Athletics and Football (extract)

4° ATHLETICS and ' Neversweat' wassecond. Five yearsafterwardsthe ama­ teurs were running in their own names again, and the public were looking on at their matches with applause. Captain Hargraves and Mr. Fenton attracted a large crowd to a mile match whichthey ran in 1843. ^ was not ^ on S a ft er that wefind professional pedestrianism in what were almost its palmiest days. ' Billy' Jackson (the American Deer), J. Davies (the Lame Chicken), and Tom Maxfield(the North Star) ran a milematch upon the Slough Road, over what is still knownas ' Maxfield's mile,' amidst an enormous concourse of people and ' immense enthusiasm.' About this date ' Bell's Life' had every week a list of nearly fifty fixturesof matches to come off, and pedestrianismas an institution was an accomplished fact. In 1850 1 the major portion of the sporting populationof Liver­ pool, Manchester, Newcastle,and the other great towns' turned out to see 'Tommy' Hayes beat 'Johnny' Tetlow,over four mileson the Aintree racecourse; and in 1852, when George Frost (the Suffolk Stag) won the championship belt at the old Copenhagen Grounds by a ten milesrace, lithographs of the contest were published and sold by the thousand. Such was the popularity of pedestrianism at this period that it is hardly to-be wondered that it should have aided other causes in setting the amateur movement going. The 'Volunteer movement' is usuallyput forwardas the ex­ planation of the outburst of athletic spirit throughout the king­ dom about this period. The more probable, and perhaps more philosophical explanation, of the impulse which undoubtedly began in the towns is that it was the natural product of the over-pressure of modern commercial and professional life. Hours of work being long, there comes a craving amongst adults for violent exercise, and that craving has led to the popularityof various athletic games, whichare nowso univer­ sally practised. Whatever may be the cause, however,of the 'athletic movement,' there can be little doubt that the first amateur athletic sports were suggested by the performance of professional ' peds,' and that wheneverthere was an unusual