‘Our Lady Specialists at Pikes Lane’: Female Spectators in Early English Professional Football, 1880–1914

There has been very little study of female football spectators, especially in a historical context. This paper aims to demonstrate that despite the restrictions placed on women's leisure time in this period, it is clear from evidence that a small but significant number of women could and did attend professional football matches throughout the period, and participated as consumers in this new leisure industry. Contrary to some modern readings that assume that the female football spectator is a relatively new phenomenon, patterns of leisure consumption were similar for women in this context, albeit with certain important restrictions, such as available leisure time, money, and parental and familial responsibilities. The study illustrates the potential female market for professional football, using numerous examples of women attending matches gathered from contemporary evidence, especially from the cotton area of South East Lancashire, where there was a concentration of early professional clubs within an economically developed industrialised society. It discusses issues of identity, both regional and local, and with respect to particular football clubs. It also describes female reactions to incidents, players and significant events, indicating the similarities and differences between the sexes, and addresses the issue of how far women were fans as well as spectators. There is also some discussion of the patterns of consumption of female spectators, and an attempt to establish a profile for them. The study uses local newspapers from Lancashire as its main primary source material. As there is little other direct information on the subject, such local materials are an important source for the history of this aspect of professional football, as they are for other areas of Victorian and Edwardian social history.