| Abstrakt: |
This article outlines a rich localized sporting culture based upon pedestrianism, the public house and gambling in nineteenth-century Bolton and its near neighbour, the shock city of the age, Manchester. As surrounding fields and moors of the city and town were gradually industrialized and urbanized, alternative spaces, premises and places were needed to accommodate sport. They were increasingly provided by entrepreneurial local publicans in a shrewd commercial move that understood the profit-making potential of sport. By arranging events either near or on their premises they were guaranteed healthy takings, as spectators and competitors consumed alcohol and gambled their wages over the bar. Publicans also profited by charging admission fees to their newly enclosed grounds. Cultural historians, though, have overlooked many of these grounds that were underpinned by the commercial interests of the petty bourgeoisie, the drinks trade and gambling. By 1860 pedestrianism seemed to have become the most extensive male working-class sporting interest in the area, only to fade throughout the 1860s. Despite this, many sporting and commercial cultural practices that were established across the mid-century subsequently remained part of the local cultural base upon which the game of professional association football in Lancashire was built. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
