Wimbledon's Pioneering Victorian Female Champions

As the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships begin this week, I decided to look at the lives and sporting careers of some of England and Ireland's pioneering female Tennis players from the Victorian era. 

Here are some of their amazing stories - just remember that these women all played Tennis wearing boned corsets, bustles and long dresses!

Maude and her sister Lilian Watson

Maud Edith Eleanor Watson MBE (9 October 1864 – 5 June 1946)

Maud Watson was an English tennis player and the first woman to be crowned as a female Wimbledon champion.

Born in Harrow, London, she was the daughter of a local vicar Henry William and Emily Frances Watson. At the age of sixteen Watson played her first match at the Edgbaston Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club. It was a successful debut, winning the singles competition by defeating her sister Lillian in the final and winning the doubles competition with her.

In 1884 Maud participated in the Irish Ladies' Championship and defeated the reigning Irish champion May Langrishe 6–3, 6–2, 6–2. She was also victorious in the mixed doubles tournament winning the title with multiple Wimbledon champion William Renshaw. Undefeated in tournament play, in 1884 the nineteen-year-old Watson won the first ever Ladies' Singles title at Wimbledon. Playing in white corsets and petticoats, from a field of thirteen competitors she defeated her sister  Lilian 6–8, 6–3, 6–3 in the final to claim the title and a silver flower basket valued at 20 Guineas.

1885 was a year of great success for Maud, who remained unbeaten in singles and lost only one set. Maud repeated her success at the 1885 Wimbledon championships. In a field of just 10 entries she easily won the quarter- and semi-finals and in the final defeated Blanche Bingley 6–1, 7–5. She successfully defended her title at the 1885 Irish Championships against Louise Martin. For two sets there was little to choose between them but in the decider Maud outstayed her opponent to win 6–2, 4–6, 6–3. In 1886, the year the Challenge Round was introduced for women, Bingley turned the tables, defeating Watson 6–3, 6–3 in the final to take the title.

In 1887 and 1888 Watson was handicapped by a sprained wrist which worsened with time. Her final competition came at the Edgebaston tournament in June 1889. She entered three events (doubles, mixed doubles and handicap singles) and won them all. While on holiday in Jersey she went swimming off the coast and nearly drowned. She was rescued with difficulty and suffered an illness afterwards which took a number of years to completely recover.

Watson worked as a nurse during the First World War for which she was rewarded as a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Maud Watson, who did not marry, died at Hammersmead House in Charmouth on 5 June 1946, at the age of 81.

Blanche Bingley Hillyard

Blanche Bingley Hillyard - 3 November 1863 – 6 August 1946

Born in Greenford in the London Borough of Ealing, Blanche Bingley was a member of the Ealing Lawn Tennis & Archery Club. In 1884, she competed in the first ever Wimbledon championships for women, and two years later she captured the first of her six singles titles. A seven-time finalist, Bingley's 13 finals remain a Wimbledon record as is the 14-year time span between her first and last titles.

Bingley's Wimbledon record suggests that she was the second strongest female player of her day, only behind Lottie Dod, who defeated her in five finals.

Once married to Commander George Whiteside Hillyard (in Greenford on 13 July 1887), Bingley was recorded with her husband's name and is usually listed in various records as Blanche Bingley Hillyard. At age 36, she again won the Wimbledon final and continued to compete until age 49, playing her last Wimbledon in 1913.

During her career, she also won the Irish championships on three occasions (1888, 1894, 1897) and the German championship, played in Hamburg, twice; in 1897, defeating Charlotte Cooper Sterry in the final in three sets, and in 1900 against Muriel Robb, also in three sets. Additionally, she won the South of England Championships at Eastbourne, then a major event, 11 times between 1885 and 1905.

Blanche Bingley Hillyard died in London in 1946. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.

Charlotte "Lottie" Dod

Charlotte "Lottie" Dod (24 September 1871 – 27 June 1960)

Chatlotte was an English sportswoman best known as a tennis player. She won the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship five times, the first one when she was only fifteen in the summer of 1887. She remains the youngest ladies' singles champion, though Martina Hingis was three days younger when she won the women's doubles title in 1996.

In addition to tennis, Dod competed in many other sports, including golf, field hockey, and archery. She also won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship, played twice for the England women's national field hockey team (which she helped to found, and won a silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in archery. The Guinness Book of Records has named her as the most versatile female athlete of all time, together with track and field athlete and fellow golf player Babe Zaharias.

Dod was born on 24 September 1871 in Bebington, Cheshire, the youngest of four children to Joseph and Margaret Dod. Joseph, from Liverpool, had made a fortune in the cotton trade. The family was wealthy enough to provide for all members for life; Lottie and her brother Willy never had to work. Besides Willy, Lottie had a sister, Annie, and another brother, Tony, all of whom also excelled in sports. Annie was a good tennis player, golfer, ice skater and billiards player. Willy Dod won the Olympic gold medal in archery at the 1908 Games, while Tony was a regional level archer and a chess and tennis player. The Dod children received a private education by tutors and governesses.

In her childhood Lottie played the piano, banjo and she was member of a local choir. When Dod was nine years old, two tennis courts were built near the family's estate, Edgeworth. Lawn tennis, invented in 1873, was highly fashionable for the wealthy in England, and all of the Dod children started playing the game frequently. Tennis parties were occasionally organized and among the invited guests were future Wimbledon champions Joshua Pim and the brothers Herbert and Wilfred Baddeley. 

When she was eleven Dod joined the Rock Ferry Tennis Club in Birkenhead, Together with Annie, who was eight years older, Dod entered her first tennis tournament, the 1883 Northern Championships in Manchester, at age eleven. They had a bye in the first round and lost in the second round of the doubles tournament to Hannah Keith and Amber McCord, but won the consolation tournament. One journalist, Sydney Brown, noted that "Miss L. Dod should be heard of in the future".

 The following year, 1884, she participated in two tournaments, the Northern Championships, played that year in Liverpool, and Waterloo. With Annie she reached the doubles finals in both tournaments and with Tony she was defeated in the first round of the mixed doubles event at Waterloo. At the Northern Championships in 1885, she came to prominence when she nearly beat reigning Wimbledon champion Maud Watson in the final, losing 6–8, 5–7. Dod would win the doubles event (with Annie). Earlier she had won the first singles title of her career at the Waterloo tournament where she was also victorious in the doubles and mixed doubles events. These performances earned her the nickname "Little Wonder" in the press.

In 1886 Dod won the singles title at the West of England Championships in Bath where she defeated Watson in the final and ending the latter's run of 55 consecutive victories. That year she played tournaments in Liverpool (Northern), Cheltenham and Derbyshire but won no further singles titles. In 1887 Dod became an established first-class player, illustrated by the fact she partnered then seven-time Wimbledon doubles winner Ernest Renshaw at the mixed doubles event of the Irish Championships. She won the singles in Dublin defeating Watson in the final in straight sets.

She again won the singles title at the Northern, defeating leading players Louisa Martin, May Langrishe and Watson without losing a set and conceding no more than two games per set. Encouraged by these results she decided to enter the 1887 Wimbledon Championships. Only six competitors, not including Martin and Watson, had entered. Dod had a bye in the first round and easily advanced through the semifinal and final of the All-Comer's tournament to earn the right to challenge the defending champion, Blanche Bingley. She defeated Bingley in straight sets 6–2, 6–0, the second set lasting just ten minutes. At 15 years and 285 days she was the youngest ever winner of the ladies' singles championships.  During the match, Dod wore a metal-and-whalebone corset which punctured her skin and caused her to bleed as she played.

The two met again in the final of the 1888 West of England Championships. Although it was designated an "open" tournament, the officials made the remarkable decision to impose a handicap of 15 on Dod. She still managed to win against her opponent, now known by her married name, Blanche Hillyard. The Wimbledon final of 1888 was a rematch of the previous year, and Dod, this time defending her title in the Challenge Round, again emerged victorious (6–3, 6–3). During that year she won several doubles and mixed doubles titles with her sister Annie, May Langrishe and Ernest Renshaw.

Lottie Dod's style of play, then regarded as unorthodox, now seems notably modern. She was perhaps the first player to advocate hitting the ball just before the top of the bounce and to adopt a modern, albeit single-handed, racquet grip. Her ground strokes were reported by contemporaries to be unusually firmly hit by the standards of the time, but – like many female players of the day – she served underhand and only rarely employed spin.

Dod only entered one open tournament in 1889 (the Northern Championships, which she won), and failed to attend Wimbledon, much to the disappointment of her fans. Together with Annie and some friends, she was on a sailing trip off the Scottish coast, and didn't want to return in time for Wimbledon. This was followed by a complete absence from the game in 1890.

Lottie Dod

After failing to do so in 1889, Dod was determined to win Wimbledon three times in a row, starting in 1891. Although it was her only competitive appearance of that season, she won her third Wimbledon title by defeating Hillyard (6–2, 6–1) in the final of the All-Comers tournament. The reigning champion Lena Rice did not defend her title. 1892 saw Dod's first singles defeat in an open tournament since 1886 when she lost to Louisa Martin of Ireland in the second round of the Irish Championships. It was the last of only five losses in her entire tennis career and her only defeat after the age of 15. She continued the year strongly, culminating in another easy straight-set Wimbledon victory over Hillyard. Dod's last tennis season as a competitive player was 1893, and she played in just two tournaments, The Northern in Manchester and Wimbledon, winning both. On both occasions, she defeated Blanche Hillyard in three sets, despite a heavy fall in the Wimbledon final. Her record of five Wimbledon titles would not last for long, as Hillyard, after losing in the final to Dod five times, won her sixth title in 1900. Suzanne Lenglen broke Dod's record of three consecutive singles wins by winning from 1919 to 1923.

Apart from entering women's tournaments, Dod sometimes also played and won matches against men (who usually played with a handicap), and on one occasion defeated star players Ernest Renshaw and George Hillyard (the husband of Blanche) when doubling with Herbert Baddeley.

This was actually the all-comers final as Helena Rice did not defend her 1890 Wimbledon title, which resulted in the winner of the all-comers final winning the challenge round and, thus, Wimbledon in 1891 by walkover.

Although tennis would remain Dod's favourite sport, she shifted her attention to other activities in the following years. In 1895, she joined her brother Tony on a trip to the winter sports resort of St. Moritz, which was very popular with English travellers. There, she passed the St. Moritz Ladies's Skating Test, the most prestigious figure skating event for women at the time. Dod also rode the toboggan on the famous Sankt Moritz Cresta Run, and began mountaineering with her brother, climbing two mountains over 4,000 m in February 1896.

 

After a long cycling trip in Italy, Lottie and Tony returned to England, only to come back to St Moritz in November, now accompanied by their mother and brother Willy. This time, Dod took the St. Moritz Men's Skating Test and passed, as the second woman ever. She also competed in curling. In the summer of 1897, she and Tony again ascended several mountains, this time in Norway.

The sport of women's field hockey was still rather young when Dod took up the game in 1897. She was one of the founding members of a women's hockey club in Spital. Playing as a central forward, she was soon named captain of the team. Club matches in which Dod played were won, while losses happened only in her absence.

By 1899, Dod had made it to captain of the Cheshire county team, and represented her club at meetings of the women's hockey association for the northern counties. She first played in the English national team on 21 March that year, winning 3–1 over Ireland. Both English goals in the 1900 England and Ireland rematch were scored by Dod, securing a 2–1 victory. Dod failed to attend the match against Wales, suffering from sciatica attacks which kept her from sporting for months.

Although she had recovered by 1901, Dod would not play again in national or county matches. All members of the Dod family stopped attending sports events for a while after their mother died on 1 August 1901, and Dod apparently lost her interest in field hockey during that period, although she did occasionally play for Spital Club until 1905.

Few golf clubs allowed women to play around the time Lottie Dod first played golf at age fifteen. Unlike tennis, Dod found golf a difficult sport to master. By the time she got seriously interested in the sport, the Ladies Golf Union (LGU) had been founded, and women's golf had become a real sport.

Dod helped establish a ladies' golf club at Moreton in 1894 and entered that year's National Championships (match play) at Littlestone (Kent). She was eliminated in the third round, but Dod's interest in the sport grew, and she became a regular competitor in the National Championships and other tournaments for the next few years. In 1898 and 1900 she reached the semi-finals of the National Championships, but was defeated narrowly both times. In 1900, she also played in an unofficial country match against Ireland, which the English won 37–18.

Dod did not compete in golf in 1901, and hardly entered major tournaments in the next two years, but she did play in the 1904 British Ladies Amateur, held at Troon. She qualified for the semi-finals for the third time in her life, and won it for the first time. Her opponent in the final was May Hezlet, the champion of 1899 and 1902. The match was very close, and the two were tied after 17 holes. Hezlet missed her putt on the final hole narrowly, after which Dod grabbed an unexpected victory, becoming the first, and to date only, woman to win British tennis and golf championships.

Following her victory, Dod sailed to Philadelphia, where she had been invited by Frances C. Griscom, a former American golf champion, to attend the U.S. Women's Amateur as a spectator. Upon arrival, Dod found out the tournament regulations had been changed to allow for non-Americans to compete, and she was requested to compete. Her loss in the first round was a disappointment, but Dod persuaded several Americans to come and play in the British championships the following year.

In the week before these 1905 championships, three international matches were planned, starting off with the first British-American international match. Dod was the only British player to lose a match, as the United Kingdom won 6–1. Dod then played for the English team in a 3–4 defeat against Scotland and a 4–3 win over Ireland, although she lost both her matches. Dod was then eliminated in the fourth round of the National Championships. It was to be her last appearance in golf.

In the autumn of 1905, Dod and her brothers sold "Edgeworth" and moved to a new home near Newbury, Berkshire. They had been practising archery from the times before, but all three became more serious now and joined the Welford Park Archers in Newbury. As one of their ancestors was said to have commanded the English longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt, they found this an appropriate sport.

Women's Olympic Archery Team 1908

Lottie Dod won her first tournament by 1906, and finished fifth in the Grand National Archery Meeting of 1906, 1907 and 1908. Dod's performances in the 1908 season earned her a spot on the British Olympic team. The field in the women's archery event consisted only of British women, but without the best archer of the era, Alice Legh. Dod led the competition,  after the first day but was surpassed by Queenie Newall on the second day, taking second place with 642 points to Newall's 688. Her brother Willy secured the gold medal in the men's competition.

In 1910, Dod came close to winning the Grand National, which would have made archery the third sport in which she became a national champion. Both Lottie and her brother William led after day one, but moved down to second on the final competition day. After the Welford Archers were disbanded in late 1911, the Dods' interest in archery faded, meaning the end of Lottie Dod's long competitive sports career.

In 1913, Willy and Lottie moved to a new house in Bideford (Tony had married in the meantime). When World War I broke out, Willy enlisted with the Royal Fusiliers, while his sister worked for the British Red Cross from November 1916 at Chelsea VAD Hospital and in a military hospital in Speen, Berkshire.

Dod wanted to be transferred to the war zones in France but was hampered by sciatica and never served as a nurse outside England. She did receive a Service Medal by the Red Cross for serving more than 1,000 hours during the war.

She then lived in London and Devon, and she never failed to attend the Wimbledon Championships until she was in her late eighties. After her brother Willy died in 1954, she lived in several nursing homes on the English south coast, eventually settling at the Birchy Hill Nursing Home in Sway, Hampshire. There she died, unmarried, at age 88, passing away while listening to the Wimbledon radio broadcasts in bed.

Dod was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983.

Lena Rice

Helena Bertha Grace "Lena" Rice (21 June 1866 – 21 June 1907)

Helena “Lena” Rice was an Irish tennis player who won the singles title at the 1890 Wimbledon Championships. She is to date the only female player from Ireland to ever win a singles title at Wimbledon.

Lena Rice was born the second-youngest of the eight children of Spring Rice and Anna Gorde in 1866. Her family lived in a two-storied Georgian building at Marlhill, half a mile from New Inn, County Tipperary. When her father died in 1868, her mother struggled to manage the household. Lena learned to play tennis with her sister Anne in their large garden at Marlhill, and both girls entered the Cahir Lawn Tennis club.

Rice's first tournament outside County Tipperary were the Irish Championships at Dublin in May 1889. There she lost 5–7, 5–7 to Blanche Bingley Hillyard in the semifinals. In doubles competition, she reached the final partnering Hillyard, and in mixed doubles she won the title along with Willoughby Hamilton.

Later that year, Rice played at the Wimbledon Championships. She reached the final where she met Hillyard once again. She won the first set 6–4 and had three match points at 5–3, 40–15 and advantage in the second, but Hillyard managed to come back and eventually won 4–6, 8–6, 6–4.

The next year, only four players participated at the singles event at Wimbledon. After winning over Mary Steedman 7–5, 6–2 in the first round, her opponent in the All-comers final was May Jacks. Rice won 6–4, 6–1 and as defending champion Blanche Hillyard was pregnant and didn't enter the tournament, Rice won the title, the 50-guineas challenger trophy and a cash prize of 20 guineas.

After her 1890 Wimbledon title, there is no record of Rice ever again playing tennis at a tournament. As her mother died in 1891, it seems likely that family ill health prevented her from continuing her tennis career.

Rice, who never married, died of tuberculosis on her 41st birthday in 1907. She was buried at the New Inn cemetery, close to her parents, her brother Samel and her sister Agnes.

A Typical Victorian Tennis Match

Edith Lucy Austin Greville (née Austin; 15 December 1867 – 27 July 1953) 

Edith Greville was English female tennis player who was active from the 1890s until around 1920. She was married to fellow player George Greville.

Between 1893 and 1919 she participated 16 times in the single event of the Wimbledon Championships and achieved her best result in 1894 and 1896 when she reached the final of the all-comers tournament. In 1894 she lost to Blanche Hillyard in straight sets, winning just two games and Hillyard became champions as the title holder Lottie Dod did not defend her title. In 1896 she lost the all-comers final in three sets to Alice Pickering, In her last two Wimbledon appearances in 1913 and 1919 she also played in the doubles and mixed doubles events.

She won the singles title at the Kent Championships on six occasions (1894-97, 1899, 1900).

In 1894 she defeated May Arbuthnot in a three-set final to win the singles title of the British Covered Court Championships, played on wood courts at the Queen's Club in London. Arbuthnot failed to convert two matchpoints. The following year, 1895, she lost her title in the challenge round to Charlotte Cooper. From 1896 to 1899 she won four consecutive titles, defeating Cooper twice in the final. In 1894, 1899 and 1901 she won the Queen's Club Championships grass court tournament.

In 1896 she was a runner-up at the South of England Championships in Eastbourne, losing the final to Blanche Hillyard in three sets.

Charlotte Cooper Sterry

Charlotte Cooper Sterry ( 22 September 1870 – 10 October 1966) 

Charlotte Cooper Sterry was a female tennis player from England who won five singles titles at the Wimbledon Championships and in 1900 became Olympic champion. In winning in Paris on July 11th 1900, she became the first female Olympic tennis champion as well as the first individual female Olympic champion.

Charlotte Cooper was born on 22 September 1870 at Waldham Lodge, Ealing, Middlesex, England, the youngest daughter of Henry Cooper, a miller, and his wife Teresa Georgiana Miller. She learned to play tennis at the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club where she was first coached by H. Lawrence and later by Charles Martin and Harold Mahony. She won her first senior singles title in 1893 at Ilkley . 

Between 1893 and 1917 she participated in 21 Wimbledon tournaments. At her first appearance she reached the semifinals of the singles event in which she lost to Blanche Bingley Hillyard. She won her first singles title in 1895, defeating Helen Jackson in the final of the All-Comers event. In that match she was down 0–5 in both sets but managed to win in straight sets. 

In 1896, she successfully defended her title in the Challenge Round against Alice Simpson Pickering. Between 1897 and 1901 the titles were divided between Cooper Sterry (1898, 1901) and Bingley Hillyard (1897, 1899, 1900). The 1902 Challenge Round match against Muriel Robb was halted on the first day of play due to rainfall at 6–4, 11–13. The match was replayed in its entirety the next day and Robb won 7–5, 6–1, playing a total of 53 games which was then a record for the longest women's singles final. 

In 1908 as a mother of two she won her last singles title when she defeated Agnes Morton in straight sets in the All-Comers final after a seven-year hiatus and at the age of 37. She is the oldest Wimbledon's ladies’ singles champion and her record of eight consecutive singles finals stood until 1990 when Martina Navratilova reached her ninth consecutive singles final.

In addition to her singles titles, Cooper Sterry also won seven All-England mixed doubles titles; five times with Harold Mahony (1894–1898) [10] and once with Laurence Doherty (1900) and Xenophon Casdagli (1908).[c] In 1913 she reached the final of the first Wimbledon women's doubles event with Dorothea Douglass, 18 years after winning her first Wimbledon title.

She won the singles title at the Irish Lawn Tennis Championships in 1895 and 1898 - a prestigious tournament at the time . At the 1900 Summer Olympics, where women participated for the first time, Cooper Sterry won the tennis singles event. On 11 July 1900 she defeated Hélène Prévost in the final in straight sets and became the first female Olympic tennis champion as well as the first individual female Olympic champion. With Reginald Doherty, she won the mixed doubles title after a straight-sets victory in the final against Hélène Prévost and Harold Mahony. In 1901 she won the singles title at the German Championships, and in 1902 she won the Swiss Championship. Cooper Sterry remained active in competitive tennis and continued to play in championship events well into her 50s.

On 12 January 1901 she married Alfred Sterry, a solicitor, who became president of the Lawn Tennis Association. They had two children: Rex (born 1903) who was the vice-chairman of the All England Club for a period of 15 years during the 1960s and 1970s and Gwen (born 1905), a tennis player who participated at Wimbledon and played on Britain's Wightman Cup team.

Cooper Sterry had an offensive style of playing, attacking the net when the opportunity arose. She was one of a few female players of her time who served overhead. Her main strengths were her steadiness, temperament and tactical ability. Her excellent volleying skills stood out at a time when this was still a rarity in ladies tennis.

Cooper Sterry, who had been deaf since the age of 26, died on 10 October 1966 at the age of 96, in Helensburgh, Scotland

She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.

Alice Pickering (1860 – 18 February 1939 née Alice Simpson) 

Alice Pickering was an English tennis player who played at the Wimbledon Championships from 1895 to 1901. In 1896, she won the all-comers-competition at Wimbledon 1896, but lost the challenge round against Charlotte Cooper 2-6, 3-6. She again reached the all-comers final in the following year, but this time lost to Blanche Bingley. 

In 1896 she won the doubles competition at the Irish Championships partnering Ruth Durlacher.

Mary Louisa "Mollie" Martin (3 September 1865, Newtowngore, Ireland – 24 October 1941, Portrush, Northern Ireland) 

Mary "Mollie" Martin was a tennis player from Ireland. In 1898 she reached the final of the Wimbledon Championships, but was beaten 6-4, 6-4 by Charlotte Cooper.

She won nine singles titles at the Irish Lawn Tennis Championships.

In my next blog post I will be examining some early 20th century female tennis players from the Edwardian and post war era's. 

Christina Broom: Britain's 1st Female Press Photographer

Christina Broom - Museum of London Collection

Christina Broom was credited as being "the UK's first female press photographer" and yet, despite her many achievements, her incredible life and work remain relatively unknown. “Historically she has been seen as an eccentric amateur, which has meant her work hasn’t seen the light of day in quite the way it should have done,” says Anna Sparham, who has curated a large exhibition of Broom’s photography, at the Museum of London.

Christina’s maiden name was Livingston and her parents were Scottish, although she was born at 8 King's Road, Chelsea, London, the seventh of eight children on 28 December 1862. Her father was Alexander Livingston, a master bootmaker and her mother was Margaret Fair Livingston. 

Her parents were well-off, but She must have rather exaggerated their worth, because when Christina told her fiancee, Albert, that she was not quite the heiress he thought she was, he asked her not to tell his mother. Christina’s brother Robert had already squandered much of the family inheritance at the gaming tables in Monaco, and her only income was the rent from a small house on nearby Oakley Street, which Oscar Wilde let from her to house his mother in – Broom would later testify at his trial.

Christina married Albert Edward Broom in 1889 and they had a daughter Winifred Margaret, who was born 7 August 1890. In 1903 the failure of the family ironmongery business was due to a cricketing accident which left her husband Albert an invalid after being struck on the shin by a ball. The injury was serious, causing necrosis of the tibia and fibulae bones. On the advice of a friend, the Brooms opened a small stationery shop in the middle-class suburb of Streatham. Although it never generated the income they hoped for, it was here that Christina noticed the booming trade in postcards which were all the rage. There were seven reliable postal deliveries a day; it was possible to send a card to someone in the same town and receive an answer within hours.

Christina Broom's Postcard Stall in London

Forced to become the main breadwinner for her family, Christina borrowed a box camera and taught herself the rudiments of photography when it was still very much in its infancy. She set up a stall in the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, selling postcards of photographs that she had taken. She maintained this stall from 1904 until 1930. 

Because newspapers were for the most part still unable to reproduce photographs, postcards were also used as a means of disseminating news, and Broom’s enterprise happened to coincide with a period of great upheaval in British history – she captured both the Suffragette movement and the First World War with an unusual, almost maternal intimacy.

She also turned her lens on the more humdrum details of city life, producing many streetscapes and informal portraits in which her sitters appear wonderfully unguarded.

Even though, by the turn of the century, photography had passed muster as a “suitable” pastime for women, most of Broom’s female cohorts preferred to operate from the safety of a studio, and to focus only on friends and family. Broom lugged her camera through the city instead, jostling for space among the male photographers of the press.

Anna Sparham says: “The testing circumstances in which she found herself stimulated her independent and resourceful qualities, but there were plenty of obstacles to overcome… conquering the apparatus was only one; having the nerve and ability to take these skills into the street, publicly projecting herself as a ‘professional photographer’, and most significantly as a woman, was another.”

When the family moved to a new house in Burnfoot Avenue, she used the coal cellar as her dark room. She was assisted by her daughter Winifred, who had left school to help and was extremely devoted for all of her life, both to the photography work and to her mother. Albert wrote the captions for the postcards in his neat script. The postcards sold well: in one night-time session Broom printed 1000.

Chelsea Barracks from Museum of London Collection

Christina was appointed official photographer to the Household Division of the Army from 1904 to 1939 and had her own darkroom in the Chelsea Barracks; she also took photographs of local scenes, including those at Buckingham Palace, as well as The Boat Race and Suffragette marches. Her portraits included  leading suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Wilding Davidson. Although Broom’s photography is immersed in an Edwardian era of grandeur and tradition,  it also conveys and acknowledges change.

Suffragettes - Museum of London Collection

 It is in her coverage of the suffragette movement that we glimpse most of her character. Although she always sought to retain a respectable impartiality in her work, here we sense a fascination and a growing appreciation. In its bright, early days the ideas must have chimed particularly with Christina’s own struggles.

When Albert Broom died in 1912, Christina and Winifred moved to Munster Road, Fulham where she took the professional name of Mrs Albert Broom. Her daughter Winnie became a VAD nurse during the First World War.

Courtesy of Museum of London

By 1915 Broom had become firmly established, selling photographs to many newspapers and magazines which featured the images of her soldier friends. Her er wartime photographs cover a huge range of subject matter from Soldiers leaving to for the front, right through to those returning wounded. She also took a rare shor of Rudyard Kipling's son John who was killed in 1915 aged 18.

Her portraits were purchased in the hundreds by soldiers who sent them home to their families; she did more for conscription, Field Marshall Frederick Roberts said, than his prayers for new recruits ever had. He was so impressed by Broom’s work that he recommended her to the King.

She attended a tea party at Buckingham Palace held for wounded soldiers in 1916 and her meetings with King George V, both before, during and after the war, would prove fruitful for her career as a press photographer. The increasingly close relationship she enjoyed with the royal family led to some of her most impressive scoops.

She was allowed great privileges and had special access to major royal events and occasions. Broom was given an exclusive commission with the Prince of Wales and produced a lovely portrait of the young prince.

Broom was the only person allowed in to see King Edward VII when he died and was lying in state. She was allowed into Westminster Abbey to photograph him at 4am in the morning. In the 1920s and 1930s her work was featured in top publications such as the Illustrated London News, The Tatler, The Sphere, and Country Life.

Christina Broom's Portrait of Pankhurst - Museum of London

   Letters and journals from the time point to Broom being accepted and respected by many of her male peers. One of the royal photographers, Ernest Brooks, gave Broom a few tips. In one note he wrote: “I am extremely sorry for you having so much worry… Hope you will soon be all right. It warrants a good nerve I know.”

The physical strain of carrying around 40 pounds worth of camera equipment across London caught up with Broom, and eventually she was confined to a wheelchair. However, if Broom found herself with crippling back pain, her daughter Winfred would push her to the barracks or the Royal Mews in her wheelchair, so that she was still able to use her camera. By the Thirties, she had closed her stall selling postcards and begun to spend more time in Margate, where she and Winnie liked to fish. 

Christina Broom died on 5 June 1939 and was buried in Fulham old cemetery. 

With the outbreak of the 2nd World War, restrictions on military photography had tightened considerably, and, despite her best efforts, Winnie found she could no longer continue running the family business. She eventually retired in Margate, where she died in 1973, but not before Queen Mary had personally recommended she save her mother’s plates for the nation. Winifred was instrumental in safeguarding Christina's negatives by having them housed in various public institutions and museums. 

Collections of Christina Broom’s photographs are held at the Museum of London, the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, London, the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Guards Museum, London; the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Local Studies Library; the Hammersmith and Fulham Archive and the National Army Museum; Maidstone Art Gallery, Kent; and the Harry Ransom Center and the Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas, both at Austin, Texas

On 17 December 2009 a collection of some 2,000 of her photographs, mainly of military subjects, was to be offered for sale by auction at Sotheby's in London. The collection was expected to make up to £35,000. It failed to sell and was acquired privately by the Museum of London.  In June 2015, the museum opened an exhibition of her photographs entitled Soldiers and Suffragettes.

Anna Sparham for the Museum of London said: 

'Bearing in mind she's this small-framed lady working in this quite often male-dominated environment, she has this ability to really pull people together to form lovely compositions.

'She seizes their attention and you always get a sense of her relationship with her subjects, whether that's the suffragettes or powerful soldiers going off to war.'

Broom, would have needed to be quite the character herself, as well as determined, as she pursued a career that was a far cry from the trajectory expected of a woman at the beginning of the 20th Century.

 

'Christina would have had to have been quite a determined lady,she is described as quite formidable and I think to embrace the world of photography, which within her world was fairly unique, it would have been quite a brave thing to do.'

VIDEO ON CHRISTINA BROOM FROM THE MUSEUM OF LONDON

The Amazing Mabel Stark - Tiger Trainer & Big Cat Tamer

A brilliant new documentary film entitled Mabel, Mabel, Tiger Trainer directed by Leslie Zemeckis premiered in 2017. We added the film trailer to our website in 2018 (on right sidebar) so we could help spread the word about this amazing woman. Lesley Zemeckis has done a sterling job in bringing Mabel’s incredible life story to the big screen. 

Mabel Stark, whose real name was Mary Haynie was a renowned tiger trainer of the 1920s and was one of the world's first women to take up this thrilling but very dangerous occupation, which she did from 1911 right through to 1968. 

"Mabel Stark" entered the world on December 10, 1889 in Kentucky. She was one of seven children born to Lela and Hardy Haynie. Her parents were farmers and they died within two years of each other, so that by the age of 17, Stark and her siblings were orphaned. 

She spent a short period of time living with her aunt in Princeton. She then travelled to Louisville and became a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital. Soon after that, she left Louisville and her history becomes difficult to trace. 

Her Circus friends contend that she worked in carnivals as a "dancer". Like many circus performers, Stark did not hesitate to enrich the truth to create an interesting story. She even once told an interviewer that she was born to a wealthy Canadian.

In 1911 she was working with the Al G. Barnes Circus based in Culver City, California, where she met animal trainer Al Sands. She worked for a brief time there as a "high school" horseback rider, but her dream job was to work with the big cats. She began work with Louis Roth, a famous "cat man" who she would later marry. Roth advocated training big cats by rewarding them with meat, as opposed to beating them as earlier trainers did. Roth used the carrot instead of the stick. Stark's first big cat performance was with two lions and two tigers. 

Soon, she became a tiger trainer in the ring. At first, they had her work a "balloon act" which had her "riding" a lion on a platform and then pressing a pedal to release fireworks at some point in the act. But by 1916, she was presenting the show's major tiger act.

On 18 February 1916, Stark was severely mauled by a lion named Louie while rehearsing for the Pacific Electric exhibit of the National Orange Show in San Bernardino, California. Stark's husband, Louis Roth, fired blank cartridges from a revolver into the face of the lion amid the screams of his wife and spectators who had gathered to watch the rehearsal.

 The lion seized Stark's left arm into its mouth and rolled over a number of times. Roth had also been mauled earlier that same day by a lion. He suffered deep injuries to his arm before firing blanks into the animal's open jaws. Mabel was dragged unconscious from the cage and rushed to a hospital where she was treated for a mauled and broken arm. This was Stark's third mauling in as many years. In 1914, while in Detroit, Michigan, she was attacked by her leopards during a parade, and during the winter of 1915 she was again attacked in Venice, California.

She adopted a sickly tiger cub named Rajah and raised him to perform a famous wrestling act with her. She accomplished this by romping and playing with the cub at the beach and actually keeping him as a pet in her apartment. According to Stark's autobiography:

 "Rajah would run straight toward me. Up he went on his hind legs, his forefeet around my neck. We turned around once or twice, I threw him to the ground, and we rolled three or four times. I opened his mouth and put my face inside, then jumped to my feet".

Rajah became instrumental in making Stark a star. She admitted years later that Rajah was actually relieving himself sexually during this wrestling act, which looks very much like a vicious attack to anyone not familiar with tiger behaviour. Stark started wearing a white uniform at this time so that the audience would not see tiger semen. The white costume became her signature, which she used for the rest of her career.   

She was approached by, and joined, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1922, where she performed in Madison Square Garden with snarling tigers and a black panther. By the end of that season, of the six wild animal acts featured with the circus, Mabel Stark's was clearly the greatest success. In 1923, she starred in the Ringling centre ring, but two years later the circus banned all wild animal acts. 

By then Stark had divorced Roth and was a star act. She married the circus's accountant Albert Ewing, who was embezzling funds from Ringling. They divorced when the crime was uncovered, but Stark believed she was being punished for her husband's sins when the circus cut all big cat acts in 1925. 

Ringling chiefs claimed that the cage took too long to assemble and tear down during a performance. Stark was still under contract, though, and was assigned to a horse act. Her tigers were kept on in the circus's menagerie, which was supervised by Art Rooney. Mabel later claimed that she married her first husbands for practical reasons, but she fell in love with Rooney. They soon married, which surprised other circus employees because Rooney wore makeup and nail polish, and they assumed he was not the marrying kind. Rooney died soon after under circumstances that were not recorded.

After a sojourn to Europe where she performed in a circus, she came back to the U.S. in 1928 and began work with the John Robinson Show. The circus train was late getting to the venue in Bangor, Maine, the tigers were getting wet in the rain, and there was no time to feed them before the show. Normally, a cat act would be delayed or cancelled for this reason. But Stark let the show go on. Two hungry tigers named Sheik and Zoo mauled her during the show. Stark's own description of the incident was:

    "Sheik was right behind me, and caught me in the left thigh, tearing a two-inch gash that cut through to the bone and almost severed my left leg just above the knee. . .I could feel blood pouring into both my boots, but I was determined to go through with the act. . .(Zoo) jumped from his pedestal and seized my right leg, jerking me to the ground. As I fell, Sheik struck out with one paw, catching the side of my head, almost scalping me. . .Zoo gave a deep growl and bit my leg again. He gave it a shake, and planting both forefeet with his claws deep in my flesh, started to chew. . .I wondered into how many pieces I would be torn. . .Most of all I was concerned for the audience. . .I knew it would be a horrible sight if my body was torn apart before their eyes. And all my tigers would be branded as murderers and sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in narrow cages instead of being allowed the freedom of the big arena and the pleasure of working. That thought gave me strength to fight."

She would suffer a wound that almost severed her leg, along with face lacerations, a hole in her shoulder, a torn deltoid muscle and a host of other injuries. Stark managed to leave the cage with the help of another trainer, Terrell Jacobs, and insisted on changing out of her blood-soaked stage clothing before going to the hospital. Doctors sewed muscles and skin back together with 378 stitches, but they did not expect her to survive. She was back to work within a few weeks, swathed in bandages and walking with a cane, although the injuries troubled her and she was in and out of hospitals several times over the next two years for further muscle repair. When she was mauled, she blamed herself, or other factors, but never the tigers. She loved them and respected them, but also said there was no such thing as a "tame tiger." 

 Stark announced her retirement a couple of times, but always returned to performing.

She performed with the Sells-Floto Circus in 1929 and then rejoined Barnes, after it had been sold to Ringling, in 1930 and stayed there until it was absorbed into Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey during the season of 1938. 

Mabel with Mae West in 1933

In 1932 she and her tiger act was filmed for the Paramount Pictures motion picture King of the Jungle (1933). In the film Stark is seen putting her tigers through their paces when fire erupts in the big top. 

 She also worked as a stunt double in the lion-taming scenes for Mae West in the 1933 film I'm No Angel, which West wrote, possibly inspired by Stark's career. 

Hollywood work introduced Stark to Louis Goebel's Jungleland, in Thousand Oaks, California, a facility that housed trained animals for movies. She returned to California and finished her career at the Jungleland Compound.

She toured with some small circuses and lived in Japan where she performed her circus act in the 1950s. Stark also appeared on television in the 1960’s - she did a stint as one of the guests with an unusual occupation on What's My Line?, the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV program.

In 1968 Jungleland was sold to a new owner who disliked Stark and fired her. Soon after she left, one of her tigers escaped and was shot. Stark was angry and hurt about the animal's destruction and felt that she could have safely secured the tiger if the owners had asked for her assistance. Three months later, she killed herself by an overdose of barbiturates.

 In the last pages of her autobiography, Hold That Tiger, Stark writes:

 "The chute door opens as I crack my whip and shout, 'Let them come,' Out slink the striped cats, snarling and roaring, leaping at each other or at me. It's a matchless thrill, and life without it is not worthwhile to me."

She died on April 20, 1968 and was found dead by her housekeeper. According to her 1938 autobiography Hold That Tiger, Stark would have preferred to “die at the hands of a tiger than by any other means.”

In 2001 a fictionalized biography of Stark's life by author Robert Hough, entitled The Final Confession of Mabel Stark was published. The story is based in 1968, the same year that Stark committed suicide. The screenplay was optioned by director Sam Mendes with the hopes of making a film starring his wife Kate Winslet, however no production schedule has yet been announced. Apparently Winslet, has been interested in playing the role of Mabel Stark since 2003.

In the meantime if you want to find out more about the real Mabel Stark read her autobiography and watch the fantastic new documentary Mabel Mabel Tiger Trainer. 

 http://mabeltigermovie.com