The Dick Kerr's Ladies

by Barbara Jacobs

In 1917 a new sport was born in the munitions factories of Britain. Within two years women's football had become one of the most popular spectator sports, and the most famous team was the Dick, Kerr's Ladies, of Preston, Lancashire. The factory girls became media stars, touring France, and then America, where they found themselves teamed against men. Abruptly, in 1921, the Football Association banned the sport, fearing that it detracted from the popularity of the men's game: the prohibition lasted for half a century. Dick, Kerr's Ladies survived, but its glory years were 1917-22, when its star players were Alice Woods, a calm but competitive world-class sprinter and miner's daughter from the politically active mining community of St Helens, and Lily Parr, who was taller than most men by the time she was 14. Barbara Jacobs, who shares their birthplace, St Helens, tells the story of the two women and the team, and what lay behind the runaway success of their sport - the closure of men's League games in the Great War, the charitable nature of the game, the need to provide sporting activities for munitionettes. She reveals too, the political and social issues that led to its shameful and carefully orchestrated demise. Intertwining the history of the tough Lancashire women with a vibrant commentary on their daily lives, Jacobs introduces us to the Lancastrian love of a 'reet good do', Blackpool and brass bands, pickled eggs and tripe and onions, and much more in a charming yet clear-eyed book that captures the true spirit of dissidence, hope, and laughter.

Genres: Football

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 29, 2004

Reviews

[Jennifer Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a fabulous read. An engaging history of this important team and a thought-provoking take on the FA's attempt to destroy women's football forever.

[Tom Ives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting underreported age of football, bit schmultzy on the northern nostalgia

[Gali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book almost immediately after reading a quote from it in an article about the FA and their treatment of the Doncaster Belles, and while it does cover the FA's relationship with women's football it's only a small part of the book.


[4.5 stars for the content, 2.5 stars for the writing style]

The first portion of the book largely talks about the context that led to the birth of the Dick, Kerr's Ladies team and how they rose to stardom. This context is written in a simple manner that's very far from what can usually be found in history books, I saw this as both as a good and a bad thing. It was a good thing because it made everything easy to understand, it made it easy to see how Alice and Lily, the two women from St Helens, evolved. It was not such a great thing because it clearly left quite a few facts out and often jumped from one idea to another before going back, it left me, quite an avid reader of much drier history books, hanging quite a few times.

The second part of the book, dealing with negative attention that women's football received when the war was over, felt rushed and I feel that the women who played football at the time deserved more attention from the author. This part of the book is the one that's most interesting in today's context of the FA trying to generate as much money as possible with the new women's top league. Although the book was written before the FA revealed its plans, the author's analysis of how a group of people who do not understand the purpose behind women's football tried to regulate it to fit the standards of men's football (and its for-profits-and-not-community-good money making mindset) still holds. The first portion of the book presenting the different ways that women's football helped the community lead better lives was very helpful when reading the second part and the author's proposal of the reasons behind the FA's ban of women's football.

As said previously, this is not a history book. Alas it is also not a book that only tells the story of Alice Woods and Lily Parr, the Dick, Kerr's Ladies and women's football - the author makes too many personal remarks for that. During the presentation of St Helens, I accepted the remarks as the author showing that she knew the area (she grew up there) and could relate to the story. When the story started developing those remarks became more and more annoying because they didn't bring anything and felt like nothing more than ways for the author to point out, over and over again, that her being from the area somehow gave her extra understanding over the reader. Sometimes those remarks also felt out of place because they talked about St Helens in the 50s and 60s when the action itself was set in the 20s!

Overall though, this book was a very easy read and an easy way for me to learn more about the birth of organised women's football in the UK.