Walking the plank

Something in the recent past pointed me in the direction of reference 1, an elderly essay in the ‘Journal of Sport History’, mainly concerning some lady athletes, mainly in the UK and the US, who went in for exhibitions of marathon walking, sometimes going on for days and nights. An occupation sometimes called walking the plank as it was sometimes conducted on more or less circular boardwalks laid for the purpose in places of entertainment, possibly music halls. Places where alcoholic drink was served and where men leered at women.

With my copy of this essay coming to me from JSTOR, the not-for-profit online library of reference 6. I have not been able to find out what the letters stand for.

While the essay is primarily about the athletic side of the rising women’s movement of the later nineteenth century, we also get to know something of two lady athletes in particular, Bertha Von Hillern and Madame Ada Anderson. The former was German and reasonably prim and proper, while the latter was from London and a touch more flamboyant. Both had to tread a fine line between promoting sensible exercise for ladies and making exhibitions of themselves, to hold off Sunday Observance and other people who thought that such exhibitions were the work of harlots or of the devil.

I was a bit disappointed that most of the article was sociological rather than sporting and I did not find out a great deal about how the sport was conducted. Did the ladies really walk non-stop for days on end or were periods of sleep allowed? What were the standards of foot-care? Wikipedia does rather better at reference 4. From where I associated to stories from the world of work of the difficulties people of faith have today when they suddenly decide to walk on pilgrimage from London to Canterbury. The spirit might be willing, but the flesh – the feet, ankles and knees – is certainly weak.

Nevertheless, it was a curious business. A fad which was strong, particularly in the US, for about twenty years, say 1870-1890. A fad which must have been fed by a huge, mainly urban, desire for entertainment. Entertainment at a time when there were no films and no television and when entertainment had to be taken to the people in the flesh rather than over the wires. Perhaps people who had only recently been uprooted from settled, rural life and who were at a bit of a loose end at the weekends. I recall reading something of the sort driving the growth of Freemasonry at roughly the same time. Perhaps also the craze up north in this country for growing giant leeks, relics of which are still to be found in the public houses there.

I also got to know about the smock races (reference 5 and print above) which came before and was reminded of the marathon dancing (references 2 and 3) which came after. Both of which appear to have been rather tawdry spectator sports.

And then, much more recently, we have the case of lady runners from Muslim countries, with Shaulis reporting that ‘according to Sports Illustrated, Algerian world champion 1,500-meter runner Hassiba Boulmerka was symbolized both as a hero and an antihero in her country’, it not being practical to be a world class lady runner while dressing in the way of the Prophet.

I also remembered, rather vaguely, my father talking of country wives in the fens skating for geese at Christmas, say in the early part of the 20th century, or something or that sort. Possibly his mother.

PS: one of this morning’s advertisements from Google suggests that I should go in for buying casks of whisky. As a speculation that is, rather than for consumption.

References

Reference 1: Pedestriennes: Newsworthy but Controversial Women in Sporting Entertainment - Dahn Shaulis – 1999.

Reference 2: https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/08/29/the-depraved-dance-marathons-of-the-1930s-you-didnt-know-about/.

Reference 3: https://www.historylink.org/File/5534. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Anderson. Much more helpful on the practical arrangements. With these marathons being a test of both strength and the ability to stand prolonged sleep deprivation.

Reference 5: https://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2008/10/smock-races.html. 

Reference 6: https://www.jstor.org/.