Kinship and Community in Victorian London: the 'Beckwith Frogs'

Fig. 1.

Professor Frederick Beckwith. Portrait in Charles Newman, Swimmers and Swimming or, The Swimmer's Album, London, 1899, p. 7.

Fig. 2.

David Pamplin. Portrait in Charles Newman, Swimmers and Swimming or, The Swimmer's Album, London, 1899, p. 58.

Fig. 3.

Willie Beckwith. Portrait in Charles Newman, Swimmers and Swimming or, The Swimmer's Album, London, 1899, p. 67.

Fig. 4.

Charles Beckwith. Portrait in Charles Newman, Swimmers and Swimming or, The Swimmer's Album, London, 1899, p. 40.

The sporting landscape of Britain changed during the course of the nineteenth century as individual engagements with sport which emphasized public spectacle, entertainment and profit, such as pedestrianism and pugilism, were superseded by national governing bodies of sport, the collective structures favoured by a professional middle class that intended to separate its sports from both gambling and professionalism. For such men the value in sport lay not in its ability to make money but in its contribution to health and sociability, ideas encapsulated in the notion of amateurism that they applied not only to sport but to other leisure activities such as music. Incorporated in this amateur ethos was a rejection of specialization, serious training and coaching. The impact of this ethos on all classes of athletes has been extensively studied both generically and in relation to particular sports.¹ The specific studies are especially important since there were differences in how amateur administrators, who could agree unanimously on a written definition of amateur eligibility, actually applied those principles in their respective sports. This is exemplified by the differing attitudes to professionals in team sports, considered by amateurs to be especially important because of their ability to develop teamwork, leadership and comradeship. Cricket continued its tradition of employing professionals, while maintaining their servant status, and football legalized professionalism, with the aim of keeping professionals under control. In rugby union, however, officials vehemently opposed any hint of professionalism; and with rowing in an eight, the pinnacle of teamwork, professionals were rigorously excluded both as participants and as coaches. Individual sports (such as athletics or swimming) posed particular problems for amateurs, partly because it was thought they might engender selfishness and partly because they had a long tradition of professional participants and professional trainers. Both the Amateur Athletic Association and the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) had resort to the courts as they attempted to eradicate professional practices. Within swimming, amateur exponents were faced with a number of additional problems. Although it had been initially a lake, sea or river activity, and late nineteenth-century championships were still being swum in open water, it had become predominantly an indoor activity in major cities, where its association with the baths and washhouses provided for the health and welfare of the lower orders discouraged many middle-class swimmers from taking part. In addition, there was a traditionally strong relationship between amateur and professional exponents of the sport and, because swimming was a skill that had to be taught, an acceptance of the value of professional teachers in encouraging and expanding participation. This view was reinforced when in 1899 the ASA followed the example of other sporting bodies which had attempted to control professionals, by instituting a professional qualification, granted upon application 'to such as are desirous and deemed worthy of obtaining them'. Factors other than the ability to teach swimming were considered since officials had to be 'satisfied as to the character and antecedents of an applicant as well as to his or her ability as a professional teacher' before awarding the qualification.² By 1902 sixty-seven certificates had been awarded, to both male and female candidates.³ This was viewed with general satisfaction within the amateur swimming community, although one outcome was that swimming coaches gradually became instructors rather than the independent entrepreneurs epitomized by some of their predecessors.

Nineteenth-century professional sports coaching had much in common with conventional craft processes, with the coach as...