Monday 20 July 2009

1894 Scotland Match

Just got my recent ebay purchase. It is a page out of a victorian magazine with a full page (a3) illustration of the 1894 England Vs Scotland Match at Celtic Park. I am particularly pleased with this 'find' for two reasons.

1. This is a bit of a lost match. Fred played in 2 matches against Scotland, the greatest honor for an English footballer of that time. The 1893 and 1898 matches are historically much more important and also easier to access in terms of what is out there about the matches.

The 1894 match was a 2-2 draw and therefore a little forgetable considering it was the year after the match at Richmond. I have never been able to gather much research on the match, but things are changing. I am now aware of original photographs of the two teams, which I will be obtaining copies from soon, and then there is this picture.

The illustration seems to be a reproduction of a watercolour. It is in the crowd undercover of the main grandstand. Scotland have just scored and the crowd are animated. Importantly there is also another interesting feature, which is my second point....

2. The picture clearly shows Victorian floodlights, that were being used at Celtic Park at that time. I managed to get some Celtic historians to confirm they used them at this time, apparently the first trail was Christmas 1893, which links in perfectly with April 1894. When the picture arrived they are clearly electric pendant lights hanging from very tall posts.

Obviously they were no used for this match, but I am pleased that the victorian flood light experiments can be linked quite smoothly into the biography. A little footnote will be all hat is needed.

I have never seen an illustration of victorian floodlights before, although I may have seen a diagram of them once, but not in a picture of a game. 1894 must have been close to the end of the experiments as they were not very successful. I think the first trail of floodlights was in 1878, so it's not new news in terms of our book. But a great and unusual illustration.

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