A woman’s letter describes a Southampton football match in the 1890s.

Has anybody, like me, ever wondered during a drab interlude at St Mary’s stadium, what it must have been like to have been a Saints supporter at a game, way back when the club was in its infancy at the tail-end of the 19^th century? For instance, were the Victorian fans as passionate, raucous and partisan as we like to think we are? Some years ago I uncovered a letter written by a person on the day of a match that took place in 1890, when the club we now know as Southampton FC had been in existence less than five years. What makes the letter even more intriguing is this particular “match-day experience“  is seen through the eyes of a young woman who signs herself off to Jane, her friend,  as NELLIE.

Background.

In  January 1890 Saints – as they were already known –  were drawn against Cowes from the Isle of Wight in the Hampshire Junior Cup quarter-final, with the match scheduled to take place at the Antelope Ground which was situated where the South Hants Hospital is now.

It was the third time St Mary’s had entered this tournament having won it the last two seasons. The previous year had witnessed a very acrimonious semi-final versus the same team which necessitated three replays and produced a lot of bad feeling between the clubs. As the only other fixtures conducted in those early days were friendlies, these Junior Cup-ties meant a lot to the local population as can be seen by reading Nellie’s description of her day at the match with her boyfriend.

(Photographs have been added by me, including the main photo of an original “Play Up Saints” cardboard shield which fans wore in their hat bands, back in a time when rosettes and woolly scarves had not been invented.)

Southampton January 25^th 1890

My dear Jane, – Oh we had so much fun to-day as you can’t imagine, and I must tell you about it. You remember the football match I wrote to you last March. Well, I’ve learnt a lot about football since then, and I do like it. Tom says I’m getting quite an Amazon, but then, you know, I don’t take any notice of him – he’s only my brother, and he gets vexed because he can’t “give me any points” like he used to. Since then he has got on the committee of St. Marys, you know, and puts on the biggest collars and cuffs he can buy. But I like Harry better, and he takes me to see all the matches now, and in the spring he says something may happen.

Oh I don’t like that Antelope ground at all. It’s not half so pretty as the County Ground and it’s all shut in with nasty red brick houses and big black beards. But Tom says, the County Ground, be hanged (he is very rude, I think), and St Mary’s have made twice as much money on the Antelope as they did last year on the County Ground. I think they made a lot of money today, anyway.

Pa and Tom have been on pins all the week, because St Mary’s were going to play Cowes. Cowes are the club that there was such excitement about last year and Tom said if the Saints won today they were safe for the Cup. Oh it was awful weather this morning, and at breakfast Tom chuckled and said the Cowes men would either get drowned or sea sick coming across in the boats. I think Tom is real mean, don’t you. And it rained, and rained, and rained, and the wind blew hard and Pa he got out his old shooting boots and leggings and said he would go and see the match if there was an earthquake. And Ma said he was an old fool and ought to be ashamed of himself going howling and shouting on a day like that, among all the boys, at his time of life too. But Pa he only grinned.

Then after dinner Harry came and we took a cab to the ground. How small those cabs are. It makes you have to sit quite close to each other. My word there was a crowd at the gate, and they wouldn’t give change so lots of them had to get change at the public houses. They let me in free. Harry said the Saints had taken the Association tip and that it paid. Then we picked out a nice place behind the goal and Harry and I stood on a form and had a lovely view, but the wind was so strong that Harry had to keep his arm around me so that I shouldn’t fall.

It was a sight to see the people all around the ground, a lot more standing under the trees against the top bank and there was a man standing on a ladder leaning against the boards so as to fetch the ball when it was kicked over them. And such a lot came over from Cowes, three boat loads they said. Poor things! And when it was time to begin, the players came in, and one of them, a slim one in a blue shirt with white sleeves, like the Cowes wore, did get a clapping. Harry said his name was Staite and that his “ghost” was laid up with a bad knee, but I don’t understand that , and there was a little man in gaiters and all the big players did just what he told them. Harry said he was the referee and a “straight ‘un”.

And the saints stood facing the wind to begin with, and then they started and I got so excited. They did work hard and the people all around shouted all the time. At first the Cowes men came running up, and a quick little player, Harry said was called Denning, and played full back for the Saints, stopped them. I like Mr Denning, he did play well.

Oh, the ground was awfully slippery, and the players kept falling down, but Mr Carter, the Saint’s captain, didn’t slip, though the other tall full back of Cowes got the seat of his trousers covered in mud.

Harry said Cowes were in good form, whatever that means. Certainly they did keep coming up the hill. Then they got several corner kicks as they call them, but it was a long time before a goal was scored, and then it was such a funny one. That Staite, they think so much of, kicked the ball hard, and it rolled all along the ground so fast. Two or three players tried to kick it, but it went through our goal at last, and then wasn’t there a row. A man near me, smoking a clay pipe and in an oil skin jacket, shouted out “There’s the first fiver”. What did he mean? Then they began again, and the play was a good bit at the other end, and Harry said the Saints were on their mettle. There was such a little man playing for the Saints, Harry said his name was Verney. I liked him, he was so plucky, and kept stopping men ever so much bigger than himself. Harry pointed a lot more of them out to me, but I can’t remember half their names.

After a while they all came back again, and they got ever so close to the goal, but the tall man, Mr. Ruffell is his name, picked up the ball and threw it away.

Just then I saw Pa and Tom half-way down the side, and Pa was quite apoplectic, and Tom looked quite sad, especially when Mr Staite kicked the ball, which just touched the bar. Then the Saints made a run all the way down the field, and nearly everyone yelled like mad, and it seems that St Mary’s had won a goal. Harry said it was all over unless Cowes got another goal before half-time, but they didn’t, so Harry’s prophesy came true. When they had changed ends and begun again, the Saints had their backs against the wind, but they could n’t seem to stop the Cowes’ men even then, for a lot of the times the ball kept right at the other end. Then a player they called “Bob” came running up once or twice and kicked the ball right into the middle, and another young looking one on the St. Mary’s side called Bromley, I liked him, was so smart the Cowes’ men couldn’t catch him anyhow.  

Then St. Mary’s got another goal, Harry said it was a fluke, but I don’t understand some of men’s slang. What I saw was a lot of them running about and knocking one another over, and then I think it was Bromley kicked at the ball, and it went through the goal quite unexpectedly. Didn’t the people go frantic almost, and such lots of them pulled out their watches. Then they begun again (they always stop when a goal is scored, you know), but Harry said Cowes had lost their heads. Twice it looked as if they had got a goal, but after a while the match stopped, and everyone ran off like mad. A lot of people crowded round the players, but most of them were cold and wet. I was, anyhow, so those who had to stand in the mud must have been. Tom hasn’t come in yet, Pa did though, and told Ma all about it; and Harry has promised to come and take me to the Empire Theatre, and he says all the St Mary’s are going in a body. But I can’t help feeling sorry for those Cowes men; Harry says they did have rough luck. I must say good-bye now, for Harry has just come. – Your loving friend,

                  NELLIE

P.S. Poor Cowes! What a time of it they will have going home.

Post script.

Whatever happened to Nellie? After sitting closely next to him in the cab, and being the beneficiary of all his football knowledge, had there been a spring proposal as Harry had hinted or was he referring to St Mary’s winning the cup for the third time in a row? Did Nellie’s support for the Saints continue? There is no surname at the letter’s end and so all the information we have, is that her brother, Tom, was on the St Mary’s committee. However we do know that St. Mary’s won their subsequent semi-final v Winchester Rovers and then beat Lymington in the Final, at Nellie’s more-favoured County Ground and so retained the trophy a third year, as Harry had – perhaps – forecasted.

St Mary’s were presented with the cup outright, and they later donated it to the Southampton Schools FA, but it vanished around the late 1950s only to resurface again in 2013 after being found in an old cupboard.