I don't normally do this but.....
The following is some of my writing for "Manchester A Football History". This has taken years to research and, as I mentioned earlier, there's still more to come. Obviously, this is part of my copyrighted book and shouldn't be directly quoted without permission etc. I'm publishing it here because I recognise the great interest in this and also hope it answers a lot of questions. Clearly, it's not really written for a messageboard and I'd really appreciate everyone to respect the usual copyright laws etc. If you like what you read please take a look at my book "Manchester A Football History" as this really is only a fraction of the City content in there. Hopefully, it also shows the level I try to go to with all my research/books.
Hope you enjoy it.....
Manchester City’s roots have been inaccurately recorded for decades, with some claiming Manchester City FC, as we know it today, has little if anything to do with the clubs that preceded it. Even the club itself has often ignored its early history and focussed on its formation as City in 1894 as the most important date. By doing this the Blues have regularly played down the importance of the club’s early history, and of the club’s first successes. Even those that have documented the club’s birth as a church team in 1880 have regularly incorrectly quoted the names of the founders. The book that has come closest to accurately recording the facts of City’s birth was the 2006 version of Manchester City The Complete Record. That book documented for the first time that the initial formation owes everything to a young woman called Anna Connell. Anna, the daughter of Arthur Connell the rector of St. Mark’s Church, was determined to ensure some of the ills of 19th century Manchester were eradicated. West Gorton, like so many districts of the World’s first industrial city, had developed at an alarming rate. Factories and terraced housing, in many cases of a poor quality, were swallowing up almost every area of greenery surrounding the city, and areas such as Ardwick, Beswick, Bradford, Clayton, and Gorton, grew from relatively small villages to become densely populated districts of the city within twenty years.
The church opened in 1865 with Arthur Connell as the first rector. It is now believed that his daughter Anna was born on 24th December 1851 in Clones, present day County Monaghan in Eire, and as she grew both Anna and her younger sister Georgina spent considerable time and effort working with the local community. In 1871 she worked as a Governess for a while at Coppull, near Preston, but by the late 1870s she was back in West Gorton. Around that time Georgina helped to create an organisation for the women of the parish, but Anna worried about the male population of West Gorton. Gang warfare, known as ‘scuttling’ by locals, regularly seemed to break out between the different communities of east Manchester with windows broken, people injured and many residents were afraid of going out. These were exceptionally harsh times and although gang warfare and the like has since become much more significant, many of the issues of today were prevalent in the 1870s. Anna’s view was that she could change that and to some extent she did.
Poverty, domestic violence, alcoholism, racial tension and gang warfare affected most Gortonians and, to be frank, most residents of the working class districts of the city. By 1877 the population of the Gorton area was reported as being in excess of 30,000 and conditions were extremely poor. Scuttling was reported in the local newspaper often and in May 1879 the Gorton Reporter revealed that over 500 had taken part in one battle alone. The districts of Gorton, Openshaw, and Bradford were exposed to regular outbreaks. One report from this period appeared in the Reporter as if it was a match report under the title 'Openshaw V. Gorton'. The following extract describes the scenes close to Clowes St:
"According to one of the witnesses the bother commenced soon after breakfast and was on more or less all day. When Constable Wilson arrived on the scene, a little before Seven O'clock in the evening, he found gathered on one side of Gorton Brook some lads and lasses from Openshaw and on the opposite side of the brook a similar gang of lads and lasses belonging to Gorton. They were engaged in the delightful occupation of storming each other."
"Some of them, said the officer, had their belts off, but they were not sufficiently close to be able to use them. This is bad, but the state of terrorism excited by the scuttlers' conduct is worse. In explanation of the fact that rowdyism was allowed to go on for so long a time, it was stated that the people living in the vicinity were afraid to inform the police, as they know that the result would be that their windows would be broken."
"This will give to those people who happily live in districts where scuttling is unknown some idea of what it means."
Perhaps Anna wanted to provide activities to release aggression in a more productive manner than the Scuttles, or maybe she simply felt that organised male activities would help develop the community identity. The Scuttles had developed the wrong community identity.
It wasn’t just the violence that worried locals. In January 1879 Arthur Connell set up a soup kitchen and a relief fund for the local poor. On its first day of operation 300 people queued for soup, bread and other food, and within a week over 1500 gallons of soup, 1000 loaves of bread and ten tons of coal had been distributed from the church.
Anna was convinced other activities could discourage the men of the parish from taking part in the drinking and violent activities, while some form of organisation could be set up to improve the racial tension. The local population of east Manchester was made up of several nationalities including Italians, Irish, German, and Polish. There was a significant Jewish population in the city and, although it’s not often considered, most English Mancunians were themselves immigrants to the city from other parts of the Country. These had arrived from all over the nation looking for work on the railways – as the history of Newton Heath demonstrates - and in the engineering works and cotton mills of the city. There was a real mix of accents, backgrounds, and interests. The two significant figures of authority were usually the local church, or the local employer. Anna Connell recognised this and decided to work with figures from the local ironworks to help improve the lives of Gortonians.
Alongside William Beastow and Thomas Goodbehere, two highly respected figures from Brooks’ Union Ironworks (later known as Brooks & Doxey’s), she set about creating a series of men’s meetings. Beastow had previously tried – and failed – with a similar venture, but Anna was convinced that the concept could work. Her aim was to encourage the local men to meet regularly and discuss the major issues, both spiritual and social, of the day. Unfortunately the men were a little reticent with only a handful turning up at the first few Tuesday night sessions. She persevered – walking from house to house trying to persuade the men to attend - and gradually after several attempts the working men's meetings became popular, especially when the committee decided to form a cricket team and a lending library.
It was William Beastow's idea to form the cricket side and it is believed it was also his idea to create a football team. Due to his position at the local ironworks and at the church, he was in a good position to encourage young men to participate in the new venture. During the development of the football side he managed to recruit respectable, hardworking players, including his two sons, Charles and John, but it is significant that many of the young men involved were exactly the type of people Anna had tried to engage with.
The football team became known as St. Mark’s (West Gorton) and the first known game took place on 13th November 1880 against the Baptist Church from Macclesfield, however this may not be the very first game played by the Club – I am convinced there would have been an earlier game but so far extensive research has failed to find earlier references. It does seem likely that Beastow, Connell, Goodbehere, and the other key figures would have sought as many fixtures as possible.
The first known game was staged between sides containing twelve players each. This may have been to accommodate all those who arrived with the Macclesfield side, or it may have simply been agreed some time in advance. It doesn’t really matter as it was the game itself that was important. It does show however that football as we know it today could not have been imagined back in 1880.
The first match report appeared in the Gorton Reporter, and a review of that newspaper’s sports coverage makes it clear that the attempts by William Beastow and the others to stage the first game must have been great as none of the other match reports detailed under the heading ‘Football’ refer to Association Football. All the other ‘football’ matches reported are rugby football games featuring local sides – Reddish, Failsworth Rangers, Newton Heath Rovers, Newton Heath, Blackley, Sandfield Hornets, and St. Mary’s (Failsworth). Football was very much the minor sport and that rugby was the area’s key winter activity. Beastow must have been a man ahead of his time because a match report for Gorton (a later incarnation of St. Mark’s) against Gorton Villa in November 1885 mentioned the arrival of Association Football in Gorton: “There was a pretty fair attendance of spectators, notwithstanding the unpropitious weather. The way in which Association games draw the Manchester public is wonderful, considering that it is not much more than three years since the dribbling code of football was introduced into this district.â€
Two weeks after the first reported game in 1880, it was recorded that St. Mark’s had achieved a draw in Harpurhey against a side called Arcadians, and then on 19th March 1881 St. Mark’s achieved their first known victory as they defeated Stalybridge Clarence 3-1. Clarence, however only had 8 fit players and three men from the crowd made up their eleven man side.
The St. Mark’s Church side developed rapidly that season. Captain Anstruther, the Archdeacon of Manchester, told the men of Anna Connell’s Men’s Meetings: “it must be a great source of encouragement to see how the movement had been taken up, and the highest credit was due to Miss Connell for the way in which it had been carried out. No man could have done it – it required a woman’s tact and skill to make it so successful.â€
The following season, 1881-2, saw the side face Newton Heath (present day Manchester United) for the first time, and play their home matches at the Kirkmanshulme Cricket Ground south of Hyde Road.
Newspaper reports from the period seemed uncertain as to what the team name was. Sometimes the side were known as St. Mark’s (West Gorton) sometimes as West Gorton (St. Mark’s). This has led to some suggesting that the church removed its patronage, or that there were concerns over the number of non-parishioners in the side. This seems unlikely as all the key figures within the Club remained significant figures at St. Mark’s Church itself. It seems more likely that the person submitting the reports to the local newspaper was simply inconsistent. Certainly indications are that the church were delighted with the direction of the Club during its first couple of seasons.
In April 1882 a report on the opening of the cricket season highlighted that St. Mark’s had a good series of fixtures and it also mentioned some of the players, most notably Chew, Kitchen, and Hopkinson. Clearly both cricket and football co-existed for some time at St. Mark’s though it’s not clear where the cricket team played, or how long it survived.
Later that year the side were asked to move on by Kirkmanshulme cricket team and the footballers took up residence at a park off Queen’s Road further east along Hyde Road. Often described as ‘Donkey Common’ this was more of a football pitch than any of the Club’s previous grounds, however moving there did cause a number of issues for the Club. The words St. Mark’s were finally dropped completely from the side’s name. Also, reports suggest there was a merger with another Gorton side which, ultimately, led to friction.
By 1884 the old St. Mark’s men decided to break away from the merged side and reform under the name of Gorton Association Football Club. Edward Kitchen, Walter Chew, Lawrence Furniss, and William Beastow – all influential figures at St. Mark’s Church – seemed to be the key players. Beastow was Chairman while Furniss found the Club’s new ground – at Pink Bank Lane (south of the Belle Vue Pleasure Gardens). Another St. Mark’s churchwarden James Moores became Club President. It seems the experience at ‘Donkey Common’ had forced the men to challenge what they wanted from the Club. Did they want a side simply to provide an outlet for physical activity each week, or did they want to create an ambitious club run on professional lines. It seems the answer was the latter.
The East Manchester area still contained many of the problems Anna Connell had wanted to tackle in the 1870s, and so there was still a great deal of activity performed both within the St. Mark’s community and the football team. 1884-85 was an important season as one of the more headline grabbing Scuttling cases was reported in the Manchester press. It was recorded that on 7th December 1884 gangs from Gorton and Openshaw fought with sticks, broken bottles and stones in Gorton itself. In January 1885 five of the young men were charged with rioting – three were aged 16, one 17 and one 18 - but from a football perspective it’s important to record that two of the ringleaders were sixteen year olds from the site of City’s initial birth (Clowes Street and Thomas Street). The area desperately needed the club to continue its development and provide a positive distraction for the youths. Clearly, they couldn’t all play for the side, but they could support the club or help in other ways.
With the desire to develop strengthened, Gorton took on a more professional approach and they applied to join the newly formed Manchester County FA. In addition, one of the original founders, William Beastow, presented Gorton with its first known formal kit. Various shirts had been worn prior to 1884 – some reports talk of scarlet and black stripes although this does not appear to have been West Gorton’s formal colours – but 1884 was the year when a proper kit was identified. The new colours were black with a white ‘Maltese style’ cross.
