Blythe Smart Publications

Arthur Pember's  Great Adventures

 

ISBN: 9780-9545017-3-0    330 pages     240 x 170    £11.99     (2007, 13)

Amazon Kindle (Revised Version)     $4.99     (2015)

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This was re-printed on the 150th Annivesary of the Football Association

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1. Ancestral Roots

2. Family and Education

3. Emigration Motives

4. Alpine Adventures

5. Soccer's Genesis

6. American Values

7. Undercover Sleuthing

8. Our State Institutions

9. Trade and Industry

10. Trojan Steam Horse

11. Begging Walks

12. Country Adventures

13. Modes of Existence

14. Mining the Depths

15. Mysteries and Miseries

16. Disguises and Surprises

17. The Descendants

Appendix, Index     (also see pictures below)

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This was one of the most exciting books to research and write, and the author discovered Arthur Pember when he was working on The Wow Factor. Morley, Marindin, Kinnaird and Alcock were already known to the F.A., but during a visit to the F.A. archives at Soho Square the archivist was asked about Pember the first F.A. president. His response was to say that he was not important, but this may have alluded to the fact that nothing was known about him at that point. On leaving Soho Square we passed the manager Sven-Göran Eriksson coming in the door, when he was seen as the saviour of English football, which now seems so long ago.

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Regarding Pember, the main clue to his origins was a reference to him playing for the No Names Club of Kilburn when he helped to establish the F.A., and this helped track him down to his house in Kilburn in 1861, and then back to his family and antecedents in Brixton and Clapham. Simon Inglis stated that he discovered Archibald Leitch the now famous ground designer when researching his several versions of Football Grounds of Britain, and it would be completely true to say that John Smart discovered Arthur Pember whilst researching the Founders of Soccer.

 

The book was to have been entitled Arthur Pember A Victorian Iconoclast, until someone queried this idea although they confused this with iconic. It was clear from the start that Pember’s story was unlike his counterparts at the Football Association, and records of committee meetings revealed his outspoken stance. Indeed he wrote on the growth of Ritualism and the demise of the House of Lords. Immigrating to New York with his family, he became a reporter on the New York Press and investigated the denizens of its impoverished streets and wrote on the growth of its industry.

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The author visited New York City when researching the Wow Factor which was a rather poignant and difficult time there, soon after the tragedy of 9/11. This helped provide some basic historical information and revealed the tenement in which he once lived. However, for the later biography a further trip was made to New York City in 2006, at which time a meeting was arranged with the Keiths, two of Pember’s descendants who were writers for Sports Illustrated. Not only were they involved in sport but their niece was a soccer player for the United States national youth team, clearly a case of sporting ability being contained in the genes.

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The trip provided an opportunity to see Water Street and the Rat Pit below Brooklyn Bridge which Pember visited in disguise, and also Five Points, The Tombs and Ludlow Street where he worked as a costermonger and stayed as a poor prisoner. He knew the leading journalists of the day such as Louis Jennings an Englishman and editor of the N.Y. Times, whilst he took on the corruption of the authorities through his investigations.

 

He also did a series of articles on industry and institutions in New York State, these articles now providing a significant historical record, thus we left the city by train for Albany and travelled by road across to Buffalo. This allowed visits to many of the places where he had written his stories, in particular life on the old Erie Canal. Finally we went on to St. Paul and La Moure, Dakota, a sleepy township where he took up farming, but he was not there long before he died and his sons returned to New York.

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The Pember story was the first book done entirely by the author including the layout, typesetting, pictures, indexing and covers in a print ready pdf format. It seemed guaranteed of success but the Brixton Society where he was born showed limited interest, and the Football Association were more concerned with current day soccer, although they did invite Pember’s family to their 150th anniversary celebrations. The book was well-received by several members of his family, whereas there was a rather interesting anecdote where fact was clearly stranger than fiction.

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Postscript

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Pember used disguises to obtain his stories, and one called the Amateur Beggar was an exact copy in content with Conan Doyle’s Man with the Twisted Lip. The resemblance was striking and this fact was brought to the attention of the Sherlock Holmes Society, whose members not only studied his works, but were acquainted with social investigators such as Jacob Riis, Jack London and Arthur Morrison from that time.

 

They considered the information, but dismissed it as being just another example of a reporter, and not important to the story of Conan Doyle. They also pointed out that Pember's Mysteries & Miseries with many of his stories was now on line for free, but failed to mention that Arthur Pember's Great Adventures contained so much and gave it context. This was most disappointing (perhaps something they did not want to believe), since the Strange Case of Pember appeared to be a notable discovery, namely the fact that Holmes disguises were based on a founder of the F.A.