English Chess Forum

While browsing through SOLO (the Bodleian online archive) for chess reference, I came across the attached from a women's magazine. Quite interesting - a women's chess club(team?) in 1900 that drew with Cambridge University and seems to have been very active playing forty matches.

The article also contains the interesting fact that in a 90 board match between Sussex and Kent around 10% of the players on each side were female. This probably hasn't changed in 120 years....

Rhoda A. Bowles (who I had not heard of before) was a celebrated chess player, organiser and writer.

See here for more (a fairly extensive account of her impressive chess activities):

https://www.chess.com/article/view/little-mother

See particularly the account of how she learnt to play chess.

https://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/hn-p ... oda-bowles

The above link is to an entertaining account of a Living Chess game organised by Bowles and her husband.

I think the London Ladies Chess Club is quite well known and Rhoda Bowles was one of its leading lights. Her column in Womanhood magazine ran for several years and organised quite a few correspondence tournaments in which both women and men competed.

There is a fair bit about all this in my book Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland 1824-1987, and for more on the history of women's chess there is a whole chapter in my doctoral thesis which is available online.

I'm not claiming any originality here, but this certainly came as a revelation to me, and so I presume other would be interested.

I've been reading the other articles she wrote in the column just now, and they are amazing - a wonderful read. Lots of truly fascinating stuff - including a long account of the first British championship, including the social events, results of the Lightning tournament and the Problem Solving competition, arbiting disputes (if you touch the rook first you can't castle...), the origin of the trophies, verbal comments made by the players at the time of the adjournment....it's really fascinating stuff and reads in such a jolly and interesting fashion.

I don't know how well known this stuff is - none of it appears in Britbase's account of the first British championship for example.

Was Miss Hooke related to George Archer Hooke?

I was impressed that the Ladies club managed to play a match a week approximately, which would require some organization. They played some Civil Service teams in 1898.

This is a rather uplifting thread. Of the most notable -isms which have shaped academic history in the past century and more, I thought chess history was, per se, left untouched by them.

She's a hugely readable writer - here's some more fun stuff about organising chess tournaments, in relation to London 1899.

Any relation to the current day is left to the discretion of the reader.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:05 pm

Was Miss Hooke related to George Archer Hooke?

I was impressed that the Ladies club managed to play a match a week approximately, which would require some organization. They played some Civil Service teams in 1898.

Yes, they were sister and brother.

See, for example, https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/19 ... iewer.html.

I hear she wasn't so good at golf, though.

She is very readable. Another entertaining set of stories here:

https://chessbookchats.blogspot.com/201 ... -1916.html

Some Chess Celebrities whom I have met:

To speak of every chess celebrity whom I have met would occupy far more space than can be spared here, for there is scarcely a living chessplayer of note in the world whom I have not met or corresponded with.

Do we have a female perspective on what our beloved Geoffrey Diggle once wrote about?

Here is her on the 1904 British:

I am sorry for uploading so many images, but I find the account fascinating and suspect it may not be easily available to others who may be interested as it may be behind the library's academic login.

Where to start...

The description of running a tournament certainly rang bells for me, especially the bit about people saying what should have been done, when they never actually do anything in the first place. (Still that applied to normal work as well.) All her writing was really entertaining and you feel you know the players. Nowadays, you just get told that 17.f6 was a TN.

Thanks to Richard for confirmation of the Hooke relationship. and the golf comment. I only hope she was paired with A Slice at some stage. I have read that page before for the Tapsell info so should have remembered.

Edith Tapsell (so far the only female winner of the Redhill club championship) later married RP Michell. Leonard P Rees was very active in keeping Redhill Chess Club going, and in his spare time he was a founder member of BCF and FIDE, and proposed having the first Olympiad! Captain Beaumont was another Surrey player and his name is commemorated in the name of the Division 2 Trophy, which is nowhere near as splendid as the Ladies Trophy he presented.

Thanks all for providing that historic material.

Richard James wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:44 pm

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:05 pm

Was Miss Hooke related to George Archer Hooke?

I was impressed that the Ladies club managed to play a match a week approximately, which would require some organization. They played some Civil Service teams in 1898.

Yes, they were sister and brother.

See, for example, https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/19 ... iewer.html.

I hear she wasn't so good at golf, though.

Yes they were sister and brother, Some good finds by John there, but he has a typo: her BCM obit was actually February 1943.

Alice Elizabeth Hooke was a clerk in the 1891 census which shows she had a sister Harriet four years younger.
I also have a note that Miss Hooke (Alice presumably) is mentioned in the Lady's Pictorial chess column (conducted by the second Mrs Gunsberg), 13 July 1895 p70 but I don't have a copy of the article. It mentioned George Hooke of the North London Club was her
EDIT: brother.
(Silly typo, I wrote sister when phone rang as I was finishing the post.)