Bob Lord of Burnley: The Biography of Football's Most Controversial Chairman

By Dave Thomas and Mike Smith

The biography of controversial Burnley chairman Bob Lord, the self-made butcher who ruled the club from 1955 to 1981. A blunt, opinionated leader, football's own 'Khrushchev' upset many with his views; but he had the idea of running a club on businesslike lines, and oversaw a production line of top players then sold on to sustain his vision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785315848

Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas, is a cornerstone of the Ruby community, and is personally responsible for many of its innovative directions and initiatives. He is one of the founders of the Pragmatic Programmers and the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

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years.

INTRODUCTION

UNTIL the dawn of the Premier League, Sky TV and foreign consortia, football clubs in England were governed by the archetypal football club chairman. They were self-made men, like meat packer Louis Edwards at Manchester United, Littlewoods Pools magnate John Moores at Everton and furniture retailer Manny Cussins at Leeds United. Men who enjoyed a bit of football on a Saturday afternoon and wanted to put something back into the clubs they had supported as boys. Men who seldom gave interviews or courted publicity. Men who kept a low public profile. That was how they generally did their business – quietly and calmly with no fuss. But there is always an exception to the rule.

Bob Lord, chairman of Burnley Football Club, had an opinion on everything. He was unafraid to speak his mind and cared little about who he upset along the way. Lord was a rebel with a cause, a football journalist’s dream come true.

Bob Lord was unlike any of his peers. With his blunt, forthright views, often expressed in a torrent of corrosive comments, he was a regular feature on the back pages of Britain’s newspapers, and occasionally on the front pages, too. To borrow an Alex Ferguson comment, he could start an argument in an empty house. Woe betide anyone who berated his beloved Burnley FC. He upset people in droves: sports journalists, club chairmen, managers, players, officials, referees, fans, committees and football authorities. Then there were the politicians, television personalities, religions and even entire nations. This list was almost endless.

If you were not born before 1981, and want a picture of Lord’s dealings with people in football, particularly the media, think of Brian Clough and the ear bashings he gave out to anyone who disagreed with him. Mix in a generous amount of Sir Alex Ferguson in full-on ‘hair-dryer’ mode, add a handful of Bernard Manning’s political incorrectness and the ruthlessness of Josef Stalin, then stand back and wait for the explosion. That might be a measure of Bob Lord, but not quite. Away from football, amongst friends, he could be completely the opposite. In private, he possessed a kind and generous side that the public rarely saw. He was someone who would offer help to those who asked for his advice and seek nothing in return.

Despite his outspoken nature, Bob Lord was a football visionary. In the mid-1950s, he had the foresight to see what was coming: superstar footballers earning huge salaries, 24/7 televised football, all-seater stadiums and a super-league. He was one of the first chairmen to invest in a youth academy system, believing that a football club should develop their own players, and he provided Burnley with one of the first state-of-the-art training facilities in Britain.

Lord was a man of his time and if he was still operating in today’s politically correct world, saying what he said, he would have been reprimanded and quickly removed from his privileged positions as both vice-president of the Football League and acting president of the Football Association. But in the politically incorrect days of mid-20th century Britain, ‘old big gob’, as he was known, got away with blue murder and the newspapers lapped it up.

Many years have passed since Bob Lord’s death in December 1981, and a comprehensive biography of one of football’s giants has not been written until now. Lord’s autobiography My Fight for Football, published in 1963, offered his own version of events up to that date. It is a personal manifesto on football but offers little on his family roots, his upbringing and the events that made him who he was. We have attempted to address that.

Opinions about Lord remain divided to this day. Some who had dealings with him say he was an astute man, a modern-thinking businessman brimming with ideas that were ahead of his time. Many players he signed say he was a direct man, often father-like, who gave good advice and paid good wages. But others say he was a blunt, rude, abrasive tyrant who ran Burnley Football Club like his own fiefdom. ‘Some people hate me,’ Lord once confided to his groundsman, Roy Oldfield. But whatever people thought of him, he was unswerving in his actions and thoughts.

In writing this account, we set out to be as unbiased as possible, preferring information and facts to opinion and hearsay. We wanted to find out how a boy from the back streets of Burnley could make it to the top of the football ladder in England, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good in football, politics and showbusiness.

We wanted to involve his closest surviving family to learn about the personal details of his family life, but sadly they declined. We respected that. But former members of his playing staff were pleased to talk. Mike Smith’s father, Norman, was one of Lord’s shop managers and we had his account and stories of working for Lord. Burnley Football Club provided access to the minutes of the boardroom meetings, a treasure trove telling how the club was run by Lord for almost 26 years, and many other primary sources were consulted.

But his daughter, Barbara, on Lord’s instruction, burned all the private papers and documents he kept at the house. Why would he have wanted this? It destroyed a huge trail of first-hand source material. When the club demolished the old Brunshaw Road Stand, mounds of paperwork and documents went up in flames. Nevertheless, archives, newspapers, reports and interviews all left a trail of evidence.

A former director of the club was of the opinion that a Lord biography would be brutal. We have tried not to be. So welcome to the world of Bob Lord, Butcher Bob, or Lord Bob, as he sometimes liked to be called.

Or ‘the John Bull’ of football, as he called himself.

Dave Thomas and Mike Smith

June 2019

Part One

MEAT

‘Upon what meat doth this great Caesar feed that he is grown so great?’

William Shakespeare

‘A thick-set man, his years spent shouldering sides of beef, chopping, cutting, giving him a tough upper body strength; 5ft 9in in his brogues, a ruddy face borne from standing for hours in cold shops and refrigerators for up to 12 hours a day. He made a formidable sight in a blood-covered butcher’s coat swinging a nickel-plated cleaver in one hand… Lord’s days were long. The meat business came first before the running of the football club and his other interests combined to make it all a six to seven days-a-week commitment. Lord rarely saw life at home.’

Norman Smith

CHAPTER 1

SEPTEMBER 1981

‘It’s a pleasure to see everyone back at Turf Moor.

Today, we welcome Plymouth Argyle for our first home game of the season. And to get things started, here’s Shakin’ Stevens and Green Door.’

Turf Moor DJ

SATURDAY, 5 September, 2pm. Burnley, a northern outpost in Thatcher’s Britain. A nation now divided. Two years into a Tory government and it’s North versus South and the haves versus the have nots. Those with jobs and those increasingly without. The traditional northern industries of shipbuilding, steel, car manufacturing and mining are all in decline. Soon, most of them will be gone. Almost three million workers are now on the dole, a quarter of them school-leavers who have never had a job. In Northern Ireland overnight, a fourth IRA hunger striker has died in The Maze prison. After a summer of inner-city riots, across the country there is a burning anger and deep resentment at a government that doesn’t care.

But it’s not all bad news. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who murdered 13 women and frequented the café near Turf Moor while out on his deliveries, is finally behind bars. Charles and Diana are expecting their first baby next summer. On tonight’s telly, 20 million will tune in to watch Larry Grayson’s Generation Game. On Radio One in the afternoon, Steve Wright told his ten million listeners on Friday that Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ will be Britain’s new number one.

League football is back and for Burnley supporters, it’s a return to Turf Moor for the first home game of the season. But after a century in football’s top two divisions playing the likes of Manchester United, Leeds and Liverpool, Burnley have started a second successive season in Division Three.

The Turf Moor turnstiles open and early-bird fans trickle through into the vacant stadium to find their regular spots. Meanwhile, for those who need a stiff drink or two before the match, the topic of conversation in the pubs and clubs around Burnley is the manager’s team selection and if the Clarets can beat today’s visitors, Plymouth Argyle.

At 2.40pm, glasses are drained and the fans all head off towards Turf Moor, passing by the programme sellers while breathing in the smell of fried onions from the burger vans. On past the chanting ‘Lord Out’ protesters gathered outside the Bob Lord stand on Brunshaw Road and dodging around the raffle ticket sellers and piles of police horse shit.

The atmosphere inside the ground was sombre, almost funereal. Where was everybody? It was hard for Burnley fans to contemplate how bad things had got. Those who had bothered to turn out were now paying £1.90 to watch Third Division football. At First Division Manchester City, it was £1.80. Only 20 seasons before, in 1960, Burnley were champions of England. The following year, the club had reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup. Burnley were then among the top teams in the world. But the glory days were long gone. From a Burnley supporter’s perspective, the blame for the club’s decline lay squarely at the door of one man. The same man who had been in charge through the past four decades, the Burnley chairman Bob Lord.

In the smoky confines of the oak-panelled boardroom, Burnley directors and their wives, along with visiting directors from Plymouth Argyle, chatted in small huddles, draining their glasses and finishing off the vol-au-vents. In the corner, at a table furthest from the bar, sat the old man taking it all in. The hooded, hawkish eyes missed nothing; watching, scrutinising, weighing them all up. This was his manor. Over 25 years, he’d run this place. He was part of the fabric, part of the history and, for many, now part of the problem.

Lord had arrived at Burnley Football Club in 1951, in his early forties. The ruddy-faced local butcher blew in like a whirlwind, bursting with ideas. The board of directors didn’t want him. The chairman, Ernie Kay, stated publicly that they would ‘just have to put up with him’. But that didn’t dampen Lord’s spirit. He drew strength from it.

Bob Lord was now 73. His flat nose and jowls gave him the appearance of an old bare-knuckle fighter. As always, he was as smartly turned out. He wore a standard three-piece suit in Prince of Wales check. His trousers had razor-sharp creases. The starched white collar on his shirt and gold tie-pin held down his claret and blue club tie. A gold pocket watch and chain hung from the breast pocket of his waistcoat. His black Oxford shoes were polished to a mirror shine.

Lord pulled on his watch chain and prised open the watch. It was 2.47pm. He sighed and snapped the watch cover shut. He didn’t want to keep them waiting. Best get it over with. He slowly levered himself upwards out of his chair but as he attempted to stand, a pain in his midriff stopped him in his tracks. He struggled to pull on his overcoat. Barbara, his eldest daughter, draped the Paisley silk scarf around his neck and handed him his trilby. Steadying himself on her arm, Bob knew it was time to face the music.

The pair made their way slowly up the carpeted steps to the same seats in the stand that bore his name. Once of a day, he’d have bounded the steps two at a time but since the summer things had changed. He nodded back at the few smiling faces around who looked concerned but were pleased to see him, but beyond the perimeter of the director’s box not many other people were smiling.

Like Caesar entering the Circus Maximus, Lord’s arrival in the stand sparked a section of the crowd into life. It wasn’t ever difficult to miss him in his trademark black trilby and overcoat, but if it was cheers and applause he was expecting, he was out of luck. After season ticket price increases, no wins, no new players signed and the club in debt to the tune of over £300,000, the mood in the ground was a far-from-happy one.

On cue, as usual, the main vocal dissent came from the covered terrace opposite, The Longside, home to the hardcore Burnley fans who now struck up their welcoming overture in perfect rhythm, plus an encore, just to get the party started,

Bob Lord’s a bastard – [clap clap, clap, clap]

Bob Lord’s a bastard…

[REPEAT]

The targeted hate and abuse had gone on for years. On and off through the good years and the bad. The chanting, the ‘Lord Out’ banners, the letters in the newspapers and the protests. The graffiti, the hate mail, stories of dog shit through the letterbox, on and on it had gone, ever since that February day in 1963 when Lord sold Burnley’s favourite son, Jimmy McIlroy, to Stoke City. Ever since that day, a rebellion had started and he had become a hate figure. Like Caesar, he waited for the knife between the shoulder blades. He knew it wouldn’t be long in coming.

It had become a form of local entertainment, like bear-baiting or pig-sticking. Let’s see if we can get the old man to change his ways, they thought. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t. The fans’ choir turned up the heat, ‘We all fucking hate Lord... Lord Out’. He’d heard the songs so many times down the years; he knew which was coming next.

Barbara gripped his hand. ‘Just ignore them, dad.’ He tried to raise a smile in return but deep inside, it hurt. The rejection, the cat-calls, the barrage of hate. It hurt. It never showed on his face but it cut deep. It hurt more than the pain he felt inside. Once of a day, he’d have sorted them out good and proper. Banned them for bloody life. But those who are about to depart this world can’t muster the energy any longer.

If it wasn’t them sticking the knife in, it was the shareholders demanding he stand down or the bloody newspapers. If not them, it was the BBC, the Football League or the Fulham chairman who had issued him with a high-court writ. There was the impending Football Association inquiry into his finances and a growing number of other people demanding money off him. The Inland Revenue, the VAT man and the growing line of local businesses who had not been paid. The telephone that constantly rang; the growing pile of unopened brown envelopes and bills left unpaid. There seemed to be no escape from the avalanche of problems that had crashed down on him. He wanted so much to fight back but he couldn’t.

Bob Lord was dying. A cancerous tumour was gathering in strength and momentum in its mission to finish him. Where many had tried to destroy him and failed, the ruthless cancer would not. In May, he’d asked the top consultant in his usual blunt way. ‘What was wrong?’ He’d been given the blunt result. Terminal cancer, three to six months. The final answer to the final question. No appeal, the referee’s decision is final. Just go home and put your affairs in order.

In January, he’d been fine and in May he had represented the Football Association at Wembley. In June, he had celebrated his 73rd birthday. Now he’d never see another cup final or rub shoulders with the great and the good again. That was all history now. Finished.

After accepting the prognosis, a constant stream of questions ran through his mind. Questions with no answers. What would they all do without him? Who would take over the club and how many more meetings would he be able to attend? He’d been part of the fabric of this place, the chairman for a quarter of the football club’s very existence. Mr Burnley. How would Hilda cope without him after he’d gone? Their golden wedding anniversary was just a few weeks away. All the times he’d been away from home on business, attending meetings of this, that and the other, and she’d been there in the background, running the home front, bringing up the girls. She had been his absolute rock down the years.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of the Burnley and Plymouth teams entering the arena. As the team captains met in the middle, another ‘Lord Out’ chant rang out from the terraces. The referee whistled for the match to begin and the noise from the crowd intensified. Lord tried to focus on the game and ignore the backstabbers and the hecklers, but they constantly groaned each time Burnley lost possession.

‘Division Three football, Lord, Division fucking Three,’ came amid the more polite calls for him to resign. On and on and on it went. Relentless. It was always his fault. Him. His fault. ‘We all fucking hate Lord. Lord Out.’

It was him and his policy of selling the best players. Running the place as he had done like a meat market. The conveyor belt that had rolled on and on, decade after decade, churning out talent like the Larry Grayson Show. The chairmen from the big-time clubs queuing up with their big, fat chequebooks to buy the prime cuts: Willie Morgan, Ralph Coates, Dave Thomas, Leighton James and all the others in between. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, – now if you’d kindly give the secretary your cheque on your way out.’ Surviving again for another season. Bloody good business. Then, two or three years later, buying the same surplus players back at knock-down prices.

Yet, despite all the banners, the hate and the problems, he was still here. Still on the Burnley board. Still the bloody chairman. Still the biggest bloody shareholder and still in charge, so sod them. Sod them all. What did they know about running a football club anyway? Nothing.

The cocktail of drugs Lord was taking dulled the pain but didn’t help his concentration on the game. His mind flitted back and forward. Down the decades. Back to the 1920s, the 1930s and the 1940s. The war years and the ration. The glory days. In his prime, fighting fit and healthy, sleeves rolled up, building the business, churning out the profits and inventing the slogans. His army of white-overalled troops, cutting up the sides of beef and filling up the sausages with God knows what. Making a fortune.

The referee’s whistle sounded to end an eventless first half. Nil-nil. Light applause from the directors as they slipped off their tartan rugs and shuffled past Lord to quaff their free half-time drinks. A chorus of boos and whistles rang out from the terrace opposite as the hardcore fans trudged off for their half-time beers.

Lord waited for them all to leave before slowly making a move to stand up. It was a sober boardroom that greeted him. The topic of conversation was mainly about the West Bromwich Albion midfielder Bryan Robson and his proposed move to Manchester United for two million quid. Two million quid, they were saying. Two million for a footballer who had suffered three broken legs. They must be bloody crackers.

He took in the surroundings of what had been his baronial home for the past quarter of a century. He’d spent half his adult life here. It might be the last time he would see the place. The honours board and the trophy cabinet. The pictures of the players, many of whom he’d signed as teenagers and then later sold. His boys. Their youthful faces looking out, full of energy, full of hope. The league championship, won during his tenure. The European Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup runs. The victories over the big-name teams: Spurs, Wolves, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday. What fantastic times. So many happy memories. The places around the world he’d seen his boys play: London, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Naples. Travelling in comfort and staying in the best hotels. Eating the best food. Only the best for his boys. The good times, only 20 years ago.

Albert Maddox, the club secretary, came over and gingerly handed him a folded typewritten sheet with the day’s gate figures. Lord opened it and shook his head in disbelief. Four thousand and twenty-two. ‘The lowest figure for a first home game in living memory,’ said the Burnley Express’s Peter Higgs the following week. Twenty years ago, Burnley’s home crowds were ten times that. More people played bingo in Burnley these days than followed its football team. Burnley’s population had fallen to 80,000 and nobody wanted to watch Third Division football, when you could see Leeds, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton just an hour away by car.

He remembered the first time he’d come to watch a match on his own as a young nipper. How he’d scraped together sixpence for the entrance fee from collecting empty beer bottles. Standing in the Brunshaw Road enclosure and seeing the great Burnley team win the Football League in 1921. Jerry Dawson in goal, defenders Cliff Jones and Len Smelt. The half-back line of Halley, Boyle and Watson. The forward line of Nesbitt, Kelly, Anderson, Weaver and little Eddie Mosscrop, the schoolteacher. Thirty games unbeaten in a season. Still a Division One league record. Some of the players turning up after the match to his father’s barber shop for a haircut and a shave. He could remember it as if it was only yesterday.

His eyes moved further down the next wall. Another team. The team he helped build. His boys. The 1959/60 league championship-winning side. Blacklaw, Elder, Angus, Miller, Adamson, Cummings, Robson, McIlroy, Pointer, Pilkington, Connelly, Meredith. The dream they had all shared that had come true that night at Maine Road in May 1960. Their handsome, smiling faces beamed back at him. The team that had ruled the football world back in the glory days when he had everything in front of him and could have done anything. It seemed like only yesterday.

Yesterday, when he had dreams and ambitions to fulfil.

Yesterday, when he made his plans.

Yesterday, when he was loved.

CHAPTER 2

ROOTS

‘I would watch this place which might almost be a town of Dante’s Inferno and wonder how life was possible here – the grey stone houses in the long, black, slimy streets and the general air of dirt and monotony. The people are lively and excitable and very good-hearted and full of humour and wit. But I could not see what they lived for – politics and football were the only things that interested them.’

Lady Ottoline Morrell

EARLY spring 1878. The shriek from the steam whistle sounded the arrival of the 12.30 Manchester train. In the third-class carriage at the far end of the train, two young boys clambered to the window to look out. The station platform sign, Burnley Manchester Road, slowly drifted into their view and the train came to a stop. James Lord, the boys’ father, slid down the window and peered out before twisting the door handle and swinging the carriage door open. Stepping down on to the platform, James grabbed a hold of their suitcases and, holding the door open, told the two boys, William and Harry, to mind their step climbing down. Dressed in their Sunday best, the two boys jumped out of the carriage and landed on the platform. James’ wife, Sarah, passed him their youngest boy, Freddy, just two years old, who James lifted up into his arms before offering his free hand to help his wife down the steps. They were finally here.

It had been a harsh winter for the Lord family. Like many in Middleton, the wage cuts imposed on the silk weavers had been savage. At 27 and a skilled silkman, James Lord had seen his piece work earnings cut from three shillings a yard to just one shilling and three-pence. Already working six days a week, there were not enough hours left to make up the loss of earnings.

The silk workers took up their grievance with the mill owners but the bosses refused to listen, threatening job losses if they didn’t accept their offer, so a strike was called. Two weeks later, the mill owners transferred most of the work to other mills in neighbouring Leigh. It was the last straw for James Lord. There was talk of work and better wages in the cotton mill towns to the north, but it would mean moving. So, in March 1878, just before the Easter holidays, James and Sarah and their three boys, William, aged seven, Harry, four, and young Freddy arrived in Burnley, where the cotton town was booming.

Out in the station yard, a line of horse-drawn carriages and porters stood waiting to take the travellers on to addresses in the town, but being on a third-class budget, James got hold of a carter who piled their luggage on top. James told the man they needed to go to Branch Road in the Burnley Wood district. It wasn’t far. It was cold but the rain held off as the family followed the carrier and his cart out of the station to find their new home.

As they exited the station yard, the town opened up before them. Along the horizon, scores of giant chimneys poked towards the sky, belching out a boiling stream of grey smoke and steam that hung above the town. The air was so thick that the sun only broke through occasionally. The rancid smell of the nearby animal rendering yard mixed with the local brewery was so strong that William and Harry looked at each other and pinched their noses. Steam-driven trams clanked up and down the hilly slope of the main road leading to the town centre. As the Lords made their way down the hill, small groups of mill girls dressed in clogs and shawls looked at them as they scurried past, chattering on their way back to the mill following their lunch break.

Delivery drivers made the slow climb up the hill, the clip-clop sound of heavy horse hooves on cobble-stones, carrying beer kegs, cotton bales, milk churns and coal. Street hawkers called out their wares, ‘Fleetwood fish – fresh today’, ‘best fruit n’ veg’, ‘hens’ eggs’. There were butchers’ shops with an abundance of fresh meat hanging outside on rails: sides of beef, spring lamb, pheasants, rabbit and pigeon. The group crossed over the canal bridge and turned right into Finsley Gate, where a row of huge cotton mills stood alongside the canal.

James had seen the advert ‘Weavers Wanted’ in the Manchester Times and had written only a fortnight ago to apply for work. He could have taken his pick of any of 20 cotton goods employers in the Burnley area. More workers hurried past them as the mill steam whistles sounded in unison to announce the end of the dinner hour. James looked around and checked his pocket watch with the nearest mill clock. Within seconds, the entire street was deserted as the afternoon shift began and the sound of thousands of weaving looms clanked into life.

The Lords arrived outside number 20 Branch Road. It was a new terraced house, one of the hundreds built in the area to house the growing number of mill and factory workers. A two-up, two-down house with a yard at the back and an outside toilet. The house was within a five-minute walk to the mill for James and the local school for the two boys. On Parliament Street, there were numerous shops providing everything the family needed. A web of terraced streets spread out all the way up to the railway line in one direction and the canal in the other.

Despite his skills as a silk weaver, James Lord had to start all over again at the bottom, working a 56 and a half-hour week, as a card room tenter, one of the lowest paid jobs in the mill. At least the work was regular and the earnings better than he’d had for several months in Middleton. Later, once the two boys had settled into school, and a minder found for Freddy, Sarah would start work in the mill as a Cotton Carder.

In 1878, Burnley’s population was around 80,000 and rising by the month, as the cotton industry demanded more and more workers. There were over 140 working mills, turning out cotton and cloth by the mile every working day.

But as the Lord family settled into their new surroundings, there was trouble brewing in the Burnley mills. In April, the Lancashire Mill Masters Association decided on a ten per cent cut in wages across the cotton weaving sector. The following month, thousands of weavers went out on strike. After a fortnight with no wages or bread, the mood in the town turned nasty.

The Burnley cotton strike and its subsequent riots ran on for eight weeks in the summer of 1878, which saw mob violence, imprisonment, deportations, mills and warehouses burned out, the riot act read and thousands of police and the cavalry deployed. The strike eventually collapsed and the weavers forced to accept the ten per cent wage reduction. As the weavers went back to work, life slowly began to get back to normal in Burnley Wood. The Lord family grew in size. Three more children arrived to make number 20 Branch Road short of space. Frank Lord was born in 1879, Lucy in 1882 and Herbert in 1887.

In 1891, the Lords moved to a larger house, number 133 Parliament Street. The three eldest boys were all now working, Harry and Fred alongside their father in the mill while William, the eldest son, now 20, had left the mill and taken up the profession of barber, operating his own business from the front room parlour of the house.

In February 1896, Fred Lord married a Burnley girl, Laura Boothman, when they were both in their teens and working in the mills. The couple lived in Marlborough Street in Burnley Wood and soon after the wedding started their own family. Their first child, Frank, arrived in October 1896, followed three years later by Arthur in 1899 and then Henry in 1901. Sadly, baby Henry suffered convulsions and died from pneumonia aged five months in May 1902, which must have been a traumatic time for the family. Three years later, in the summer of 1905, Fred and Laura had their fourth child and their first daughter, who they named Gladys.

Cutting hair must have been more lucrative than working in the mill as, by 1900, Fred Lord had joined brother William working in the family hairdressing business. When William later joined the Burnley police force, Fred Lord was left in sole charge of the shop. Fred became a well-known character in Burnley Wood. The barber’s shop was located at the top end of Parliament Street in a busy location. The locals would pass Lord’s barbers on their way to the mills twice a day. Open six days a week from early morning until dusk, Fred would cut hair, men’s and women’s, and enjoy a gossip with the locals, charging tuppence for a short back and sides, and a penny for a shave. Fred Lord was a bit of a comedian by all accounts. His customers must have enjoyed his company as two of his jokes had been published in the town’s local paper, the Burnley Express, and both had won prizes.

Fred was a keen follower of sport, specifically football, and followed Burnley Football Club. On Saturday mornings, he would open early, close up at 2.30pm, nip down to Turf Moor to watch the match at 3pm and then reopen the shop after tea and cut hair again until 10pm. His shop was only a ten-minute walk from the football ground and several of the Burnley footballers who lived locally were among his best customers.

In 1903, Fred Lord attended the first meeting of the Burnley Hairdressers Association, which brought together barbers from across the local area. Local newspapers reported that he spoke regularly at meetings of the group on a range of issues: opening hours, working conditions, new barbering methods and techniques, fixing prices and arranging organising sporting activities. He also helped to set up a hairdressers’ pension scheme. In 1915, he became President of the Burnley Hairdressers Association.

Another founding member of the Burnley Hairdressers Association, who became a good friend of Fred Lord’s, was Ernie Kay. Like Lord, Ernest David Kay started his own barbering business from his front room in Abel Street in the Daneshouse district. Kay came originally from Ramsbottom and was a keen sportsman, and also a fellow Burnley FC follower.

By the turn of the century, Burnley’s population had grown to over 100,000. The Burnley Wood district was now one of the most densely populated areas in the town, with more than 10,000 people living within its tightly packed streets. With the front room taken up at 133 Parliament Street taken up by the hairdressing business, Fred Lord expanded his little business empire in 1905, renting the house next door, number 131, and opening up the front room as a tobacconists and newsagent.

On Friday, 19 June 1908, the final addition to Fred Lord’s family arrived, a boy, who they named Robert William, after Fred’s grandfather. No-one at this time could possibly have predicted how the new infant would later become such a key figure in the town and the world of football.

The week Robert William Lord arrived had fallen during one of the driest Junes on record. In football, Tottenham Hotspur had been elected to the Second Division of the Football League at the expense of Stoke City. Another colliery disaster in Burnley had claimed four more lives and Burnley wheelwrights were on strike for another two shillings on top of their 33 shillings a week.

Fred Lord was a busy man and did not register young Robert’s birth until 24 July, well over a month later. (His birth certificate also shows his mother’s maiden name as Booth, not Boothman, and their address as 31 Parliament Street, not 131.)

On Monday, 27 April 1914, when Robert was five years old, he received his initiation into Burnley Football Club. ‘I have promised to close the school earlier than usual this afternoon, at 3.30pm, to enable the children to go with their parents to see the football team returning from London,’ announced Beatrice Monk, the headmistress of Coal Clough Primary School.

The previous weekend, Burnley had won the FA Cup, beating Liverpool 1-0 at the Crystal Palace in front of His Majesty, King George V. Fred picked Robert up from school and the two of them walked into town to see the Burnley team bring home the famous trophy. Local factories, coal pits and mills all stopped work mid-afternoon and the route into Burnley was thick with people and supporters waving flags as they waited for the team’s arrival at Rosegrove railway station.

In his book, My Fight for Football, published in 1963, Lord describes the scene.

‘I stood as a youngster amid the mighty mass of people assembled near the Town Hall of Burnley to cheer home our Cup winners of 1914. That vast crowd was there, together with the City Fathers, to welcome the Cup to Burnley for the first time. The team came out onto the balcony, and there was Tommy Boyle, the captain, holding the Cup in triumph as high above his head as he could in order that all those people should see it. Even I, as a nipper of six, could see it. How I thrilled!’

There were huge crowds present in the town centre in and around the Town Hall that day. So huge, in fact, that several people fainted and were injured in the crush. On police instructions, the Burnley team came down Manchester Road and paused briefly outside the Town Hall before carrying on to Turf Moor as they had a match against Bradford City that evening. The Cup raising on the balcony did not take place until some days later, when a civic reception was held at the Town Hall. Lord would have only been five years old at the time, the event taking place two months before his sixth birthday in June 1914.

Witnessing that historic moment, coupled with the cheering, the massed, singing crowds and the joy of seeing his town’s football club win the biggest prize in football (then), made a huge impression on the youngster. From that day, Robert Lord became devoted to Burnley FC.

The ‘City Fathers’ Lord refers to in his earlier comment from 1963 were the people with whom power lay in the town. The control of Burnley’s citizens was in the hands of a group of businessmen, men with names like Hargreaves, Kay, Whittaker, Rawlinson, Grimshaw, Pickles, Massey, Sutcliffe, Spencer, Kippax, Dugdale, Slater, Thornber and a few others. They were cotton mill owners, lawyers, land owners, brewery magnates and factory bosses.

This group of men ran the town. They owned the public utilities, the gasworks, the coal mines, water distribution and sanitation. They sat on the town council. They ran the police force, the judicial system and the local magistrates, handing down sentences and birchings to anyone who broke the peace or stepped out of line. Their interests were protected by law and they held the power to enforce it. Lord called them ‘The City Fathers’. In other Burnley circles, they were known as ‘The Guardians’, and several of these men were also influential in establishing Burnley Football Club from its earliest days.

The honour of Burnley’s football team winning the FA Cup lifted the whole town and made for a great start to the summer of 1914. In one Burnley park, a giant floral display honouring the FA Cup winners was created. It was a gloriously hot summer as the thermometers in the mills reached 95 degrees, so hot that the foremen gave out orange juice to cool the weavers down.

The end of June was also the last week of school for the football-mad Robert Lord. After the annual Wakes Week holiday, there would be six whole weeks off school. Days were spent playing football in Towneley Park, climbing trees and fishing in the brook. June turned into July and all was well in Burnley, but things were not so good across the Channel in Europe.

In Sarajevo, on Sunday, 28 June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated as they left their morning church service. The assassination triggered a chain of political and military events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. When Germany attacked France through Belgium on 4 August, Britain entered the war alongside the French. The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, commented that ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe’.

One of the first groups of Burnley men to volunteer and sign up in mid-September 1914 were the members of the Burnley Lads club, where hairdresser and sports coach Ernie Kay, along with 70 of the Lads, led by Captain Henry Davison Riley, formed part of Z Company of the 11th Service Battalion, The East Lancashire Regiment, better known as the Accrington Pals. The Pals soon left home to begin training in Wales before they shipped out to the Middle East for their first taste of war.

In September 1915, Fred Lord’s eldest son, Frank, now 19, enlisted into the Royal Field Artillery as a Gunner. Then, three months later, quite unexpectedly, a letter arrived from the War Office with Fred’s name on it. Fred Lord was 39 years old but he still met the upper age limit of 41 to serve in the army. Despite gaining only a B1 grade in his medical, due to a perforated eardrum, the army still drafted him.

In February 1916, Ernie Kay’s Accrington Pals returned from their Middle East tour of duty and were posted to the Somme region in France in preparation for the forthcoming summer offensive. The Accrington Pals, along with several other Pals battalions, were given the village of Serre-les-Puisieux, which was held by the Germans, as their objective.

At 7.30am on 1 July, Captain Henry Davison Riley blew his whistle and led his Burnley Company of the Accrington Pals and Sergeant Ernie Kay over the top. Within 30 minutes, the Pals battalion was decimated by a hail of heavy machine-gun fire from all directions. Captain Riley was killed only minutes after leaving his trench, shot in the head. Ernie Kay managed to cross no-man’s land and reach the German wire before he fell. He was hit three times, shot first in the forearm, then in the back and a minute later in the shoulder. Bleeding badly, Kay crawled on his belly all the way back to his own lines. Of the 720 men of the Accrington Pals who crossed no-man’s land that morning, 241 were killed and 392 wounded on the bloodiest day of the Somme.

In September 1916, Fred Lord finally received his call-up. He joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps along with 26 of his fellow Burnley hairdressers, who had also been conscripted into the war effort.

Eight-year-old Robert, his brother Arthur, sister Gladys and mother Laura waved goodbye to their father at the railway station, just as they had already done with their older brother Frank, not knowing when they would see him again. With the barber shop closed, Laura carried on running the tobacconists and newsagents next door and looking after the children.

One morning in December 1916, a boy came into the shop and handed Laura a telegram. Following an accident carrying a field gun, Fred had slipped and suffered a hernia. It wasn’t a bad enough injury to discharge him but he was hospitalised for a fortnight before spending the next two years in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps base at Aldershot as a storeman.

As the