Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club
Written by; Tao MacLeod
In the early part of the twentieth century there was a football club based in the north of England that blazed a trail for female players and athletes. The Dick, Kerr Ladies was formed out to the yards of a factory in the Lancashire town of Preston. In the course of the First World War women entered the workplace, when men went to the frontline. It was during this period that a group of ladies came together to form a team that would go on to tour North America, play in front of thousands of fans, raise money for charity and dominate women’s football for years to come, before being banned by the misogynistic footballing authorities.
The team took their name from Dick, Kerr & Co., a organisation that engineered locomotives and trams before moving into munitions during the First World War of 1914 to 1918. The ladies would get together during their breaks and kick a ball about. After a while they became more organised and started playing some informal games. Alfred Frankland was a member of the office staff at the factory and became the coach. Under his guise the team’s skills developed quickly. They started playing more organised fixtures against other women’s sides, factory teams and local clubs. The proceeds from these matches were given to charities such as those that helped, injured and former servicemen.
Women’s football predated the Dick, Kerr Ladies team, with reports of games being played across the British Isles as far back as the late 19th century. Some of the early games were organised in local parks. However, these matches were often greeted with scorn and sexism, from onlookers and the media. With the outbreak of war, though, men’s league football was suspended, leaving a void for the spectators in search of sporting entertainment. As interest grew the Dick, Kerr Ladies started to play in proper sports grounds and stadia. On Christmas Day 1917, the women played Arundel Coulthard Factory at Preston North End’s Deepdale Stadium, running out four nil winners. 10,000 people came to watch, with the profits from the gate receipts having provided much needed support for a local hospital, and showed the potential for what was to come in later years.
The ladies played all over the country, arranging games, in neighbouring counties and further north in Scotland, as well as the English Capital City of London. There were even opponents found to play against from overseas. In 1920 the Lancastrians traveled to Paris to play a team of composed from different French clubs. 12,000 people came to watch this match, which ended in a one all draw. A tour of France, saw the Dick, Kerr Ladies play in Paris, Roubaix, Le Havre and Rouen, with three games drawn and the fourth and final match being won by the English women. These games drew such positive publicity back home that their 1920 Boxing Day charity match against St. Helen’s Ladies drew a record breaking large crowd. Held at Everton FC’s Goodison Park, in Liverpool, 53,000 spectators paid to attend, with the proceeds going towards the Unemployed Ex Servicemen’s Distress Fund. The crowd number was a world record for a women’s club match, that stood for several decades afterwards.
The games against the French wasn’t the only example of foreign playing experience. In 1922, the Dick, Kerr Ladies embarked on a two month tour of North America. The plan was to arrive in Quebec, before heading south to play some games in the USA, with the intention of travelling through New Jersey, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, Akron (in Ohio), St. Louis, Missouri, Chicago and Pittsburgh. After this, they were meant to head north, back to Canada for games in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. However, having arrived in Canada the national governing body, the Dominion Football Association, barred the English tourists from playing against any of their clubs, due to their disregard for the women’s game. This seemingly showed a change of heart from the Canadians, as fixtures had apparently been arranged before the team’s departure by ferry several days earlier. Despite this disappointment, they did play nine teams from across the United States, pushing some of their male opponents in a competitive manner. Due to the lack of women’s footy in North America, at the time, the players of the opposing teams were all men. However, the ladies managed to win four, draw two and only lose three games, whilst playing in front of an estimated 75,000 spectators.
There were several good players, who turned out for Dick, Kerr Ladies, who became known, at the time, for their playing abilities. The club’s first captain was called Alice Cook (née Kell). Born in 1898, she was just 19 when she played in the 1917 Christmas Day charity match at Deepdale Stadium. A munitions worker at the factory, she was a member of the early squads and turned out as a defender. She continued to play until 1928. Alice Woods was a midfielder who started out at St. Helens, before moving across to the more successful side. She was a part of the Dick, Kerr side that toured France and played in the 1920 Boxing Day match at Goodison Park. The club’s most famous player, however, was a young lady called Lily Parr.
Born in 1905, Lily Parr was born into a large family, whose father worked as a labourer at a local glass factory. As the fourth child amongst seven siblings, she grew up playing sports with her brothers. Like many of the other players at the club, her working class background gave her a physical advantage over some footballers from the other women’s sides. The opportunities to perform manual labour allowed Lily and her team mates to develop physical strength and power that wasn’t afforded to other women of the era. However, Parr seemed to be particularly exceptional, in that she was reported to be able to hit shot harder than some of her male counterparts. She played as an attacking player, predominately a winger, however she was too young to be a part of the original team. In 1920, she was, reportedly, recommended to the coach Alfred Frankland, by her former St. Helens teammate Alice Woods, who had earlier made the switch. She promptly found success that helped to define both her and her new side in their respective footballing journeys. Apparently, Parr scored 43 goals in her first season, whilst only 14 years old. She continued to play for several more years, until her retirement in 1951 totalling a massive 967 goals for both St. Helens and Dick, Kerr, in a 32 year playing career. She was also openly homosexual when such things were not on equal terms with heterosexual relationships in the UK. She has since become an icon within the community, even having a grassroots LGBTQ+ trophy being named in her honour. In 2002, Lily Parr was the only woman to be inducted into the inaugural English Football Hall of Fame, at the National Football Museum.
Life for female footballers and the players of the Dick, Kerr Ladies wasn’t all plain sailing. Overt sexism was rife in British society at the time. In 1921 the English Football Association banned the use of all grounds owned, or used by member league clubs. Many reasons were made for this misogyny including the playing of football being unsuitable for women based upon medical grounds. Doctors were even trotted out with dodgy opinions about what females are capable of achieving. Another excuse was based around the upper and middle class ethos of amateurism. This was an ideal that sport should be played for the love of the game. To be good at footy was something that was meant to be innate and therefore to be paid to play and to strive towards improvement constituted the work of a tradesman. Those administering football during the late 19th and early 20th centuries primarily came from the elite private school system, whilst those who played started to hail more and more from working class areas.
As those in charge started to grapple with the nuances of their ideology in the face of practical realities, they lashed out in ways that were, in fact, classist. The Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club was a factory team, based in the industrial north of England. To play the games the players had to take time off from work, thus losing out on a half, or full day’s pay, more so for the foreign tours. They didn’t own companies, shares, or property that could earn them money whilst they expanded their horizons. If the fixtures drew in some cash they had a right to be recompensed. When money from the charitable funds from the gate receipts (which they had helped to earn) were directed towards those doing the charitable work, as a method of recompense and to cover expenses, the FA cried foul. Even though the team earned more for charity than they took and instead of celebrating that these women were earning money from sport, before they were even allowed to vote, the powers that were banned women from playing football in all official stadia.
This set back the development of women’s football for decades. Although, Dick, Kerr were the foremost ladies team in the country, with their consistent performances and victories, they weren’t the only side playing at the time. More and more females were taking up football, but this growth had been stunted before reaching its full potential. Rather than being able to play in front of large crowds these clubs were forced to arrange their fixtures in local parks and small recreational grounds. This should act as a perspective to those who suggest that the current women’s game isn’t as tactically, or technically advanced as the men’s game. It should be noted that the game has come a long way since the FA finally brought women’s football back ‘in-house’ in July 1971, 50 years after the initial ban. The national governing body then didn’t start funding the women’s game properly for several more decades. Dick, Kerr Ladies and the team’s star players such as Lily Parr, Alice Woods and Alice Cook should be celebrated as legends of the game. We now can enjoy such tournaments as the FA Women’s Super League, the World Cup and Olympic Games tournament. Women’s footy is now starting to become a part of the mainstream. In 2022 the English Lionesses won the European Championships for the first time. This cultural shift could have been so much easier, due to the efforts of those who played more than a hundred years ago.
