At the start of this year Special Collections was fortunate to be allocated a sum of money from the Regional Innovation Fund. We decided to use this funding to progress work on the Leicester Tigers Rugby Union Club collection. Founded in 1880 as the Leicester Football Club, the club has been known as the Tigers since 1885. Their archival collection is a hugely significant sports and local history resource spanning 140 years, and the Tigers are an important partner of DMU.
Leicester Tigers shirt logo. From Google Images.
The first discussions between DMU Special Collections and the Club regarding the Tigers collection coming to DMU were back in 2019, resulting in the collection delivery being scheduled for mid-March 2020. Literally the day we were due to take in the materials was the day lockdown was announced, so we did not get the collection onsite until November 2021. This included documents transferred from the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland as the Club felt they wanted all their historical materials in one place. It is a wonderfully large and complicated collection, including many artefacts, garments and oversized panels. The team created a box-list that helped us to navigate the collection, but, as a small service we were unable to begin detailed cataloguing work straight away.
Images of the Tigers collection on its arrival in DMU Special Collections.
The funding award enabled us to recruit a project team of 5 people: Dr Peter Lester, an experienced archivist, who sorted and catalogued the papers in detail. He has been supported by Abi Broomfield, a Masters student in Sports History, who worked on cataloguing the clothing in the collection.
Peter and Abi working on the Tigers collection.
We also employed two undergraduate students, Jonathan and Aaromal, to carry out digitisation work, focusing on photographs and match programmes. It is planned to upload these to the Tigers catalogue so that readers around the world can access them.
Aaromal and Jonathan at work digitising the collection.
And, PhD student Ellie Alderson has been delving into the collection and working to produce a series of articles which we will be sharing later in the year. These will showcase different parts of the archive and the wealth of information that can be found within!
We would like to say a huge thank you to all those who worked on the project. Your work has been incredible and has made such a huge impact on the Tigers collection, especially in terms of improving its accessibility for local, national and international audiences. To round-up the project, we asked members of the team to share their experience of working with the collection as well as their favourite finds.
ABI
was interested in the professionalization of the game: 'For me, the biggest thing I've taken away is that I can see how the club has evolved from being a small local team to being one of the biggest rugby union clubs in the world. It has helped me understand the process of the sport turning professional and the impact of commercialisation on the game through the introduction of sponsors in recent decades. I have also grown to appreciate the unique relationship rugby union has as the Tigers have been known to play matches and take on some of the biggest international teams in the world. It has benefitted my studies as handling these objects have brought to life the information I had previously only read about in books.”
One of the earliest photographs in the collection of Leicester Football Club, 1899.
Leicester Football Club, 1907.
PETER
enjoyed exploring the administrative papers and learning about early rugby tours: 'the first decades of the twentieth century, saw the club visit parts of Wales, southwest England and even Paris, usually over the Easter weekend, during which they would play fixtures against other clubs including Bristol, Cardiff and Llanelli.
A route map of Leicester Football Club's Easter Tour, 1925.
They would travel by train, car, or sometimes motorised charabancs; a postcard showing the Tigers on Tour in Cardiff around 1890 shows the tour members arriving at the Queen’s hotel packed into an open-top horse-drawn carriage. The tour cards usually feature itineraries and details of the matches. The tour card for Easter 1925, bound in a handsome leather cover, includes a detailed route map, with all the towns and roads marked out (no motorways then!). Leaving the club house by cars on Friday, 10 April, the tour party arrived for afternoon tea at the Crown Hotel in Evesham before continuing to Bristol. There was an afternoon match against Bristol on the Saturday, followed by tea in the pavilion, before heading off to Monmouth, arriving at the Beaufort Arms for dinner. On Sunday, there was a motor tour through the Wye Valley to Chepstow. Monday saw the party head to Llanelli, arriving in the afternoon for a kick-off against the Welsh side at 3.15. Returning to Monmouth in the evening, the group left on Tuesday, crossing back into England and a match against Bath, before heading for dinner in Stratford-on-Avon and arriving in Leicester in the evening. Later club tours were more ambitious in scope. In 1980 the club went on a Centenary Tour to Australia and Fiji; later tours included visits to Bahrain and Dubai; the United States; and Canada. The collection also has a wide range of administrative documents, including financial records and accounts. These include a series of gate account books, which record the tickets sold at the turnstiles for each match. Each of the volumes list all the turnstile operators or "gatemen" working at each match and the tickets sold at each turnstile, along with the monies paid. There is also a volume recording payments made to the "gatemen" dating between 1918 and 1919. In May 1981 an inspection of the turnstiles revealed that some of them were over 60 years old.'
Gate Account Book, 1911.
JONATHAN
was especially struck by the gender imbalance in the early programmes which were clearly produced with a male audience in mind: 'I had a lovely time working at the archives as a Digitisation Assistant. The project I was involved in was to scan a tremendous number of items that Leicester’s very own rugby team, Tigers, had sent us. Seeing how it had evolved from the late 18th century to what it is today was quite fascinating. One of my favourite moments was, when scanning one of their league programmes, an advertisement for "Ladies Night" popped up. It felt very out of place amidst all the car, men’s clothing, and beer adverts.'
Leicester Football Club Programme 1990/91 for Tigers Vs Gloucester Sept, 1990 match.
The collection is too large for the team to have fully completed cataloguing during this short project, but happily the bulk of the following sections have been listed to file/item level:
The outstanding materials to be listed are predominantly garments and artefacts. To view and browse the online catalogue please use the link below: https://specialcollections.catalogue.dmu.ac.uk/records/S/015
Everyone is welcome to visit the archive to view the collection. Please see our website for information about access and booking an appointment.
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