William Penny Brookes
William Penny Brookes | |
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International Olympic Movement | |
Website | http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk |
William Penny Brookes (13 August 1809 – 11 December 1895) was an English surgeon,
Brookes was born, lived, worked and died in the small market town of Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. He was apprenticed to his father, Dr William Brookes, and later studied in London, England; Paris, France and Padua, Italy, before returning home to Much Wenlock in 1831.[1]
Brookes was a social reformer, who campaigned to give opportunities for what he termed "every grade of man" to expand their knowledge and become mentally and physically fit. He established the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS) in 1841 to provide the opportunity of acquiring knowledge but especially to provide opportunities for the working classes. He promoted athletic exercises, ranging from running to football, by holding an annual games offering prizes for sports competitions. Later, competitions for "cultural" events were added. This opened the door for the working classes to enter competitive sport which, in the United Kingdom, had previously been the privilege of only the elite. Following the 1860 Games, the Olympian Class separated from WARS due to an irrevocable difference of opinion between the two organisations, and it changed its name to Wenlock Olympian Society (WOS) to emphasise that it was now independent.
His lifelong campaign to get
Life
William Penny Brookes was born in
As a botanist, he provided information on plants growing around Wenlock and also Shropshire for Charles Hulbert's The History and Description of the County of Salop (1837), and William Allport Leighton's Flora of Shropshire (1841). His herbarium is held at the Much Wenlock Town Council's archives.[4]
He also became actively involved in the local community, becoming a
"The Olympian Class" was set up in 1850 "for the promotion of the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Wenlock and especially of the working classes, by the encouragement of outdoor recreation, and by the award of prizes annually at public meetings for skill in Athletic exercise and proficiency in Intellectual and industrial attainments".[7] The first Games meeting was held in October 1850, and included competitions in classic athletics and also country sports such as quoits, football and cricket.
When these first Wenlock Olympian Games were staged in 1850,[8] there was heavy criticism of Brookes's insistence that the Games was open to the working classes and thus have a large number of scantily-dressed young men performing in front of women. It was felt that such an event would cause drunkenness, rioting, lewd behaviour, and that men would leave their wives. The Games were a huge success and none of the threatened disturbances occurred.[8] The Games quickly expanded, and within a few years it was attracting competitors from as far away as London and Liverpool.
From 1852, the Society ran a library for working-class subscribers and interest groups called "classes" met at the Corn Exchange, the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS) headquarters for the benefit of the people of the vast Borough of Wenlock and its neighbourhood. Brookes was himself elected to annual office in the Society as: Secretary in years 1850 and 1851, 1860 and 1874; Treasurer 1858 and 1859, 1870, and 1880 to 1882; and President in 1854 and 1855, 1857, 1862 to 1867, and 1891.[9]
Brookes was a
In 1858, Brookes established contact with the organisers of an
The 1859 Wenlock Olympian Games were much expanded following nine years of work to build up subscriptions and attracted more competitors with new competitions and brought in spectators through more organised pageantry and better advertising. The following year, even more people came as there was a well-publicised opening celebration for the laying of the first stone for Much Wenlock's first railway which was another of Brookes' projects. This, coupled with the discovery of the Roman city of
In 1865, Brookes was instrumental in setting up the National Olympian Association based in
Brookes was also heavily involved in many other local activities. He became Chairman of the Wenlock Gas Company in 1856, which first brought lighting to the town. He was a Commissioner for Roads and Taxes, Overseer of the Poor, and also became a Director of both the Much Wenlock and Severn Junction Railway Company and the later Wenlock Railway Company. The first train to Much Wenlock was arranged to coincide with the Wenlock Olympian Games of 1861. He was manager of the Much Wenlock National School, where, in 1871, he helped introduce drill and physical exercise into the curriculum. He believed that as children at the school were likely to be employed in jobs that required physical strength, such as farming or quarrying, development of their physical strength was equally as important as their mental ability.
In 1889, he invited Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the organiser of an International Congress on Physical Education, to Much Wenlock. He accepted, and in October 1890, he went to stay at the Brookes family home for several days. A meeting of the Wenlock Olympian Games was held in Coubertin's honour with much pageantry. After every Olympian Games there was a dinner, and on this occasion, the dinner was held at The Raven Hotel. Today The Raven Hotel has a display of several photographs about WOS by kind permission of the Society, including copies of original letters from Coubertin to Brookes.[12] On his return to France, Coubertin gave a glowing account of his stay in an article, "Les Jeux Olympiques à Much Wenlock", and referred to his host's efforts to revive the Olympics. He wrote : "If the Olympic Games that Modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives there today, it is due, not to a Greek, but to Dr W P Brookes".[2] Although Coubertin later sought to downplay Brookes's influence, he corresponded with him for several years and sent him a gold medal (made of silver) in 1891 to be presented to the winner of the Tilting Competition.[13] Coubertin went on to set up the International Olympic Committee in 1894, which was followed by the Athens 1896 Olympic Games that came under the auspices of the Committee.
Brookes died just four months before the 1896 Summer Olympics held in Athens in 1896, organised by Coubertin's International Olympic Committee.
Legacy
The
References
- ^ a b Wenlock Olympian Society Archives
- ^ a b Wenlock Olympian Society Archives: Minute Book 2
- ^ a b c William Penny Brookes. Wenlock Olympian Society
- ISBN 0-9508637-0-X.section History of Botanical Recordings.
- ^ Welcome to Wenlock Olympian Society. wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk
- ^ Darwin Country – Brookes, William Penny. darwincountry.org
- ^ Beale 2011, p. 25.
- ^ a b c Wenlock Olympian Society Archives: Minute Book 1, 1850.
- ^ List of Wenlock Olympian Society Office-Holders 1850–1895 in Beale 2011, pp. 183–184.
- ^ Born out of Wenlock, p.40.
- ^ Born out of Wenlock, p.51.
- ^ "Raven Hotel website". 8 October 2010. Retrieved 8 October 2010.
- ^ Findling & Pelle 2004, p. 457.
- ^ William Brookes School
- ^ Beale 2011, p. 9.
Further reading
- Ashrafian, H. (2005). "William Penny Brookes (1809–1895): Forgotten Olympic Lord of the Rings" in British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2005;39:969
- Beale, Catherine (2011). Born Out of Wenlock, William Penny Brookes and the British origins of the modern Olympics. Derby: DB Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85983-967-6.
- Findling, John E.; Pelle, Kimberly D. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. ISBN 9780313322785. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
- Furbank, Muriel; Cromarty, Helen; McDonald, Glyn (1996). William Penny Brookes and the Olympic Connection. Much Wenlock: Wenlock Olympian Society.
- Mullins, Sam (1986). British Olympians: William Penny Brookes and the Wenlock Games. London: Birmingham Olympic Council. ISBN 0-901662-01-1
- Nicolle, Dorothy (2010). William Brookes and the Olympic Games. Wem: Blue Hills Press. ISBN 978-0-9560293-5-5.