Introduction: Much Wenlock and Olympic History

Much Wenlock is one of the oldest settlements in Shropshire and William Penny Brookes gave the town the distinction of links with the modern Olympic movement. However, Brookes began his work, not with sport, but with literacy when he set up the Agricultural Reading Society in 1841.  Brookes was born in 1809 in the house where he lived, and later died in 1895, the subject of a blue plaque in the town today.

Brookes trained as a doctor, like his father and two brothers but he also had many other interests from international botany, to local projects like the establishment of the Wenlock Gas Company, and more importantly the Wenlock and Severn Railway Company, which also built the local railway station in 1864. After studying at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and qualifying in medicine and surgery, Brookes furthered his education in Padua, Italy and Paris, France before the death of his father in 1830 required him to return home and take over the family practice.

So the Agricultural Reading Society was more like an early lending library, part of Brookes’ wider commitment to the welfare of all classes. After many donations of books and other cultural objects, the classes diversified to botany, art and music. A separate Wenlock Olympian class was established in 1850 to hold an annual Games:
 
​‘To promote the moral physical and intellectual improvement of the   inhabitants of the town of Wenlock, and especially the working classes, by the encouragement of out-door recreation and by the award of prizes annually at public meetings for skill in athletic exercises, and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments.’
 
We can see the idea of a healthy body and a healthy mind linked by Brookes’ philosophy. Although pre-dated by earlier examples of Ho-lympic, Olimpick, and Olympian Games in Britain, Penny Brookes inaugurated his Wenlock Olympian class at an important time in the development of modern sport, as increased codification of rules standardized different codes with their own bureaucracy, and regimes.

Baron De Coubertin and the Wenlock Olympian Society
 
Baron De Coubertin became interested in physical and mental fitness, and sport as a way of international collaboration, after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1.  In 1889 de Coubertin, organizer of the International Congress on Physical Education, was in England looking at education and health regimes. Brookes invited the young nobleman to Wenlock, as he shared De Coubertin’s interest in physical education as a compulsory subject in national schools, for the many, as well as in private schools for the few.  While De Coubertin was to form the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at a meeting at The Sorbonne in 1894, and stage the first version of his own games in Athens in 1896, he credited Dr William Penny Brookes as amongst his most important influences.  If you’d like to look at the history of the IOC Olympic Games, then every official report can be accessed for free via the digital library at LA84.

Conclusion 2012 and Wenlock
 
This historical link between Much Wenlock and the IOC Olympic Games was made in a variety of ways when London became the first city to host the IOC version of the Olympic Summer Games in 2012. The previous occasions had been in 1908, and 1948. Until 1924 there were no separate Summer and Winter Games. One of the mascots for 2012 was called Wenlock, and the second mascot, Mandeville, commemorated the first Stoke Mandeville Games, held in 1948, which went on to become the Paralympic Games. Today, the Wenlock Olympian trail provides a way of marking key sites of development in this picturesque town, and of course the history and heritage of the Games. Unlike the IOC Games for elite athletes, Wenlock Games enable everyone the opportunity to become a potential Olympian! Some elements, like the live Arts Festival, remind us of the ancient history of the Olympic Games, while others like Kwik Cricket and Under 11s hockey remind us that Penny Brookes, like De Coubertin, wanted the youth of the world to be united by sport, rather than divided by war. If you can’t wait until July 2017 for most events, the half marathon takes place on May 14th 2017, and the route will take in Ironbridge – the birthplace of modern industry and a World Heritage Site. Read more about Olympic History and the sites of modern sport in Jean’s new book.

A transnational network of women’s sporting interest expanded in the second half of the nineteenth century with croquet, cycling, golf, mountaineering, skating, lawn tennis and field sports particularly fashionable. Newly established access to elementary education for the working classes from 1870 onwards and further and higher education for middle class girls were particularly influential. Sport could help to create social bonds, a collegiate spirit and healthy students. 

Social health provision like the building of more swimming baths could have unintended links with fashion and entertainment. Bathing was an activity that could be done very cheaply or at great expense. Morality constantly found itself confounded by market forces. The music hall and entertainment industry also expanded after 1870.  A vogue for competitive and endurance swimming events followed in addition to scientific, or synchronized performances. Theatre and music halls covered both high and low culture, enabling sporting performers to explore links with display, fashion and consumerism. 

Individual entrepreneurs and performers were significant in both Britain and the US. Kate Bennett and her sisters taught middle to upper class women to swim in New York but also earned money through tuition at public baths, displays, open-air ballets, aquatic concerts and by sponsoring competitions attended by a paying public at which the victor would win a gold locket or earrings. Kate, who had lost her father to drowning, was driven both to teach people to become proficient in the water and to provide a viable income in a challenging market. (Lisa Bier Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women's Swimming 1870-1926 (New York: McFarland and Company, 2011 p. 33).

Revealing a toned figure as part of sporting spectacle had its own Sports Luxe versions, even in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Professional female ‘natationists’ included Agnes Beckwith and her half sister Lizzy, who both combined entertainment performance, coaching and teaching. Agnes swam five-miles in from London Bridge to Greenwich in The Thames in 1875, at the age of fourteen, in a time of one hour nine minutes. Agnes also exploited private audiences who paid to see a rehearsed act in music halls and other venues such as the Royal Aquarium, Westminster. Billed as ‘The Greatest Lady swimmer in the world’, Agnes and her entourage wore considerably less than most women sea-bathers, to swim ‘decoratively’ in a glass tank filled with many gallons of water each night and which toured nationally. Agnes married a theatrical agent, William Taylor in 1882, although she kept the Beckwith name, for public performances.  Her show was patronised by the Prince and Princess of Wales and she swam in a costume du bain; an elaborate black costume, emphasising Agnes’ bare legs and shoulders, with red decorative swags and ruches.

Later female swimmers like Australian Annette Kellerman, born in 1886, used their physiques to form their own brands. Kellerman wrote guides on health and fitness, as well as swimming manuals and moved to Europe before settling in Hollywood, appearing in films like Neptune’s Daughter (1914); A Daughter of The Gods (1916) and Venus of the South Seas (1924).  

However, the first female British swimmer to cover the Channel after Gertrude Ederle in 1926, Mercedes Gleitze, pioneered new levels of commercial sponsorship. Mercedes embraced these opportunities as her income from long distance swimming was a fragile means of supporting herself.   During her career she signed contracts to advertise various products in the media, and to promote swimwear, including caps, in department stores such as Brown, Muff & Company (Drapers & Furriers), Bradford; George Halls (Wolsey Bathing Suits), 20 King Street, Huddersfield and D. Kellett’s Store (Outfitters & Drapery), South Great George’s Street, Dublin. 
More significant though, was Mercedes Gleitze’s role in launching the new Oyster Rolex watch, of the Geneva-based manufacturer. Rolex made contact through Messrs S.T. Garland Advertising Service of Brook Street, London W1, and asked Mercedes to wear a prototype watch on her planned Channel crossing on 7 October 1927.  She agreed to carry it on a ribbon around her neck, and when she left the water after crossing from France to England in fifteen hours and fifteen minutes, the watch was still working perfectly.  The following month Rolex placed a whole front page advertisement featuring her in the London Daily Mail to introduce their new product, the Rolex Oyster, and so Mercedes pioneered Rolex’s establishment as a global household name.  I would like to thank Mercedes’ daughter Doloranda Pember for the information on her mother’s career and acknowledge the picture credit for The Daily Mail advertisement to her book manuscript. 

​So well before the recent Sport Luxe trend, so evident in Vogue and other fashion magazines, sports women helped to promote luxury goods and health-related products to the mass market.  To read more, see Jean’s latest book A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport Part One 1850-1960.