by Bob Cowan. As I write this, there are just 100 days to go before the Olympic Winter Games get underway at Sochi, Russia. The GB curling teams have already been named. This post continues the story of the curling competition in 1924 in Chamonix, France, when curling's Olympic story began. Part 1 is here.

A few days before the Games were due to begin, on January 22, an international 'Curling Congress' was convened at the Hotel Majestic in Chamonix to decide, amongst other things, how the first Olympic curling competition should be run! Those who attended that congress are shown in the photo above, published in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1924-25. In the back row is Fernand Henri Cournollet (France), Armand Isaac-Benedic (France), Paul Rousseau (Comite Olympique Francais), A Maucourt (France), I Magnus (France). In front is W Hewit (Canada), Colonel Robertson-Aikman (Great Britain), Marquis de Solignac (Comite International Olympique), Major D G Astley (Great Britain), P J Mulqueen (Canada).

Robertson-Aikman and Astley were both reserves in the GB squad. Cournollet and Isaac-Benedic were skip and third of the French team. There was no Swedish representative on the committee although the Royal Club Annual does suggest that Robertson-Aikman was carrying a mandate for that country. Nor was there a Swiss representative. I had wondered what Astley could have contributed - but we know he had a number or years competing in St Moritz both before and after WW1, so he had experience of the Swiss curling scene.

Not all the attendees were curlers. The photo above includes two Canadians, even though that country would not be represented in the curling event. I wonder why not. Canadian curlers were certainly invited. Perhaps the reason lies undiscovered to this day in the archives of the Canadian Curling Association, or the Canadian Olympic Association. P J Mulqueen served for many years on both the Canadian Olympic Association and the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. The 'W Hewit' I think is William Abraham Hewitt, sportswriter and editor of the Toronto Star, and secretary of the Ontario Hockey Association. (Certainly the photo of Hewitt on this page corresponds to the person front left in the group above.) He was in Chamonix as manager of the Canadian ice hockey team (the Toronto Granites) who would play in the ice hockey competition there, and win it. If I have identified Mulqueen and Hewitt correctly, then it can be said that neither of the Canadian representatives at the Congress was a well-kent curling player or administrator. The Congress appointed a Committee which comprised Robertson-Aikman as President, Mulqueen as Vice-president, and Magnus as Secretary, although what function the Committee was to have after January 22 is unclear.

It was this group that decided that games would be of eighteen ends, and that a round robin would be played to decide a winner. The draw was made, by ballot, for matches to begin on Saturday, January 26: On Day 1, Great Britain v Switzerland, France v Sweden; on Day 2, Great Britain v Sweden, France v Switzerland; Day 3, Sweden v Switzerland, Great Britain v France.

However, the Swiss withdrew from the competition, a revised draw was made, and the competition then got underway on Monday, January 28. The French Official Report lists the eight names of the Swiss squad which had been expected to compete. These Swiss curlers were named as H Buchli, J Caprez, Castan, C Genillard, A Rocco, H Roelli, P Wieland, and W Wieland. Again, eight names, so presumably the Swiss had been asked to field a team of four, plus four reserves. It should be possible to expand on the names of these Swiss players, and to learn something about them. But that's for another time. It is unknown why the Swiss did not take part, dropping out at what appears to be the last minute. Perhaps such information may lie in the archives of the Swiss Olympic Association. In 1924 there was no national Swiss Curling Association. There were twenty-five Swiss curling clubs affiliated directly to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in that year, although many of the members of these clubs were British visitors. Still, in 1924, many Swiss curled, and a national team would have been a strong one.

A photo of the French team appeared in the French Official Report. Actually I was able to obtain in an online auction the photo above, almost identical to that in the French Official Report, but a little better quality, apparently clipped from a magazine of the time. On the left is skip Fernand Henri Jean Cournollet, who was 41 years old during the games. Next to him is Armand Isaac-Benedic who was 48. The two players on the right of the photo are Pierre Canivet (33) and George Andre (47), although I am not sure which is which. On the basis of the ages, I would say that the taller of the two is Andre, and the curler on the right, with the beard, is Canivet. What do you think? Hopefully someone will be able to confirm the identity of all four players in the photo.

Information about the ages of all these players comes from the detailed Olympic statistics on the Sports-Reference website here, certainly the best source for reliable Olympic information on the Web. The French Official Report gives the names of two alternates, Henri Aldebert and Robert Planque, neither of whom participated in either game the French played. The website of the French Olympic Committee lists all six names as bronze medal winners, see here. Mind you this site also states that curling was a 'demonstration sport' in 1924. There were NO demonstration sports in Chamonix, and it is one of the sport's mysteries just why this information came to be accepted, see below.

There was no national French Curling Association in 1924. The Chamonix (Mont Blanc) Curling Club was directly affiliated to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, instituted in 1923, and its members are listed in the 1924-25 Annual. The club had sixteen men and thirteen women members in that season. Four of the six names above are in that list - Isaac-Benedic and Planque are not. The list of members of the club in September 1924, as listed in the Annual for 1924-25, also includes the name of the French Under-Secretary of State for Physical Education, Gaston Vidal, who had declared the Games open. There is a photo of him on the ice at the Chamonix Games here.

This poor quality photo, found here, shows the French team in action. However, it is captioned as showing action from the France - Switzerland match, illustrating that even information on official Olympic websites may be incorrect. Switzerland did not participate in 1924, as already discussed.

Although the Swedes only played two matches, all eight players in their squad took part, a different team playing in each match. Hakan Sundstrom, who served as secretary of the Swedish Curling Federation for many years, confirms this.

This photo, which appeared in the French Official Report, is of one of the Swedish teams. I believe these players to be (L-R) Karl Erik Wahlberg (49), Carl August Kronlund (58), Carl Axel Pettersson (49), and Johan Petter Ahlen (44). According to the information in the World Curling Federation's Historical Results database here, Kronlund was lead, Wahlberg, second, Pettersson, third, and Ahlen, skip. This is the team that beat France in the first match of the competition. The website of the Swedish Olympic Association has small head and shoulders photographs of all these athletes, here, and although these confirm both Kronlund and Ahlen, I'm less certain that I've identified the other two correctly. Incidentally Kronlund was the oldest curler in the curling competition at Chamonix. In the Royal Club Annual for 1924-25, Ahlen, Pettersson, Kronlund and Wahlberg were all listed as members of the same curling club, Stockholms CC, instituted in 1917.

There is a rather strange photo of Ahlen, Pettersson and Wahlberg to be found in the IOC's website gallery of curling photos from 1924, see here. It is captioned, 'Taking a break from the curling in Chamonix'. The three are sitting at a table in the snow, in what looks like an outdoor cafe/bar, apparently on the Montenvers, being served by a waitress who is pouring drinks. (I assume they would have ascended by the famous rack railway from Chamonix to the bottom of the Mer de Glace, a 'must do' attraction of the area even today.) I thought this was a strange image to find on the IOC website, but it all helps to build up a picture of an event which took place a long time ago!

Hopefully confirmation will come from Sweden on the identities of all those pictured.

Having identified the team that beat the French, by a process of elimination, the team that lost to Great Britain in the second match must have been Carl Wilhelm Petersen (39, skip), Ture Odlund (29, third), Victor Wetterstrom (39, second) and Erik Severin (44, lead). Again all the ages come from the sports-reference website, and this information matches that on the Swedish Olympic site. I have not yet found any photograph of this team together, but the search goes on! The 1924-25 Annual lists Peterson and Wetterstrom as being members of the Stockholms Amatoforenings Curling Section, instituted 1900, and Odlund and Severin as members of the Kronprinsens CC, instituted in 1913.

Why would the Swedish curlers select a different team in each of their matches? The country had won their first game, against France, so in fielding a different team they were not keeping with a winning lineup. My suggestion is that the Swedish squad had realised that only those who actually played in the competition would get medals, and they wanted to give all eight members the opportunity to earn these. This is only supposition on my part, however.

The myth that GB's Major Astley played for Sweden is discussed in Part 3, here.

There was little about the curling competition at Chamonix reported in the press of the time. However, the British victory did not go unnoticed. The Times covered the GB team's success in its issue of Thursday, January 31, with:

"Olympic Winter Sports
Great Britain Wins Curling
Chamonix, Jan 30
The Olympic Winter Sports were continued here today, when the Curling Contest was won by Great Britain, Sweden was second, and France third. The British team was composed of Colonel R Aikman, Major E G L Astley (sic), R Welsh, W K Jackson, L Jackson, W. Brown, J MacLeod (sic), and T B Murray."

The article continued with reports of the ice hockey competition, the 50 kilometre ski race, and an accident to the French bobsleigh team.

Further afield, it was not the competition result that filled the newspaper columns.

A syndicated report from the Associated Press was picked up by a number of North American newspapers. The clipping above is from the Bridgeport Telegraph, February 1, 1924. I think this has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but if the story has any basis in truth it answers the question of whose stones were used in the competition. It confirms that the curlers brought their own stones to Chamonix! We know that Robertson-Aikman and Astley went out early to Chamonix to take part in the Curling Congress. According to the report in the 1924-25 Annual, the rest of the squad travelled first to London where they left on January 23, to Dover, then across the Channel to Calais, on to Paris, and then across France to Chamonix. Most of the journey would have been by train, of course. Did one of the squad travel directly to Chamonix from Davos? I don't know.

Incidentally, play was likely to have been from the crampet, rather than the hack, and in some photos a crampet can indeed be seen lying flat on the ice. There were no coloured circles back then, nor taped lines. The scoring area, the house, would have been marked simply by a scraped circle, seven foot in radius, not six as it is today. The larger 'house' would have made it easier to score shots and may explain somewhat the very high scores. A tee-ringer would have been used to mark out the circles. Go here to see one of the 2014 GB curling squad using a tee-ringer!

What were the ice conditions like for the 1924 curling competition? Fairlie's BOA Report notes that because of the weather problems there had been very little practice possible for those who were to compete but during the actual event 'the ice was in excellent order'.  This contradicts what was read out by the Royal Club Secretary at the 1924 AGM saying, "The ice was not good, being untrue and not a good quality." But in the report printed in the Annual for 1924-25, it was noted, "Curling practice was then indulged in, and the ice was found to be something similar to that encountered under ordinary conditions in Scotland, though falling far short of the ideal ice provided in Haymarket Ice Rink." 

Fairlie, in his BOA Report, chose to include in the Conclusion of his one page report about the curling competition a short passage, which bears close scrutiny. He writes, "There are some who say that Curling is not a sport which ought to be included in the Winter Sports Section of the Olympic Programme. Whether they are right or wrong is a matter for the authorities. The fact remains that the International Olympic Committee included curling in their Programme and invited countries to participate, and Great Britain entered and won. On this account we desire to very heartily congratulate the team, which consisted of the following members of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club of Scotland, on their splendid victory: W K Jackson, R Welsh, T B Murray, L Jackson."

How do you react on reading this? I find it quite extraordinary that this passage was included in the BOA Official Report! Who were those who didn't want to see curling in the Olympics? Fairlie himself, or other individuals involved with the British Olympic Association? Or is Fairlie expressing (English) public opinion, and quoting those persons ignorant of the sport itself having never played it, and who judge it only by appearance? Such people are out there even now, to judge by comments posted on blogs, forums and on Twitter, but I like to think they are not so numerous as they once were, thanks to the sport's positive exposure at recent Olympic Games. 

Fairlie goes on to say nice things about Colonel Robertson-Aikman, that he had acted as guide and sponsor of the team throughout in a 'very able way'. He concludes, "His courtesy and willingness to fall in with every suggestion made to him and his team was a very great help and assistance to those who had charge of the British Teams in Chamonix, and added much to the smooth running of the competitions."

F G L Fairlie actually competed in the 1924 Winter Games. He was a member of the GB's bobsleigh squad, a member of GB1. This is significant as practice for the bobsleigh was taking place when the curling competition was going on, so I do wonder if he saw any of the actual games. His full name was Francis Gerard Luis Fairlie, born November 1, 1899, and died March 31, 1983. A Londoner, he attended Sandhurst Military College and served in the Scots Guards. The GB1 bobsleigh team had a bad accident when practising. The team were thrown out of the sled and the brakeman, Captain Browning, suffered a broken leg and the others, according to Fairlie himself, 'escaped with a bad shaking'. Browning was obviously unable to compete further and a different lineup for the GB1 bob - William Horton, Archibald Crabbe, Gerard Fairlie, and George Pim - competed in the championship competition, held a couple of days later on February 2-3, after the curling event was complete, finishing in fifth place. The GB2 bob was second and gained silver medals. There is a wonderful video clip of what the bobsleigh run was like online here.

Incidentally, a member of the French curling team, George Andre, not only played in the curling matches, but also was a member of one of that country's bobsleigh teams, as was curling team reserve Henri Aldebert. Andre's bob finished fourth in the competition.

I have been wondering whether there was any camaraderie among the curlers and those participating in other sports. Fairlie does include a photo of all those in 'Team GB' in the BOA Report. It is certainly possible to pick out the curlers. They are in the middle row, the reserves on the left and the actual team on the right. The photo is a little small but those familiar with the other sports may well be able to identify some of the competitors. Fairlie himself is in the back row, second from the right. The photo is credited to Central Press, London.

If there were indeed those who did not want curling to be included in future Olympic programmes, they would have been satisfied that the next Games in St Moritz, Switzerland, did not feature curling at all, nor is there any evidence that its inclusion was ever contemplated. There is no mention in Royal Club Annuals of any invitation to take part. However, such an invitation was issued in 1931, well in advance of the Lake Placid Games. The invitation was put to representative members attending the Royal Club AGM on July 29, in Ayr. The Secretary, Andrew Hamilton, advised that the Royal Club had been asked to 'sponsor teams' to take part in these games. It was noted that it was hoped that teams from GB, Canada, America, Sweden and Switzerland would take part. Hamilton concluded, "The expense of the trip is estimated to cost £80 to £100. Any one desiring to be included in the team will please inform the Secretary of the Royal Club by the end of October." The Chairman added, "That is merely for your information, gentleman," before moving on to other matters. It would seem that the Royal Club had no intention of selecting a team as had been done in 1924. No more about the 1932 Games appeared in Royal Club Annuals. Given that Britain was in the throes of an economic depression in these years, perhaps this is understandable.

Curling at Lake Placid did go ahead as a 'demonstration'. The Official Report of the 1932 Games can be downloaded from here. Only Canada and the USA competed, each country fielding four teams.

You may see reports that say that curling was a demonstration sport in 1936 and 1964. This was not curling but ice stock sport, also known as Bavarian curling or eisstockschiessen.

Over the years that followed, even into the era when modern curling was looking to become an Olympic sport, the success at Chamonix was forgotten, overlooked or misrepresented.

There are many references which describe curling as a demonstration sport at Chamonix. The Joy of Curling: A Celebration by Ed Lukovich, Eigil Ramsfjell and Bud Somerville from 1990 is one! Of course, the contemporary records, such as the French Official Report and Fairlie's BOA Report, had always shown that curling had been a full medal sport at Chamonix. But why was this fact overlooked in the intervening years? How had the 1924 curling competition become known as a demonstration sport? Perhaps the fact that curling had been a demonstration sport in 1932 had simply led people to assume that this had also been the case in 1924.

The book British Olympians: A Hundred Years of Gold Medallists which was published in 1991, is a fantastic reference for those interested in British Olympic athletes. But nowhere is curling even mentioned therein. The book contains a section with a full listing of British Olympic competitors introduced by 'Listed here is every British competitor who has actually taken part in the Olympic Games'. But it does not do this.

I find it extremely unlikely that the book's author, Ian Buchanan, could simply have overlooked the GB curling medallists when researching his book. It is inconceivable to me that Buchanan - a founder member and one time President of the International Society of Olympic Historians formed in 1991 - had not read the French Official Report or Fairlie's BOA Report of the 1924 Games. Indeed, he refers to Fairlie's BOA Report in the text of his book. My conclusion has to be that he deliberately omitted the curlers. I wonder why. He died in 2008, so his reason for not including the sport of curling, nor the names of Willie Jackson, Robin Welsh, Tom Murray and Laurence Jackson in his book, may never be known.

Mind you, the Royal Caledonian Curling Club does not include (as of November 2013) the 1924 Men's Olympic Champions in their list of past international champions on its website. This is an omission which I hope will be rectified soon! (Added later. And it has been, see here!)

Ironically, it was Buchanan's colleague, Ture Widlund, also a founder member of the ISOH, who is credited in the sports-reference website (here) for clarifying curling's status. This says, "Although no such distinction was ever made in 1924, most historians used to list curling as a demonstration sport at the 1924 Olympics. It is unclear why this happened, as the sport is listed among the other events in all contemporary sources, and the IOC never officially designated it as a demonstration sport. Ture Widlund, one of the co-founders and first Vice-President of the International Society of Olympic Historians, discovered this while looking at the 1924 Official Report, noting that there was no distinction in that report between curling and military ski patrol and any of the medal sports. The IOC was contacted about this seeming discrepancy, and just before the 2006 Winter Olympics, the IOC decided to officially declare the 1924 curling and military ski patrol events as Olympic, removing any doubt."

I have not found the original reference to Ture Widland's research, but there's no doubt in my mind that the person who brought the validity of these first gold medals to the notice of the wider public was Herald journalist, Doug Gillon, and GB sports fans are certainly in his debt.

I was Editor of the Scottish Curler magazine in the run up to the 2006 curling competition in Pinerolo. Doug came through on the telephone and I can recall clearly his excitement as he explained that when researching information about the 1924 Games he had discovered that GB had won gold medals then. The evidence was there clearly in contemporary reports, with no mention that curling had been a demonstration sport in 1924. Doug had contacted the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, and received confirmation that this was the case. His article in the Herald on Monday, January 23, 2006, see here, caused quite a storm, see here and here for example. The IOC then issued a statement confirming that curling had indeed been a medal sport in 1924.

At the risk of being accused of nitpicking, I note that the World Curling Federation's website has an article on the history of curling at the Olympic Games (here). This begins, "Curling made its debut as an Olympic Winter Sport at the first Winter Games at Chamonix in 1924. At this event Great Britain defeated Sweden and France in what was retroactively accepted in 2006 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and medals were awarded." This is not strictly true. The second sentence is misleading. There was no 'retroactive acceptance' leading to medals being awarded. As we've seen above, medals were awarded back in 1924, and curling was a medal sport at Chamonix. What happened in 2006 was that the IOC confirmed that curling had not been a demonstration sport in 1924, and that all the winners of all the events in 1924 should be considered as Olympic champions.

Robin Welsh, author of Beginner's Guide to Curling, published in 1969, and International Guide to Curling, published in 1985, certainly knew that his father had won Olympic gold. The latter book says of the Winter Games in Chamonix in 1924, '... when curling as included as a medal-winning sport for the first and only time'. Welsh says in his 1969 publication that Chamonix was, 'the only time curling has been included as a participation sport in the Games'. He goes on to say, 'The British Curling deputation at the Games, led by Colonel Robertson-Aikman, were as proud of the medals and diplomas won as the four Scots who had won them'. This again can be taken as evidence that only the four curlers who played in the two matches were presented with Gold medals, and that Robertson-Aikman, Brown, McLeod and Astley did not receive medals.

One can ask why our sport, having survived a somewhat difficult baptism in 1924, did not continue in the Olympic programme in 1928. Could more have been done to ensure that curling was in the forefront of the minds of members of the British Olympic Association, and the International Olympic Committee? I think the answer to this last question is yes.

One of the problems facing the sport of curling in 1924 - at least in the eyes of the British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee - was that the sport did not seem to have an organising body to represent its interests worldwide. Of course, this was how the Royal Caledonian Curling Club saw its own role, but it was not the perception of others. The 'Curling Congress', held just before the Chamonix Games began, apparently discussed this in detail. Colonel Robertson-Aikman was convinced that something needed to be done, and at the Royal Club AGM in 1924 he proposed to the meeting that the Royal Club change its name to 'Royal Caledonian Curling Club the International Federation of Curling'. The Annual of 1924-25 devotes more than five pages to the discussion that followed! Despite being the incoming President and a much respected figure in Scottish curling, Robertson-Aikman's motion was defeated. One has to wonder if the change of name, had it been approved, would have made the Royal Club more proactive in promoting curling's image and growing the game over the years that followed. Or even if the change of name would have led to better relations with the British Olympic Association.

At the time of the Royal Club AGM when all these discussions were going on, the Olympic Summer Games in Paris were coming to a close. The members present at the AGM, after much discussion, did vote to send a £50 donation to BOA funds.

I have already mentioned that curling was not included in the 1928 Olympic Winter Games. However, at the Royal Club AGM in Glasgow in August 1927, the Secretary, after prompting from Colonel Robertson-Aikman, told the meeting that he had received a letter from the Chairman of the British Olympic Council 'asking the Royal Caledonian Curling Club to again subscribe to the funds of that body'. (The British Olympic 'Council' was the executive committee of the British Olympic Association.) Discussion followed in which Robertson-Aikman pointed out that there were thirty-five bodies represented in that organisation, including the British Bobsleigh Association, the British Ice Hockey Association, and the National Skating Association. He emphasized, "I wish to bring to the notice of members here that our Club seems to be entirely ignored, and I think some steps ought to be taken about it after what we have done," in reference to having won the first Olympic curling competition in 1924. Mr Jackson (presumably W K Jackson) then said, "We are not in a position, even supposing we were willing, to give fifty guineas to this. We are agreed that as we have been ignored, perhaps we should just ignore them." (My emphasis.) A petty thing to say, perhaps, and it does indicate a lack of willingness of the Royal Club, back in 1927, to fight for a place in the British Olympic Association alongside other sports.

The Winter Games at Chamonix were considered to have been a success. But could the same be said for the curling competition? The result aside, the answer must surely be 'no'. Few countries agreed to take part, and then one team withdrew at the last moment. The games that were played were one-sided. At the Royal Club AGM, one member (perhaps unsurprising we find that this was William Henderson of Lawton) actually called them a 'farce' because of the one-sided results! The curling event had not garnered much media interest, and one member at the AGM actually had to ask where the competition had taken place.

That the general public was apathetic towards the Olympic Games movement, particularly in the 1920s, is well discussed in a relatively recent article by Mathew Llewellyn of the State University of California. This is an interesting read, although not specific to the Chamonix Games, and does show how the British enthusiasm for the Olympics is a recent phenomenon. It can be found and downloaded here. This general lack of public enthusiasm - including that of the curling community -  for things Olympic may underplay and explain some of what I've written about above.
 

by Bob Cowan

In 1924, eight curlers travelled to Chamonix, France, to represent Great Britain in what was to become the first Olympic Winter Games. This photo was published in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1924-1925. It is credited to Aug Couttet, Chamonix, and captioned 'British Curlers Marching Past Saluting Base' and is from the opening ceremonies on January 25, 1924. The eight members of the Great British curling team - these days we would call them the GB 'squad' - are those in the foreground. The curlers paraded with brooms 'at a slope', with curling stone handles hung around their necks on tartan ribbon. Colonel Robertson-Aikman is out in front with the seven others behind, in two ranks.

In the many years I've been associated with the sport of curling I've seen the formation of the International Curling Federation (now the World Curling Federation), curling as a demonstration sport at Calgary in the Winter Olympics of 1988, its eventual reinstatement as a full Olympic sport in 1998, Rhona Martin and her GB team's success at Ogden at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, the continuing spread of the sport worldwide since then, not forgetting the development of wheelchair curling and its introduction into the Winter Paralympics. How massive has Olympic curling become! Soon the sport will take centre stage in Sochi, Russia, when the first rounds of the 2014 Olympic competition begin on Monday, February 10. But curling's Olympic story began in Chamonix, back in 1924.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation 'out there' about the first Olympic curling competition, and the British victory in 1924. I've tried to set out here all the facts about the competition and the competitors, as best as I have been able to uncover. I want to ensure that the four members of the winning team are well remembered. This post is the first of three. The second part is here. And the third, here.

This photo is from the British Olympic Association Official Report of the VIIIth Olympiade, 1924. This report was compiled by F G L Fairlie, who is styled 'Official Compiler to the British Olympic Association', the book being published by that organisation in 1925. I will refer to this book as 'Fairlie's BOA Report' below. The photographer is not named. This report is not available online, but can be consulted in the National Library of Scotland.

The names of the eight members of the GB curling squad, shown in the photograph above, were (L-R) William Brown, Laurence Jackson, Thomas B Murray, William K Jackson, John McLeod, Robin Welsh, Major D G Astley and Colonel T S Robertson-Aikman. The photo was taken on the day of the opening ceremonies, Friday, January 25, 1924.
The GB team, which played in two matches, was Willie Jackson (skip), Robin Welsh (3rd), Tom Murray (2nd) and Laurence Jackson (lead), using their informal names. That's the team above, lined up in order, with skip Willie Jackson on the left of the photograph. The photographer is not credited. There is a version of this photo in the Official Report - not Fairlie's BOA Report, referred to above - but that published by the French Olympic Committee, Les Jeux de la VIIIe Olympiade, Paris 1924, Rapport Officiel. I will refer to this publication as the 'French Official Report'. This is online and can be downloaded as a (large) pdf file from here. It's written in French and information and photos about the curling competition occupy just three pages. Both this and Fairlie's BOA report contain extensive information from the Paris games held later in 1924, as well as the Chamonix details.

What the players are wearing in the above photo is what they wore on the ice during the matches. Apparently, ties were de rigueur as were bunnets, and all wore plus fours. Willie and Laurence had white jumpers under their jackets, whereas Tom Murray sported a (presumably) colourful patterned jumper. Jackets had a union flag patch on the left arm. Shoes look to be normal outdoor shoes of the time, presumably with rubber soles.

The four reserves were Colonel John T S Robertson-Aikman (who was named the squad's 'Captain'), John McLeod, William Brown, and Major D G Astley.

Some content in the French Official Report is completely wrong. Laurence Jackson's name does not appear at all. W K Jackson is listed as a 'non-participant', as is an 'R Cousin'. This is probably the representative member for Edinburgh Ice Rink, Robert Cousin, who was on the Council of Management of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1924. Although listed as a non-participant, there is no evidence that Cousin was ever a member of the GB squad, or that he ever went to Chamonix. Unfortunately Laurence Jackson's omission has not been recognised by some, notably the website (here) of the Sportscotland Institute of Sport, the organisation which supports our current Olympic hopefuls. This lists the eight names which appear in the French Official Report, ie including Cousin but omitting Laurence Jackson, on the web page which lists all British Olympic Winter Games medallists.
This photo can be found in the gallery of the 1924 Games on the IOC website here. Its legend says '28th January 1924: The British Curling team during the Winter Olympics at Chamonix, France.' It is credited to Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

You will sometimes hear said that Chamonix was not actually the 'first official Winter Olympics', so let's clarify this before going further. Figure skating had been included in the summer games in London in 1908, and again in Antwerp in 1920, when an ice hockey competition had also been held. In June 1921, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that a winter sports event should be held in 1924, prior to the Paris Olympic Summer Games later in the year. The French National Olympic Committee, during a Winter Sports Federations' Congress in June 1921, chose Chamonix to host this event.

Although the 'Semaine Internationale des Sports d'Hiver' (International Winter Sports Week - which actually went on for eleven days) was not called officially the ‘Olympic Winter Games’ at the time, it was organised under the patronage of the IOC, and included many of the ceremonial aspects of the Olympic Games. Following the success of the event, the IOC decided, during their 1925 Congress in Prague, to hold similar winter events every four years, which would be known as Olympic Winter Games. The Chamonix International Winter Sports Week was then retrospectively recognised as the first Olympic Winter Games. The reason why the Chamonix event was not called officially the first Olympic Winter Games at the time was political. The Scandinavian countries already had their own successful Nordic Games, held usually in Sweden. Representatives from these countries felt that the new 'Olympic Winter Games' would detract from the importance of the Nordic Games. Athletes from Norway, Finland, and Sweden did take part in the 1924 Winter Sports Week, and it has been suggested that the French organisers were able to encourage them to do so, partly by not calling the event, the 'Olympics'. That said, newspaper reports from Chamonix at the time all refer to the 'Olympics' in one way or another. As it turned out, the Olympic Winter Games were to continue, but the Nordic Games did not, being held for the last time in 1926.

The International Olympic Committee's Olympic Study Centre has an extensive archive collection. There is an overview of what these archives contain about the early Olympic Winter Games online here. The following information is from this source. The Chamonix Winter Games were held from January 25 to February 5, 1924, and attracted 258 participants (247 men and 11 women) representing 16 different countries. The programme consisted of six different sports (16 separate events): skating (figure and speed skating), skiing (cross-country skiing, nordic combined, ski jumping), military patrol (a forerunner of the modern biathlon), ice hockey, curling and bobsleigh. The host city Chamonix had to construct an ice rink, a ski jump, a bobsleigh run and a curling rink.

Details of all the GB participants at the Chamonix Games can be found in Fairlie's BOA Report. Great Britain competed in ladies' figure skating, men's figure skating, pairs figure skating, ice hockey, and bobsleigh, as well as curling.

Roger Frison-Roche was the Secretary of the Chamonix Winter Sports Committee. Fifty years later his reminiscences about the event were recorded in a transcript of a speech which you can read here. It is fascinating to learn of the problems which the organisers encountered. First of all there was a huge snowfall. Then, with everything ready a week before the event, a thaw set in, and the main ice rink was 'transformed into a lake'! The majority of the competitors at Chamonix were skaters and they were unable to train. The curling rink was the first ice area to be 'reconstructed' and was used by figure skaters, speed skaters and hockey players before the main ice surface was ready. This limited the time available for the curlers to practise.

This plan of the main ice arena shows the adjacent curling rink, marked out to show it large enough for four sheets. The original hope had been for a curling competition much larger than that involving just the three countries which took part, and a four-sheet rink would have allowed easily for an eight-country competition. The image is extracted from the French Official Report.

This photo, also extracted from the French Official Report, is captioned, 'Le Rink du Stade Olympique du Mont Blanc pendant le tournoi'. (TheRinkof the Mont BlancOlympicStadiumduring the tournament.) Fairlie's BOA Report says, "Two rinks, side by side, could be accommodated, but only one was used."This photo seems to contradict this as it certainly shows two sheets in use. Indeed, a number of photos in the French Official Report do seem to show curling activity taking place over more than one sheet. A photo in the Spaarnestad collection in the Netherlands National Archives (here) clearly shows two rinks in play, and is captioned 'Winter Olympics Chamonix 1924. View of the Curling field'. It is dated January 27, the day before the first official match, so may show practice sessions underway.

The first official match of the curling competition was held on Monday, January 28, 1924, at 10:00. Sweden beat France, 18-10. GB's Colonel Robertson-Aikman was the umpire.

At 10.00 the following day, Tuesday, January 29, 1924, Great Britain played Sweden and won 38-7. France's Henri Cournollet was the umpire.

This photo, extracted from the French Official Report, apparently shows the GB v Sweden game. It is captioned, 'The decisive match between Sweden and Britain'. The result of this match - the GB team's first - was only 'decisive' in the sense that Sweden did not win it, and so did not win the tournament outright, as they had already won their first game. GB still had a game to play, against France. The photographer of this photo and the one above is not credited. That's Laurence Jackson in the white jumper just behind Tom Murray in the patterned top, both looking at what is happening in the head. The Swedish skip is sweeping, or about to sweep, with a corn broom, his body just obscuring a figure that is almost certainly Robin Welsh. But what are the three figures on the right doing? Are they spectators, actually standing on the ice beside the players? 

On Wednesday, January 30, 1924, at 10:00, GB played France, winning 46-4. Sweden's Erik Severin officiated.

This photo is from the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1924-1925. It is credited to The Times and captioned 'Great Britain v France'. It does have a 'posed' feel to it but it is of sufficient quality to be able to identify some of the participants. Willie Jackson (second from left) is gesturing with his brush, with Robin Welsh and Lawrence Jackson on his left. Tom Murray, on the right in his signature jersey, seems to be explaining something to three of the French team. He appears to have some paper in his hand. As second player on the team, it may have been his job to record the score. The curler on the left of the photo must be another of the French players. Behind him, in the background, and again standing on the ice beside the playing area, that looks like Colonel Robertson-Aikman. And in the middle background that could well be Major Astley and John McLeod watching the action.

Games were of eighteen ends and one has to assume that the full eighteen were played, given the size of the scores. Back in 1924, there was no offering the handshakes early to concede.

This is how the results are recorded in the French Official Report. Two points were awarded for a win, and one point was to be awarded for a draw. So, after the single round robin, GB had four points and were the gold medallists, Sweden two points and were silver medallists, and France none, and were the bronze medallists.

Although several websites, including Wikipedia (here), suggest that there was a 'silver medal playoff' to decide the medallists. This is best considered as an urban legend, with no basis in truth. I'll return to this topic later.

The French inscription on the reverse can be translated as, "Chamonix Mont-Blanc Winter Sports, 25 January - 5 February 1924, organised by the French Olympic Committee under the high patronage of the International Olympic Committee on the occasion of the celebration of the VIII Olympiad." Note that the Olympic Rings do not appear in the design.

In 1924, there were no podium presentations. The awards were made at the closing ceremony, according to Fairlie's BOA Report. However, in the Royal Club Annual for 1924-25 there is a report entitled 'World's Curling Champions. British Team's Success at Olympic Games'. This says, "When it became known that Great Britain had won the World's Curling Championship, the Union Jack was run to the top of the mast, and while competitors and spectators stood to attention with heads uncovered, the military band played 'God Save The King'."

There's a pic of the gold, silver and bronze medals together online here, although I note that the silver medal shown is described as a replica!


What of the medals won by the GB curlers? Robin Welsh's medal is known to be safely in the care of his grandson. The two won by Willie Jackson and Lawrence Jackson were purchased in 2008 by the Royal Club's Charitable Trust, see here. Has Tom Murray's medal survived? I don't know. [Added later. Yes it has! Derek Whitehouse has pointed me in the direction of an article which appeared in a local paper, the Lanark Gazette of Thursday, March 7, 2002, which has a photo of Tom Murray's grandson with the medal. And I can now confirm, as of November, 2013, that the medal is safely in the care of his great granddaughters.]

Did the four reserves also receive medals? I wish to suggest that the reserves did not get medals, as they did not play in either game. Until quite recently it was not policy to award medals to alternates at international curling events, unless they had taken to the ice for at least part of a game. I have found two other pieces of information which support the view that only the four members of the Jackson team got medals. Robin Welsh, son of the Robin Welsh who played in Chamonix, writes in his book Beginner's Guide to Curling, published in 1969, "The British Curling deputation at the Games, led by Colonel Robertson-Aikman, were as proud of the medals and diplomas won as the four Scots who had won them." The final sentence of the report in the 1924-24 Annual says, "The British players received gold medals and diplomas, which they very highly prize." Again, it's my emphasis in both cases. These two bits of evidence suggest to me that only the four curlers who played in the two matches were presented with gold medals. Should gold medals and diplomas belonging to Robertson-Aikman, Astley, McLeod or Brown ever turn up, then my assumption will be proved wrong!

Other memorabilia from the event is shown in a Curling History Blog post about Willie Jackson, here. This contains images of Jackson's official identity card, and a competitor's badge which probably belonged to Robin Welsh. 

The GB curling team had been selected by a committee of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. After the Games, the process came in for criticism at the Royal Club AGM in 1924, held on Wednesday, July 23, in the Station Hotel, Perth. Member William Henderson, from Lawton, complained that regular club members had had 'no proper opportunity to take part'. It was explained to the meeting that the Royal Club 'were left in the position of having to decide within two or three days whether to send a team and whom to send'. But there had been time to appoint a selection committee. In the Chair during these discussions at the AGM was John McLeod, who had been one of the reserves in Chamonix. He concluded, "We sent out our premier team, and they justified their being sent." McLeod also stated that when the selection of a team was being made, they had been told that seven or eight countries were going to be represented in the curling competition, including the USA and Canada.

Sir Robert Lockhart (representative of the Raith and Abbotshall Club), who had been a member of the selection committee, explained further, "I wish to say we took the very greatest care and did everything in our power to secure and elect the best representative curlers to represent Great Britain in France on the first occasion on which there had been an Olympic contest in curling." 

More about the selection process can be found in the correspondence columns of The Courier, Thursday, August 21, 1924, in response to continued criticisms in that paper by William Henderson. Sir Robert Lockhart wrote, "We were asked to send one rink of four players and four reserves. After carefully considering the situation from every point of view, the Committee came to the conclusion that, while it was probable that the ice would be keen, it was possible, as the matches would be played on open ice, that there would be a good deal of sweeping to do, and that it was therefore necessary to send a comparatively young and athletic team."

Also at the AGM, a member asked if the Royal Club had defrayed the expenses of the GB team. It was explained that none of the cost of sending the team to Chamonix had come from Royal Club funds. Part of the costs came from the British Olympic Association, and part from the curlers themselves.


What more can be said about these GB team members, the first curling Olympic curling gold medallists? Firstly, all four were Scottish. The skip's full name was William Kilgour Jackson - he was known as 'Willie' Jackson. He was born March 14, 1871, in Lamington, South Lanarkshire, and so would have been 52 years old at Chamonix. He was head of the family business, which he established in 1900, farming and dealing in cattle and sheep from a base in Symington. Willie Jackson was the outstanding Scottish curler of the first half of the twentieth century. He was a top performing skip with the Scottish team which played against the visiting Canadians in 1921. He was a Vice-president of the Royal Club in the 1922-23 season and again in 1931-32. Then in 1933-34 he served as the Club's President. He died in Symington in January 1955. His obituary, in the Royal Club's Annual for 1955-56, said, "He was indeed a master of the game, whether in direction or in performance," and, "Willie Jackson was a most lovable personality, always willing to help with encouragement and advice and always ready to have a crack about his favourite game."

It's 'jackets off' in this photo of Willie Jackson skipping at Chamonix. Exactly when this was taken and who the photographer was is unclear. It has been used to accompany text in an article about the history of curling on the World Curling Federation's website here.

Robin Welsh was born in October 20, 1869, in Edinburgh and died October 21, 1934, in a nursing home in that city, aged 65. He was the son of a farmer at Liberton and educated at George Watson's. He played club rugby for the Watsonian club and represented Scotland in the three internationals held in 1895. He also represented Scotland at tennis in 1914. In 1920 Welsh entered Edinburgh City Council and was soon elected a magistrate. He was one of Scotland's outstanding curlers and as skip he won the Linlithgow Trophy, the Swan Trophy, the Rink Medal, and the World's Championship, which was played in Edinburgh. Welsh, who threw third stones at Chamonix, was 54 years old then. He became Vice-president of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1924-25, the season following the Chamonix Games. He was a director of the Edinburgh Ice Rink Ltd, and secretary of the Edinburgh Ice Rink Curling and Skating Club. An extensive obituary, written by A Gordon Mitchell, can be found in the Annual for 1934-35. Welsh's son, also named Robin who was just fifteen when his father died, was to become secretary of the Royal Club and the International Curling Federation, and edited the Scottish Curler magazine from 1954 to 1998.

Thomas Blackwood Murray was born October 3, 1877, in Biggar, South Lanarkshire. He was second player at Chamonix when he was 46 years of age. He died June 3, 1944, aged 66. Tom Murray came from a farming background and began curling at his local Biggar Curling Club at the end of the nineteenth century. He was one of the most prominent Scottish curlers of the first half of the twentieth century. He was a member of the teams which toured Canada in 1911-12, and again in 1922-23. He played with Willie Jackson in many competitions. Murray is better known these days by his initials 'T B', as the T B Murray Trophy, which he presented to encourage junior curling at the Haymarket Rink, is the trophy that is presented to the winners of the Scottish Junior Men's Championship. He served as President of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1936-37. His obituary can be found in the Royal Club Annual for 1944-45 which notes that he was a gifted after dinner speaker. He is described as 'silver-tongued' Tom Murray.

Laurence Jackson was the skip's son. He was born September 16, 1900 in Carnwath, South Lanarkshire. He was the youngest member of the British squad, by some way. He was 23 when playing at Chamonix. He had considerable curling experience though, and had played with his father and Tom Murray in the Strathcona Cup matches against the Canadians in 1921. There is just a hint out there that perhaps he was not the first choice for selection, as he is not in the last of eight names that appears in the French Official Report. Which is odd. However, there is no doubt that he did play as lead on the GB team in both championship matches. After Chamonix he went on to have a long curling career, continuing to play in his father's rink as third with his brother Elliot and Johnnie Plenderleith as lead, and when Willie Jackson retired he skipped his own rinks post WW2 to many important victories. He died on July 27, 1984, aged 83, in Biggar. His obituary can be found in the September 1984 issue of the Scottish Curler, where he is described as 'the best shotmaker in Scottish curling in the immediate pre-war period'. He was President of the Edinburgh Ice Rink Curling Club in 1950-51.

Had the GB team played together before Chamonix 1924? Perhaps not, although the four would have known each other well. Tom Murray had been Willie Jackson's third player in many competitions, and when Edinburgh Ice Rink Ltd, the holding company that owned and operated Haymarket Ice Rink, decided to put up a trophy in 1922 for annual competition, grandly named the 'World's Curling Championship', the first winning names to be engraved on the trophy included those of Willie Jackson and Tom Murray. Jackson, father and son, with Tom Murray, had played in four test matches for the Strathcona Cup during the Canadians' visit in 1921, winning three of these matches. That was the same record as Robin Welsh who also skipped in four test matches. Willie Jackson skipped one of the teams in the Royal Club's Tour to Canada and the USA in January and February 1923, the season before Chamonix, and was also the Vice-captain. Tom Murray was his third player. All the details of this Tour are in a book The Scottish Curlers in Canada and the USA: A Record of their Tour in 1922-23, by Major M H Marshall who was the honorary secretary of the tour team. The records show that Jackson and Murray were the 'outstanding players on the visiting team', winning 43 and drawing two of 61 games.

Murray moved down to be second player in Chamonix to make room in the team for Robin Welsh, also a successful skip against the Canadians in 1921. But Tom Murray was a good skip in his own right. The Annual of 1922-23 has a photo of Tom Murray with his team which had won the Directors Trophy at the Haymarket Rink in 1922. Laurence Jackson was a member of that team.

John McLeod, Bridge of Weir, had been a member of the Scottish team in Canada in 1912-13, and was also a test match skip against Canada, winning two of four matches, in 1921. In the 1919-20 season a Scottish team had visited Sweden, and this was captained by John McLeod. McLeod died in 1937 and his obituary in the 1937-38 Annual notes he 'was one of the most skilful curlers in Scotland'. John McLeod was the Royal Club's Vice-president in the 1923-24 season in which the Chamonix games took place. There's much more about McLeod later in this story!

William Brown stands the tallest of the curlers in the group photo, shown above, from Fairlie's BOA Report. That photo misrepresents Brown's actual height, as the group were standing on an uneven surface. He was not a giant, as the photo appears to show! There's another photo of Brown in the Royal Club Annual for 1927-28, which shows that in the 1926-27 season he had been a member of Willie Jackson's rink, at lead, in at least two competitions. Prior to the 1924 Games, he had been a member of both Symington CC (of which Jackson was President) and Biggar CC (of which Murray was President). Brown then was well known to the GB team, and perhaps was selected as a reserve because of his abilities to play front end should the need arise. Unfortunately, Pierre Richard in his book Curling... Ou Le Jeu De Galets: Son histoire au Quebec (1807-1980), published in 2007, makes the incorrect assumption that GB's William Brown is the same person who was a member of the Royal Montreal CC and skipped the Quebec side in 1932 when curling was a demonstration event at Lake Placid. They are two different curlers. Indeed, the Canadian William Brown, who was originally from Sanquhar, is recorded in Major M H Marshall's book as playing against some of the tourists at the Thistle Club in Montreal during the 1922-23 tour.

Colonel T S Robertson-Aikman was the the senior member of the GB Squad. He had been a Royal Club Vice-president in 1895-96, and would be elected as the Club's President in the season which followed the Chamonix Games. He had captained the Scottish team which had visited Canada in 1912-13, had been Scottish team captain when the Canadians came to Scotland in 1921, and was persuaded to be captain again when the Scots toured Canada and the USA in 1922-23. On that tour, Robertson-Aikman skipped one of the teams, the 'Captain's Rink', so he was an accomplished player. His team had, at second, Major D G Astley! So these two reserves of the GB squad knew each other well. The latter played 58 games in total as a second player during the Canadian tour. This was his second time as a member of a Tour team. When he was Captain D G Astley, he had been the 'reserve member' on the 1912-13 tour.

I have emphasized the 'tour connections' here. Any curler who has experienced the intensity and stamina required (both on and off the ice) in these international forays to Canada and the USA, or to Sweden, will realise that a few days in France would have been coped with easily! One could say that the GB squad was 'battle-hardened'!

In 1924 Robertson-Aikman and Astley were both members of Hamilton CC, the club of which the former was President for many years. Astley though is only mentioned in that club's listings in the Royal Club Annuals of 1922-23, 1923-24 and 1924-25 as an 'occasional member' (as opposed to a 'regular member') and his name disappears from the records completely in the season following the Chamonix Games. He was not a player with a championship winning record as some of the others, but he was an experienced player, as his tour record shows. He would have been 55 years of age in Chamonix.

Astley was English! He was born in Norfolk, and lived near Norwich, far from any curling club in England at the time. He seems to have learned his curling as a member of the St Moritz CC in Switzerland. He is listed as a member of that club, as Captain D G Astley, from 1909 to 1912, and again in 1914. I haven't discovered why there is a connection with the Hamilton CC, but I suspect this may have just have been because of his friendship with Colonel Robertson-Aikman. He would have had to have been a member of a curling club affiliated to the Royal Club to have been able to tour Canada in 1922-23, and indeed to play in Chamonix. I set out to find out more about him. Astley's home in 1923 was Little Plumstead Hall, Norwich, which later became a hospital.

Astley seems to have been a keen sailor, racing a Broads One Design called Dotterel and a Yare and Bure One Design called Painted Lady on the Norfolk Broads in the 1920s. He was Chairman of the Red Poll Cattle Society for many years. But he was more than just a Norfolk farmer, see here!

Delaval Graham L'Estrange Astley was born on December 7, 1868. His birth is registered in Aylsham Parish in Norfolk. He died at home at Wroxham Cottage on May 17, 1951, at age 82. He gained the rank of Lieutenant in the service of the Welsh Regiment and the rank of Major in the service of the North Somerset Yeomanry. He was to hold the office of Deputy Lieutenant of Norfolk. He was invested as a Companion, Order of the Bath, in 1941.

Why have I sought out information about Major Astley? These days his name has become the most well known of the GB squad, more so than the Jacksons, Murray and Welsh. Just put the name into any search engine to see why he has achieved notoriety! You will find that he is recorded as having played for both the GB team and for Sweden, and so is unique in Olympic history as having won both gold and silver medals for different countries at the same competition. I will return to all this later, as it's simply not true!

There is one further image which I'd like to include here. It's rather fun! It's an artist's colour sketch showing the GB curlers in action, and reminds me that though we tend to think of Chamonix 1924 in just black and white, from the photographs of the time, the real situation would have been much more colourful! It appears on a Tanzanian stamp, issued in 1997, one of a set of sports' stamps issued by that country in the run up to the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, when curling was to be included in the programme as a full medal sport.

Over the years, many countries have issued stamps commemorating various Olympic sports, even though the country may have no direct connection with the sport, as in this case. This stamp comes from my own thematic stamp collection of 'the sport of curling'. I wondered if the artist had used an actual image as his template. I'm sure this is indeed the case, and I've found the image. Compare the image on the stamp with the photo of the GB squad practising (shown above), remove a couple of figures from the group around the stone being swept, and one has the composition from which the artist who painted the stamp image has used as a starting point!

I like the interpretation of the colourful argyle pattern hose the two sweepers are wearing with their plus-fours. However the information on the right which overprints the image is rather fanciful! It says, "First Olympic Winter Games - 1924 Curling is introduced; England and Scotland play. No winner announced." Now that's a good story!

The story continues in Part 2, below.

The sources of all the images above are as indicated. I will be pleased to receive comments and corrections if I've made mistakes. And thanks to Derek Whitehouse for remembering, and keeping safe, the newspaper article about Tom Murray's medal!

I came across this cartoon recently. These days it would be seen by many to be in bad taste. It was published in Punch in 1958, and drawn by J W Taylor. Taylor was not one of the more famous Punch cartoonists, but he has at least one big fan, see here. His university education was in Manchester, and he became a school teacher in Stoke. One has to conclude it is unlikely that he had ever personally experienced the joys of curling outside on a deep water loch. I wonder what prompted him to draw this cartoon. However, there is just a nod to the dangers - one of the figures in the background is rushing to the rescue with a ladder!

Of course, if we go back to the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, long before indoor rinks, and before the first artificial outdoor rinks had been invented, curling was only ever played on natural stretches of water. I quote from David B Smith's 1981 book Curling: an illustrated history, "The advantage of such lochs was their size, their responsiveness to the roar of the stone, their picturesque beauty." David goes on to mention that the disadvantage of deep water is the time it takes to freeze, and that there was a real risk of drowning, should the ice break.  

One of the first questions ever posed to David and I when we began this blog back in the summer of 2008 was, "How common was drowning in the years gone by?" David responded to the question with this post.  Therein he recounted that he had found only one report of death by drowning at a curling match. The reference is in Sir Richard Broun's Memorabilia Curliana Mabenensia, which was written in 1830. The author describes how successful the curlers of Lochmaben had been in matches with neighbouring parishes. Broun writes, "It is sufficient to say, that they have been successful over Tinwald, Torthorwald, Dumfries, Mouswald, Cummertrees, Annan, Dryfesdale, Hutton, Wamphray, Applegarth, Johnstone - and perhaps Kirkmichael might have been added to the list, but for the occurrence of a most disastrous accident by which six individuals were drowned, and a termination the most melancholy put to the bonspiel." He then goes on to give details of the battles between Lochmaben and Closeburn, with no further mention of what appears to be a 'curling disaster'.

In searching the British Newspaper Archive for instances where curlers had come to grief on outside ice, I had found no mention of any accident at Lochmaben when curlers had been drowned. I found a number of stories of curlers falling through the ice, all over the country, but without loss of life. But what struck me - forcibly - was just how many tragic stories there were during the nineteenth century about people who had been skating or sliding on the ice, and died! Local newspapers throughout Britain regularly contained reports of fatal ice accidents during the winter months.

I had come to the conclusion that the reason there was so little information in Broun's book was that the accident had all occurred way back in time, and that the occasion had been passed on simply by word of mouth. But then I got the opportunity to study the original reference, in Memorabilia Curliana Mabenensia. It occurs in Chapter VI of the book, which is entitled 'Bonspielana'. In the paragraph before that about Lochmaben's bonspiel successes, there is reference to famous Lochmaben curlers who had been at the top of their form during the time of the 'French War'. This was a reference to the Napoleonic Wars, which finished with the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Broun's reference to the Lochmaben tragedy likely dated to the early nineteenth century, a time well covered by papers in the British Newspaper Archive. It then struck me that Broun does not say explicitly that it was curlers who had drowned, only that there had been 'a most disastrous accident'. I searched more generally in the BNA for ice accidents at Lochmaben. No success. Had there been any ice accident in Kirkmichael parish? Eureka! There had ... and it was the one referred to in Broun's book. The story was all well recorded in The Scots Magazine of February 1, 1813, and the Caledonian Mercury of February 4, 1813.

So, we need to go back two hundred years. At that time, travelling any distance was not easy, and curlers from one parish were somewhat restricted to playing against those of neighbouring parishes. Lochmaben's first curling club, the Lochmaben Curling Society, was not constituted until 1823, as Lynne Longmore has recorded in detail in Minutes of Note, see here. Ten years before that date, the curlers of Kirkmichael parish had received a challenge from those of Lochmaben parish and they had met on one of the Lochmaben lochs on Friday, January 29, 1813. The home side was successful and the two groups of curlers agreed to meet again the following day, Saturday, January 30, on Cumrue Loch in Kirkmichael parish. There was 'a vast concourse of spectators' when the match got underway in the morning. By two o'clock 'the ice had become so soft and wet, that it was agreed to change the board, and a few of the young men then attending, went in search of another; they immediately pitched upon one, and while the curlers were carrying their stones towards this new rink, they perceived the ice to give way, and in one moment saw the whole group of young men and boys sink.' Ten persons went in the water, which was around twelve foot deep. Five were rescued, one of the rescuers taking off his coat and holding its edge to use it as a rope, linking hands with others on the ice behind him.

The bodies of the others were recovered later using two ladders tied together to bridge the hole in the ice. All five who died were under 23 years of age. They were William McGill (Corshill), James Paterson (Auchenclurehill), James Dalzell (Parkgate), Robert Muirman (who was a servant in Dalfibble, married with two children) and Peter Carruthers (also a servant in Dalfibble). Singled out for praise for their part in the rescue of the others were James McGill (Corshill) and James Roddan (Pleasance). Presumably William and James McGill were related.

I wondered if all those who died had been locals. Dalfibble is a farm to the west of Cumrue Loch. Parkgate may refer to the farm or the community, again west of Cumrue. I have found old references to 'Pleasance, Kirkmichael', but don't know exactly where this was. And where were Corshill, and Auchenclurehill? I cannot yet find these names on old maps of the area, although Corsua farm is close by.

The story recounted in the newspapers differs in one respect from that in Memorabilia Curliana Mabenensia. The news reports say that there were only five fatalities, whereas Broun indicates that six died. However, it would seem from the newspaper accounts that those who died had not been engaged in the curling match, but were spectators who had tried to help the curlers by seeking out a new place on the loch where a new rink could be laid out. The reports do not mention if the curlers were involved in the rescue attempts, but it is quite apparent why play was abandoned, and why Broun wrote, " ... and a termination the most melancholy put to the bonspiel."

The Lancaster Gazette also ran the story on February 6, 1813, omitting the detail of the curling bonspiel, and putting the blame on two skaters. The report reads, "On Saturday last, as two persons were amusing themselves skaiting on Camrew Loch, in the parish of Kirkmichael, one of them made a dextrous wheel round a number of spectators, who happened to be collected at one place, when the impression of his skaits so weakened the thawing ice, that it instantly gave way, and ten persons were plunged into the water where it was about eleven feet deep." This report also indicates that five were saved, and the rest perished.

Cumrue Loch can be found on modern maps just west of Templand. The grid reference is NY 061860. Lochmaben and Kirkmichael are adjacent parishes. Cumrue Loch is just inside the south east boundary of Kirkmichael parish. It is not (yet) recorded as a 'Curling Place' on the Historical Curling Places database and website. Perhaps because it had been the scene of such a tragedy, the curlers chose not to return there after 1813.

This is Cumrue Loch as it appeared today, a grey December morning in 2013. It sits in the middle of a large dairy farm. My thanks to Brendan, the farmer, for his help in getting me to a spot from where I could take this photo.

by Bob Cowan

At this time of year, I'm always on the lookout for Christmas cards with a curling theme. Over the years I've sent, and received, quite a few. And I've kept some although I hesitate to call these 'a collection'. I will not be surprised to learn that 'out there' there someone has a large thematic collection of curling Christmas cards. Here are just a few of my own.

In the heyday of the postcard, in the early years of the twentieth century, it was not uncommon for regular postcards to be overprinted with a Christmas greeting. Although the one above is a Swiss card, promoting a large Grindelwald hotel, it is interesting to note that the overprint is in English, as at that time, the majority of winter tourists to the alpine resorts were Brits! There is another example of an overprinted Christmas card, this time from the UK, in this post.

For many years, the Scottish Curler magazine sold a Christmas card. These first appeared in 1967, when a scene of curling on Duddingston Loch was reproduced on the cards, from the painting by Charles Lees. An order form was inserted with each magazine, and in 1967 the cost was 15/- per dozen, including envelopes.

The pink tinted illustration above was the Scottish Curler Christmas Card for 1973. By this time the cost had risen to £1.25 per dozen. 'The Curlers' is probably the most famous painting of a curling scene. Sir George Harvey painted the original in 1834-35, although I should probably say 'originals', as more than one version of the painting is known to exist.

The most impressive version now belongs to the National Galleries of Scotland, see here.

This unusual card was sold by the US Women's Curling Association, artist and date not stated.

This card was sold by the Province of London Curling Club. The artist is not named.

The Royal Caledonian Curling Club for a number of years marketed Christmas cards to raise funds. This is the first of three examples I've picked out. The drawing is by Malky McCormack from a design by Beth Cashin.

This is another Royal Caledonian Curling Club card. The image is by the late Rod McLeod, a well known cartoonist whose work could be found in the Daily Mail, Daily Record, Daily Express and the Evening Times. He was a keen curler, a member of the Nondies CC, and is fondly remembered by many.

This is another card marketed by the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in association with Cameo Fine Arts of Peebles. The image is entitled 'Christmas Post' by Eve Coote.

Ian Rodney, who devised a cartoon every month for the Scottish Curler magazine in the years 2002-09, drew Santa for this Alternative Curling Club card.

The image on this card is 'Curling Fun' by Canadian artist Terry Ananny.

This card, which was sold in aid of the National Trust for Scotland, uses part of 'The Curling Match' by Charles Altamont Doyle, and is credited to City of Edinburgh Museums and Art Galleries, Scotland/ Bridgeman Art Library, London.

David and I wish all followers of the Curling History blog, and indeed all curlers everywhere, 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year'!

The Ipswich Journal images are copyright The British Library Board, all rights reserved. The screenshots are reproduced from the British Newspaper Archive.

by Bob Cowan

January 1954 saw the publication of Scotland's first curling magazine, the Scottish Curler. I feel privileged to have been the Editor of the magazine for seven seasons during which time it celebrated its fiftieth year, and so I have been aware that, had it survived, this would have been its sixtieth birthday.

The first issue of the magazine was composed of twenty-four A5 pages, and was printed and published by the Stanley Press, Elder Street, Edinburgh. It cost one shilling, and a subscription form was included. This indicated that a year's subscription (nine issues) was eleven shillings, including postage. This sum could be remitted by Postal Order.

It had the the support of the Edinburgh Ice Rink Company, the Chairman, A A Wighton, writing a half-page 'introduction' to the new magazine. The other half of the page was a similar piece by R Balfour Kerr, the President of the Edinburgh Ice Rink Curling Club.

The Editor was not named in the first issue, but we know now that this was Robin Welsh, who wrote an editorial column, and continued to edit and produce the magazine for forty-four years, until 1998. He became secretary and treasurer to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1958, and was awarded MBE in 1984 for his services to the sport. He died in 2006. Read an obituary here.

Let's look at Volume 1, Number 1, to see what were the newsworthy stories in January, 1954.

Five pages of the magazine was devoted to 'The World's Championship' as the Edinburgh International was called at that time. The competition was won by Willie Young's Airth rink of John Pearson, J Scott and Bob Young (see the cover photo), who beat John Robertson, G Lindsay, W Struthers and Dr Dow, 16-6 in an final of thirteen ends, on Saturday, December 5, 1953. It had been agreed that the final was to be fourteen ends, rather than sixteen as in previous years, but when Young's team counted six in the first end, it turned into a one-sided game, and did not go the distance. Eighty-eight teams took part in the competition.  

Four 'Canadian airmen' who were stationed in Germany had arranged a trip, thanks to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, to 'sample the brand of curling in Scotland'. Here they are in the lounge at the Haymarket rink sampling Scotland's national drink. L-R: Douglas Nelligan, Duncan McLeod, William Elgie, Moira (pouring a dram), James Sellar (the Haymarket rink manager) and Ted Austin.


The early years of the Scottish Curler were well supported by advertisers. The January 1954 issue had two with a curling theme, such as that above ...

by Bob Cowan

In November I wrote extensively about the curling competition at Chamonix in 1924, the beginning of the sport's Olympic story, see here, here, and here. The gold medals were won by a GB team, four Scots, after a round robin involving just three countries, Britain, Sweden and France. Willie Jackson (skip), Robin Welsh (3rd), Tom Murray (2nd) and Laurence Jackson (lead) won both their games to become champions. The GB 'squad' included four others: Colonel T S Robertson-Aikman, Major D G Astley, John MacLeod and William Brown, who travelled to Chamonix as the team's reserves.

That's the squad in the photo above. The team which played and won the championship is seated. L-R: Tom Murray, Willie Jackson, Robin Welsh and Laurence Jackson. The reserves are standing. L-R: William Brown, Colonel Robertson-Aikman, John MacLeod and Major Astley.

Today's post debunks the myth that one of the GB reserves also played for Sweden in the Olympic competition.

The story has come to be accepted as fact, and has been retold online and in print, but is a distraction to the real events of the 1924 curling competition. I show now that the assertion is completely false. No-one from the GB squad played for Sweden in the 1924 Olympic curling competition!

Mr Henderson - Tell us if any of the members of this Olympic Team were members of the Swedish Team as well.
The Chairman - There was one member that I know of - myself.
Mr Henderson - No others?
The Chairman - There was only one member to my recollection, gentlemen, and that was myself.

It was Herald journalist Doug Gillon who first picked up on this exchange, and in his January 2006 article he notes, almost as an aside, "The major (ie Major D G Astley) ended up playing for the Swedes who overcame France in a play-off, finishing runners-up. So the major collected a bona fide Olympic silver, and if the IOC are correct, a gold one as well."

Doug got this completely wrong.

The Chairman mentioned in the exchange above was John McLeod, not Major Astley. There was no 'play-off game' at Chamonix, and that it is unlikely that the four GB reserves received medals. However, McLeod did have connections with Sweden, so perhaps the story that he had played for Sweden had some credence. I speculated in this post what might have happened.

But even then I was not convinced the story was true. It all seemed so unlikely. I decided to go back to square one, and look at all the evidence again. The penny - eventually - dropped, after reading all the discussions of the Royal Club AGM, as recorded in the Annual of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club for 1924-25.


It all makes sense now. At least, it does to me! I hope that the interpretation above meets with general approval. My fellow blogger, David Smith, the former Sheriff of Kilmarnock, is convinced.

In summary, there is no evidence at all that one of the GB reserves also played for Sweden in the Olympic curling competition in 1924.

The moral for me is to always take things in context, read what is on the page, not what I think is on the page!

Postscript: William Henderson, who was such a vocal critic of the Royal Club at the 1924 AGM, was elected as Vice-President of the Royal Club in the 1930-31 season, and captained the Royal Club touring team in Canada in 1938.

The photo of the GB curling squad comes from a scrapbook kept by Tom Murray, now in the care of his great granddaughter, and reproduced with her permission.

by Bob Cowan

Postage stamps with a curling theme have been an interest of mine for many years. Indeed, the passion has extended to collecting other aspects of postal history including first day covers, cachets, cancels, postal stationary, and postcards, all with a curling theme. This post describes a good starting point for a thematic curling collection, commemorative postage stamps issued by the Winter Olympic Games host countries.

Prior to 1988, when curling was a demonstration sport in Calgary, Canada, three stamps with a curling image had been issued from Sharjah, and two from Canada. The 1988 stamp above is the first true Olympic curling stamp, the sport being a demonstration event at the Calgary Games. Since then, each Winter Olympic Games has seen a number of countries issue commemorative stamps. I have no intention of illustrating them all here, only to show those issued by the host country.

Just for clarification, there was no curling stamp back in 1924 when the sport began its Olympic journey in Chamonix, France. However, an image from that event appears on a difficult-to-find Tanzanian stamp commemorating the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. That stamp is featured at the end of a Curling History Blog post about the 1924 Olympic curling competition, here.

To celebrate the 1988 Winter Olympics, Canada Post issued a series of eleven stamps over three years. One showed a map of the venues. Nine featured Olympic sport disciplines, and another featured curling, one of four demonstration sports at these Games.

The designer of the stamps was Pierre-Yves Pelletier, from Montreal. His brief was to produce a design which would promote the sports, not individual athletes or teams. He had to develop a technique that eliminated details, yet kept each sport identifiable. 
 
Canada Post issued a souvenir brochure entitled 'Catching the Spirit' which describes how the stamps were made, as well as including all the stamps.

Pierre-Yves Pelletier chose photographs of athletes and modified these using a special screening technique. The six-sided dots of different sizes were overlaid on a 900 square grid over each photo to produce the desired image. The numerical data was read by computer and output to a laser printer.

Each stamp was printed in a variety of colours. In all, 800 different combinations of colours and images were tried out.

The curling stamp was printed on sheets with the alpine skiing stamp, and one often finds these for sale in pairs, or in blocks of four.

Altogether, Canada Post issued 105, 000, 000 stamps commemorating the 1988 Winter Olympic Games.
Curling was again a demonstration sport at the 1992 Winter Games. The competition was held in the village of Pralognan. This French stamp (above) was included in a set of eleven, which are available all together in an attractive mini sheet.

Other countries which issued commemorative Olympic stamps or mini sheets with a curling interest for the 1998 Games include Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Gambia, Chad, Togo, Grenada, Niger, as well as Tanzania, mentioned above.
And with the success of the Rhona Martin GB team, there was a special hand cancel!

Other countries which issued commemorative Olympic stamps or mini sheets with a curling interest for the 2002 Games include Canada, Sierra Leone, Republic of Guinea, Gambia, and Mozambique.

There are two Canadian curling stamps to collect from the Games at Vancouver 2010. This one above ...

... and this one, showing one of the mascots for the Paralympic Games, a wheelchair curler!

Other countries which issued commemorative Olympic stamps or mini sheets with a curling interest for the 2010 Games include Guinea-Bissau (3), Mozambique (2), and San Marino.

This Russian curling themed stamp for Sochi 2014 is one of a set of three winter sports.

Other countries which have (so far) issued stamps or mini sheets with a curling interest for the 2014 Games include Canada (featuring Sandra Schmirler), Djibouti (a mini sheet with two stamps, one of which has a pic of Sweden's Anette Norberg), Togo, Chad, and Mozambique.

There is another Olympic curling stamp that should be mentioned. It is a Cambodian mini sheet from 1994, for the Lillehammer, Norway, Winter Olympic Games. Curling was not included in the Olympic programme in 1994, but the topic was nevertheless included in the Cambodian set of sports' stamps. The image used is interesting, given that the curling stones featured do not have handles!

Countries which have produced curling-themed stamps with no particular association with the Olympics include Sharjah, Canada (2), Guyana, Maldives, Austria, Czech Republic and New Zealand. And of course a collection might include both mint and postally used stamps, imperforates, and overprints.

Good collecting!

Have I have missed any? Please let me know if I have. Bob.

by Bob Cowan

I recently wrote extensively about the curling competition at Chamonix in 1924, the beginning of the sport's Olympic story, see here. The gold medals were won by a GB team, after a round robin involving just three countries, Britain, Sweden and France. Willie Jackson (skip), Robin Welsh (3rd), Tom Murray (2nd) and Laurence Jackson (lead) won both their games to become champions.

I explained how the Jackson team had been selected by a special committee of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. The selectors wanted to send the best possible side to the Olympic event because, at that time, it was thought that North American and Swiss teams would participate, and that the competition would be much larger and the competition much stronger than it eventually turned out to be.

I wondered if the selected GB team had played together before Chamonix 1924. Three of the members certainly had. Willie Jackson with Tom Murray as his third had recorded a number of successes, some with Willie's son Laurence Jackson also in the team. Robin Welsh, a successful skip in his own right, had seemingly been brought into the side just for the Olympic event. The four would have known each other well, but when I wrote about them last November I had no evidence that they had played together before Chamonix. Now I have. They had been successful as a team, on at least one occasion, before they headed to France to take part in the Olympic competition.


The photo of the Jackson team comes from a scrapbook kept by Tom Murray, now in the care of his great granddaughter, and reproduced with her permission. The photo of the Preston team is courtesy of Phil Barton. Thanks too to Frank Kershaw and John Kerr for additional information about the history of the Ice Palace Shield.

Ninety years ago, on January 25, 1924, the Great Britain team paraded through Chamonix on the first day of the the 'Semaine Internationale des Sports d'Hiver', the event that would retrospectively become the first Olympic Winter Games. That's the GB delegation in the photo above with athletes who would compete in ladies' and men's figure skating, pairs figure skating, ice hockey, bobsleigh, and curling. You can see the curlers, with corn brooms on their shoulders, in the rear of the group. There are eight of them - the Willie Jackson team, and four reserves.

I'd like to be able to identify the flagbearer.  The British Olympic Association's Official Report of the VIIIth Olympiad, compiled by F G L Fairlie, does not say, but from other photographs in that publication it would seem that two of the bobsleigh team are leading Team GB. I think that is Lieutenant W G Horton with the banner, and Lieutenant A D Crabbe with the flag, but confirmation is required.

Although the event was not called the ‘Olympic Winter Games’ at the time, it was organised under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee, and included many of the ceremonial aspects of the Olympic Games. In the parade on January 25, the teams were headed for the main ice arena, the Stade du Mont Blanc, where Camille Mandrillon took the Olympic Oath on behalf of the athletes, see here.

As I write this I'm looking forward to watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Games in Sochi. I imagine these will be quite different than ninety years ago! Read more about the first opening ceremony here, and watch a short video of the parade here. Spot the GB curlers walking past!

I have previously written in detail about the1924 curling competition, see here, this being won by a British team, four Scots - Willie Jackson (skip), Robin Welsh (3rd), Tom Murray (2nd) and Laurence Jackson (lead). The curling rink was to the side of the of the main arena, see below.

Just what did the curling rink look like? I have included shots of the action in previous posts, but these don't give a good impression of the rink and the surroundings. I recently acquired an original photograph from the time. This is a similar photo to that in the Spaarnestad collection in the Netherlands National Archives (here) which is dated January 27, the day before the first official match.

The photograph shows two games being played on 'La piste de curling'. It is possible to identify some of the players on the ice. I'm fairly sure that on the far sheet that's the GB team in action, with Laurence Jackson and Tom Murray ready to sweep a stone that has been played by their skip. They are playing against some of the Swedish curlers.

I do not believe that this was one of the medal matches. If the date of the photo in the Netherlands National Archives is correct, I thought it must be a practice session. The first official match of the curling competition was held on the morning of Monday, January 28, 1924. Sweden beat France, 18-10. The following day, Tuesday, January 29, 1924, Great Britain played Sweden and won 38-7. On Wednesday, January 30, 1924, GB played France, winning 46-4. And that was the competition over.

I speculated before, see here, that there could have been friendly games, after the main matches. Now there is evidence that the curling rink was put to good use before the main games took place.

The evidence came in emails from Lars Ingels, who describes himself as a 'Swedish Olympic amateur historian'. He pointed me towards an article in the April 1999 SOF-bulletinen, the magazine of the Swedish Olympic Historians Association. It is a first hand account written by Ture Odlund, one of the members of the Swedish squad, recounting how they travelled to the games, and details of the medal games. Odlund played third in the team that was to lose the medal game against the Jackson side. I am indebted to Lars for bringing this article to my attention.

When the draw for the curling competition was made, a Swiss team was expected to take part, and the first games were to take place on Saturday, January 26. But the Swiss withdrew. A new draw was made and the competition proper began on the Monday, January 28. That meant that there were two free days between the opening parade and the first medal game. Ture Odlund indicates that in these days the Swedes and the Scots played three 'friendly' games, and the Swedes played a further two games against France! The teams would have got to know each other well before the medal games took place.

I recently obtained this postcard which is titled 'Match de Curling au Stade du Mont Blanc'. I wondered if the photo had been taken around the time of the Olympic curling competition. It was only when I was able to study it with a magnifying glass that I found that it was. The clue is on the snow lying on the roof of the small building in the rear of the view. The depth of the snow, and the way that it has broken off, is identical to that in the photo of 'La piste de Curling', posted above! It must have been taken around the same time, January 27.

I've commented on this photo before, see here. It's from the IOC's archive of photos from 1924 (here). It is captioned thus, 'Chamonix 1924 - During the events. The Swedish team (SWE) and the team of Great Britain (GBR)'. This caption is quite wrong! None of the GB gold medal winning foursome are in the photo. And who is the mystery woman fourth from the left? Three of the British reserves are in the group. William Brown is on the right, next to Colonel Robertson-Aikman. Third from the right is Swedish skip, Johan Petter Ahlen and next to him is John McLeod. The other three of Ahlen's team, Kronlund, Wahlberg, and Pettersson, are on the left of the photo. So, four Swedish players, three GB reserves, and a woman. Who is she?

Looking at the detail of the Chamonix postcard, it's the same group of curlers on the ice that are in the IOC photograph, and on the right of this closeup, there's the mystery woman involved in the game. She's ready to sweep with Willie Bown, and that's Colonel Robertson-Aikman in the head. She's playing here with three Brits, but was she herself British? Or could she have been Swedish?

There's just another puzzle in this photo. The scoreboard at the back seems to read France 4 Britain 39. It doesn't apply to the game being played, but could, perhaps, be a left over from the medal game on the morning of Tuesday, January 29, when GB beat France 46-4, with the last end or two still to be added. If this is indeed the case, then these games are being played after the medal matches have all been completed. And that would make sense.

Can you identify the mystery woman? Here's a closeup from the group photo.

It would not be until 1988 that women curlers stepped on to Olympic ice officially, when curling was a demonstration sport in Calgary. No GB team though. See who played then, here.

There's one other image which I've come across recently.

This is from a French publication, L'Illustration, from February 9, 1924. It is captioned 'Une partie de curling entre equipes anglaise et suedoise'. The insert words, bottom right, can be translated as, "Theplayerhas just launched his stonetooslowand thosein his teamsweep the icein front of the stoneto extendits slide." Several players in the cartoon can be easily identified. That's certainly Sweden's skip, Johan Petter Ahlen, calling the shot in the head. But it is two of the British squad (identifiable by their plus-fours) that are doing the sweeping. I would guess that's supposed to be Tom Murray on the right, and either Robin Welsh or John McLeod on the left. I suppose that the illustrator has used artistic license in his composition intended to describe an aspect of the game, but it would be nice to think that the Swedes and the Brits did mix up their teams for a friendly game at some point in Chamonix all these years ago!

Thanks to Lars Ingels for help with this article. The top photo is from a scrapbook now in the care of Tom Murray's great grandaughter. The origins of the other images are as indicated.

On the wall of Tibbermore Church near Perth is a monument to James Ritchie, who died in 1840. 

This monument is built into the west wall of the north wing of Tibbermore Church, a few miles to the west of Perth. On top of a sarcophagus are two curling stones, tramps, and a broom. John Ritchie, a local farmer, was a keen curler! His ornate headstone seems to be unique in depicting the sport of curling.

The monument also has a carving of Ritchie's prize winning bull.

Tibbermore Kirk is no longer is use, and has been in the care of the Scottish Redundant Churches Trust since 2001, see here.

See this video for views of the church and graveyard.

These are single-soled stones, with scalloped decoration above the striking band. There's a broom kowe behind. And on the right are a pair of tramps, also known as crampits, which were attached to the feet in the manner of crampons, to give secure footing, but which did much damage to the ice. David Smith discussed these in this post.

I photographed James Ritchie's memorial back in 2007, see here. Being on an outside wall, it is open to the weather. A large yew tree does give the carvings some protection, and someone is paying attention to the condition of the monument. In 2007, there was signs of damage to the rearmost of the two stones, and a crack could be seen in the scalloped decoration. This had undergone some restoration in the intervening years.

Who was James Ritchie? We know he farmed at Cairney (also spelled Cairnie on old maps), which is well to the south west of Tibbermore on the other side of the main road from Auchterarder to Perth.

By Bob Cowan

Bill Charmatz is a well known American illustrator, who died in 2005. There is a website dedicated to his work and maintained by his daughter, see here. Reading this you will learn that Bill Charmatz was born in New York in 1925. He attended the School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan and served in the US Navy in WW2. During his freelance illustration career he drew for The New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire Magazine, Playboy, Fortune, Life, Time, and Sports Illustrated. He illustrated a weekly column for the last mentioned for over twenty years.

Last year, several Charmatz cartoons came to light during renovations at a Canadian curling club. These drawings appeared to be authentic. But there's nothing that records his involvement with the sport of curling. There's no record that they were ever published, and that's the reason for this post on the Curling History blog today. Can we find out more about them?

'Not hurling you idiot! Curling, curling!' is shown above. 

This is my favourite. An 'Andy Capp' character curling on skis! And it gives a clue to when the illustrator encountered our sport - at the Air Canada Silver Broom World Curling Championship in Megeve, France, in 1971. It is known that Charmatz had an assignment to cover skiing in France. His daughter has confirmed that he was in that country in 1971. Some of the illustrations have an Air Canada Silver Broom sticker attached. Were the cartoons drawn officially for Air Canada, or for the local organising committee? An approach to the airline's archives has not produced any explanation.

Air Canada sponsored the World Men's Curling Championship from 1968 through to 1985 - the 'Silver Broom', as it was always known. The airline contracted out the organisation of the event to an 'executive director' called Doug Maxwell. Doug and his own team worked with local organising committees each year to make sure the competition went ahead successfully, in whichever country it was to be held. 1971 was early in the sponsorship, and what was to become a successful format, involving players, fans and media, was just beginning to take shape. Prior to 1971, the competition had visited Pointe Claire (Quebec, Canada), Perth (Scotland) and Utica (USA). The event continued to grow over the years that followed. At Megeve, the following countries participated: Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and USA. Canada beat Scotland 9-5 in the final, see here.

Doug Maxwell would probably have been able to solve the mystery of the Charmatz drawings, but he died a few years back. There may be others who can remember what linked BillCharmatz to the Megeve Silver Broom. Can you help? 
Do you have memories of the 1971 Silver Broom? Did one of the Air Canada flight attendants who worked the event have an accident at Megeve, prompting the cartoon above? Are there still competitors from the 1971 competition reading this, or their families who travelled to support them? Perhaps members of the local organising committee, or national curling organisations, or the media, may be able to help?

Please do get in touch.

There's an interesting video about Bill Charmatz's life and work, in two parts, here and here.

Sonja Laurin has kindly allowed me to put up these Bill Charmatz images.

POSTSCRIPT added April 8, 2014.
The mystery has been solved. Information has come from Margaret Hare, the sister-in-law of the late Pat Hare, a member of the Morrisburg Curling Club where the cartoons were found.  

“Patricia Hare worked in the Public Affairs Department of Air Canada for 38 years. She joined Air Canada in 1947 when it was called Trans Canada Airlines. During her career, Pat became the Coordinator for Special Projects. She enjoyed curling and was thrilled when Air Canada became the sponsor of the Silver Broom from 1968 to 1985. Her position with Air Canada allowed her to travel and attend many of the Silver Broom Tournaments. As a result, she was able to acquire the drawings by Bill Charmatz. When Pat retired she moved from Montreal, where she belonged to the Wentworth Curling Club, to Iroquois and spent many happy times at the Morrisburg Curling Club. She participated in many bonspiels and volunteered for many activities within her community such as the Club's coordinator for the Scott Tournament of Hearts in 1990”.

So it was Pat Hare, in her role with Air Canada, who is the link between the Charmatz drawings and Morrisburg Curling Club.

by Bob Cowan

Arrangements are well in hand for the Curling Connections exhibition in Dumfries Museum, set to open on April 18. The exhibition, featuring many aspects of curling's history, runs in parallel with the World Seniors and World Mixed Doubles championships with their slogan of 'Bringing Curling Home'.

The exhibition will emphasise local Dumfries and Galloway associations with curling over the centuries. A huge variety of items has been brought together for the exhibition which is being co-ordinated by Siobhan Ratchford and her curatorial team at the Dumfries Museum, with much input from local curler and former Scottish Champion Graeme Adam.

Many items to go on show have worldwide significance. For example, the Scottish Curling Trust has loaned an Olympic Gold Medal, one of two owned by the Trust which were awarded to Willie and Laurence Jackson, the skip and lead of the team which represented Great Britain in the first Olympic curling competition in Chamonix in 1924. This will be the first time in recent years that such a medal has been on public display!

The evolution of the curling stone will be well illustrated, and on display will be the Stirling Stone, the best known example of a loofie, the earliest type of curling stone, on loan from the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum.

These are just two examples. I won't spoil the surprise by describing any other exhibits. Suffice to say that you won't be disappointed!

My own interest in the history of curling was ignited when I visited a display in the Perth Museum during the 1975 Silver Broom. Hopefully, Curling Connections will similarly enthuse visitors. The exhibition will run for a while after the events at the Ice Bowl are over - until June 15. Don't miss it!

Aside from my memories, I only have two images from that 1975 exhibition. This one has been rescued from a 35mm slide of the advert outside the Perth Museum.

And this is the only 35mm slide I have of the exhibition itself. I wonder if any more images from 1975 have survived anywhere?

The catalogue of the 1975 exhibition survives in this A4 booklet which has a ten page 'Introduction', written by David B Smith, an elegant summary of the sport's history.

Photos from the Bob Cowan archive

As well as local items, some of the rarest artifacts from the history of the sport have been brought together for this exhibition. Display boards and descriptive labels tell the story.

More modern memorabilia, on loan from some of the region's 'local heroes', is also on show.

My pick as the star attraction? Seeing the first Olympic Winter Games gold medal awarded for curling in 1924, alongside the gold medal won by Rhona Martin in 2002!

There's spectacular video footage to watch. And any children will find there are lots of activities for them to do too.

Almost the whole team was in action yesterday to set out the final display showing the 'evolution' of the curling stone, with a variety of examples to ponder over. The workers were: (Back L-R) Kayleigh (museum intern), J-P (museum attendant). Front: Siobhan (museum curator), Joanne (museums officer) and Catherine (museums officer).

And here's how this area of the exhibition looked with just hours to go to the (soft) opening today. World Curling Federation President Kate Caithness will be the guest of honour at the official opening on April 22. The exhibition will run until June 15.

Photos and text by Bob Cowan

The Curling Connections exhibition in Dumfries Museum has been a great success. But last night the museum was broken into, and a number of items stolen. These include the two Olympic Gold Medals that were the star attractions of the exhibition, from the 1924 and 2002 curling competitions.

The former was on loan from the Scottish Curling Trust, and the latter from Rhona Martin. The local police are keen to trace three individuals seen running away from the museum around 10pm last night. They were last seen on Rotchell Road heading in the direction of Park Farm. If you were in the area around this time or saw any suspicious activity, please call the police on 101 or anonymously through Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Needless to say here, the loss of Rhona's medal is heartbreaking. Click here to see what it looks like.

David Smith writes:

Until the arrival in Scotland of indoor ice rinks, the ice of which was made by machine and did not depend on the climate, there was a continuous search for ways to provide more curling. Perhaps the most successful was John Cairnie's 'artificial rink', in which a thin skin of ice was sprayed onto an impermeable surface. Since a thin skin of ice could be created almost whenever there was a bit of frost this invention proved very popular. It has been calculated that a well-situated Cairnie rink could quadruple the number of curling days. Cairnie, the first President of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, had sought to popularise his invention by the publication in Glasgow in 1833 of his book, An Essay on Curling and Artificial Pond Making.

The laird of Morrishill beside Beith, Alexander Shedden, who was a keen sportsman, created a Cairnie-type rink which was used for curling in the winter. That did not give him as much curling as he wished and so he devised a game which was to be played on this rink outdoors but did not need even a degree of frost. The rink he used was composed of a bottoming of large stones, which were covered with a stratum of rotten-rock, covered by a layer of engine ashes and freestone sand well mixed. This was meticulously levelled.

The location of this artificial curling rink can just be seen in this screenshot from the Ordnance Survey, 25 inch to the mile map, first edition, published in 1858, as found on the National Library of Scotland maps website here.

The rink was situated between the walled garden and the boundary wall of the estate, as identified in this article.

The 'stones' which Shedden designed for outdoor use on this rink were spherical in form, the body of wood covered all over with a skin of copper, or tin. It was necessary to balance each ball and this was done by floating them in water. Balls which had a core made from lignum vitae had to be balanced by floating them on mercury for that wood is heavier than water. After various attempts at throwing these balls it was found that a spring handle answered the purpose admirably.

We are fortunate that Chance has preserved for us an example of one of these balls in the Dick Institute at Kilmarnock. Click here to see a photo.
Also preserved are one or two copies of a publication, entitled Report of Dinner and Presentation to Alexander Shedden, Esq. of Morrishill, 17th February 1846. This was printed by John Smith and Son, Beith.

The dedication of the Report is to Mrs Shedden. The spring-loaded handle is shown in an illustration of one of the 'balls'. What the precise purpose of the brush was is not mentioned.

The Report narrates in considerable detail the names of persons attending the dinner, and the reasons for holding the dinner and making the presentation. It began: “A number of Curlers, and others in the parish of Beith, anxious to convey some expression of their esteem and regard towards Alexander Shedden, Esq, of Morrishill, for the uniform kindness he has ever displayed in inviting them to join with him in the various games he has so liberally promoted within his grounds, foremost among which is 'Scotland's Ain Game'; and also for the talent and ingenuity he has exhibited, not only in inventing, but bringing to perfection an entirely new game, which being played on an artificial rink prepared for the purpose, can at all times be practised, and is an excellent substitute for curling."

Alexander Shedden was entertained at a public dinner, on Tuesday, February 17, 1846, on which occasion he was presented with an elegant silver jug.

“The party was purposely of a select nature, but upwards of 60 gentlemen, comprising the most influential and keenest curlers of the district, sat down to an excellent dinner provided by Mr Kennedy of the Saracen's Head Inn, Beith. Hugh Brown, Esq, of Broadstone in the chair...”

The Report's description of the new game meant that, “The announcement of its success, a success practically proved, and warmly acknowledged by the keenest and most experienced curlers of the district, would not be unacceptable to their curling and sporting friends at a distance, who had neither the opportunity of seeing the rink, or hearing its construction and double use fully explained.”

At the dinner and after the presentation to him of a silver jug, appropriately engraved, and bearing on its lid a statuette of a man – presumably the laird himself – preparing to throw one of his new 'stones', Alexander Shedden, in the course of replying to the toast in his honour, displayed one of his balls, 10 inches in diameter and weighing 23 lbs and explained, “My idea always was, that a substitute game might be got up, and my argument in favour of this was, that if one could produce a thoroughly level surface, a perfectly round Ball, and equally balanced, it would be as unnatural for a ball so adjusted to depart from a direct line, when once set in motion on a perfect level, as for a stone to move out of a perpendicular dropped from a height...”

An illustrated page from the publication, a celebration of the Roaring Game and its conviviality. At the bottom is depicted the natural pond at Morrishill.

After many toasts, as was the custom at that period, the proceedings were concluded by a speech from Mr William Paton, the oldest curler present. He said, “With regard to our worthy Guest's improvement; he has brought forward a set of balls, majestic in their appearance, and if a stranger was standing fifteen yards distant he would wonder how the balls were to be propelled. (Great cheering.) But, by the ingenuity displayed by our worthy Guest, there's a handle springs up from the bowels of the ball as if by magic, and when the ball is delivered, it recedes back into the ball by the same magic, just as it had come forth; (cheers) and, gentlemen, at the word of command, 'Hocus pocus, fly, Jack, and begone!', it rolls away majestically to its destination. (Great cheering.)

That manly game of Balls is a substitute for curling, and has been brought forward by Alexander Shedden, Esq, and in my opinion, as a curler for the last fifty years, it comes as nigh curling as anything that has been produced...”

By David B Smith

Illustrations are courtesy of the author 

by Bob Cowan

This week has seen Charles Lees's painting of the Grand Match at Linlithgow Loch, beautifully restored, go on display in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh as part of the 'Playing for Scotland: The Making of Modern Sport' exhibit. It is on loan to the Gallery from the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

To celebrate this, here is the story of the actual Grand Match depicted in the painting!

The first Grand Match of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club had been successfully held in January 1847 at Penicuik Pond, after three mild winters. A second such contest was eagerly anticipated, and arrangements were put in place when the Grand Match committee met in Edinburgh, on Thursday, December 30, 1847. The meeting resolved that the Grand Match should be played again between curlers from the North and the South sides of the River Forth, as it had been earlier that year at Penicuik.

It was decided that the second Grand Match should take place at Linlithgow on Friday, January 28, 1848, but should the state of the weather afford ice at an earlier date, then it should go ahead then.

On January 19, the Grand Match committee met again, and forty-three rinks from the North were ballotted to play against the same number from the south, although no fewer than 171 rinks had applied from South of the Forth. The extra 128 rinks were ballotted to compete against each other to take part in a President v President-Elect match. Not all the ballotted rinks mustered on the day though, as will be noted below.

The match took place on Tuesday, January 25, 1848. It was a beautiful day, a blue sky, and cold. The ice had a slight covering of dry snow. The conditions could not have been better.

The Annual of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club for 1848-49 contains the results of all the matches and also the following 'Report of the Grand Match'. In the days before cameras and smart phones, it fell to the anonymous writer of this report to paint a picture with words of the happenings of the day!

"The 25th of January 1848—a day which will long be pre-eminently memorable in the Curling Annals of Scotland—having been fixed upon by the Royal Caledonian Curling Club as that on which the Grand Match was to 'come off' between the Curlers of the North and those of the South side of the Forth; and Queen Mary's loch, a beautiful expanse of water in the immediate vicinity of the ancient burgh of Linlithgow, having been selected as the spot on which this great contest for the palm of superiority was to take place, a vast national gathering of the heroes of the Broom—certainly by far the most numerous that ever congregated—assembled at this place. As regards its geographical and central position, its easiness of access from all parts of the country, by means of railway connection; its ample and extensive capability to accommodate the large assemblage of Curlers and spectators who might be expected to turn out on the occasion, a spot more appropriate or better calculated for the purpose, could scarcely have been chosen.

At an early hour, and during the whole course of the forenoon, the Members of the Royal Club, which now numbers in its ranks upwards of 8000, might be observed pouring from all parts of the country, far and near, into the quiet town of Linlithgow; every train, both from east and west, as it arrived at the station, disgorging some hundred combatants, fully accoutred with stones and besoms. Numerous vehicles, besides, of all descriptions, loaded with passengers, came rattling in through every inlet to the town. From the position which we occupied, we had a very good opportunity of surveying the different groups as they arrived. First comes a band of strapping lads from the hills, with their plaids and broad blue bonnets, the very beau ideal of Scottish peasantry. Next comes a party who, from the ruddy glow of their cheeks, and their big top coats, are evidently south country farmers, come up to fight for the honour of the Loudons. Here again is a lot of spruce-looking brethren of the rink, evidently from Edinburgh; they are the Merchiston Club, who have the honour to claim Prince Albert as a Member. Another train arrives with a fresh batch of Curlers, among whom we distinguish the Noble President-Elect of the Royal Club, the Duke of Athole, at the head of his four Rinks of Highlanders; and never did one of his illustrious ancestors fight more stoutly for name and for fame than did His Grace that day for the honour of the North.

The muster being now completed, the Skip of each Rink, after receiving his note of instructions, marched off with his troops to the scene of action, while every eye beamed with joyous anticipation of a 'roaring game'. Thirty-five Rinks from the North, and the like number from the South, constituted the Grand Match between the North and South sides of the Forth. The South side having mustered in greater numbers than the North, were formed into another great Match, consisting of fifty Rinks a side, and designated, respectively, the President's and President-Elect's party. Numerous other rinks were made up by amateurs not belonging to the Royal Club. The whole field amounted in all to about 130 rinks (consisting of 8 players each) so that altogether, including the immense concourse of spectators who had assembled, some from great distances, to witness this interesting trial of skill in our favourite national game, there could not be fewer, at one time, than 6000 persons scattered over the surface of this magnificent sheet of ice.

His capricious Majesty, John Frost, by putting his veto for some years past upon public meetings on the slippery board, though convened for the most legitimate and constitutional purposes, and by having treated the prayers, petitions, and complaints of his liege subjects, with the most sovereign contempt, seems to have been meditating an abridgement of the liberties and privileges of his devoted people. Such an attempt was not to be tolerated; discontent, insubordination, and desertion, were beginning to manifest themselves among his troops; and having received from certain quarters a premonitory hint of what was likely to be (and has eventually been) the result of similar proceedings elsewhere, the sulky Arch Monarch prudently altered his intention in time, came down from his high throne, and at last abandoned his project altogether. Accordingly to make amends for previous neglect, His Majesty on this occasion came out in great strength, appeared in person 'with all his frozen honours thick upon him', and took up a position on the bartizans of the old Palace of Linlithgow from which he might enjoy a full and uninterrupted view of the 'doughty deeds of arms' performed by his valorous combatants on the glassy plain below.

In the whole annals of curling, there never was a more propitious day, keener ice, or a more interesting locality for the exercise of this truly national game. The mist which hung over the loch in the morning had given way to the glowing effects of a glorious sun who was shining now in all his splendour, and whose golden rays refracted prismatically in the glittering and pearly fringework with which every tree, and every shrub, and every plant was luxuriantly adorned, in honour, no doubt, of the presence of the hoary monarch, shed a lustre and a brilliancy all around that was truly enchanting. The loch, which was covered slightly with a sprinkling of dry powdery snow, to the depth of an inch or so, and just sufficient to enable the players to keep their feet with safety, and to give occasional employment to the 'sooping department', had been laid out and prepared for upwards of 150 rinks, and every precaution had been taken to provide against the possibility of accident from the ice giving way, by the distribution of life buoys, ropes, and ladders, in every direction, under the charge of a detachment of police, specially engaged for the occasion.

The report of a gun, the appointed signal for preparation, was now heard. All was bustle and motion; the individuals composing the collected multitude, hurrying to and fro, over the broad expanse, to occupy the various positions allotted to them. Order, however, soon took place, and the immense mass gradually resolved itself into separate distinct groups formed of the different rinks, who, with their Skips at their head, awaited with intense anxiety the word of command to 'set to'. At this moment, the scene, to a spectator, was animating and exciting beyond description. Presently another discharge from the ruined battlements of the ancient palace gave the expected signal, and in the same instant, the deep roll of a hundred ponderous stones sent booming up the Rinks, mingling and dying away in the distance, with the receding echoes of the discharged artillery, produced an effect truly grand. Then on every side might be heard:

That music dear to a Curler's ear,
And enjoyed by him alone,
The merry clink of the Curling rink
And the boom of the roaring stone.

Taking a survey through the different Rinks you might here and there observe the titled peer and the hardy peasant,—the belted knight and the honest ploughman,—the Reverend Doctor and the Minister's Man, all promiscuously engaged in the friendly contest; title and station giving no other distinction than that derived from superiority of skill in the game, —for it is a marked and peculiar characteristic of this manly sport, that its votaries meet on the Ice upon a footing of the most perfect equality and fraternity that the reddest and most ardent republican could desire. Passing along you might hear some honest broad-bonnetted Skip bawling out ' Canny noo, Sir John, play canny and drap a gaird on this stane; the sorro's in the man! he's raging like a lion."

Another sharp-eyed carle cries out, "Come up here, my Lord, between Tam Gladstane and the Cornel, there's plenty of room to draw a shot ;—I like you man, I like ye, she's bonny, bonny—weel dune, my Lord, ye're the shot—ye 're a perfect pat-lid man."" Be up amang them here, Doctor," shouts a decent looking elder to his worthy pastor, "and outwick Jamie Tamson,—tut, tut, ye want heels, whar's your pith the day, Doctor; I see ye're keepin' your pouther for the poopit on Sunday." And thus the joke and the play went on, all, however, in the most perfect good humour, the banners under which they fought being inscribed "Rivalry and Good Fellowship."

Around every Rink were gathered a group of interested spectators who had assembled from various quarters, and who certainly were not without their enjoyment in the sport, from watching the various turns of the game, and the unconstrained excitement of the players. The Rink which had the greatest number of bystanders was that which included the Duke of Athole, the President-Elect; and such is the genial influence of this manly game on the feelings of all engaged in it, that it would have been impossible, from his Grace's manner, to have known that he stood 'a peer of the proudest title' amongst the honest and independent but humble sons of industry and toil with whom he was mated.

The contest raged with 'various success' over every portion of the ample loch from 12 till half past 3 o'clock, when another discharge of musketry announced the close of the game. The different Skips, according to previous orders, immediately repaired to head quarters to report the result of the game in their respective Rinks, and after a little time spent in summing up, the Secretary reported, amid the shouts and huzzas of the victorious party, that the Curlers of the South had beaten their opponents, in the aggregate, by a majority of 106. We beg to refer, for the particular result of each Rink, in both Matches, to the tables given in pages 18, and 19 of the present Annual. *

In concluding these remarks, we must not omit to mention, that the arrangements made by the Secretary and the Local Committee, were most judicious. Nor must we forget the kindness of Provost Dawson, in allowing the free use'of his fields bordering upon the Loch, and of Mr Scott in giving up for several days the use of the water of the Loch for his mills,—nor the attention shown by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company, in placing Special Trains at the disposal of the Dinner party in the Evening.

Finally, the kind and courteous manner of the noble President-Elect throughout the whole day, were such as to endear him to every keen Curler."

The Grand Match results are below. Was your club involved? In 1848, some 170 clubs were member of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

In each case the team from the North is written first. The name is that of the skip, with the club name in brackets. In some cases only the surname is listed. In one case, that of Largo, the name of the skip is not recorded.

1. John Drysdale (Dollar and Devonvale) 14, John Piper (Penicuik) 20
2. James Sharp (Dunblane)15, Allan Pollok junior (Mearns) 20
3. Daniel Macrobie (Bridge of Allan) 18, - Cowan (Corstorphine) 22
4. - McLaren (Ardoch) 11, Wm Dalgleish (Avondale) 22
5. J W Williamson (Kinross) 7, - Wilson (Buchan) 29
6. John Milne (Dunkeld) 21, Jas Guild (Cumbernauld) 26
7. Matthew Barr (Bridge of Allan) 26, D Hoggan (Banknock) 22
8. Alex Cowie (Torry) 22, Henry Shanks (Bathgate) 19
9. Robert Paterson (Doune) 16, Wm Spence (Northwoodside) 15
10. Rev J Gilchrist (Abdie) 19, M Hay (Banknock) 28
11. David Anderson (Balyarrow) 28, Andrew Wright (Corstorphine) 15
12. John Braynion (Ardoch) 25, Robert R Glen (Linlithgow) 9
13. Thomas Saunders (Alloa Prince of Wales) 13, J W Gray (Merchiston) 24
14. Hugh McLaren (Alloa) 16, A Prentice (Cambusnethan) 30
15. Andrew Walker (Cupar) 29, Archd Thomson (Buchan) 13
16. Wm Thomson (Coldoch) 11, Wm Morrison (Grahamston) 17
17. D C Macdonald (Dunkeld) 8. T Stodart (Newlands Water) 25
18. The Duke of Athole (Dunkeld) 17, John Coubrough (Airth and Bruce Castle) 17
19. -- -- (Largo) 10,  P Gemmil (Rowallan) 28
20. Robert Douglas (Dunblane) 30, John Ferguson (Hamilton) 13
21. Alex Monteath (Ardoch) 19, Dr Wilson (Whitehill) 12
22. James Forbes (Doune) 27, James Smith (Avondale) 13
23. Thomas Law (Inverkeithing St Margts) 19, H Caldwell (Paisley Union) 19
24. John Reid (Dunblane) 29, Jas Mossman (Uphall) 17
25. George Todd (Kinross) 19, R Drennan (Linlithgow) 21
26. John Robertson (Dollar and Devon Vale) 5, G Glendinning (Buchan) 30
27. A Mitchell (Alloa) 12, John Fleming (Bathgate) 26
28. D Monro (Bridge of Allan), 16, Thos Cuningham (Currie) 23
29. Wm Stirling (Dunblane) 24, John Gibb (Linlithgow Junior) 21
30. J Wright (Bridge of Allan) 17,  Bailie Landels (Linlithgow) 20
31. John Dewar (Doune) 19,  Archd Hunter (Buchan) 19
32. John Balfour (Doune) 18, Wm. Boak (Merchiston) 17
33. J Duncan (Tullibody) 10, Dr Simpson (Kirknewton) 25
34. Wm Robertson (Dunkeld) 15, Thos Lawson (Newlands Water) 27
35. A Seton Stewart (Alloa) 21, B Scott (Linlithgow Junior) 28.

Total for the North 626, for the South, 732. Majority for the South, 106.

The club with the highest score on the winning side was Buchan, and that on the losing side was Dunblane.

The results of the further fifty games in the President v President-Elect match can be found in the Annual for 1848-49.

Top photo © Bob Cowan

by Bob Cowan

It is often glibly stated that Scotsmen took the sport of curling wherever they went, especially in North America. It is rarely possible to document exactly when curling was first played in any given area. Here's an unusual story of how serving Royal Navy personnel played the sport in the Pacific Northwest in 1847.

On November 26, 1845, a Royal Navy warship crossed the bar of the Columbia River to sail upstream. No doubt the ship's captain, Thomas Baillie, progressed cautiously, as his charge, HMS Modeste, had damaged her rudder on a previous visit to the Columbia in the summer of 1844. This time all went well, and by November 29, 1845, HMS Modeste was safely anchored 100 miles upstream, off Fort Vancouver, an outpost of the British Hudson's Bay Company.

HMS Modeste, a sail powered sloop of some 560 tons, had been built at Woolwich Dockyard and launched in October 1839. She carried eighteen guns and a crew of a hundred and twenty. She saw service in the Anglo-Chinese war (the first Opium War) in 1842, see here. Then in 1843 she was commissioned to the British fleet in the Pacific. In 1844 her captain was ordered to visit and report on British settlements on the Northwest Pacific Coast, which were mostly posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. Although a small vessel by Royal Navy standards, nimble enough to be capable of navigating the Columbia, she would have been a significant military presence at Fort Vancouver.

Some background is needed here. In the early nineteenth century, the modern-day US states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and most of the Canadian Province of British Columbia, were part of what Britain called the Columbia District, and what the United States called the Oregon Country. In 1818 the United States and Great Britain had agreed to a 'joint occupation' of the area in which citizens of both countries could settle.

The return visit of the Modeste to Fort Vancouver in November 1845 was a consequence of the election of James K Polk as the eleventh President of the USA earlier that year. Polk now claimed the entire Oregon area for the United States, from California northward to the southern boundary of what is now Alaska. Britain and the USA were on a path towards war. Positioning HMS Modeste at Fort Vancouver was an early example of what might be called 'gunboat diplomacy', and was a warning that Britain was not prepared to give up the area without a fight. The reality was that neither country was prepared to go to war over the disputed territory. A compromise was eventually agreed, with Britain accepting the 49th parallel as the northern US border, excluding the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The deal to resolve the 'Oregon Question' was sealed on June 15, 1846.

Although the danger of war had receded, HMS Modeste remained anchored off Fort Vancouver for a second winter, that of 1846-47. One reason for this was that it took time for Captain Baillie to be reassured on the details of the political agreement, in the days when information had to be conveyed across the miles by sea. That winter was a severe one, and the Modeste was icebound on the Columbia. One has to imagine that keeping morale high among the crew was difficult. Captain Baillie and the ship's officers and crew needed to stay on cordial terms with the Americans, as well as those associated with Fort Vancouver. It is recorded that the British crew put on plays several times; there was a ball, and horse races. The log also records that curling matches were played!

John Gibson, the ship's surgeon, sent a letter to the Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, back in Edinburgh, describing the curling activities. This letter was printed in the Royal Club Annual for 1847-48, and can be studied today. Gibson writes:

HER MAJESTY'S SHIP MODESTE:
Columbia River, 27th January 1847
Dear Sir,
Knowing the interest which you take in the prosperity of our manly game, at home, as well as in foreign lands, I beg to acquaint you, that in this the Far West, upon the noble river Columbia, a friendly Match was yesterday played (the first in Oregon) between a party of the Officers of HMS Modeste, now frozen in, and of the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company's Officers.

Gibson goes on to explain that one of the ship's marines had helped to procure suitable stones with which to play: "To procure stones of a proper shape, (Brother Masons being as yet scarce in this corner of the Globe,) was a difficulty at first; but by the aid of a Marine of the Ship, a kind of Cowan, I was enabled to muster a few, which although minus the polish of surface and handle, yet they led well up to the tee."

(A 'Cowan' in this context probably meant someone who had worked in stone, such as a drystane dyker.)

Gibson describes a series of three games. On one side there was the team representing HMS Modeste (Captain Baillie, Lieutenant Coode, Gibson himself, and Mr Grant, a midshipman) against the Hudson's Bay Company team (Dr Barclay, and Messrs Lowe, Sangster, and Grahame). Each game was the first to 21 points. The Modeste team won the first match, the Hudson's Bay team won the second. The Modeste side won the third. The rink was 32 yards in length, and Gibson describes the matches with these words, "The ice was roughish, with occasional snow showers, but the sooping being well attended to, I assure you that shots were taken by some of the parties, sons of 'keen keen curlers' at home, that would be no disgrace to our crack clubs."

The games were considered a great success. Afterwards, the participants dined on board the ship with traditional curlers' fare of 'beef and greens' and plans were laid for the formation of a curling club.

Can we say anything of those who took part? Captain Thomas Baillie, who was from Earlston in the Scottish Borders, continued to serve with distinction in the Royal Navy, reaching the rank of Vice-admiral. Lieutenant Coode is likely to be Trevenen Penrose Coode (see here), who went on to have his own commands. On the Hudson's Bay Company roster, the Dr Barclay would have been Dr Forbes Barclay, originally from the Shetlands, and there is much about him here.

There would seem to be little doubt that John Gibson, Modeste's surgeon, was the curler with the most experience of the group, and probably the instigator of the curling activities. He joined the Doune Curling Club in 1835, some years before he was appointed to the Modeste in 1843. On his return from the Pacific Northwest he served as the surgeon on the convict ship Scindian in 1850, and again on the Minden in 1851, both three month voyages to Western Australia. The National Archives has a document commending his 'judicious treatment of convicts'.

He married, and set up home in Doune, in Kilmadock Parish. His enthusiasm for curling continued, and by 1849, he was already one of the two representative members of Doune Curling Club to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. Sadly he died suddenly on October 10, 1858, aged just 52, leaving behind his wife, and three young children, twins aged two, and a year-old son. The Stirling Observer of October 14, 1858, in recording his sudden death, describes his as 'one of our most active and intelligent townsmen'.

Perhaps you know more about Gibson, and the others who are named in the 1847 games: Midshipman Grant, and the Hudson's Bay Company officers, Lowe, Sangster and Grahame? Let me know if you do.

A report of the curling matches appeared in the Oregon Spectator, the very first newspaper published west of the Missouri. It had been going for just a year in Oregon City, see here.    

The report of the curling matches was on page 3 of the issue of February 4, 1847. Thanks to the website of the University of Oregon Libraries, this newspaper can be read in its entirety (see here), and the curling piece extracted, above.

This newspaper clipping confirms the detail in John Gibson's letter to the Royal Club (other than suggesting that the rink was just 22 yards in length, rather than 32 yards). It does contain an additional piece of information about the proposed 'Vancouver Curling Club'. As with many curling clubs back in Scotland, it was to have a patron, P S Ogden. This has to have been Peter Skene Ogden, the most senior representative of the Hudson's Bay Company in the area. His life story is a fascinating read, see here. For example, Ogden, Utah, is named after him, and was the venue for the curling competition in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games!

In 1847, according to the Oregon Spectator, Ogden says, "... and we doubt not, but in the winters to come, the 'roaring game' will have a place in the pastimes and diversions of Oregon."

Ogden's prediction did not come about immediately. HMS Modeste left Fort Vancouver on May 3, 1847, to return to Britain. The importance of Fort Vancouver to the Hudson's Bay Company diminished as more and more Americans settled in the area, and on June 14, 1860, the Company abandoned Fort Vancouver and moved its operations north of the border. It is not recorded if any of the American settlers took part in curling matches in January 1847. The fact that the 'Vancouver Curling Club' did not survive, suggests perhaps that they did not. (That club name should not be confused with British Columbia's 'Vancouver Curling Club' which dates from 1912. Fort Vancouver, Vancouver Island and the city of Vancouver are all named after Captain George Vancouver, who charted much of the Pacific Northwest at the end of the eighteenth century, see here.)  

Curling did not return to the Oregon area until 1962, see here, and Ogden's predictions DID eventually come true. Last year (2013), as curling's popularity continued to increase throughout the USA, the Evergreen Curling Club opened a dedicated three-sheet facility in Beaverton, Oregon. The club is well aware of the matches in 1847 and on June 12, 2007, staged a reconstruction of the event!

This photo, from the Evergreen CC's website, was composited by Gary Stasiuk, and there are more photos here. We wish the club continued success!

Note. The following documents and websites have been useful in understanding the political context of the positioning of HMS Modeste in 1847: 'The Royal Navy and the Oregon Crisis, 1844-1846' by Barry M Gough, which can be downloaded from here; and 'HMS Modeste on the Pacific Coast 1843-47: Log and Letters', an article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, No 4 (December, 1960), pp 408-436, found here. The history of Fort Vancouver is here.

Thanks to Eileen Kamm for assistance. 

ADDED LATER (13/8/2014)

Bruce Irvin, the President of the Evergreen Curling Club, has been in touch with the following additional information.

There's a photo of Dr Forbes Barclay, with one of his grave and headstone, here.

According to History of Oregon, 1886-1888, by Hubert Howe Bancroft , p 576, Midshipman Grant's full name was Charles Grant.

Apparently T P Coode was something of an artist as shown here and here.

Lowe was Thomas Lowe, clerk at Ft. Vancouver who served as chief accountant at the post during most of the 1840s. He kept an extensive diary that has been used for restoration efforts by the National Park Service. (Bruce wonders whether any of his early 1847 journal entries mention curling.) Lowe was a Scot, originally from Coupar Angus, Perthshire. A short biography of him is contained within the biography of Francis Ermatinger. When the California gold rush started in 1849, Thomas Lowe deserted the Hudson's Bay Company for California to form Allan, Lowe and Company, commission merchants in San Francisco.

The brief biography of Mr Lowe also mentions another of the curlers, James Allan Grahame, born in Edinburgh in 1825. The two were brothers-in-law having both married daughters of retired Hudson's Bay Company officer James Birnie. Grahame was also a clerk at Ft. Vancouver, became a silent investor in Allan, Lowe and Co., rose quickly through the ranks at Ft. Vancouver, became head and chief trader until the fort was handed over to the Americans in 1860. He continued his career with the Hudson's Bay Company in British Columbia.

Sangster probably was James Sangster the clerk in charge of pilotage at Ft. Vancouver. Apparently Sangster was from Port Glasgow. He later moved to Victoria, BC where he was pilot, harbormaster, collector of customs and Victoria's first postmaster. He committed suicide in 1858. Sangster Elementary school in Victoria, BC is named for him.

Many thanks to Bruce for this information.

The article by Gregory Shine, 'A Gallant Little Schooner: The US Schooner Shark and the Oregon Country, 1846', see here, provides background from an American perspective, and also provides detail about the difficulties on navigating the Columbia River at that time.

by David B Smith

On a recent surf of the internet seeking items of curling interest I was quite surprised to see in a Swiss auction house's catalogue a modest sculptured relief of a modern curling scene. The relief was said to be made of 'Englischzement' and it was signed by the sculptor Rolf Brem.

It did not take long to ascertain that the piece had been modelled by one of Switzerland's most famous, popular, and prolific sculptors, whose long life had centred on the Swiss city of Lucerne. He had died in 2014.

There was lots of material by him on display on the net but as far as my researches went this was the only depiction of curling.

I therefore resorted to my old and faithful friend, Max Triet, who was until his retirement director of the Swiss Sport Museum in Basel, and with whom I had collaborated in putting on several historical exhibitions in Switzerland, including one in the old Olympic Museum in Lausanne, and one in the new.

He was very excited by my news and told me more about Brem than I really needed to know. He thought the 'guide price' was low for the artist but he said he would go to Zofingen, where the auction house was. When I protested about the cost he explained that he would use the Swiss equivalent of the Scottish bus pass and travel free by train.

On his return his excitement was unabated, but he was still of the view that the guide price was low and that I should not expect to buy it for even the top estimate. We discussed the price and he said he would attend the sale, and bid on my behalf if that seemed prudent.

He did, and I was very pleased at the result.

A few days later my pleasure was complete with the arrival in a very large but light box of the latest addition to my collection. When it emerged from its copious bubblewrapping I was exceedingly pleased – the more so because it also pleased Hazel, my wife.

The relief is 41cm by 15cm. I have been informed that 'English cement' (Englischzement) is a mixture of plaster, ground white marble and cement. The look of it is very like stone.

The composition is of a curler – right – who has thrown his stone - left – to where his colleagues and the house are shown.

It is always difficult to decide where a new work of art should be shown. We managed to place it in the dining room below a painting of an elderly man whose place above the mantelpiece was sacrosanct. The children would never forgive us for moving 'the Old Man'.

Images © David B Smith.

Book reviewed by David B Smith

One of the most remarkable - and least publicised - 'by-products' of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer was the publication by Historic Scotland of the book, Scotland's Sporting Buildings, by Nick Haynes.

The purpose of the book is 'to celebrate the divers range and outstanding quality of historic purpose-built sporting architecture that exists across the country'.

The book is not long at 108 pages, but it is crammed full of illustrations in colour and black and white. Its format is a general introduction on Scotland's sporting history followed by shorter sections on each of a list of sporting activities beginning with archery and ending with tennis, racquets, and squash.

The place of Scotland's two 'national games', golf and curling, is emphasised in the introduction, and each has its own chapter following.

The emphasis is on the buildings which accompanied each sport. Naturally there is more continuous history of, say, golf and bowling clubhouses, than there is of curling houses because the former sports have maintained their buildings whereas curling has more or less departed from its ancient outdoor ponds and rinks and become an indoor sport played in ice rinks.
Nonetheless, the rear cover of the book sports a fine picture in colour of the 'Thomson Tower' in Duddingston, as the ancient curling house designed in 1826 by Edinburgh's foremost architect of the day, William H Playfair, is nowadays improperly called. It is worth telling the story of the tower, which one looks for in vain in the book. It is that the Duddingston Curling Society whose favourite ice was that of Duddingston Loch, which bordered the manse glebe and garden, got the permission of the minister to have their curling house erected on the glebe. The minister, the Rev. John Thomson, who was a keen, keen landscape painter as well as a curler, gave permission on condition that the upper storey of the two storey curling house should be referred to always as 'Edinburgh' and used as the minister's studio, so that his family and staff could tell inquirers that the minister was 'in Edinburgh', when in fact he was indulging his artistic passion.


From the curler's point of view perhaps of most interest are the colour photographs of the curling houses of Abdie CC, Aberlady CC at Gosford, Banchory CC, Easter Balmoral CC (the Queen's), and Partick CC, all of them listed by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and therefore likely to remain as icons of the earlier days of curling's history.

Aberlady Curling Club House, Gosford House.

Banchory Curling Club Hut, Burnett Park, Banchory.

Easter Balmoral Curling Pavilion.

Partick Curling Club Pavilion, Victoria Park, Glasgow. There are more photos of this here.

The book may be purchased online, see here, and at all good booksellers.

The images of the curling houses are © Nick Haynes