Jacoba ('Cobie') Ives - First Woman to Play for Yorkshire County

[Ingrid Ives]

One thing I noticed in the report of the event at Thoresby High School - "The players must make at least 20 moves every hour....Juniors are allowed an extra four moves." The word 'allowed' is a bit puzzling - it seems to imply a concession - does this mean they only had to make 16 moves? It would be more appropriate if they had to make extra moves!

Here are a few more articles on that event.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Smiling, Mum would tell us stories about some of the men becoming really annoyed if she beat them."

Ian is right, but it is "some", not all, and in fairness, there are some players who are furious if they lose to anyone!

[Peter Shaw]

I have some old Wakefield Chess Club minute books where she is mentioned a couple of times. There are a couple of newspaper cuttings of Woodhouse Cup results from 1947 before she was married. Miss Rosema lost both games, to Miss G Wilson and SC Wheuay. Then in the 1951 AGM minutes it is recorded that she finished in 'second place in a second class section at Ilford'. Meanwhile in the same minutes Mr Ives won the Kitchin correspondence tournament.

Again, thank you so much for posting this. If it's not too much trouble, I would love to see a scan or photo of what you have? I don't think we have any material from before my parents were married in 1948.

Here are the two relevant pages. At some point I will have to get around to scanning all the pages from these books.

1951 was a significant year for Wakefield chess club, the one and only time we won the Woodhouse Cup.

[Ingrid Ives]

Many thanks for posting these, Peter; really interesting. With regard to scanning, I've had all the old newspaper cuttings and photos I posted here, scanned professionally to high resolution by a company called Vintage Photo Labs, which you'll find online. Their service was excellent and having the scans has enabled me to distribute the cuttings to various interested family members. Having them scanned professionally is also a lot less trouble than trying to do it at home. They can copy flat pages from your books.

As there's been quite a bit of interest in these old cuttings and photos, I'll start a separate thread in the chess history section with more, but this time featuring my father, Ronald Wilson Ives.

[Andrew Zigmond]

I recently discovered (through an archived YCA bulletin on Steve Mann's site - the article in question refers to even older YCA bulletins which have presumably now been lost) that in 1947 Harrogate CC had a female secretary who become the first woman delegate to the YCA. The lady in question was a Miss Gladys Redhead who had previously competed in a fringe tournament at the famous 1936 Nottingham Chess Congress (that featured all the world champions from Lasker through to Botvinnik).

I mentioned this to Steve who did some further research. Gladys Redhead was born in 1907 to parents who spent much of their time migrating between England and India; their daughter travelling with them. The family retired to Harrogate in the 1940s and that appears to be when she joined the local club. After the deaths of her parents by the early 1950s she made a late marriage and assumed the married name Irvine. She was still living in Harrogate when her husband died in 1973 but had moved to Worcestershire by the time of her own death in 1990. Frustratingly it is unclear when she dropped out of chess and how good she was.

The point is that her years of chess activity in Yorkshire would have only been a few years before that of Jacoba Ives. It is very possible they knew of each other but whether they knew each other personally or who might have won had they played is something we can only speculate on.

[Ingrid Ives]

I recently discovered (through an archived YCA bulletin on Steve Mann's site - the article in question refers to even older YCA bulletins which have presumably now been lost) that in 1947 Harrogate CC had a female secretary who become the first woman delegate to the YCA. The lady in question was a Miss Gladys Redhead who had previously competed in a fringe tournament at the famous 1936 Nottingham Chess Congress (that featured all the world champions from Lasker through to Botvinnik).

I mentioned this to Steve who did some further research. Gladys Redhead was born in 1907 to parents who spent much of their time migrating between England and India; their daughter travelling with them. The family retired to Harrogate in the 1940s and that appears to be when she joined the local club. After the deaths of her parents by the early 1950s she made a late marriage and assumed the married name Irvine. She was still living in Harrogate when her husband died in 1973 but had moved to Worcestershire by the time of her own death in 1990. Frustratingly it is unclear when she dropped out of chess and how good she was.

The point is that her years of chess activity in Yorkshire would have only been a few years before that of Jacoba Ives. It is very possible they knew of each other but whether they knew each other personally or who might have won had they played is something we can only speculate on.

What an absolutely fascinating story, Andrew, and what a pity that Gladys might not have been given the credit she deserved. I'm still going through all my father's paperwork following the death of my mother in 2020 and, now that I'm aware of Gladys, I'll keep a look out for her name. Many thanks for posting this.

[Ingrid Ives]

For anyone interested, there is an article on both my late parents, Ronnie and Cobie Ives, in the July 2023 issue of Chess Magazine.

https://chess.co.uk/collections/chess-m ... -july-2023

I co-authored the article with John Saunders.

There is also a thread in the Chess History section of this forum on my father, Ronald (Ronnie) Wilson Ives.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13297

[Mark Howitt]

Interesting

[Mark Howitt]

Yorks chess history is interesting.