The Origins of Basketball in Britain

The introduction and development of basketball in Britain from 1892-1936 was presided over by the Young Men’s Christian Association.  In this respect there was no single person to promote the game but rather an association of parochial ‘YMs’ that were enthusiastic about a game that was preferred by many young men to the monotonous ritual of gymnastic drills.

Basketball was introduced into England through three quite separate and distinct avenues which have resulted in the game being marginalised to the present day. The earliest recorded account of ‘basket-ball’ or ‘hand-ball’ as it was sometimes called, is to be found in the Birkenhead YMCA members magazine for January, 1893. The President of the Birkenhead branch of the YMCA, Mr C J Proctor had been on a business trip to Canada in 1892 and having seen the game played, introduced basketball to the Birkenhead YMCA members on his return. Thus, Birkenhead YMCA became the focal point for the games development certainly until 1911 when the game was being widely played in YMCAs throughout the country. The game had also gained popularity with female physical education teachers who were looking for an alternative to drill exercises for their young female charges.

  

In contrast to the developments initiated by the Birkenhead YMCA, basketball found its way into teacher training courses in physical education for females in 1893. Madame Bergman-Osterberg was a pioneer of physical education in England; when she returned from the World Congress on Physical Education in Chicago, USA in July 1893 she introduced the game to students at her Hampstead Teacher Training College in London (became Dartford College in 1895). By 1901 Madame Osterberg’s students had produced a version of the game that found favour amongst English females, the game being called ’net-ball’. The game met the need for an outdoor winter game that would occupy a small space and was suitable for girls. The transformation of basket-ball into net-ball was a process that served to limit the games development for both genders: boys did not want to play a game for girls and girls played the game with ‘different’ rules of play which tended to suit the social sensibilities surrounding female participation in sports at that time.

The third avenue for the games entry into England occurred in June, 1894 at the YMCA Jubilee Convention when a delegate from France, American-born Melvin B Rideout introduced the game to fellow delegates on Margate beach. As a consequence basketball was then taken to all parts of Great Britain where it was introduced into local YMCAs. This they did with varying degrees of success as the German Gymnastics Movement dominated the use of YMCA gymnasia until 1919.

In 1941, the inventor of Basketball James Naismith visited England and passed comment on the state of the game in England thus:

England has shown little enthusiasm for the game … The acceptance of basketball for girls of that country stamped the game as one that was played by women, and the Englishmen therefore refused to play it.