Sport, Class, and Place: Gerald Howard-Smith and Early Twentieth- Century Wolverhampton

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the gentleman amateur, the middle class, and the working class in early twentieth-century England. It does so by examining the ways in which one man, upper middle-class solicitor Gerald Howard-Smith, was able to engage in, and benefit from, elite sociability in a quintessentially working-class town such as Wolverhampton. The conclusion is that, primarily because of his sporting interests, it was possible, and probably easy, for him to isolate himself from most traces of the town in which he worked, near to which he lived, and on the fringes of which he spent so much of his leisure time.