592. Mad Victorian Sport

0:09Some years since, the feat of walking 1 ,000 miles in 1 ,000 hours was considered next to an impossibility. But here we have to record the wonder doubled. This has been accomplished on the Surrey Cricket Ground, Kennington Oval, by Richard Manx, whose feats of walking present instances of the capability and endurance of the human frame altogether unparalleled. Manx commenced this feat on Friday, the 26th of last September, but being suddenly attacked with diarrhea, he was compelled to give up on the Monday following after having walked 129 miles. His surgeon ordered Manx to rest for a time, to recruit his health and strength.

0:56This the pedestrian reluctantly yielded to, and for a fortnight he remained under medical treatment. On Friday the 10th of October, he recommenced his great task. Starting for the first mile at four o 'clock in the afternoon, on he went, full of spirit, completing his first 100 miles at 43 minutes 15 seconds after 5 o 'clock on Sunday evening the 12th of October, his second 100 miles at 44 minutes 10 seconds past 7 o 'clock on Tuesday the 14th of October, and finally, after completing another 799 miles, going for his thousandth mile at half past 11 o 'clock on Friday morning October the 31st. Manx has been heard to declare that never again will he attempt such a frightful feat.

1:50So that was the Illustrated London News, November 1851. And Tom, it is recording one of the supreme feats in the history of sport. A triumph over adversity, over adverse conditions, over the landscape and over diarrhea. it's a feat that deserves to live in the legends of sport but sadly has been almost completely forgotten tragically it has and i like to think that the rest of history is nothing if not a vehicle for resurrecting great sporting feats that have been forgotten and i think obviously one of the reasons why it's been forgotten is it did happen a very long time ago so it happened before the first Olympics of the modern era in Athens in 1896, before the establishment here in England of the Football League in 1888, before the founding of professional baseball in the United States way back in 1869.

2:46So, I mean, that's a very good reason why Richard Manx is no longer a household name. But I guess it's also because the sporting field in which he established himself as the GOAT, the greatest of all time, namely pedestrianism. I mean, it no longer exists. Nobody, you don't see pedestrianism on Sky Sports. No, no, but people still walk, Tom. They do, but they're not doing it as part of a very complicated sporting infrastructure, are they? No, they're not. And in that, it's unlike other sports that were starting to flourish in the early 19th century in Britain. So horse racing, I mean, that's been going on for a long time.

3:25Cricket, that dates back to the 17th century. Boxing, again, a very long history. but sadly pedestrianism hasn't made it into the modern era so it might in that sense seem a kind of you know historical artifact yeah but i think the reason for zooming in on this seemingly obscure topic is that his incredible feat at the kennington oval in 1851 even as it reminds us of a sporting world that we have lost i think it is also anticipating the future and you can see lots of ways in which it anticipates the future in that report that you read from the illustrated London News. So the fact that the report exists at all, right?

4:06So we did a story, lots of listeners will remember one of the great episodes we did on history's greatest monkeys. And we covered another sporting fixture, which was the encounter between Jaco Macaco and Puss, the dog, in the Westminster pit. And that was a window into the unknowability of the past, because there weren't really reliable newspaper reports of what happened in this great sporting encounter. But here, you know, we have a very detailed report with very, very precise timings. Yes, perhaps overly precise. Yes, exactly. 43 minutes and 15 seconds after five o 'clock. But the thing is, that's what people love in sport, isn't it?

4:42Of course it is. The statistics plus the media plus the reportage. That's key to the sporting phenomenon, isn't it? It absolutely is. And also, I think the other thing that points to the future is the way that innovations have been introduced at this great sporting occasion to boost attendance, to get spectators in through the turnstiles. So one of these is reported not in the Illustrated London News, but in another paper covering this occasion, the Morning Advertiser. And the journalist writes, a number of variegated lamps have been placed in the most conspicuous parts of the course. and one placed on each of the stakes that hold the ropes that form the ring.

5:21And these are set up on the final night where Manx is approaching the finishing line because so many people want to come and see it. And obviously he's walking through the night and it's dark. I'm just going to go on record here. People say there's no such thing as progress in history, but a world in which people would get up in the middle of the night to watch a man basically walking down the road is demented. Absolutely. I mean, it is progress because, to quote the sports journalist Dominic Utton, who's written a fascinating article on this. These lamps made Manx's display of pedestrianism on the final night of his great feat at the Oval, the world's first floodlit sporting event.

5:57Wow. You know, and all of this contributes to the buzz. Yeah. So by the time that Manx finally gets to cross the finishing line, the Oval is absolutely full to capacity. All 3 ,000 seats. 3 ,000 seats. Incredible. And there are massive, massive queues outside. all the streets around the oval are kind of filled to overflowing yeah it's the talk of london i can't help thinking a lot of those people are going to be disappointed but they're not though i mean that's the thing the sense of occasion is incredible and i think that's precisely what makes it such a kind of pivotal moment in the history of sport that it's midway between the future a future with floodlight sporting occasions and press coverage and all of that but also a past that reaches way way back into the pre-modern world and i know you're passionate about this particular sporting venue so the oval in itself is a harbinger of what's to come isn't it because it's it's the ancestor in some ways it was an ancestor of the sports stadiums you know phila park molyneux yeah the great stadiums uh football or crickets or american football or baseball or whatever it might be yeah so the oval had been founded six years earlier in 1845 in kennington which is in South London.

7:10And it's catering to the southern reaches of London, which by this point is the world's largest city, in the same way that another and even older cricket ground, namely Lourdes, caters to its northern reaches. And these two grounds are physical emblems of sport as a new kind of entertainment, an industrial form of entertainment, because it is serving an industrial megalopolis. So London is sprawling, it's rich, it's teeming with inhabitants. And these inhabitants, lots of them now, are consumers who have both the time and the money to sit down and watch a man walk around a field. Yeah. As well as a host of other occasions.

7:58So it reflects the development of leisure as much as anything else. And also suburbanism, right? Because these are effectively what would then have been called suburban grounds. Yes. And that's interesting because Kennington is now a suburb of London. It's being absorbed into the kind of the mass of the city. But previously it had been a common, which is a vast expanse of open public land. That's why it's called a common. Because it was close to London. It had provided Londoners with a kind of place of public recreation. It's where you would go out to breathe fresh air. And this, you know, the recreation you could find there included sports of all kinds.

8:33and as London expands and the common starts to vanish beneath brick the Oval is founded to ensure that there would be at least some open ground where people could continue to play cricket or as we will see football as well and in that sense the Oval is not just looking forward to the future, it is a reminder of the role that Commons had played in providing recreation for people in England and indeed other countries as well and these are kind of forms of entertainment that reach back to the medieval past. So there may be some listeners who are sort of thinking, oh gosh, I wish they were doing the War of the Spanish Succession or something, because sport isn't really history.

9:13But of course, sport is history. It's part of the texture of life for millions of people who were here before us. And this week, we've got a guest coming on, haven't we? Robert Coles, who is going to be talking about boxing. And he's written a brilliant book, This Sporting Life. And he makes the point, doesn't he, that historians, perhaps because they're often quite nerdy people, they tend to neglect sport or to slightly condescend to it when they write about it they don't treat it with the importance that it deserves as a kind of specimen of social history you agree with him don't you because obviously you've written about sport in the Greek and Roman worlds or chariot racing I guess in Constantinople yeah I think that what people do in their leisure time is fascinating and sport in the modern world is such a huge part of people's lives but it's also a huge part of the global economy I mean it's absolutely become a way for not just individuals anymore, but entire states to project their prestige and their power.

10:08So I think the story of how that has emerged is really significant. And so in that spirit, why don't we try and place this great feat of Richard Manx at the Oval in its proper historical context? I'd love that. We can do that first by looking at the history of pedestrianism, this kind of mad sounding sport now pretty much forgotten but one that was a topic of obsessional interest in the first half of 19th century Britain you know it becomes a complete national obsession and then by looking at the significance of the venue where he does this feat this incredible achievement of walking a thousand miles in 500 consecutive half hours so namely the oval why was it built where it was and how did it subsequently influence the development of professional sport as we would recognize it today.

10:57Sounds brilliant. And I think that answering these questions, I hope, will make the case for the Oval as perhaps one of, if not the most historically significant of all modern sports grounds, kind of the prototype for so much that follows. Okay. But Stephanie up there with the ground that invented European football, which is modern. So let us start with pedestrianism, though. so you compare it in your notes with boxing and cricket so a sport that is basically born of the 18th century obsession with gambling yes so people are betting money on people walking around a track or down the street or whatever which seems mad but we know that the georgians love to bet so that's actually pretty plausible yeah and the thing is that it's something that appeals both to the upper classes, to the very highest echelons of society, and to the vast mass of people.

11:50And actually, foot races, so not people running, but just walking, have been a feature of kind of fairs and public celebrations since at least the Restoration back in the 17th century. They knew how to have fun. They really did. The merry monarch. Nothing but fun. But noblemen were better on these, right? Absolutely. So it's completely part of the climate of aristocratic gambling. So it's not just happening in fairs, it's happening in the kind of gentleman's clubs where you go to give talks about yourself. So in the 18th century, famously, this saw kind of aristocrats in their clubs bet on all kinds of mad things.

12:28So would a pigeon leave a window ledge within a given time? or perhaps the most notorious one. There's a bet that one of the gamblers would be able to have sex, and I quote, in a balloon 1 ,000 yards from the earth. So these are the kind of things, oh dear, I've just lost Shropshire, that kind of thing, because the pigeon has flown off or his lordship hasn't managed to get in the hot air balloon with a strumpet, all of that. But they will use their servants, won't they? So basically footman racing, is that right? They'll race their footmen? Yes. And again, this reaches back to the restoration.

12:59so Samuel Pepys of course I mean he loves his pleasures and so he's a big enthusiast for footman racing so on the 30th of July 1663 he reports how the town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot race run this day on banstered downs between Lee the Duke of Richmond's footman and a tailor a famous runner and Lee has beat him though the King and Duke of York and all men almost did bet three or four to one upon the tailor's head so the King the Duke of York I mean you know doesn't get higher than that wow and so this is an enthusiasm that runs through the 17th century through the 18th century into the napoleonic wars and in the fight against france the fight against napoleon the craze for gambling on foot races starts to merge with something else that we've talked about a lot in connection say with nelson and this is a relish for displays of heroic manliness right and people believe that you can prove your mannerness by walking is that yes they do they They do.

13:57And when you contemplate the feats that are achieved, I mean, you'd see why. So the guy who blazes the path for this emerging sport of pedestrianism in the first decade of the 19th century is a Scotsman called Robert Barclay Oladice. And he's universally known as Captain Barclay. And he comes from a very old and distinguished Scottish family. He's a descendant, I think, of a cousin of the founder of Barclay's Bank. Right. He's a military man, so hence Captain Barclay. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and he is an archetypal sportsman. So when he's not off serving with His Majesty's army, he is training and supporting boxers and himself engaging in boxing.

14:41But his main claim to fame is his stunning feats of what come to be called pedestrianism And he seems to kind of have worked up to this by every so often doing some kind of mad feat So in 1801, it's a very, very muddy day And he thinks, oh mud, brilliant, there's a challenge And so he walks 110 miles in under 19 and a half hours along these muddy lanes Just to show that he can do it I'm going to go on record and I don't believe you could guarantee that all 110 miles would be muddy I think you could talk up the mud But I believe that parts of that track Would be just less muddy Okay Dominic Well that's the bracing scepticism For which you are renowned Yeah 1805 I don't know whether you're going to be sceptical about this He has his breakfast And then he thinks I'll go for a walk He walks 72 miles And then he sits down for dinner No I believe that Because I'm doing something similar Because I'm walking around the Welsh coast As you know With my mates James and Tim from school And how far have you got with that?

15:36A lot of miles A lot of miles We started in the top north wales which is quite grim if i'm completely honest in about 2040 we'll be in the nice bit with all the beaches and stuff but we're doing absolutely herculean feeds people are very welcome to come and watch i'd love that actually i mean maybe you could sell the rights to some sporting channel why have gold hunger not snapped this up mad yeah so you and captain barkley both absolute heroes of pedestrianism and it's in 1809 that captain barkley really puts his name on the map. So this is a feat that rings down the ages and the Times gives a full report to it.

16:18And it happened on the 12th of July, 1809. The Times report runs two days later on the 14th of July, and it comes from a circuit at Newmarket. So here is the Times. The gentleman on Wednesday completed his arduous pedestrian undertaking to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours at the rate of a mile in each and every hour. He had until 4 o 'clock p.m. to finish his task, but he performed his last mile in the quarter of an hour after three with perfect ease and great spirit amidst an immense concourse of spectators. So pluck and spectators, everything that you'd want in a sporting occasion.

16:56Let me just work this out. He started this on the 1st of June and he finished it on the 12th of July. yeah so for 42 days he walked every hour of every day surely even the the most obtuse listener will have spotted some potential drawbacks when does he eat when does he sleep when does he go to the toilet how does that work so what he does is he walks back to back miles so he he will walk a mile at the end of one hour and then carry on into the next hour which then kind of frees up time so he has kind of 90 minute intervals where he could go to the toilet or snatch a few few minutes sleep so he walks in every hour but he doesn't walk for the whole hour basically no so he has to walk a mile every hour right and then once he's done it then he can have a rest the sleep is a big issue i think he has kind of 90 minute bursts where he can have sleep and then he gets woken up for 42 days that's bonkers yeah i mean it's tough and this is why it's so celebrated and it features on in all the newspapers alongside kind of news of British victories and the Peninsular War and so on.

18:05And in fact, the maddest thing of all is that five days after he's completed this walk, Captain Barclay is sailing with his regiment for the Low Countries and it goes disastrously wrong. But Captain Barclay continues to be hailed as a kind of absolute model of British manhood and proof that even though the British army may not be able to defeat the French in the sporting fields of the low countries. We could outwalk them. We can absolutely outwalk them because this is not something the French are getting up to. No, of course not. So a great cause of patriotic pride. But also, Captain Barclay, you're presenting him as this sort of selfless incarnation of British manhood.

18:44But am I not right in saying he's making a lot of money from this? I don't think that that diminishes his pluck and manhood. Okay. But yes, he's very, very well remunerated. And again, The Times covers this. Fascinating. This also is a way in which it seems so modern that the sporting feats are celebrated, but there is an obsessive interest in how much money is being generated. So the Times puts it, Captain Barclay had a large sum depending upon his undertaking. The aggregate of the bets is supposed to amount to£100 ,000. I mean, that's a lot of money at the time. And so it's not surprising that in the years that follow Barclay's great feat, there are lots of pedestrianists who attempt not just to emulate it, but to surpass it.

19:24so in 1815 you have an Essex man named Josiah Eaton who goes just that little bit better than Barclay by undertaking a walk of 1 ,100 miles in 1 ,100 hours and he does this going round and round Blackheath which is a common in southeast London and he completes that on Boxing Day and it must have been scheduled because they would have worked out when he would finish it and this again is a pointer to the great british tradition of sport on boxing day yeah of course yeah and indeed in australia so football and cricket yeah and then the sport goes from strength to strength doesn't it so by the 18 late 1830s you're really into a golden age of pedestrianism 1838 golden year of pedestrian feats so that year you have one pedestrian who walks 1250 miles in successive a thousand hours so that's basically one and a quarter miles every hour a bit like cricket there's quite a lot of maths involved in pedestrianism.

20:22Then another succeeds in walking 1 ,500 miles in 1 ,000 hours. And then later in the year, he completes 1 ,750 miles in 1 ,000 hours. So in other words, you're having less and less time to complete your miles. But it is Richard Manx in 1851, this extraordinary feat, who passes the ultimate test. So Dominic, who is Richard Manx, this great forgotten British sportsman. So people know that actually there are two great sporting heroes in British history. One is Steve Bull from Wolverhampton Wanderers, who was from the West Midlands. And Richard Manx, there's no coincidence, is also from the West Midlands.

21:00He's a bricklayer, isn't he, from Solihull. And the bricklaying is key to this, isn't it? Yeah. People say that basically he's used to toiling for hours and hours. Yeah. And bricklaying has given him tremendous endurance, stamina and strength. Yes. And before he takes up pedestrianism, he's been a runner, a middle distance runner, then a long distance runner. And he ends up with the splendid nickname of the Warwickshire Antelope, which is actually red. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, Dominic, before, but my great uncle, Charles Holland. Yeah, I was an Olympic cyclist and was known as the Midlands Rocket.

21:35So another Midlands athlete. Yeah, I think this is about the 40th time on the podcast, but it's lovely to have him back. We've got Steve Boll, my great uncle, and Richard Manx. And so Richard Manx enters the history books of pedestrianism in 1851. This is his Annus Maribilis. So in June that year, he goes to a cricket club in Sheffield. And I will quote Derek Martin, who's written a great book on this, a short history of the Barclay match. So the Barclay match is the thing that he established. And again, apologies, there's quite a lot of maths here. So this is what he does in Sheffield. he'd walk a thousand quarter miles in a thousand consecutive quarter hours i.e 250 miles in 10 days and 10 hours then immediately a thousand half miles in a thousand consecutive half hours i.e 500 miles in 20 days and 20 hours Dominic's face followed immediately by a conventional Barclay match i.e that is the thousand miles in a thousand consecutive hours and this would amount in all to the monumental total of 1 ,750 miles in 72 days and 22 hours.

22:42And as if this were not enough, he would begin walking his quarter miles at the beginning of each quarter hour, the half miles on the half hour and the miles on the hour. So in other words, he is going beyond what Barclay had done. He's not giving himself time to have lengthy sleeps or anything. When he's doing the quarter miles, I mean, he's having to snap five minute, 10 minute snatches of sleep. so really tough i have to say the reporting of this reminds me of baseball or indeed cricket tom as in it's obsessed with stats and it sucks all the joy out of this swashbuckling sport well obviously opinions on that will differ but this is this is why he's building up to the ultimate challenge which is what he does at the oval he has to walk a thousand miles in a thousand half hours i.e he has to walk a thousand miles in 500 hours right so that's unbelievably demanding a 1 ,000 miles in 500 hours.

23:30I mean, actually, when you think about it, walking 1 ,000 miles is bonkers. I mean, any time. But to do it in 500 hours. Yeah. And this is a massive sporting deal, right? This is a massive public occasion. People in London are obsessed with this, are genuinely obsessed with it. I think it is seen as being the Everest of pedestrianism. Once it's been scaled, no one will ever be able to kind of rival it. And people must have been really looking forward to it. Like, will Messi ever win the World Cup? It's that kind of thing, right? Will Manx. pull off this amazing feat. Yes, the sense of occasion is absolutely massive.

24:03And as with any kind of great sporting event, the details are kind of lovingly preserved and cherished and become part of sporting folklore. So things like, you know, what is he eating while he's doing this? So the London Illustrated News reports, he ate around 10 times each day, a diet of game and poultry, roast beef, mutton and chops, washed down with strong beef tea. Old ale was his favourite restorative, while through the night he drank tea fortified with brandy. Then there are kind of occasional moments where he seems to wobble, perhaps on the verge of giving up. So the 28th of October, it rains all day, and it's reported that this gets him down.

24:44The following day, somebody goes to wake him up after he's snatched, you know, five minutes sleep, and he wakes up and punches the guy in the face. He's so angry and upset. And then on the final day of the walk, it's reported at half past two o 'clock, On Friday morning, so dead of night, he refused to rise, cried like a child and said to the timekeeper, I shall walk no more, asking, do you want to kill me? But at length he was induced to persevere unto the finish. That's mad that on the last day he thought of dropping out. He's obviously a broken man by that point. I mean, that's it. That's why it's such a great sport, Dominic.

25:21Will he do it? Will he manage it? Will he get up? Will he punch someone in the face? he's been doing it for 999 miles and then another thousand he says actually i've had enough i wish i'd never started but that's that's precisely the tension and you know the maddest thing of all go on and this is noted by dominic hutton manx completes his a thousandth mile you know it's been measured out around the outfield of the oval and then it gets properly measured and they discover that he'd actually walked 12 miles further than he'd needed to oh my word Imagine, you'd be gutted, wouldn't you? I mean, thank God it wasn't 12 miles less.

25:57Yeah, that would have been terrible. That would have been terrible. So a huge success for Richard Manx, but it's also a great success for the ground that staged it, the Oval. Okay. Because it's generated massive media and public interest. It's generated massive crowds. And above all, and the most important thing from the perspective of the consortium that owns the ground, it's generated massive amounts of cash. Right. And his feat of pedestrianism is drawing on traditions of spectacle and gambling that reach back hundreds of years on Kennington Common. But of course, as we've said, it's also looking forward to this new era of stats and professionalism and the monetization of what is increasingly coming to be thought of as organized sport.

26:48And Dominic, you've heard me say it before. You're about to hear me say it again. I think there is no stadium in the world that better illustrates how we went from kind of pre-modern entertainments to modern sport than the Oval. And that's why in the second half, I hope you will allow me to stress test that proposition. OK, so join us after the break when Tom considers one of the most intriguing questions in all history. This episode is brought to you by The Long Walk, which is out in cinemas on the 12th of September. This is an adaptation of Stephen King's very first book. He wrote it in 1967 when the Vietnam War was tearing America apart and thousands of American boys were being conscripted to fight in the war.

27:32And he published it in 1979. And the premise is brutally simple. You have 50 boys and basically you just have to keep walking. And if you stop, then you get shot. And the whole reason for doing it is that at the end, if you are the one boy who survives then you get untold riches but of course to get these riches you have to outwalk the other 49 so it's directed by francis lawrence who is behind several films in the hunger game series and it stars the bafta rising star david johnson it stars cooper hoffman and of course my favorite actor mark hamill who supports wolfampton wanderers so you can watch The Long Walk exclusively in cinemas from the 12th of September and you can book tickets at thelongwalkmovie.co.uk.

28:26In affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which died at the Oval on the 29th of August 1882, deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, R-I-P. NB. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. So, Tom, that's the most famous obituary in sporting history, and it was published in the Sporting Times on the 2nd of September, 1882. And I know you're a big cricket fan. There are none bigger. So would you like to explain to our more sceptical listeners, especially our American listeners, what on earth is going on? So it commemorates a humiliating defeat of the England national cricket team by the Australian national cricket team four days earlier at the Oval.

29:19And it's that phrase, the ashes will be taken to Australia that will have an enduring afterlife because the following winter, the England national cricket team go to Australia and the captain vows before he leaves England that he's going to recover those ashes. and the notion that England and Australia, whenever they play each other at cricket, are competing for the Ashes very rapidly catches on. And today the Ashes remain probably the most celebrated, the most enduring international rivalry in cricket, if actually not all sports. So the Ashes will be competed for later this year in Australia.

29:58And it all begins at the Oval, which is hardly surprising because, of course, the Oval was founded as a cricket ground and it remains one to this day. but your skepticism would be justified if I was merely talking about cricket but I'm not because the impact the oval has on the evolution of professional sport is not confined to cricket so we've seen the role that it played in pedestrianism in the career of Richard Manx the Warwickshire Antelope but of course pedestrianism fades away perhaps because once Richard Manx has completed that feat there's nowhere for the sport to go but the oval provides a stage not just for cricket but also for two sports that in the second half of the 19th century are exploding in popularity and are destined to have a much brighter future than pedestrianism and dominic the first of these is a sport that you are particularly fond of yeah it's football association football so obviously people have been playing football various kinds of football for a long time but there's a great vogue isn't there in the middle of the 19th century for codifying games.