Our club is one of the oldest in the West Midlands being formed and continuously running since 1957. The oldest club is of course Birmingham fencing club which was formed in 1925, but had its roots in the Birmingham Athletic Club’s (BAC) military section which was created in 1871. This military section was originally set up by a certain Corporal Thomas Hill.
Thomas Hill (1845-1925) was born in Oldbury and was the regimental Fencing Instructor for the Kings 1st Dragoon Guards. After leaving the army in 1871, he returned to the West Midlands to take up a trade as a tool maker and blacksmith and also joined the newly created BAC and formed a military defensive section composed of eight men teaching them foil, broadsword, singlestick, bayonet quarterstaff and even reconstructed rapier and dagger. He would be involved in the running of the military section right into his 70’s.
It was Corporal Hill and his section, composed of J.G Jennes, Fred Bromage, Richard Sapcote, R.W. Blood, F. Clues, Bertie Gomm and W.O. Williams who toured the West Midlands demonstrating a series of martial exercises, which included activities such as quarterstaff, broadsword, lance drills, singlestick and foil fencing. The section first demonstrated fencing in Sutton Coldfield in May 1882. Fencing drills were taught and people participated in fencing Sutton Coldfield in the 1890’s, although they would not resemble any activity taught that SCFC members would recognise today. These exercises were taught by Sergeant-Instructor R. Taylor.
Colour-Sergeant R. Taylor (1841-1907) served in the North Gloucestershire 28th Infantry of Foot and saw action in the Indian Mutiny having suffered a sabre wound when assaulting the fort on the island of Beyt on the 6th October 1859. He was promoted to Colour-Sergeant in 1862 and received the new regimental colours from Queen Victoria herself in 1866. He saw further service in Malta, Gibraltar, China and Ireland before returning to England. In 1880 he was made a drill instructor for volunteer battalions and assigned to the 1st volunteer battalion of the South Staffordshire regiment. F Company, otherwise known as the Sutton Coldfield Volunteer Rifles was formed of 100 men in 1881. Sergeant Taylor was assigned to Sutton Rifles to be their drill instructor and started drilling the men in as their musketry instructor in 1882.
Known to be a strict disciplinarian but also affable and agreeable, he stayed with the company until 1891 when he retired from the Army due to his age. He also taught broadsword drills to the company officers and also surprisingly to children. Between 1887 and 1890 Sutton Park was the scene of a number of summer fetes which included maypole dances, gymnastic exercises, music and sword drills. Sergeant Taylor instructed 70 boys across Sutton Coldfield private schools in sword drills for three consecutive years.
Unfortunately its hard to say what form of exercise the ‘sword drill’ was. Its unlikely it involved any kind of blade on blade fencing, and more likely to be based on the 1875 Infantry sword drill, probably with singlesticks which was a wooden stick with a leather guard, used in the military as an economical way of teaching sabre skills. Teaching singlesticks in paired drills was not uncommon in West Midland schools and continued to be taught within boys associations such as the Boy Scouts well into the early 20th century, sometimes with or without sticks as seen below in 1925.
After he retired he continued to help drill boys in schools, and was for a time a ticket collector at the Sutton Coldfield Institute where frequent public lectures were held. He became a billiard marker for the Trinity Working men’s club and then took over as its caretaker. He died aged 66 in 1907 and was given a military funeral in Sutton Coldfield.
After his death there are are no further recorded fencing activities in Sutton Coldfield. The Birmingham Athletic Institute (BAI – A separate athletics entity from the BAC) would advertise in the Sutton Coldfield News in 1900 a number of activities which included Boxing, Wrestling, Broadsword Exercises and fencing but we don’t know if any Suttonian’s took up theses activities.
The BAC would revisit the Sutton Coldfield during World War One at the Command Depot, as part of a series of athletic demonstrations around the region to improve the spirits of wounded and convalescent soldiers. The fencing demonstrations made were foils and singlesticks and were led by lieutenant (later Colonel) Ronald Edgar Cole, who would later go on to found the Birmingham Fencing Club in 1925 as a separate entity from the BAC
Following these demonstration’s a long time would pass before fencing was seen again in the Royal Town. Nearby Erdington would develop an archery and fencing club for boys and girls at the St Marks Youth Centre in 1950 in led by Birmingham fencing club member and British archery champion Mr Anthony Wood, but Sutton Coldfield would have to wait until 1957 before its first proper fencing club was formed. In the following months I will briefly post about the history of the club since its beginnings in 1957.