. The third of twelve children to an Ilfracombe-born labourer Thomas Huxtable (1824-87) and his wife Elizabeth Poole, who had married in 1876, Tom Huxtable was born in Devon and brought up at 1 Little Phoenix Street, not far from Rovers’ ground. He made his Western League bow for the club in a home defeat against Portsmouth in April 1905. Towards the end of the 1905-06 season, he was given three Southern League games in Rovers’ forward line and later played South-Western League football for both Cardiff City and Llanbradach. In the 1911 census he and his nephew Bill Huxtable were working at Cardiff Docks and staying with his widowed mother Elizabeth at 28 Ferry Road, Grangetown. He died in Devon shortly after his thirty-fifth birthday. In March 1906 a centre-forward called Huxtable scored Newport’s opening goal against Bristol City reserves in a Western League fixture played at Ashton Gate. |
James Walter Hyam.
Born, 20.7.1891, Shadwell, London. Died, 16.3.1951, Hanham. Début: 29.11.19 v Watford. Career: Army; September 1916 Bristol Rovers (professional, 21.11.19); May 1920 Aberdare Athletic; July 1921 Tranmere Rovers [1,0]; 21.9.22 Clevedon; 2.9.27 Bristol Tramways. Inside-forward Jimmy Hyam had represented Rovers in wartime football in 1916-17, when his seventeen goals had included four in a 5-0 win against Swindon Town in September 1916 and hat-tricks against RAF Bulford and Bristol Dockers. A Private in the Army, his seven goals in fourteen Southern League games in 1919-20 all came in a golden eight-match spell. After appearing in Tranmere’s first ever Football League fixture, a 4-1 victory over Crewe Alexandra in August 1921, he helped Clevedon secure the Suburban League Division One championship in 1925-26. Brought up in London, at 42 High Street, Shadwell, after his mother Catherine Madeline Ralf (1850-1904), a German national, had relocated her eight children, Jimmy being the youngest, and remarried to a Swede named Johan Alfred Wickstrom (1853-1921). In fact, his father, John Walter Hyam (1848-91) had died just weeks before Jimmy’ birth and subsequent christening at Christ Church, Watney Street on 16th August 1891. Jimmy Hyam, who had worked as a boy as a clerk at Paddington Station, married Rose Bryan (1888-1977) in Bristol in the summer of 1917, lived at 5 Central Avenue, Kingswood and played cricket for St James for many years. |
Walter Robert Jack.
Born, 11.1.1880, Lecropt, Bridge of Allan, Perthshire. Died, 3.12.1921, Grangemouth. Début: 21.11.03 v Fulham. Career: Marshall’s Boys’ Club; 1899 Grange Rovers; 26.9.02 Leith Athletic [14,4]; July 1903 Bo’ness; November 1903 Bristol Rovers; 3.5.04 West Bromwich Albion [25,13]; July 1905 Clyde (manager, to May 1909). Two goals in the 5-1 home victory over Kettering Town in March 1904 helped Walter Jack to a total of six goals in eleven Southern League matches for Rovers. Having made his West Brom début at Barnsley in September 1904, he scored a brace against each of Doncaster Rovers, Port Vale, Lincoln City and Burton United, but soon headed into management north of the border, leading Clyde to the runners-up spot in Division Two, but never appearing as a player in the Scottish League. Prior to that, four Scottish League goals would have been five but for the abandonment of Leith’s game against Falkirk in bad light. A son of Robert Jack and Helen Dick, who died in 1902, he had previously lived at 55 Marshall Street, Grangemouth. Unmarried and living in Middle Street, Grangemouth, Walter Jack died tragically; crossing the footbridge to Harbour Street, he stumbled and fell twenty feet into the lock, where he was dragged under as the water rushed in, numerous bystanders with boat-hooks being unable to rescue his body for half an hour. |
Gavin Jarvie.
Born, 20.1.1879, Newton, South Lanarkshire. Died, 25.7.1957, Cleland, North Lanarkshire. Début: 3.9.04 v Northampton Town. Career: Cambuslang Rangers; May 1900 Partick Thistle (trial); 16.10.01 Airdrieonians [26,2]; 3.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 30.8.07 Sunderland [96,2]; May 1912 Hamilton Academical [27,4] (to 1913). Trained as a steel dresser, Gavin Jarvie found great success on the football field. Brought up at White House, Cambuslang, he was the fifth of six sons before John Jarvie (the son of John Jarvie and Janet Parker, 1814-63) and Agnes Clelland finally had a daughter, Agnes. After a trial game for Partick Thistle against a Scottish Amateur XI in May 1900, and having helped Airdrieonians to the Second Division title and Lanarkshire Cup in 1902-03, Gavin made his Airdrieonians top-flight bow against Motherwell in August 1903 and, an ever-present that campaign, his two goals came in the fixtures against Dundee. A reliable presence at left-half for three years, he helped Rovers secure the Southern League championship in 1904-05 and his solitary goal in 89 matches in that competition came in the Easter 1907 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace. Whilst at Sunderland he and his wife, Margaret, lived at 3 Beatrice Street, Monkswearmouth; they had no children. Five feet eight inches tall and weighing twelve stone, he missed just one game in his season at Hamilton, a highlight for the club being the exciting 5-3 win at Raith Rovers in November 1912. |
Charles T Jones.
Born, July 1888, Birmingham. Died? Début: 24.4.09 v Brentford. Career: Verity Work; 1908 Birmingham [1,0]; 23.4.09 Bristol Rovers (to 1910). Left-half in Birmingham’s Division Two game at Burnley in January 1909, Charles Jones made his Rovers début on the left wing against Brentford and added four further Southern League games the following campaign. |
James Walter Edmund Jones.
Corn, 1884, Wellington, Staffordshire. Died, 1951. Début: 11.2.11 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: Hill Top United; Old Hill Red Rose; Wellington Ravenhurst; 9.10.05 Shrewsbury Town; April 1909 Wellington Town; 30.4.10 Aston Villa [2,1]; 10.2.11 Bristol Rovers (exchange with Brendel Anstey, 1888-1933); 1.9.12 Walsall (to May 1913). Jim Jones scored twelve times in 39 Southern League matches after his Football League career at Villa was over. In only his second game for Rovers he scored the second goal as Rovers ran up an unexpected 5-1 victory and he later added two goals in a game against both New Brompton and Millwall. During his time with Rovers, he stayed with James Brogan and John Rankin, fellow Rovers players. His 33 Birmingham League goals for Shrewsbury included four as Dudley Town were defeated 4-2 in April 1908 and a hat-trick three months earlier against Birmingham reserves; he also scored twice in the Shropshire Mayor’s Charity Cup Final of 1908, as Whitchurch were defeated 3-1. His Villa goal was the opener in a 2-1 victory at Bradford City in September 1910 on his first appearance, playing alongside Walter Gerrish and Arthur Cartlidge, whilst his seven goals in 23 Birmingham League matches with Walsall included one in his final game, a 3-2 win at home to Wrexham in April 1913. |
(Jack) John Thomas Jones.
Born, 24.10.1874, West Bromwich. Died, 13.9.1903, London. Début: 1.9.97 v West Bromwich Albion Reserves. Career: Sandwell Albion; Dudley; Halesowen Town; 1894 Small Heath [35,15]; 8.6.97 Bristol Rovers; 5.5.02 Tottenham Hotspur. Charismatic and outstanding, Jack Jones is a legendary figure in Rovers’ colours, from the moment he marked his début with a goal. Astonishingly, he was to score 49 goals in 61 Birmingham and District games for Rovers and, from the club’s elevation in 1899, 36 goals in 76 Southern League fixtures, as well as six in the 15-1 victory over Weymouth in the FA Cup in November 1900, with two early long-range shots and four more goals in the second-half, and five more goals against the same opposition twelve months later; in Rovers’ colours, whilst living at 5 Park Crescent, Stapleton, he also scored four goals on three occasions and hat-tricks on four more. When Rovers demolished Gravesend 10-0 in the Southern League in December 1900 at Eastville, he scored the third goal in thirty-five minutes and added a nineteen-minute second-half hat-trick. The first of his three goals against QPR in April 1902 came within the opening seconds of the match. Scoring goals everywhere he went, Jones made his League début against West Bromwich Albion in February 1895; Small Heath were relegated in 1895-96 and he was the club’s second highest scorer in Division Two the following campaign. Born in West Bromwich, he made débuts for both Rovers and Small Heath against his home-town club. Five feet six inches in height and weighing eleven stone four pounds, it seemed he could score at will. One contemporary report explained that he had “the art of deceiving an opponent as to his intentions; a capital man near goal”. When Tottenham came to Eastville for a Southern League match in September 1902, Rovers presented their former star with a “handsomely-fitted travel bag”, as well as a pretty leather bag for his wife. As “Bristol” Jones, he added a further nineteen goals in 32 Southern League games for Spurs, including a characteristic hat-trick against Gray’s United on his début, before succumbing to typhoid, aged just twenty-eight, leaving two young sons and a pregnant wife. Spurs put on a representative fixture to raise funds for the bereaved family. His widow Jane later re-married, in June 1908, to a milkman named John Fletcher; her three sons took the surname of their stepfather and, together with a half-sister born in Halesowen, emigrated to the Unites States of America where a second half-sister was born. Jones’ sons Archie and Cecil settled in Florida, whilst Leslie moved to Chicago, where his great-grand-daughter Elyse Fletcher learned the footballing skills that led to her appointment as soccer coach at the University of Missouri. |
Harold Kay.
Born, 9.12.1886, Elsecar, Yorkshire. Died, June 1953, Hemsworth. Début: 25.4.14 v Exeter City Career: Elsecar; 31.5.11 Rotherham Town; 5.5.13 Bristol Rovers; 15.5.14 Rotherham County; 8.7.20 Barnsley. Five feet seven inches in height and weighing ten stone ten pounds, Harry Kay enjoyed League football at Barnsley before appearing at outside-left for Rovers in a 1-1 draw at Exeter on the final day of the 1913-14 season; Rotherham County were Midland League champions in 1914-15. It is also possible he is the Private Kay who played for Rovers against Cardiff City in an unofficial wartime game in October 1915. However, the Harold Kay born in 1897, who appeared for Barnsley, Southend United, Barrow and Crewe Alexandra, was definitely a different player. A coal hewer by profession and married to Edith Ellen Watkinson (1891-1970), he lived for many years at 65 School Street, Hemsworth. |
(Jack) John Kifford.
Born, 20.10.1875, Paisley. Died, 21.11.1921, Paisley. Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Neilston Victoria; Paisley Neilston; 22.9.97 Abercorn [13,0]; 13.6.98 Derby County [6,0]; 14.7.00 Bristol Rovers; May 1901 Portsmouth (trial); 4.6.01 West Bromwich Albion [96,8]; 4.5.05 Millwall; 18.7.06 Carlisle United; 3.6.07 Coventry City (to May 1908). Before retiring from football to join Fred Karno’s circus troupe, to which Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel also belonged, right-back Jack Kifford enjoyed a successful decade of football, both north and south of the border. Born John Kefford, the spelling also used on his death certificate, he was the illegitimate son of John Kifford senior, a private with the 26th Regiment based at Paisley Barracks, and Elizabeth Graham, a bleachfield worker of 3 John Street, Paisley. He was brought up in Neilston by his mother and, at the time of the 1891 census, was working at the Mason Arms Inn in the town. A Scottish League début came in Abercorn’s 3-1 victory over Leith Athletic in September 1897 and he appeared in thirteen of the club’s eighteen League fixtures as well as one Scottish Cup-tie before moving to the Baseball Ground, his first Football League match being Derby’s 5-5 draw with Everton in October 1898. With Rovers Kifford, whose kick was “clean and strong”, was an ever-present in 1900-01, playing in all 28 Southern League fixtures at full-back as well as the 15-1 FA Cup victory over Weymouth; at this time he was living at 14 Anstey Road, St George. Although never scoring, he hit the crossbar with a long-range effort in the opening moments of the 10-0 victory over Gravesend United in December 1900. A regular in Albion’s Second Division championship season of 1901-02, he scored the only eight goals of his career, six of them being penalties. He played in Albion’s youngest-ever League side, the team that beat Chesterfield 4-0 in September 1901 and became the third Baggies player sent off in a League match, when he was dismissed during a tempestuous local derby at Villa Park in September 1903. A move into non-league football brought five Southern League games at The Den and twenty Birmingham and District League games along with nine FA Cup-ties for Coventry City without scoring. Jack Kifford married domestic servant Ellen Campbell (1876-1918), who after marriage used the spelling Kifford, at Holy Cross RC Chapel in Daisysteel, Glasgow on 3rd July 1896, by which stage he was recorded as a printfield worker; their three sons all died young and one of their three daughters, Henrietta, is recorded as marrying William Grady in 1919. |
George Kinsey.
Born, 27.11.1866, Burton-upon-Trent. Died, 13.11.1936, Birmingham. Début: 1.9.97 v West Bromwich Albion reserves Career: Barton FC; 1883 Burton Crusaders; 1885 Burton Swifts; 6.9.90 Birmingham St George’s; August 1891 Wolverhampton Wanderers [73,3]; June 1894 Aston Villa [3,0]; 29.5.95 Derby County [36,0]; 26.3.97 Notts County [4,0]; 15.6.97 Bristol Rovers; 21.9.00 Burton Swifts [8,1]; July 1901 Burton United (trainer); 17.9.02 Burton Early Closers (re-instated as an amateur, 1904; retired, 1906). An FA Cup winner in 1893, when Wolves beat Everton 1-0 in the final, and the holder of four England caps between 1892 and 1896, left-half George Kinsey was one of the most experienced footballers to grace Eastville in the Southern League era. From making his League début in a Wolves shirt at Sunderland in September 1891, he apparently won nineteen medals in his long career and three times played in an FA Cup semi-final. An ever-present as Derby finished as Football League runners-up and FA Cup semi-finalists in 1895-96, he helped secure the Second Division title for County in the spring of 1897 and played in 92 games, scoring ten times, for Rovers prior to the summer of 1899, 58 matches and five goals in that tally coming in the Birmingham and District League, all of these as captain; he also captained the Gloucestershire XI which won the South-West Championship of 1897-98; he then played in five Southern League matches for Rovers in 1899-1900. Kinsey “tackled and placed (the ball) with rare judgment” (Bristol Evening News, 7.10.99). Measuring five feet seven-and-a-half inches and weighing eleven stone eight pounds, he “works as hard as anyone”, but missed a penalty in the away game against Bristol St George in March 1899. Granted a testimonial game against a Selected XI in November 1899, he was able to invite several former Villa and Derby team-mates to participate, amongst them the legendary England centre-forward Steve Bloomer. His four games for England had included two large victories, a 5-2 success over the Scots at Richmond on April Fools’ Day 1893 and a 9-1 thrashing of Wales in March 1896 at Cardiff Arms Park, in which Derby County’s Steve Bloomer (1874-1938) scored five times. George Kinsey was the son of Jabez Kinsey (1836-1912), a brewer's labourer from Wilson, Leicestershire and his wife Elizabeth Nixon, later Illseley (who had three sons from a previous relationship), who married in 1866 in Burton-upon-Trent and was brought up at 189 Thornley Street, Horninglow with three siblings. The 1891 census shows him as a boarder at 3 Mollett Street, Birmingham, the home of William and Elizabeth Perrott, employed as a brewer's labourer. “A most hard-working and conscientious half-back and, if a trifle slow, retaining all his wonderful tackling powers, perseverance and excellent judgment”, his career began in the Burton area, captaining Swifts in their pre-Football League era and representing Staffordshire, before scoring three goals in seventeen Football Alliance matches for Birmingham St George’s. He married in 1891 in Burton-upon-Trent London-born Rosa Elizabeth Butler (1868-1935) and they lived at 20 Park Street, Burton-upon-Trent and later at 25 Uxbridge Street in the same town, with their three surviving daughters, Elizabeth, Ethel and Irene, George working as a licenced victualler. He later ran the Three Tuns in Lawrence Hill and was buried at Burton Cemetery five days after his death, which occurred at 72 Mott Street, Birmingham, where he had been living with relatives. |
(Junior) James Lamb.
Born, 1876, Scotland. Died? Début: 9.11.01 v Kettering Town. Career: Jordanhill; June 1896 Partick Thistle; 20.11.97 Falkirk; 30.9.98 Partick Thistle [11,4]; 7.9.99 Linthouse; 15.11.00 Abercorn; 19.10.01 Bristol Rovers (to 1902). “Junior” Lamb had an unusual career at Firhill for, having scored a brace in friendlies with Cambuslang, Airdrieonians, Blackburn Rovers and Clyde during 1896-97, he played in Partick’s 6-0 thrashing against Rangers in the Glasgow Cup in September 1897 prior to his League bow against St Mirren the following month (he signed professional forms there on 16th October 1896) and, although Thistle were relegated in 1898-99, scored twice in the 8-3 home defeat at the hands of Celtic in December 1898. His only game for Falkirk was a friendly against East Stirling in November 1897; he made his début for Linthouse in the Scottish Cup against Motherwell, a 5-1 defeat, two days after signing. The Linties finished the 1899-1900 season bottom of the Scottish Second Division and disappeared off the footballing map. Lamb scored a hat-trick when Rovers reserves defeated Swindon Town reserves 6-1 in October 1901 and played in six Southern League fixtures with Rovers without scoring, before apparently returning north of the border. |
James Lamont.
Born, 1875, Cowlairs. Died? Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: Cowdenbeath; 17.8.93 Cowlairs; 10.10.95 Partick Thistle; 4.5.98 Bedminster; 19.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 22.11.00 Partick Thistle [57,12] (to 1902). The identity of this player is uncertain: he could be James Jardine Lamont, who was born in Bridgton in 1875; or James Lamont born that year in Blackfriars, Glasgow; or indeed James Lamont born in Tradeston, Glasgow, again in 1875. What is known for certain is that he did play in thirteen Scottish League games for Partick Thistle in 1895-96, both his goals coming in the 5-1 victory over Linthouse in February 1896 and represented Glasgow in the annual fixture against Sheffield in 1895. He had earlier been in the Cowlairs side which lost a Scottish Cup-tie 8-0 to Rangers at Ibrox in front of a 5,000 crowd in November 1893. Having made his début at Tottenham in September 1898, he played for Bedminster in 23 Southern League games and nine Western League fixtures without scoring and, after playing in the side which drew 2-2 at Eastville in January 1899, arrived at Eastville in the summer of 1899. Five feet five inches in height and weighing in at eleven stone, he scored Rovers’ first ever Southern League goal, this strike coming against Sheppey United and proving the only goal from open play he registered for Rovers; he added a penalty against Chatham amongst his 27 Southern League appearances. Lamont returned to Partick, adding a brace in the 4-1 victory over Motherwell in December 1901 and taking his tally at Firhill to over fifty Scottish League games and to sixteen goals in 116 matches for Thistle in all competitions. |
(Frank) Frederick Henry Latham.
Born, 26.7.1885, Alfreton, Derbyshire. Died, 1918, Bristol. Début: 22.9.06 v Swindon Town. Career: Keynsham; 1.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 23.8.07 Staple Hill; September 1908 Bristol City [1,0]; 4.9.09 Mardy; April 1910 Reading (trial); 4.9.11 Bath City. Known as “Frank”, this locally-born player scored on his Rovers début and ended up with two goals in six Southern League appearances. In addition, he had scored the first three goals as the reserves won 4-0 away to Frome Town on Boxing Day 1905. The following season he scored four first-half goals in the reserves’ 7-0 victory over Welton Rovers in September, four goals against the Bristol and District League XI on Boxing Day and a hat-trick in the April return fixture against Welton Rovers. His first goal for Staple Hill was the third in their 5-0 FA Cup victory over Chippenham Town in September 1907, Phil “Nipper” Britton scoring the fourth. He later played for Bristol City against Liverpool in Division Two, the season the Robins were to reach the FA Cup Final, and played in one Southern League fixture for Reading. This man is not the former Crewe goalkeeper Fred Latham, who joined the club on 6th March 1901 and appeared for Rovers in a Western League encounter against Reading that month. |
(Jackie) John Laurie.
Born, 13.1.1873, Knightsbridge, Glasgow. Died? Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth. Career: Clydebank Juniors; February 1905 Partick Thistle [11,1]; August 1906 Vale of Leven; 31.8.07 Workington; August 1908 Blackburn Rovers [2,0]; 4.5.09 Bristol Rovers; 4.6.10 Workington. After just two League appearances at Ewood Park, Jackie Lawrie was an ever-present for Rovers in 1909-10, appearing in 42 Southern League matches and scoring in the home games with Brentford and Southend United and in Rovers’ win at Coventry City. He was employed on the left-wing but played in four games at outside-right as needs dictated, and was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910. Previously, his solitary goal for Partick had come in a 3-2 victory away to Motherwell on New Year’s Day 1906 in Division One. It is believed he is the John Lawrie, son of William Lawrie and Mary Robertson, who died in Carlisle at the age of seventy-five. |
Thomas Lee.
Born, 1876, Alnwick, Northumberland. Died? Début: 9.9.99 v Sheppey United. Career: Alnwick Town; 30.8.97 Sunderland [1,0]; 21.6.99 Bristol Rovers; May 1900 Hebburn Argyle; 4.9.00 South Shields Athletic; 29.1.01 Bristol Rovers; 12.3.02 Hebburn Argyle; 13.8.02 Millwall Athletic; March 1903 Ashington. Tom Lee, who also played in five Southern League matches for Millwall, had made one appearance in the Football League before his 22 Southern League games without scoring for Rovers. Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height and weighing eleven stone seven pounds, he appeared in all three positions in the half-back line, as well as at right-back, his final two games coming as a stand-in through the spring of 1902. The son of Charles and Caroline Lee of Felton, near Alnwick, Tom Lee was baptised on 9th April 1876. |
John Leonard.
Born, 1876, Gloucester. Died? Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: 26.10.96 St Mirren; 7.5.97 Derby County [1,1]; 24.3.98 Notts County [1,1]; 13.6.98 Bedminster; 8.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 2.11.99 Small Heath [7,1]; 19.11.00 Aberdare Athletic; 3.5.02 Thornliebank; 13.7.03 Vale of Leven; September 1904 Glentoran; August 1905 Belfast Celtic; April 1906 Renton; October 1907 Dumbarton Harp (to 1909). A right-sided forward, who did not make the grade in Scotland but scored for three Football League sides, John Leonard appeared in Rovers’ first five Southern League games of 1899-1900, scoring twice against Portsmouth. Five feet five inches in height and weighing eleven stone eight pounds, he had earlier played and scored for Derby County against Sheffield Wednesday in February 1898, the month he helped the Rams towards their first ever FA Cup Final appearance by scoring the only goal at Molineux in the second round. He also scored after 67 minutes, as Notts County won 3-2 at home to Liverpool in April 1898, after Tom Boucher had twice given County the lead. A début against Trowbridge Town in September 1898 was the first of 24 Southern League, including seven goals, and eight goalless Western League appearances for Bedminster. He scored Small Heath’s final goal as Barnsley were defeated 5-0 in Division Two in December 1900, before enjoying football in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It is possible he was a brother of Patrick Leonard of Manchester City and Thames Ironworks. |
(Jack) John Lewis.
Born, 26.2.1882, Aberystwyth. Died, 12.9.1954, Burton-upon-Trent. Début: 23.9.99 v Bedminster. Career: Park Mills; 5.9.99 Bristol Rovers; 4.5.00 Portsmouth; May 1901 Bristol Rovers; 18.8.01 Burton United; August 1903 Kidderminster Harriers; September 1903 Burton United [74,24]; 3.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 14.5.06 Brighton; 3.5.07 Southampton; 1.9.08 Croydon Common; 27.8.09 Burton United; 22.10.10 Stafford Rangers. The first man to represent his country whilst on the books of Bristol Rovers was inside-right Jack Lewis. It was a 4pm kick-off in March 1906 when Lewis won his solitary cap for Wales against England; the game was “listless” and Lewis was “slow”, according to The Scotsman; England won 1-0 through a late goal from Sammy Day (1878-1950) of Old Malvernians. “Sharp and clever”, he joined Rovers after impressing in a game for Birmingham Juniors against Scottish Juniors in April 1899. Lewis’ 81 Southern League games and thirty goals for Rovers in three spells included a Southern League championship medal from the 1904-05 campaign, during which he scored a first-minute goal at Brighton over Christmas. He also scored Rovers’ final three goals, a second-half hat-trick, as Eastleigh were defeated 5-0 in the FA Cup in October 1899 and added a hat-trick for the reserves against Brierley Hill Alliance two months later. Top scorer in Burton United’s first two seasons in the Football League, having played in their first Division Two fixture, he was to enjoy many seasons in the Southern League. He scored four goals in ten Southern League games for Pompey, seven in 33 for Brighton and nine in 24 for Saints, where he was top scorer in 1907-08. One of these goals for Southampton came in their 4-2 Southern League defeat at Eastville in October 1907, whilst he had also scored one of the four Brighton goals which defeated Rovers in April of that year, after having had a penalty saved by Arthur Cartlidge when the sides met in September 1906. At Croydon Common he became something of a hero, his fourteen goals in only ten Southern League games, as they secured the Southern League Division Two title, adding to a total of forty goals in 61 matches in all competitions; he scored five times in a 10-1 FA Cup victory against Farncombe in September 1908 and four times the following month against the Grenadier Guards. In addition, he managed two goals in two games for Kidderminster. By dint of playing for Burton United against Kidderminster Harriers in April 1910, Lewis became the only player to have played in both United’s first and last ever game. He may be the man who married Elizabeth Jones at Gelligaer in Glamorgan on 27th May 1915. Living for many years at 15a Edward Street in Burton and now buried at Burton Cemetery, he worked in the traffic department at the local ordnance factory. Five feet eight-and-a-half inches in height and weighing in at eleven stone, Lewis remains one of a select band of players who played for their country whilst with Rovers. |
(Ted) Edward James Long.
Born, 1.6.1886, Melksham. Died, 31.5.1954, Bristol. Début: 2.9.11 v Norwich City. Career: 1905 Trowbridge Town; 16.11.08 Portsmouth; 1911 Swindon Town (amateur); 10.5.11 Bristol Rovers; 1912 St Louis, USA; 14.8.13 Swindon Town; 1914 Trowbridge Town; 1921-22 Westbury United (manager); 1926-27 Warminster Town reserves; 1936-51 Trowbridge Town (manager; director). Eighteen Southern League matches for Rovers preceded Ted Long’s appropriately lengthy spell as manager of Trowbridge Town. He scored nine goals in 38 Southern League matches at Pompey and two in two games for Swindon. Twelve stone in weight, he was a strong outside-right, who left Rovers to play in the United States and later, whilst running The Bell Inn at 19 Stallard Street, Trowbridge, joined the board of Trowbridge Town. Earlier in his career, he had scored thirty goals with Trowbridge, this figure including hat-tricks against Yeovil Casuals in March 1906, Calne Town in March 1908 and Wells City in September 1908. His father, Abel Long (1852-1929), was an inspector living at 29 Bond Street, Trowbridge, who had married Fanny Keates (1854-1929) at Christmas 1872 and Ted was the youngest of their children, their fourth son. Born at 18 Mortimer Street, Trowbridge, Ted married Jessie Violet Malpass (1889-1956) in Chipping Sodbury in 1912 and they had one son, Ernest, and two grandchildren, Patricia and Terence. Ted Long died the day before his sixty-sixth birthday. |
(Jimmy) William James Lyon.
Born, 8.6.1878, Inverness. Died, 21.9.1915, Liverpool. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United. Career: 1895 Third Lanark (professional, 22.4.96) [5,0]; May 1897 Inverness Clachnacuddin; 13.11.97 Kirkintilloch Rob Roy; 20.10.98 Dundee [7,0]; 20.1.99 Inverness Clachnacuddin; 20.7.99 Walsall [44,1]; 16.8.00 Inverness Clachnacuddin; 3.5.01 Bristol Rovers; 2.5.03 Manchester City [6,0]; 16.4.04 Preston North End [210,8]; 1.9.11 Hyde; 9.10.13 Lancaster Town (player-manager, 7.5.14). Brought up at 14 Lower Kessock Street, Inverness as the middle of five children to a railway store keeper James Lyon and Sophia MacKenzie, who had married in Fodderty on 28th August 1868, Jimmy Lyon enjoyed a career north of the border before trying his hand in England. His Third Lanark début came in a 2-0 defeat against Hibernian in August 1896 and his five League games were supplemented by a Scottish Cup-tie at Celtic Park in February 1897, which was lost 3-1. In Walsall, he boarded at 79 Wallows Lane in a house belonging to one George Swain, before embarking on a long and successful career at Preston. Having scored the second goal in Walsall’s 2-0 victory over Burton Swifts in Division Two in April 1900, it took until his thirty-seventh Rovers game for Lyon to score for the club, netting the final goal as QPR were defeated 4-0 at Eastville in November 1902; in 49 Southern League games he also added a second goal, from the penalty-spot against West Ham, two months later. On the other hand, Lyon was sent off when Rovers lost 2-1 at Swindon Town in February 1903, following a first-half clash with the Robins’ Jimmy Poppitt (1875-1930) in a game when “free-kicks were as plentiful as blackberries in autumn”. Manchester City won four of the six consecutive Division One game in which he appeared in the autumn of 1903, the legendary Billy Meredith (1874-1958) scoring in two of them. He first played for Preston in a goalless draw with Arsenal in April 1904, the Lilywhites securing the Second Division title that month and finishing as runners-up to Liverpool in Division One in 1905-06. Having scored his first Preston goal in November 1905 against Aston Villa, he was then sent off against the same opposition in November 1909, after a poor high tackle on Harry Hampton (1885-1963) and received a one-month suspension. His club form earned a representative game alongside Rovers’ Billy Clark for the Home Scots against the Anglo Scots at Cathkin Park in March 1908. Five feet five inches tall and weighing eleven stone, Lyon apparently played “with exceedingly good judgment, and is difficult to rob of the ball”. He had been born on a Monday morning at 11 o’clock, at the family home at 44 Nelson Street, Inverness. In Bristol on 28th April 1902, he married Beatrice Alice Bateman (1885-1916), the daughter of electrical engineer George Batemen and his wife Kate of 8 Albion Row, Easton. Jimmy and Beatrice had two daughters, Sophia Friend MacKenzie Lyon (1903-12) and Beatrice Catherine Lyon, who married Reginald Hunt in 1926 and Arthur Cooper eight years later. Living at 3 Fenton Road, Fulwood, Preston, Lyon was fined 2 shillings 6 pence after being found guilty at Preston Police Court of being drunk and disorderly in Church Street, Preston in September 1907. He signed up for the 1st King’s Liverpool Regiment in September 1915, as private 31822, but was dead within a week, having apparently fallen into Liverpool Docks. |
Adam McCall.
Born, 24.3.1885, Riccarton, Kilmarnock. Died, 1973, Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway. Died? Début: 1.1.10 v Crystal Palace Career: Third Lanark; February 1905 Galashiels; May 1905 Partick Thistle (£3.10sh) [4,2]; 16.4.09 Nithsdale Wanderers; 29.12.09 Bristol Rovers; 5.11.11 Worcester City; 28.11.11 Halesowen Town; 20.12.11 Nithsdale Wanderers; June 1912 Lanemark; September 1913 Nithsdale Wanderers (to 1915). Thomas McCall, an engineer’s machinist, and his wife Margaret McKie, who had married on Hogmanay 1872 in Kilmarnock, had a son, Adam, who was born at midnight at the family home in 10 Park Street. He worked in his home town as an apprentice iron turner, then away from Ayrshire as his football career took hold. A second-half winning goal from a breakaway, as Partick defeated Morton 2-1 before a 4,000 crowd in October 1905 was followed by a first-half equaliser in the 1-1 draw with St Mirren in March 1906. He scored twice in 32 Southern League games with Rovers, whilst boarding with the Grove family in Eastville, hitting the net at home to QPR in March 1910 and away to Orient the following campaign, and later made one appearance for Worcester City. In addition, he was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910 and he added the second goal when Rovers surprised reigning League champions Aston Villa, in defeating them 2-1 in a friendly at Eastville in April 1909. Married to Jesse Jameson, who had six children before her first husband Archibald Haddow was killed in the mines aged forty-three, he had a daughter Margaret and five grandchildren, and died aged eighty-eight. |
John McCall.
Born, 1877, Muirkirk, Ayrshire. Died, 1951, Nottingham. Début: 20.9.02 v Brentford. Career: Muirkirk Athletic; Strathclyde; Dean Park; 19.8.01 Hibernian [13,1]; 6.6.02 Bristol Rovers; 20.4.03 Notts County [3,0]; 29.9.04 Arnold. An unusual career at Hibernian saw John McCall make his début against St Mirren in August 1901, score his only goal for the club against the same opposition that November, a late equaliser from Bill McCartney’s cross (McCartney, 1879-1945, a Scottish international, scored from the penalty spot for West Ham against Rovers in March 1905), and then appear in the Scottish Cup Final of 1902, his final appearance for the club. McCall was unusually quiet during the final, in which Hibernian defeated Celtic through an Andy McGeachan (b.1882) goal fifteen minutes from time in “a dull and spiritless game”. Used on the left-wing for Rovers in seven Southern League games, adding the winning goal at home to Spurs, he later played for Notts County against Sunderland, Everton and Stoke in Division One. “A rolling stone”, according to one contemporary report, he was five feet seven inches in height and weighed eleven stone seven pounds; he married Sarah Elizabeth Hodson (1882-1944) in 1904. |
Henry McCann.
Born, 1885, Larbert. Died, November 1944, Chester-le-Street. Début: 5.9.14 v Crystal Palace. Career: Carron Thistle; Glasgow Ashfield; January 1906 Hibernian [17,2]; 28.12.07 Lincoln City [17,6]; 25.6.09 Darlington; 8.9.10 West Stanley; 24.11.11 Birtley; 22.5.12 Barnsley [1,0]; 2.6.13 Exeter City; 4.5.14 Bristol Rovers (retired, 1915). The 1911 census shows Scots-born Henry McCann, aged twenty-four, living in Chester-le-Street with his younger brother Alexander. McCann’s Hibernian début had come in a 2-1 Scottish Cup win away to Falkirk and his first League goal in the 2-2 draw against Queen’s Park at Hampden Park in March 1906 with a first-half long drive past Scottish international Dr Leslie Henderson Skene (1882-1959); he scored on his Lincoln City début against Grimsby Town in January 1908. Three goals for Darlington, against Wingate Albion, Carlisle United and Seaham Harbour, helped his side to fifth place in the North-Eastern League for 1909-10, and he played in Barnsley’s 2-0 victory over Leeds City in January 1913. Having scored in both fixtures against Rovers the previous campaign amongst his eleven goals in 35 Southern League appearances at Exeter City, he joined Rovers in the twilight of a career north and south of the border. He played in Rovers’ first 21 Southern League games of 1914-15, his nine goals including a brace in the 4-0 defeat of Brighton at Eastville that November, before returning to the north-east of England. |
(Sandy) Alexander C McCubbin.
Born, 3.8.1887, Greenock. Died, 29.9.1971, San Francisco, California, USA. Début: 10.10.08 v Coventry City. Career: Greenock Volunteers; 1905 Hamilton Academical [11,2]; May 1906 Morton; 7.5.08 Bristol Rovers; May 1909 Morton [120,20]; 6.5.10 Huddersfield Town [11,5]; March 1912 Newland Athletic (trial); 30.4.12 Lincoln City [59,15] (to 1914); 1919 Newland Athletic; 6.11.19 Lincoln Corinthians (to 1921). Having made his name at Hamilton, Sandy McCubbin made his début for his home-town club in Morton’s 3-0 win against Queen’s Park at Cappielow Park in August 1906. In September 1907 he had given Morton a short-lived lead just before half-time at home to Rangers and he added two first-half goals as Port Glasgow Athletic were defeated 4-2 three months later. In January 1908 Morton saw off plucky Vale of Atholl, resplendent in their tartan shorts, 7-1 in the Scottish Cup, McCubbin scoring two of the five goals they had scored before half-time. Five feet eight inches tall, his two spells at Morton were sandwiched by nine Southern League games for Rovers and goals in the 5-1 New Year home win over Exeter City and the 3-2 victory over Brentford at Eastville on the final day of the campaign. After scoring in both 1910-11 Second Division fixtures against Leeds City, he was replaced at Huddersfield by the former Rovers forward Jimmy Howie. He was sent off for fighting with Frank Martin (1887-1967), when Lincoln played Grimsby Town in February 1913. Sandy McCubbin, his wife Elizabeth and four sons, William, Ronald, Alexander and Albert, emigrated to the States, sailing from Liverpool on 28th October 1921 and arriving at Ellis Island on 8th November that year to live with his mother, Mrs Rome, at 25 Addison Street, San Francisco. |
Hugh Auchlan McDonald.
Born, 20.12.1881, Kilwinning, Ayrshire. Died, 27.8.1920, Plumstead, London. Début: 7.2.14 v Reading. Career: Ayr Academicals; Ayr Westerlea; 7.9.98 St Bernard’s [1,0]; 26.1.99 Hearts of Beith; 23.5.99 Ayr FC [65,0]; August 1903 Maybole; 1904 Ayr Academical; 26.7.05 Beith; 29.1.06 Arsenal; April 1906 Beith; 26.5.06 Brighton; 8.5.08 Arsenal; 5.7.10 Oldham Athletic [41,0]; 2.12.11 Bradford Park Avenue [26,0]; 23.12.12 Arsenal [94,0]; 7.11.13 Fulham [8,0]; 7.2.14 Bristol Rovers (retired, 1914). To goalkeeper Hugh McDonald’s impressive career track record can be added 71 Southern League matches for Brighton, four of them against Rovers, and two appearances whilst with Rovers. As a teenager, he had made his Scottish League début in St Bernard’s 1-1 draw at Dundee in September 1898. Whilst at Ayr, he twice faced his brother Archie, who played in sixteen Scottish League games as Partick Thistle’s goalkeeper during the 1899-1900 campaign. His career tally of 224 Football League games included serving as an ever-present in Oldham’s first season in Division One, where he presented “a formidable opponent for a nervous forward” (The Athletic News, February 1908). He saved a penalty on his Park Avenue début to preserve a goalless draw with Grimsby Town and his first game for Fulham was against his former club Arsenal, whom he served in three stints. A plasterer by profession, he stood six feet one-and-a-half inches tall and weighed fourteen stone twelve pounds. Single, Hugh McDonald retired to become a publican in Plumstead, but died at the age of thirty-eight. |
Thomas Fair MacAulay McInnes.
Born, 8.7.1873, Bowling, Dunbartonshire. Died, 1.12.1937, Dalmuir, Dunbartonshire. Début: 14.10.99 v New Brompton. Career: Clydebank School; Dalmuir Thistle; Cowlairs; December 1889 Newcastle East End; Newcastle West End; 8.8.91 Clyde [22,6]; June 1892 Nottingham Forest [167,45]; 9.10.99 Bristol Rovers; 12.9.00 Nottingham Forest; 25.9.00 Lincoln City [79,20]; 30.1.05 Port Glasgow Athletic (to May 1905). When Rovers defeated Gravesend United 3-1 at Eastville in a Southern League fixture in April 1900, Tom McInnes scored all three goals. This proved the high-point of a Rovers career that took in nineteen Southern League games and nine goals; he also “scored” a disallowed goal against Millwall in March 1900. Arriving at Eastville with a great reputation, he shot narrowly wide early on during his Rovers début and he “put in some smart bits of work” (Bristol Evening News, 21.10.99). Dark-haired and moustachioed, inside-forward McInnes had previously joined Newcastle West End after arriving in the north-east in search of work as a riveter. He was with Clyde for their first season in the Scottish League, leaving the field injured against Leith Athletic that September and contributing a hat-trick the following month as Rangers were defeated 5-1 at Ibrox; his form earned a game for the Scottish League against the Scottish Football Alliance in May 1892 and he scored twice in a 4-3 win at Cathkin Park. McInnes, “a dangerous raider and an accurate shot” (Douglas Lamming), appeared in Forest’s first League match, against Everton in September 1892. Long service with Forest earned two Scottish trial games, in 1897 and 1898, and he was part of the Forest side which defeated Derby County 3-1 in a shock result in the FA Cup Final of 1898, creating the crucial second goal. After Rovers, he top-scored at Lincoln in 1901-02, having first appeared in the Imps’ side for the 6-0 demolition of Gainsborough Trinity in October 1900. His final game was in October 1903 although, having headed a goal on his Port Glasgow début in a 3-0 win against Stranraer in the Scottish Cup, he did manage one final Scottish League appearance in February 1905, a 1-1 draw before a 2,000 crowd at Hibernian. One of four sons and four daughters to Angus McInnes and Janet Goldie, who had married in 1854, McInnes married Ethel Maud Pearson (1884-1978), in 1903 in Lincoln and they had four children. He should not be confused with the Scottish international forward Tom McInnes (1869-1939), who confusingly played for Notts County whilst the Rovers man was at Forest. |
Robert McIntyre.
Born, 1879, Kilwinning, Ayrshire. Died? Début: 14.9.01 v New Brompton. Career: 14.1.96 Kilwinning Eglinton; 6.3.97 Abercorn; 15.5.01 Bristol Rovers; 5.4.02 Stevenston Thistle; 27.5.02 Abercorn [22,5]. A regular at Abercorn in 1899-1900, Bob McIntyre missed just one game, the 2-1 win against Ayr at Somerset Park that December; his tally of Scottish League games and goals at Abercorn included one penalty. He arguably holds the worst record of any Rovers centre-forward, as he played in three Southern League games and Rovers lost all three, scoring none and conceding nine. When the reserves defeated St George 4-1 at home four days before Christmas 1901, he scored all the side’s goals, and he scored at least seventeen goals for Rovers’ second string side that campaign, including hat-tricks in a 7-0 win against a North Bristol League XI in December 1901, an 8-0 victory over Trowbridge Town in January 1902 and a 5-1 victory the following week against St George. His final game for the reserves was the abandoned Bristol Charity Cup fixture against St George a fortnight before he returned north of the border. “Fast, passes quickly and has good command of the ball” was one contemporary assessment of this forward, who stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed eleven stone six pounds. One Robert McIntyre played once for Norwich City in the 1904-05 season, in a Norfolk and Suffolk League encounter against Yarmouth Town. |
John Wilson McKenzie.
Born, 13.9.1886, Montrose. Died, 1943, Scotland. Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth. Career: Montrose; May 1904 Dundee [106,0]; 20.5.08 Aston Villa [5,0]; 15.5.09 Bristol Rovers (to 1910; re-instated as professional, 1911). A salmon fisher’s son, John McKenzie was brought up at 127 Bridge Street, Montrose as the third of four children of John McKenzie senior and Mary McKay. He is recorded as being five feet ten-and-a-half inches in height and weighing twelve stone seven pounds. A right-back, McKenzie appeared in twenty Southern League games for Rovers in 1909-10, having earlier played in top-flight football both north and south of the border, and was in the side which defeated Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910. He earlier made his Villa bow in a 1-1 First Division draw at home to Notts County in November 1908 and featured in four consecutive games the following spring, three of which were lost. His first Scottish league game with Dundee was the 1-1 draw with St Mirren in Paisley in October 1904, his side recovering from conceding an early goal to draw level after half-time, and he played regularly at Dens Park until a final game, a 1-1 draw with Kilmarnock in March 1908. |
(Jack) John Cameron McLean.
Born, 22.5.1872, Port Glasgow. Died? Début: 6.9.02 v Northampton Town. Career: 1890 Greenock Volunteers; 10.10.94 Liverpool [26,0]; 12.6.97 Grimsby Town [30,2]; 10.5.98 Bristol City (£40) [34,1]; 5.5.02 Bristol Rovers; April 1903 Millwall Athletic; 3.5.06 Queen’s Park Rangers (to 1908). In a distinguished career, Jack McLean made two appearances for Renfrewshire and played for Scotland in the junior international against Ireland in 1893. “A splendid footballer, a hard worker and a fearless tackler”, he had Football League experience with three clubs prior to joining Rovers and had been an ever-present in City’s first-ever League season, 1901-02, scoring against Gainsborough Trinity in January 1902. In fact, his Ashton Gate début had come against Brighton United in September 1898 and he could add 76 Southern League games and seven goals, plus one goal in twenty Western League matches to his Football League total. He had also scored Second Division goals for Grimsby in their 1897-98 fixtures at Loughborough and Lincoln City and for Bristol City against Gainsborough Trinity in January 1902. He was to appear for Rovers in all but one of the Southern League games during 1902-03, 29 in total, scoring his only goal from left-half at Kettering on the final day of the campaign. McLean went on to play in the Southern League for two further clubs without scoring, adding 98 games for Millwall and 73 with QPR, including three against Rovers as well as both FA Cup-ties of January 1907, prior to his retirement. Oddly, QPR appeared in consecutive Charity Shields in 1908 and 1909, playing Manchester United on both occasions and McLean featured in both matches. Previously, the Liverpool Mercury had purred on his début: “McLean turned out a real champion. He is the rough diamond and only requires polishing to be a really first-class player”. Relegation, though, dampened the praise and his dribbling skills came in for criticism, for it proved to be “no earthly use to his side for, as is generally the case, he is robbed or his final pass interposed and, when the ball is sent to his opposing forwards, he is in nine times out of ten out of his place”. |
William John Maggs.
Born, 1897, Bristol. Died, 1983, Bristol. Début: 6.2.15 v Northampton Town. Career: Welton Rovers; February 1915 Bristol Rovers (loan). Young Bill Maggs played in a 2-0 defeat at Northampton in the Southern League, replacing the injured Ellis Crompton at right-half. He may be the Maggs who was with Bath City during the 1909-10 season, and is probably the man, a son of William Maggs of St Philip and Jacob, who married on 23rd September 1918 at Holy Trinity, Stapleton to Elsie Eliza Merry (1892-1986), the daughter of Walter Merry (1862-1929) and Harriett Louisa Skinner (1863-1953). |
Colin Mainds.
Born, 7.7.1884, Dundee. Died, 20.12.1936, Paisley. Début: 20.9.13 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: West March XI; Renfrew Victoria; August 1905 Port Glasgow Athletic [29,3]; August 1906 Rangers [13,1]; 5.6.07 Reading; May 1909 Third Lanark [146,6]; 26.8.13 Bristol Rovers; 1914 Third Lanark; December 1915 Abercorn. Following an apprenticeship at Abercorn’s junior side, West March, Colin Mainds made his first appearance for Port Glasgow in a 2-1 victory over Falkirk in August 1905 and scored his first goal in January 1906 against Queen’s Park. He subsequently scored his only Rangers goal in the Scottish League goal against his former club, Port Glasgow, in August of that year. Before a crowd of 8,000 at Clune Park, the young player gave Rangers an eighth-minute lead “from about thirty yards’ distance by a high, drooping shot”. He went on to enjoy four seasons with Thirds as well as appearing in 71 Southern League games for Reading, scoring twice, the first against Rovers in September 1907 and subsequently against Crystal Palace three months later. “Mainds, with wild hair in disarray, the enthusiast” (Reading Standard, 28.9.07) also appeared, without scoring, in 23 games in the same division with Rovers, this figure including five-goal defeats at Swindon and West Ham. Brought up at 39 Clark Street, Paisley by his parents, Colin and Catherine Mainds, he had trained as a joiner prior to taking up professional football. The son and grandson of a pair of Colin Mainds, he married twice, first to Elizabeth Clark, who died on 5th February 1924 after bearing him three children, Catherine, Colin and Elizabeth, and secondly, once widowed, on 2nd June 1925 to Jeannie Leitch, with whom he had a son William and a daughter Margaret. Colin Mainds, resident at 44 Broomlands Street, Paisley died at a quarter to ten in the evening five days before Christmas 1936 at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Paisley of a cerebral haemorrhage. |
Walter Wallace Marriott.
Born, 1.8.1879, Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire. Died, 1962, Northampton. Début: 6.9.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Wellingborough Montrose; 29.8.99 Wellingborough Town; 16.10.01 Aston Villa (£300) [8,0]; 2.5.02 Bristol Rovers; 6.5.04 Northampton Town; 6.5.05 New Brompton; 3.9.08 Rushden Windmill. The eldest child of Capell Marriott (1857-1933), a plasterer, and his wife Eliza Fletcher, Walter Marriott was baptised in Kingsthorpe on 20th November 1879 and grew up in Back Lane, Kingsthorpe. His father, baptised on 28th June 1857 was the son of Thomas, baptised on 24th October 1835, and Ann Marriott. After League football with Villa, who had paid what then constituted an extortionate sum on a relatively unknown outside-left, he scored six times in 56 Southern League matches with Rovers, contributing one of the five goals in fifteen first-half minutes against his former club Wellingborough at Eastville over Christmas 1903, and also scored as Bristol City were defeated in the 1903 Gloucestershire Cup Final. He played in six Southern League matches for Wellingborough, scoring twice (he was in the side which opposed Rovers in his final game for the club), 24 games in the same league with Northampton, scoring once, the winning goal away to Queen’s Park Rangers in October 1904. He played in 77 Southern League fixtures with New Brompton, including five matches against Rovers and his fifteen goals included a hat-trick in a 3-3 draw away to Crystal Palace in October 1907, all three goals coming, after a goalless first-half, from tap-ins when set up by former England outside-left Steve Smith (1874-1935). During his time at Priestfield, he played alongside Rovers players in Bill Floyd and Bobbie Walker. A bricklayer by profession, he married the horticulturally-named Rose Emma Budd (1879-1939) in 1904 and lived with her parents in Kingsthorpe Road, Northampton and later at 162 Harborough Road, Northampton. |
Herbert Mason.
Born, 1892/93, Clifton. Died? Début: 13.2.15 v Watford. Career: St Phillips United; February 1915 Bristol Rovers (loan); Stirchley United. With four older siblings, Herbert Mason was the son of a sanitary roller driver John Henry Mason and his wife Ada Jane Smith of 6 Beaufort Buildings, Clifton. Mason played at right-half in a 3-2 home defeat at the hands of Watford on his début, then returned to the side later in the season to appear at left-half in five further Southern League matches. He was also in the reserves’ side for the games against Newport County and Reading in September 1915. After playing for Rovers he moved to the Birmingham area and was reported to be living at 76 Somerset Road, Erdington. |
John Mason.
Born, Wolverhampton. Died? Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth. Career: Redditch Town; 7.5.07 Worcester City; 17.1.08 Wolverhampton Wanderers [8,1]; May 1909 Bristol Rovers; 12.5.10 Crewe Alexandra; 18.5.11 Wellington Town; 20.10.11 Willenhall Swifts; 3.10.12 Wednesbury Old Athletic; 1913 Llandudno Town. With a goal at Eastville in a 4-0 victory on his début, John Mason’s impressive start was maintained when he scored in each of his first three Southern League appearances for Rovers. He was to total five goals in fourteen matches for Rovers in that competition, but gradually lost the inside-right position to Albert Rodgers. In addition, he was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910. His career had begun with a Second Division goal in April 1908, a consolation strike as Wolves lost 3-1 at Leeds City that Easter Saturday. Later, he appeared for Crewe in 28 Birmingham and District League fixtures, many alongside fellow Rovers players in Fred Chapple and Frank Handley, his three goals including strikes in consecutive April weeks against Stafford Rangers and Worcester City. |
Samuel Herbert Morris.
Born, 23.10.1886, West Bromwich. Died, December 1969, Paddington. Début: 2.9.11 v Norwich City. Career: Perry Bar; 1906 Aston Villa; 4.5.08 Queen’s Park Rangers; spring 1911 Birmingham; 6.6.11 Bristol Rovers; 17.6.19 Brentford [36,0]; July 1921 Maidstone United. A strong and dependable centre-half, Sam Morris played in 89 Southern League games for Rovers in the years immediately prior to World War One, although he never scored. In addition, he was in the side which knocked Notts County out of the FA Cup in January 1913, with a 2-0 victory at Eastville. He had earlier appeared in 38 Southern League games for QPR, one of his two goals coming in a 4-2 victory over Rovers in January 1909, the final goal of the game. He played for Brentford in 36 Southern League matches in 1919-20 prior to featuring on the same number of occasions in their inaugural Football League season; he appeared in both Brentford’s Third Division games against Rovers in 1920-21. Initially a motor car machinist by trade, Sam Morris later worked in Paddington as an “ice rink foreman and ice skate grinder” and he may also have played for Rotherham County. |
Robert Bruce Muir.
Born, 23.9.1876, Kilmarnock. Died, 15.3.1953, Toronto, Canada. Début: 14.9.01 v New Brompton. Career: Kilmarnock Deanpark; 24.6.96 Clyde [7,2]; 9.7.97 Kilmarnock [61,14]; 27.6.01 Bristol Rovers; 23.4.03 Celtic [20,4]; 20.4.04 Notts County (£300) [19,0]; 4.5.05 Norwich City (£400); 20.2.08 Galston; May 1912 Toronto Eatonia (until after 1923; later manager). Bobby Muir appeared for Rovers in 46 Southern League fixtures, scoring six goals in the process. In addition, he hit the post with a vicious low shot in Rovers’ 4-0 victory over Luton Town in April 1902, and the bar in the home fixture with QPR later the same month. His first goal had come in the astonishing 8-1 victory over Wellingborough at Eastville in February 1902 and proved “a popular point, the crowd cheering loudly”; having appeared in all eight FA Cup games during Rovers’ long run in 1901-02, he contrived to score in both his final matches for the club before playing top-flight football in England and Scotland. Having made his Celtic début, as did “Sunny Jim” Young, in the 2-1 victory over Partick Thistle in August 1903, the first League fixture in which the Celts wore their now synonymous green-and-white-hooped shirts, he was obliged to miss one mid-season run of nine games with an injury. Muir was in great form during the 1904 Scottish Cup Final when he helped Celtic defeat Rangers 3-2, creating Celtic’s equaliser on the stroke of half-time when his long, mazy run down the wing culminated in a cross to legendary forward Jimmy Quinn (1878-1945), the fourth goal of a pulsating game; he was said to be "the best man in his position since Neil McCallum (1868-1920) ... a bewilderer with lean and clever footwork". Cup form had supported his career, for he had contributed a hat-trick back in February 1899, when Kilmarnock defeated East Stirling 4-2 in that competition. After Rovers, his five goals in 64 Southern League games with Norwich included a brace in the Canaries’ 4-1 victory over New Brompton in November 1905 and he played in four Southern League matches for Norwich against Rovers; he broke his arm playing against West Ham United reserves. A benefit match for him at Norwich in 1908 raised a figure of £46 13/6. He emigrated to Canada in 1912, working for a department store T Eaton and Company, and was secretary-treasurer of the Ontario Football Association between 1915 and 1942, moving to live in the United States from April 1945. When Celtic toured Canada in 1951, the veteran former inside-forward had met up with his old club and he died back in Toronto. He married first Maud Gregory and secondly Florence, having a son Lawrence and four married daughters, Nancy Stokes, Coralie Woody, Lillian Reid and Anita Paige by the time of his death, aged seventy-six, at home at 134 Latimer Avenue, Toronto. |
Edward Murphy.
Born, April 1881, Tunstall, Staffordshire. Died, 25.5.1916, London. Début: 5.10.07 v Watford. Career: Tunstall Crosswell’s; 29.10.02 Glossop [86,18]; 27.7.05 Bury [27,1]; May 1906 Gainsborough Trinity (trial); 28.6.06 Swindon Town; 19.8.07 Bristol Rovers; 16.7.08 Denaby United; 26.11.08 Biddulph Mission; December 1909 St George’s Victoria; October 1910 Silverwood Colliery; April 1911 South Kirkby Colliery. Following a successful Football League career, in which he scored for Bury in a 3-2 victory over Everton on Boxing Day 1905, thirty-six games for Swindon Town alongside Billy Tout in the Southern League had brought Eddie Murphy six goals. He had played in both fixtures in 1906-07 against Rovers and scored twice each in the home victories over New Brompton and Northampton Town. Five feet eight-and-a-half inches tall and weighing eleven stone seven pounds, he made his Rovers début in a 2-1 win at Watford and scored the opening goal in a 2-2 draw at home to Norwich City seven days later; he never played for the club again. The fifth of eight children to James Murphy and Elizabeth Byrne, who has both moved from County Carlow in search of work in the ironstone industry, Eddie Murphy was brought up at 8 Chapel Street, Tunstall and later around the corner at 23 Booth Street, and was working as a coal-miner in 1901. Unmarried, he served in France and Flanders as a Private with the 1st Staffordshire Regiment, number 7599 and, gassed at Wulverghem, died of his wounds at King George V Military Hospital in Stamford Street. The next of kin named was his eldest sibling, Margaret (1875-1953), who married in 1893 George Hall Billings (1876-1962). Eddie Murphy is buried in grave FA.N.C.7 at Tunstall Cemetery. |
William Murray.
Born? Died? Début: 1.9.13 v Cardiff City. Career: St Francis Xavier College; New Brighton Tower; 8.12.10 Everton; 13.10.11 Port Vale; 31.5.13 Bristol Rovers; 20.7.14 Northwich Victoria (to 1920). Devoid of League action elsewhere, Bill Murray scored three times in ten Southern League games for Rovers during the 1913-14 season. He scored at Reading and Coventry and in the 2-1 autumnal home victory over Watford. Prior to that, he had scored six goals in 24 Central League appearances for Port Vale, scoring twice in a game against Blackburn Rovers reserves in January 1912 and Liverpool reserves that April. He also added three goals in each of the Birmingham Cup and Staffordshire Cup. |