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Impressions of Northern Athletes and Athletics

 

The author:

The family name of Sutherland is very common in the county of Sutherland in the Northern Highlands of Scotland.  John William Sutherland was born at Craigton, in one of the highest and most remote parts of Morness in Rogart parish, in 1890.  His father, Robert, and his mother, Catherine (née Mackay), already had an established family and John William (who was known in the family as Jack) had older brothers and an older sister; the family continued to grow and Jack eventually had nine brothers and sisters.  By 1908, when he was 18, he was living at Golspie, on the south-east coast of Sutherland, and by 1910 he was back living at Rogart, a few miles inland, where he wrote his book Scientific Athletics.  He was brought up in an athletic family and in a culture that valued throwing and, although he was not a big man (nor a big boy or youth) he excelled in the throwing events, particularly the Shot and Hammer.  Indeed, so slight was he that he created something of a sensation because he was very successful when very young and was much smaller than the people he competed against.  In August 1908, the Aberdeen Journal described him at the Dornoch Highland Games as ‘a lad of 17 years of age and weighing 10 stone’ [140 lbs.; 63.5kg] and ‘he was repeatedly cheered’ when he won the Hammer Throw (16lbs) [7.26 kg] by 8 inches [20.3cm], and was second in Putting the Ball (22lbs) [9.98kg].

Jack Sutherland’s family was always an important part of his athletic life; in August 1908 (above), for example, it seems likely that his oldest brother, Andrew, was a prize-winner in the wrestling competition, and Donald, who was two years older, was a piper and an athlete, and won prizes in the Reels & Strathspeys competitions.  In his book Scientific Athletics, Jack Sutherland includes a photograph of “D. Sutherland, Rogart” (p. 63) and in Chapter XIX, Prominent Scottish Athletes and Their Performances, he describes D. Sutherland as a “successful all-round athlete” and gives details of his best throwing and jumping performances, but fails to mention that he was his younger brother.  Donald was also known as The Rogart Hercules, but he was also an accomplished piper and we hear of him later, composing pipe-music too. At about this time Donald left Scotland and went to Australia, from where he went to Peru before travelling to Oregon and finally settling in Montana.  Neil, another brother, had also emigrated and lived in Montana.

In his early competitive years, writers repeatedly commented on Jack’s youth and his diminutive stature.  In September 1908, The Aberdeen People’s Journal wrote, “A young athlete competed here, who promises exceptionally well.  John William Sutherland, by name, he is 17 years of age, 5 feet 7 inches [1.70m] tall, and weighs 10 stones 7 lbs. [147 lbs.; 66.7kg].”  They went on to say that he had thrown a 16lb [7,26 kg]Hammer ‘well over 95 feet [29m]’, putt a 22lb [9.98 kg] Shot 32 feet [9.75m], and ‘was good for 5 feet 3inches [1.60m]’ in the High Jump (ground to ground).  All these distances can be authenticated in Sutherland’s own diary.  He retained this boyish appearance throughout his athletic career and, in September 1911, the Aberdeen Journal again commented on his youth and size - “He was, to all appearances, the youngest athlete in the heavy events, and his victory was a popular one”; he was 21 years old and was still 5ft 7ins [1.70m] tall and still only 10½ stone [147lbs.; 66.7kg].  In that event he won ‘the Light Stone’ by over a foot with a throw of 38ft [11.58m], and won £2; this would be equivalent in purchasing power to £200 in 2021.  By this date, however, his diary (as reported in Scientific Athletics) had come to an end, so we can only guess at how heavy the ‘light stone’ was.  The John O’Groat Journal was to make similar comments about his age and size a year later.

John William Sutherland’s performances are not easy to trace; his performances were sometimes reported under the name, ‘John William Sutherland’, sometimes ‘J.W. Sutherland’, and sometimes ‘John Sutherland’, but in the same competitions there were other Sutherlands, and even a John, J, and W. Sutherland, and some were even from Golspie and Rogart.  By June 1909, John William Sutherland had joined the Territorial Army and he competed in the Camp Sports at Burghead, winning the Hammer Throw for the 5^th Seaforths (i.e. the 5^th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders).

Jack Sutherland’s diary comes to an abrupt end after reporting his results for August 1911; his entry for 18 August records that he had been at the Durnoch Highland Gathering and had been ‘indisposed,’ nevertheless he set a ‘county record’ for the 16lb. [7.26 kg] Hammer, and putt the 15¾lb. [7.14 kg] ball 45ft. [13.72m], [listed as 15lb. (6.80 kg) in the press] and high jumped 5ft 4 ins. [1.625m], but did not record in his diary that he was also 2nd= in the Pole Vault.  He also failed to note that although breaking a county record, he finished outside the first three in the event.  Nevertheless, he was thought to be particularly impressive on that day with the John O’Groat Journal reporting that he was “well to the front” in the heavy events, “as he indeed nearly always is”, and that he went in for “a system of physical training, and is particularly well developed for a young man.”  It was, therefore, a good advertisement for the book he had started.

The entry for the following day (19 August 1911) records that he is still ‘incapacitated,’ and ‘greatly indisposed,’ but did compete at the Brora Games and competed in two Hammer, and two Putting the Ball events – but well below his previous standard.  This entry is confusing and must have been added later, for he not only makes reference to the Brora Games which took place on 2nd September, but also to the Lairg Highland Gathering on 20th September, in which his performances were also below his normal standard.

1912 was both the pinnacle of Jack Sutherland’s athletic career and its effective end, and it all happened within a few days.  On Friday 9 August Jack Sutherland opened his season at the Bower Athletic Sports, winning the 16lb. [7.26 kg] Hammer with 117ft. 1 inch [35.69m], and Putting the 16lb. [7.26 kg] Ball 48ft 10 ins. [14.84m]  He was also 2nd in the wrestling.  His Putting the Ball performance was reported to be 1 foot 2 inches [35.5cms] better than the World’s Record, but was downhill, nevertheless, on the basis of those performances he challenged A. A. Cameron, known in Scotland as the “World’s Champion,” to a series of events to decide the “heavy weight championship.”  The challenge appeared in the newspapers one week later, on Friday 16 August. The Wick Riverside Committee was quick to seize on this and started to plan for the Sutherland/Cameron Championship Challenge to take place at the Wick Gala on Wednesday 28 August, just 12 days ahead.

On the same day that Sutherland’s challenge appeared in the newspapers (Friday 16 August), Jack Sutherland entered the Durnoch Highland Gathering, competing in the Open events, and also in the events open only to those born in the county – a very busy afternoon in which at the beginning of the meeting he “dislocated” the cartilage in his right knee in a Pole-Vaulting competition.  As a result, in the County events, he was 1st= in the Pole Vault, but 2nd= in the High Jump, and 2nd in Putting the 16lb. [7.26 kg] Ball.  In the Open events he was 3rd in the 16lb [7.26 kg] Hammer, 3rd in the 22lb. [9.98kg] Hammer, and 3rd in the Long Jump.  The “intense pain” clearly incapacitated him and he could hardly bend his knee, and before the week was out he had written to Cameron withdrawing his challenge.  Jack Sutherland did not compete again in 1912, and in 1913 seems only to have competed once – at the Brora Highland Gathering, and was 2nd in the Open Hammer event, 10 feet [3m] below his performance of the previous year, and was also 2nd in Putting the 16lb [7.26 kg] Ball – over 9 feet [2.74m] less than the year before, but that was the end of his athletic career in Scotland.  Almost immediately he emigrated to America.

Despite recording a 16lb. [7.26 kg] putt further than the World’s Record, J. W. Sutherland is remembered in athletics history only for his book, “Scientific Athletics” which he wrote when he was under 21, perhaps the youngest ever author of a technical book on athletics.  He writes with such authority and certainty that any reader not knowing his age might imagine the author to be a white-haired veteran.  He writes with a florid style, seldom choosing a short word when he can find a longer one; he also writes a series of articles for the John O’Groat Journal, writes replies to his newspaper correspondents, and also probably reported on his own performances in his very distinctive writing style in the John O’Groat Journal, but under the nom de plume “X.Y.Z.

Perhaps we should not expect him to reveal everything about his life in Scientific Athletics; he does not, for example, mention that he and his brother Donald gave weight-lifting demonstrations in the local drill hall and offer a prize to anyone in the audience who could emulate them – a prize that was never won.  He also doesn’t mention the importance in his life of piping.  From childhood he was exposed to the bagpipes and he and his brothers all played; indeed, even as children they learned how to make them, and learned how to burn holes with red-hot wires in the wooden pipes (chanters) on which they would later make music.  The chanters were later attached to the bag made, perhaps, out of sheep-skin, and then the drones were added to form the bagpipes. 

With at least two of his older brothers already settled in America, it is not surprising that Jack Sutherland wanted to try his luck there too, and in the autumn of 1913 he crossed the Atlantic and settled in Silver Springs, Clackamas, in north-west Oregon, close to the Canadian border.  With his wife, Janess Elizabeth Sutton, he made his home there and became a school teacher; and he and Janess had three children.  He was, however, a Scottish Highlander to the core and he began to compete in Highland Games there, ’though there are no records of his results, and he continued his piping and even wrote pipe-music.  Jack Sutherland was a highly talented and versatile man, and he not only played the pipes, he was also an unusually talented composer, and teacher of piping. One observer wrote of him as “an accomplished and talented piper with a very keen understanding of the subtleties of the music,” but was so eager not to be seen to outshine his brother Donald, he kept his real musical relents partly hidden.

Jack Sutherland was a highly talented and accomplished man but he was also full of contradictions; his writing revealed him to be self assured and confident, and he always performed well when under the pressure of competition and in front of a crowd, but those who knew him described him as shy and modest, later, his son even called him a private person.  Very unusually, no photographs exist of Jack Sutherland, with the exception of the portrait shot of his shoulders and the back of his head in Scientific Athletics (facing title page); one contemporary Scot explained that Jack Sutherland may have “felt circumspect about photographs, like many Gaels of his day.”

In Oregon, Jack Sutherland continued to follow athletics all his life. In a letter to his brother Andrew after the 1968 Olympic Games, he commented on the Russians’ perceived lack of success and regretted that Neil [Neal] Steinhauer, an Oregon thrower, had been unable to compete because of a “sprained back”, recalling that he (Steinhauer) had thrown 69 feet [21.03m]; and he mused on the fact that back in his youth, in the days of Scientific Athletics, he had thought 50 feet [15.24m] to be just about the limit of possibility!  His interest in an Oregon thrower shows, however, that although a complete Scottish Highlander, after more than fifty years in the U.S.A., John William Sutherland had also become a thorough American.  He died in 1970 at the age of 80.

 

This brief biography has been updated with the kind assistance of, and valuable information from, Christina Perera, the Rogart Heritage Society, and members of the Sutherland family.

 

Peter Radford

2015 (revised November 2019; 2^nd revision, August 2021; final edition March 2022)

 

 

The place of Sutherland’s series of articles, “Impressions of Northern Athletes and Athletics” in the history of Athletics literature.

John Wm Sutherland’s articles were printed only in the John O’Groat Journal, a weekly newspaper serving Caithness and the counties in north-east Scotland.  They never had a wide readership even in 1912-13 when they were first printed, and they have never been published since.  In them Sutherland covers much the same ground as in Scientific Athletics, and the first one appeared two months before Scientific Athletics was published and might, in part, have been a promotional exercise for it.  There are, however, thirteen articles and they were written almost a year after the main parts of his book had gone to the publishers, allowing Sutherland to refer to his book, reflect on it, add new material, and also look back on the 1912 Olympic Games. 

Very unusually, because of his youth, Sutherland was still an active athlete at the time that he wrote and published his articles, and so was competing at the same time he was writing, and his name sometimes appears in reports of sporting events in the same issue in which one of his articles appears, giving a unique athlete’s view of athletics and physical culture in north-east Scotland before WWI.  Because of this double-life (competing athlete and writer on athletics) he finds himself at the centre of a public discussion about one of his own performances, and whether it should be considered to be a World’s Record.  This episode, including letters about it, and two from J.W. Sutherland, constitutes Part II of this collection  

Although only 21, he writes with great assurance and a sense of gravitas, adopting a high moral tone, lecturing and correcting those who he thinks need it, and making highly critical comments where he thinks they are due.  This was, however, J. W. Sutherland’s swansong.  He sustained a cartilage injury while competing in 1912, and this effectively ended his athletic career. 

 

The text:

The text consists of thirteen discrete articles that were written as a continuous series.  They were printed in the John O’Groat Journal between 30 August 1912 and 24 January 1913.

Part I.

1.    Sutherland praises Caithness athletes back to Sir John Sinclair’s time more than a century earlier (see Athlos - Sir John Sinclair, “A Collection of Papers on the Subject of Athletic Exercises, &c.,” 1807).

He lists ten “objectionable practices” employed by athletes.  Deliberately spiking an opponent is obviously objectionably at any time, but some are no longer considered objectionable, and it is hard to see how they ever were; for example, “putting the shot at a tangent from the extremity of the stance, so as to increase the distance.”  This is hard to understand in an age, such as ours, in which putts are made from a circle and into a sector of a much larger imaginary circle, and marked with real or imaginary arcs.  Sutherland seems to be describing a situation in which the putts are made from behind a straight line.  Any real or imaginary line that measured distance would be straight, and any tangential putt would have to go further to reach such a line, when compared with one that was putt at right-angles to the delivery line.  But in those circumstances that would mean that a tangential throw was disadvantaged, so how does Sutherland consider it objectionable?  He must, therefore, be writing about a situation in which the putt is released behind a straight line, and distances are marked out in parallel straight lines to it, but the officials measure the length of the putt to the first mark it makes (i.e., not at right-angles to the throwing line.)  To any other era of shot putting, that would be considered not only fair, but usual.  (see also Athlos - William McCombie Smith, “The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland, Including Bagpipe Playing and Dancing”, 1891)

Sutherland’s list of objectionable practice is useful because it gives us clues as to how athletics meetings were conducted, and how the grounds were laid out.  Another example is his objection to an athlete “pulling at the circumambient rope” which must tell us that the ground was staked out with ropes attached to the stakes at about waist height.  Also, his objection to athletes moving the uprights inwards (presumably for High Jumpers jumping straight-on) and so disadvantaging those who jumped from the side, seems to suggest that individual jumpers were not free to place the uprights where they wanted them.

2.    Sutherland focuses on morality and the dangers of “laxity of moral discipline,” i.e. vice. He is enthusiastic about the legacy from Ancient Greece and Rome, and also of contemporary Physical Culture – that “beautiful story.”  Rather optimistically, he writes that, “athletes almost invariably enjoy perfect health, and a symmetrical bodily structure, to say nothing regarding physical and will power,” – how we all wish that were true!

3.    Advice is given to athletes about selecting their right event, and then he moves on to vitality - “after about eleven years’ incessant indulgence in athletics, I can advise authoritatively as to the acquisition and preservation of vitality.”  He also begins his promotion of his forthcoming book – “Scientific Athletics,” and uses three quotes from it.  With the Olympic Games in Stockholm, still a recent memory, Sutherland praises the American athletes, crediting their success to their specialisation.  On the other hand, the words “wretched,” “ignominious,” and “retrogression” are used to describe the British athletes, and he claims that they were indifferent to their own training, and wistfully thinks of what the Scottish athletes would have done had they been there.

          Sutherland begins to reply to readers’ letters from his first two articles, and also replies to some privately.  Correspondents were encouraged to use a nom-de-plume, and were told that their letters would be considered to be strictly confidential, and then destroyed.

4.    Gives advice to 16-year-old and 18-19-year-olds on what targets they should set. Recommends the use of a training and competition diary.  Addresses the issue of height and weight for adult athletes, and concludes that success for smaller men is possible if they are “very scientific, resolute, and possessed of copious energy,” i.e. like himself, but also rightly acknowledges that his own achievements have been “unapproached” by anyone else of his size.  Acknowledges the achievements of Duncan Macdonald who, though only 5ft 4 ins. [1.63m] tall, threw the 17lb [7.71k] Hammer 100ft. [30.48m]

In the question and answer section at the end of his article, he does not mince his word and tells one of those writing-in – “Cigarette smoking at root of evil; stop it.”

5.    Focuses on training and practice, and quotes from “Scientific Athletics” (Chapter 1), but his quotations, though capturing the spirit of the originals, are by no means accurate. He gives advice on a number of topics including warm-up, clothing, and the weather, and concludes that athletics should be taken up because it was “an effectual preventive of disease,” but was not recommended for athletes who were unskilful, or whose muscles were “weak, flaccid, or rudimentary,” or “when constitutional impotency is present, or when the athlete is very immature.”

6.    Although this is based on Chapter VI of Scientific Athletics it is shorter and the latter part of this article includes new material including the relationship between the chest and waist measurements, and also includes an unusual exercise in which one side of the abdominals only is contracted – a personal trick maybe? Once more, Sutherland strikes an assertive tone; he also seems to quote Shakespeare, but “round belly, silken lined” is not to be found in Shakespeare.  Did he mean “round belly with good capon lin'd” from As You Like It?

7.    This article introduces material on sleep and relaxation, topics not covered in Scientific Athletics. Sutherland continues here with the tone of someone imparting his acquired wisdom to the world – at times close to lecturing, as if he was the white-haired, ancient, High Priest of Physical Culture, e.g. –

            “Always keep fit!  Study athletics deeply, and only pay attention to the advice of those who do! Leave theorisers severely alone.”

            “Life hangs upon a thread”

            “Physical culture . . . is the sovereign panacea for many evils of the present day.”

            - and one has to remind oneself that this is written by a young man of 21!

8.    Up to this point, Sutherland could recycle much of his material that would later be published in his Scientific Athletics, but this article appeared just after Scientific Athletics was published, and so his readers would expect new material. John William Sutherland was always a confident young man who had strong opinions about things, and in these articles we can see that he was not at all happy with how Highland Games were run.  It is clear that he had a very low opinion of the officials, and he is so critical of them, we cannot imagine that he was a popular figure when he arrived at a competition venue.  For anyone who has a benign, nostalgic view of the Highland Games before World War I, with strong, fit Scots competing with swirl of their kilts, and a skirl of the bagpipes in the background, Sutherland’s words are a strong counter-balance.  In his words, those who officiated at the various Highland Games were at best incompetent, and sometimes biased, and even dishonest.  The athletes quarreled with the officials, and so did the crowd, the events were programmed in the wrong order, and the announcements on the ground were made too late, and the crowd wasn’t particularly interested in the athletic events anyway.  The layout of the grounds was so poor that sprinters (who had been started by a starter who did not know his job) had too little distance to slow down they ended up running into the tents and wrecking them, or even crashing into the spectators.  The athletes were not much better either, being up to every shady trick in the book.

Language becomes a problem for us here; “risky tosser” does not sound good to the 21st-century ear, and the proverbial “swank,” and “show,” mean far less to modern readers than they did in 1912.

At the end of this section Sutherland moves into more new territory and writes about wrestling, and introduces his readers to some international strong men and wrestlers from Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, and Austria, and notes two forthcoming wrestling bouts.

9.    Sutherland continues to provide new material, and here re-designs the Highland Games meeting. He chooses 20 events arranged in a particular order.  We know that he had quarrels with the order of events sometimes (see 8, above) and here he goes over the ground that everyone before him who had ever managed an athletics meeting had travelled – what events to hold, what order they should be in to attract and entertain the crowd, satisfy the athletes, and keep within budget.  This is, perhaps the weakest section so far, and there is no evidence that anyone was asking for his new programme, or ever took it up. There are, however, some incidental fragments that are interesting; jumpers and throwers had only three attempts, and although the Highland Games were famous for their throwing events, there were, nevertheless, the following running events – 100yds [91.44m], 440yds [402.34m] 880yds [804.67m], 1-Mile [1609.34m], the 120yds [109.73m] High Hurdles, and an obstacle race (a type of steeple-chase maybe?).

At the end, he returns to his notes with which he ended his previous article about the strong-men and wrestlers, and gives up-dates and reports.  Perhaps he sees himself as a future sports reporter, but although commenting on the Lemm v Irslinger wrestling match in London, it is hard to believe that he was actually there.

10.    In Chapter VI of Scientific Athletics Sutherland had strayed from athletic events and coaching advice into “diet,” and the advertisements in his book show that he had already been drawn into the then popular movement of “Physical Culture.” In his tenth article he strays even further from his own knowledge of athletic events, training, and performance into areas that Physical Culture had annexed, namely health, well-being, and even medicine, about which he had never had any formal training, or even very much experience; he was still only 22 and had never strayed far from the area in north-east Scotland where he was born. 

Here, he recommends a “reasonable amount of exercise” to combat everything from gout, rheumatism, flatulence, and lumbago, to “general impurities of the blood,” and “palpitations of the heart,” and also acatharsia, although it is not at all clear what he means by any of it. 

John William Sutherland was a young man with strong opinions and willingness to express them, but with very little respect for the opinions of others, even though what he knew about these new topics came almost entirely from reading other people’s opinions.  He was very anxious to be seen as an expert on all things that came under the umbrella of Physical Culture, including health and diet, as well as exercise, and would soon be calling himself the “leading athletic and hygienic and Physical Culture expert” in the North.  It seems that he had in mind a career as a sport and Physical Culture journalist, and in these John O’Groat Journal articles he was establishing his potential territory of expertise. 

There is, however, little of substance here; he makes very broad generalisations, and often overstates his case without giving any evidence, and there are signs that something is not quite right.  Errors begin to creep in – either a sign that the paper is not giving his articles sufficient attention, or that, perhaps, he is getting his copy in too late to allow proper checking.

 

11.    He is back on the territory he knows best in this article – the Scottish Highland Games and athletic sports - and once again takes up one of his favourite themes – that he knew how to run these Games better than the organisers did. He wanted –

          More competitions for the Under 25s (he was under 25)

          Competitions for local athletes (which he acknowledges already exist)

          Entry fees to be abolished

          No handicap races (they reward lazy athletes who don’t train)

          The throwers should have more than three trials (because athletes always

                   throw further with more trials)

          There should be more caber-tossing in the north of Scotland where it was

                    almost unknown.

          More prizes (not just prizes for the first three in an event)

          Keep all the Games going (even the small and unsuccessful ones).

 

There is no record of what any of the Games’ organisers thought of this catalogue of advice.

 

12.    John William Sutherland, despite his own relatively small size, was an enthusiast of the “heavy” events and in wrestling, and it was almost inevitable that he would be interested in the weight-lifters, and the world’s strong men. In this article he focuses on them and their world that hovered between sport and theatre, in which they selected their own stunts to perform in public, but which were difficult to authenticate or replicate, and so led to round after round of admiration, suspicion, accusation, and indignation.  From at athletics-history point of view, his inclusion of Donald Dinnie is of particular interest. 

[13].   The 12th article seems to be the last in the series, though it was never described as such, but one week later another article from John William Sutherland appeared on the topic of sun-light, which took him back to Physical Culture topics.  The only thing of interest to athletics historians in this article, however, is his review of longevity and athletic performance – particularly ultra-endurance performances, which featured several from or to John O’Groats. 

He finishes with a quote from Horace that could be adopted as their motto by all athletes - Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortaliteus - life has given nothing to mortals without great labour.

 

 

Part II.

The saga of Sutherland’s Shot-Putt performance at Bower in 1912, which was reported to be downhill and so not a record, moved quickly.  On the basis of it (and his Hammer Throw performance), Sutherland challenged A.A. Cameron, but, almost at once, he was injured and so had to withdraw his challenge to Cameron.  Correspondents then wrote to the newspaper questioning how Sutherland’s throw could ever have been considered a record, or disbelieving that he had done it, and finally Sutherland writes defending himself and makes side-swipes at those athletes who had held records, and makes some very curious assertions about square and lead shots.  The whole episode lasted only six weeks but embraced both the pinnacle, and the effective end, of Sutherland’s athletic career, and took place during the period that Sutherland’s first four articles were printed, and just a few weeks before Scientific Athletics was published.

Nearly seven months later, Sutherland returns to his rivalry with A. A. Cameron, and claimed that Cameron’s World Record Hammer Throw had not been legitimate, and that his own throw at Bower had been superior.  So, from being one of John William Sutherland’s heroes a little over a year earlier, when he had described in Scientific Athletics, Cameron’s “unquestionable supremacy as the world’s champion all-round heavy-weight athlete of the present generation”, to publicly trying to discredit one of Cameron’s World Record performances in the columns of the John O’Groat Journal.

It should be pointed out, however, that throwing the 16 lb [7.26k] Hammer with a stiff 4 ft 2 in. [1m 27cm] shaft, was never a world event, and any record with it should be described, at best, as a Scottish Highland Games Record, but even then there was no official body to ratify such a record.  So, John William Sutherland was not a World’s Record holder, nevertheless, his performances were remarkable; his winning margins were often extraordinary,*and, he was quite a small man,** and per unit of height and weight he must have been one of the best throwers that had ever lived.

 

*         At Bower in 1912 he won the Hammer by 34 feet [10.36m], and the Shot

           by 17 feet 8 inches [5.38m].

 

**       Height - 5 ft 6¼ ins., [1. 68m]; and Weight - 10 st. 10 lbs. [150 lbs – 68.04k].

 

Peter Radford  2022

 

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