Most spectators at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham would have been unaware of the city’s lengthy role in promoting athletics competitions. The Birmingham Athletic Club (BAC), one of the first British multi-sport clubs, was established in 1866. And 155 years ago, just one year after its launch, the BAC hosted the National Olympian Games in Birmingham, a precursor of the international Olympic games.
The club’s success was due in large part to the energetic efforts of two outstanding local athletes, Clement Davies and Joseph Hubbard. Clement Davies was the son of John Birt Davies, professor of forensic medicine at Queen’s College and the first coroner of Birmingham. Educated at King Edward’s grammar school and Cambridge university where he developed his athletic skills, Clement excelled at jumping. At a sports day organised by the Birmingham Rifle Volunteers in May 1865, Clement, aged 23, won first prizes for the highest standing jump, longest running jump, vaulting the bar, and the sack race. He was also a keen boxer.
At another military sports display a few months later, participants were astonished to see a muscular young man push through the crowd of spectators into the arena. Uninvited, he proceeded to perform a series of elegant exercises on the horizontal bar, the like of which no one had seen before. The crowd, hugely impressed, demanded to know who the interloper was. His name was Joseph Hubbard, an employee of a local manufacturing firm, who had taught himself to perform astonishing athletic feats. Members of the BAC committee were so impressed that they sent him off to the German Gymnasium in London for training.
These two young men took the lead in getting the nascent athletics society off the ground. With Clement Davies as honorary secretary and Joseph Hubbard as chief trainer, or ‘professor’, the BAC organised its first gymnastics display in July 1866, drawing on advice from Ernst Ravenstein of the German Gymnastics Society.
Held at their makeshift gymnasium at Bingley Hall, the performances included running, leaping, vaulting and sack races, and exercises on the parallel bars. The club leased premises at Portland Road and the Kent Street baths, and other sports were added to their repertoire, including boxing, swimming and foxhunting. They recruited 250 members in their first year, as well as organising private classes for women and special sessions for schoolchildren.
The BAC was affiliated to the National Olympian Association (NOA), enabling members to compete in national contests. When the association was looking for a venue to hold its second national games, they were delighted to receive an offer from Birmingham. Clement Davies was appointed secretary of the NOA alongside his role at the BAC, with responsibility for organising the national competition. Held over three days in June 1867, the NOA’s festival of sport began with a procession and ended with a grand ball. Competitors came from London, Manchester, Norwich, Derby, Newcastle, Leeds and elsewhere.
Various prizes were on offer, including ‘tilting at the ring’, in which horse riders galloped towards a cross-bar on which hung two small rings that they had to carry away on the end of a pointed lance. There were also running and jumping contests, wrestling and boxing, athletics, cricket, gymnastics and swimming. The event was considered a huge success and Clement Davies was commended for his ‘indefatigable energy’ in directing the proceedings.
Joseph Hubbard’s long career as an athlete and ‘professor of muscular science’ was still going strong in 1888. On the horizontal bar, parallel bars, and on horseback he was said to be ‘wonderfully good and no professional trapeze performer has been able to teach him anything’, so said the Birmingham Mail.
Clement Davies, my great grandfather, was too busy running his hardware factory to continue competing at a high level, but he remained actively involved in the BAC, being elected its vice-president and then president, a post he held until 1886. His interests expanded to include more sedentary activities, such as the card game whist, on which he published a book, but his support for the athletics club continued. He was a familiar figure at the annual gymastics displays at Birmingham Town Hall until the end of his life in May 1911.
