Glory days

“THE EVENT DREW SUCH CROWDS IT HAD TO MOVE TO CRYSTAL PALACE, HOME OF THE FA CUP FINAL”

Words: Mark Riddaway

Right now, the eyes of the sporting world are on North America, the temporary centre of the footballing firmament. Through the first two weeks of July, some of that attention will be drawn towards Wimbledon. Strange though it sounds, there have been moments when the spotlight of the sports media has fallen similarly brightly on Borough Market.  

In its 20^th-century wholesale heyday, Borough was filled with dozens of men from the area’s sports-obsessed, working-class communities who spent their mornings heaving fruit and veg around the market and their evenings lighting up the football pitches and boxing clubs of Bermondsey. And from time to time, their prowess turned into a matter of national fascination.

1. The basket balancers

Technologies evolve, but the nature of attention is eternal: extreme physical feats will always guarantee eyeballs, particularly when they appear slightly deranged. And so it was with the Borough Market Sports, the annual sports day for market employees and south London greengrocers. Run by the Borough Market trust to raise money for local charities, this started in 1906 at Champion Hill stadium in Dulwich – and proved an overnight sensation.

Back then, wholesalers used bushel baskets – capacious (c.40 litres), sturdy, stackable – to transport their wares. Rather than stick to regular athletics, the event organisers had the genius idea of using these heavy containers and their half-bushel equivalents as sports equipment. The headline race saw each competitor cover 300 yards with 14 massive baskets balanced on his head, an exploit requiring impressive strength and stability.

From 1907, similarly entertaining collisions of costermongering and cardio were added to the schedule, including barrow races (pushing a porter’s barrow) and handicap races (carrying a sandbag). Press and public lapped it up.

By 1910 the event was drawing such large crowds it had to move to Crystal Palace, a vast arena that regularly hosted the FA Cup final. In 1913, one paper reported that “Olympic talent would seem to be going begging”, such was the level of competition. Particularly impressive was Mr C Stockey, a market porter and father of seven – an old man “on the verge of 40” – who ran half a mile in 3 minutes, 22 seconds with a 50kg sack of sand on his back. His secret? For an entire week, he had “denied himself the luxury of tobacco”.

The new sports developed a life of their own, with the top runners facing off in one-on-one races for large purses. In August 1908, Harry Strangwich of Borough Market was challenged by Jack Hutching of Islington to a basket race of “one to two miles … for as much money as he can find”. The following year, a similar call was put out. “There is much talk about basket carrying in Walworth since the sports in connection with Borough Market,” it read. James Sainsbury, a Covent Garden porter, was putting himself up to take on “any man … nobody barred” in a one-mile race for a wager of £5 (£750 in today’s money). Training sessions out on the London streets drew gawping crowds. Basket racing had become a bona fide sport. Borough was its Wembley. 

2. The battle of the markets

In 1911, a Brixton-based music hall star, George French – known for being equally talented as both a sportsman and a pantomime dame – decided that what Londoners needed to know was whether men who stack sacks of potatoes are as strong as men who carry cows. That autumn at Crystal Palace, in the full glare of publicity, the battle for the George French shield – paid for and presented by the man himself – would be fought between the porters of London’s four major markets: Smithfield, Billingsgate, Covent Garden and Borough. Tug of war. Teams of eight. Two semis and a final. Best of three.

After smashing the pathetic fruiterers of Covent Garden in the semis, the Borough team hit a wall. In its preview, The Daily Mirror had predicted that “eight men accustomed to tossing half-bullocks about” would surely prevail. And so it came to pass. Smithfield, “much the heavier team” according to one report, won easily. The meat market men triumphed again in 1912; same two finalists, same outcome. And it was déjà vu all over again in 1913, with Borough doing what, until very recently, we could all laugh at Arsenal for. Second again, olé, olé. Then all those fit young men went off to fight in the First World War, a bout from which none came out a winner, and the George French challenge faded into history.

3. The celebrity endorsement

In 1930, after a long hiatus, Borough’s charity sports day was revived by William Blackman, secretary of the market trustees. A couple of months before the scheduled date, Blackman had the inspired idea of writing to the Hollywood offices of Charlie Chaplin, the world’s biggest celebrity, requesting a financial contribution. His chutzpah paid off in spades.

Every year, Chaplin, who had grown up close to the Market, sent £20 (£1,500 today) and a personal telegram, the annual arrival of which guaranteed national headlines. In 1930, the star’s donation was used to buy a grandfather clock as a prize – because what else would a young market porter wish for? But from 1931 onwards, until another world war severed the sequence, the “Charlie Chaplin prize” consisted of “a suit of clothes, an overcoat and a gold watch”.    

The revived sports days, attended by massive crowds, involved a wide array of events, from conventional sprints and relays to a basket race on bikes, an “egg and spoon race (Ladies)” and “tilting at the bucket”, a surreal joust involving men in wheelbarrows wielding lances at water-filled buckets.

The Chaplin prize was presented to the winner of the day’s only pedestrian basket race – a 440-yard lap of the track, carrying 12 half-bushel baskets – and it was this headline event that generated most of the Pathé news clips, photo spreads and insightful post-match analysis. “Fat men are better at this game than thin men,” the Daily Herald’s expert pundit sagely observed.

Read more about the 1930s Borough Sports revival

4. The boss

As a youth in the 1940s, Ted Hardy played for Arsenal, Leyton Orient and Blackpool, but a torn ligament ended his professional football career before it had really begun. Still a teenager, he took his gammy knee to Borough Market, where he found work as a porter. He was still there 20 years later when, in 1968, he enjoyed a moment in the limelight as manager of Dagenham FC, an amateur team punching far above its weight.  

Earlier that same season, his spirited side came within a whisker of being the first non-professionals to win the London Challenge Cup, losing the final to a strong West Ham team featuring Trevor Brooking. Driven on by another porter – fullback George Dudley, who humped meat at Smithfield (and we know how strong those boys were) – Dagenham then fought their way into the second round of the FA Cup, where they managed an impressive 1-1 draw with Reading.

Journalists descended on Borough. Ahead of the replay, the draw was made for the third round. The Daily Mirror splashed with a picture of Hardy sitting in the market cafe after his shift, listening to the draw on the radio. “Blimey, it’s Manchester City!” read the caption. Characterised by the Daily Express as a “chirpy cockney who loves a good talk”, Hardy was up at 3.30am on the day of the replay, shifting fruit at Borough. Sadly, they lost 1-0 – unluckily by all accounts – and the fairy story of a visit to Maine Road went up in smoke. But to Borough’s proud porters, who set aside their Millwall loyalties to cheer him on, Ted Hardy would always be winner.