Mr Corinthian: Pa Jackson and the Casual Corinthians

By Llew Walker

Mr Corinthian is the first-ever biography of Nicholas Lane ('Pa') Jackson, founding father of the famous Corinthian Football Club. This team of amateur gentlemen was a phenomenon in the game's early years. Achieving victories over FA Cup winners and league champions, their players twice comprised the whole England national team, while their overseas tours introduced the game to countries that would later become footballing superpowers. Jackson has been hailed as the architect, visionary and genius behind this celebrated club. But 'Pa', as he was affectionately known, was not what he seemed. An incorrigible self-publicist and social climber, he cultivated the appearance of a sophisticated English gentleman and a 'grand old man of sport'. For the last 100 years, his version of the Corinthian story, as told to club members, has been accepted as a faithful record of events - but it wasn't. Did the club's historians conspire to fabricate an undeserved reputation? This book is a search for the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781801505871

Book preview

PART ONE

Nicholas Lane Jackson, Jnr

Preface

NICHOLAS LANE ‘Pa’ Jackson was a respected and influential ‘grand old man of British sport’,¹ a pioneering Victorian sports journalist, an FA committee member, an accomplished footballing administrator, an entrepreneur, an author and an authority on football, lawn tennis, athletics and golf. But he’s primarily remembered for his affiliation with the celebrated Corinthian Football Club. Under his management, the amateur Corinthians captured the sporting public’s imagination with famous wins over some of the best professional teams of the day. They were admired for their ‘Corinthian Spirit’, an ethos of fair play and sportsmanship, and travelled the world, promoting the game and how it should be played and inspiring the foundation of local football associations, cup competitions and clubs. For over 100 years, they’ve been considered the finest amateur team in the game’s history.

… just as their greatest rivals, Queens Park, Glasgow, founded Scottish football, so the Corinthians founded English football, and it is not too much to say that they were the greatest influence on the game’s formative years during the last decade of the last century.²

Whenever the name ‘Corinthian’ appears in the pages of football history, so does Jackson’s. Whenever their story is told, it always begins with the man affectionately known as ‘Pa’.³ He’s portrayed as the architect, visionary and genius behind the club’s creation. He was, in every respect, ‘Mr Corinthian’.

However, in recent years, Pa and the Corinthians have come under intense scrutiny. Football historian Terry Morris says:

The motives of the men who organised and played for Corinthian F.C. were entirely conservative, aiming primarily to preserve the sporting environment in which they had been educated and which they saw as increasingly threatened by the growing popularity and commercialisation of the game. Such motives can easily be understood, but given the misrepresentation and sometimes the hypocrisy with which they were pursued, they should not be admired.⁴

Bolsmann and Porter say:

From ‘Pa’ Jackson onwards, the Corinthians have been very influential in writing their own story. Those who have written histories of the Club – Corbett (1906), Creek (1933), Cavallini (2007) – have themselves been Corinthians or closely associated with the Corinthian-Casuals. They lean heavily on each other – Creek on Corbett, Cavallini on Creek and Corbett – and, while useful as guides to the club’s playing record, they demand careful and critical reading.⁵

The conclusion is that the Corinthians fabricated their own reputation and were snobs and elitists who duped the public into believing the story spun by the club’s historians.

Morris also suggests that the ‘founding father of the Corinthians’ lied and that this is proof of deception, likely indicating other discrepancies in the club’s story. Morris points to Pa’s claim in his autobiography, Sporting Days and Sporting Ways:⁶

I was born in 1849 at Ermington, in Devonshire, but when I was still a baby my parents moved to London and went to live at Little Knight Rider Street, close to Saint Paul’s churchyard.

This was a story Jackson frequently repeated in interviews and profiles published throughout his lifetime. However, Morris points out:

Jackson informs us that he was born in Devon in 1849, but in fact the census returns make it quite clear that he was born in Hackney, in the east end of London.⁷

Morris is correct, as in five decades of census returns, Pa consistently stated he was born in Hackney or Middlesex, and the baptismal records from the Pavement Chapel in Hackney confirm he was born at Southgate Road on 1 November 1849,⁸ and baptised on 21 April 1850.⁹

Morris also infers that the scarcity of information about Pa is also suspicious:

Historians of the Club have never had a lot to say about Nicholas Lane Jackson, which is scarcely surprising, as he had little to say about himself. His autobiography, Sporting Days and Sporting Ways, published in his old age in 1932, tells us a lot about the famous men that he encountered in a colourful life, but not much about its author. What he does tell us about himself is largely untrue.¹⁰

The suggestion that the leading protagonist in the Corinthian story was willing to hide information and lie about himself implied he did the same concerning the Corinthian Club too; therefore, Morris regards the history of the Corinthian Club as Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.¹¹

Suggesting Pa falsified information and that a partisan collection of authors fabricated the club’s undeserved reputation could mean Morris, Bolsmann and Porter have uncovered a conspiracy theory. If correct, it has implications not only for the club and its founding father but it also opens the doors to a complete re-evaluation of various other volumes that purport to tell the story of the game’s early history.

The Jackson Cup

THE YEAR of 1897 was a challenging one for Nicholas Lane Jackson, the younger.¹² After several years of locking horns with the English FA, he had finally resigned, having been accused of disloyalty and insubordination. He also fell ill. The effects of the illness lingered and doctors recommended that he take a holiday.

In January 1898 he headed off to the alpine resort of St Moritz, Switzerland, for the prescribed rest and relaxation. This was one of only a few times he travelled outside the British Isles, and it appears to be the only time he visited Switzerland. Like many novice tourists, he immersed himself in the local culture and activities, and later that year he presented the St Moritz Curling Club with a trophy. According to Jackson, the gift’s acceptance was ‘somewhat lukewarm’, but the presentation of a ‘Challenge Cup – To be competed for annually by Curling Clubs in Switzerland’, bearing a relatively unknown benefactor’s name, must have been puzzling for the Swiss curlers. By following the doctor’s advice, Pa had stumbled upon a new sport to patronise.

Over time, the Jackson Cup would become the blue-ribbon event in the curling world, and today is the oldest-surviving cup in the sport.¹³ The original trophy now sits on several additional plinths carrying the winners’ names from the last 120 years, and the engraving, ‘Presented by N.L. Jackson – March 1898’ stands out for all to see.¹⁴

In bestowing a self-named trophy on the St Moritz Curling Club, Pa had aligned himself with a sport for which he had no credentials, no connection and little opportunity to pursue. Obviously, his benevolence had the desired effect because, for Pa, it was all about legacy.

Pa is mistakenly remembered in St Moritz as ‘Sir’ N.L. Jackson, a title he would have cherished and a misconception he seemingly chose not to correct, for Pa wasn’t what he seemed.

From the public houses of Victorian London to the elite world of the country club, the life of Nicholas Lane Jackson, the younger, is a tale of an entrepreneur who became involved with the new sport of association football when it began to flourish. By chance, he entered the elite society of the gentlemen who were guiding the game’s development and, through willingness, commitment and dedication, he earned his colleagues’ respect and rose to become a well-known and active member of the game’s governing body. He was a public figure who counted players, club owners, politicians, publishers, journalists, aristocrats and even some royalty as friends or acquaintances. With his good fortune and his new social standing came a class consciousness and a compulsion to fashion the manners and mores of those whose company he was keeping.

Pa became the driving force behind the Corinthian Football Club, and he guided the club through its golden years, seemingly single-handedly responsible for its accomplishments. He was also the first to publish a club history, which became the primary source for all other narratives, and as a living witness to the club’s foundation, his account of the club’s early years was never questioned. However, it was flawed and exaggerated his involvement because, for Pa, the prestige of Corinthian was directly linked to his celebrity and social status.

The Corinthians were a collection of the best amateur players in the country, and Pa arranged matches against the rising professional clubs in the north of England. It was a recipe for success. The matches Pa organised between the southern amateurs and the northern professionals were edgier than the usual friendlies the public was accustomed to, and their popularity confirmed the demand for footballing spectacles. They provided exciting and meaningful entertainment that undoubtedly contributed to the popularity and growth of football, and may have, in William McGregor’s mind at least, validated the concept of the Football League.¹⁵

Large crowds and widespread newspaper coverage helped raise the marketability of football, and when professionalism was legitimised in 1885, the game’s commercial potential was too great to be suppressed. The amateur game couldn’t compete against the growing tide of commercialism, and via Pa’s position at the FA, he became the outspoken and seemingly self-appointed voice of the amateur cause. Yet his attempts to restrict the rise of professionalism were paradoxical, as, on the one hand, he would rail against the indentured professional footballers, once calling them ‘poor wretches’, yet would collaborate with their employers and arrange fixtures for the Corinthians.

Ironically, Pa probably had more in common with the club owners of the north than with those he had chosen to throw in his lot with. He would have identified with the northern club owners’ entrepreneurial spirit, and perhaps this comprehension also lay behind Pa’s choice of opposition. He became good friends with William Sudell, considered the champion of the professional lobby and the man behind the staggering success of Preston North End.¹⁶ Pa arranged more fixtures against Sudell’s team than any other.

Gathering the finest exponents in the amateur ranks and absorbing the critical innovations from the Scottish game and other footballing centres around the country, Pa crafted a team that played the ‘Corinthian style’ of football, which was admired wherever they played. The famous Corinthians were in demand, and the appeal of contests against the amateur giant killers meant clubs would be willing to gamble on their reputation remaining intact if they suffered a defeat at the hands of the finest amateurs in the land. It was an honour to have such venerated guests, and, anyway, a visit by Pa’s lads might make good commercial sense!

In the background, society was changing, and accepted truths were being challenged. The Victorians struggled with concepts that had once defined their existence in what Birley called ‘the new, questioning age’.¹⁷ Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Marx’s Das Kapital questioned absolutes and the established order, while Dickens and others exposed the poverty and misery of the increasing urbanisation of industrialised Britain. The art world wrestled with the ugliness of the industrial towns in the north of England, contrasted with the contrived, Arcadian pastoral landscapes they preferred. The Victorian psyche struggled to reconcile the concept of nature versus nurture, the ‘green and pleasant land’, with the ‘dark Satanic mills’, which felt like a battle between right and wrong and good versus evil.

Similarly, Corinthian matches were perceived as contests between the ‘natural’ amateur and the ‘nurtured’ professional, but win or lose, the Corinthian’s reputation always seemed to remain intact.

Meanwhile, national newspaper circulation ballooned, an increasingly literate society demanded more and more sports news, and the Corinthians were particularly newsworthy. Pa, in the right place and at the right time, was able to peddle his thoughts and opinions to the devotees of the new sport, and as Corinthian fixtures became a popular attraction, Pa’s reputation and influence grew.

History regards the Corinthians as a unique phenomenon in the story of football. They were the champions of amateurism, famous for promoting the game globally, demonstrating how it should be played, and advocating the values of sportsmanship, honesty and fair play. Their code of conduct influenced all sports and introduced the concept that ‘the spirit of the game’ was more important than winning at all costs. Although it appears quaint and old-fashioned today, what became known as the ‘Corinthian Spirit’ continues to represent a sporting code of the highest standards. Even today, referees are still instructed to make decisions … according to the laws of the game and the ‘spirit of the game’.¹⁸

The same principle is still found in many sports and is commonly associated with the Olympic Games and the ‘Olympic Spirit’ founded by Pierre de Coubertin, who, on a visit to England in the late 19th century, had admired the ethos of amateur sport and the Corinthian Spirit and adopted the same principles for his own Games.

A less acknowledged accolade involves the Corinthians’ role in defusing the tensions between the ‘northern caucus’ and southern gentleman. The matches between the amateurs and the professionals kept the avenues of communication open and provided opportunities for discussion, negotiation, compromise and even friendship. Had the opposing factions been left to pursue their own causes, the game would likely have become something else, divided and regionalised, governed by social class, location, school or occupation; similar forces that would later divide rugby into the union and league codes.

As years passed and the game’s popularity accelerated, the numbers at turnstiles continued to drive the universal laws of supply and demand. Growing attendances, leagues, cups and community allegiances propelled the game forward as practical economics eclipsed amateur morals.

At some point towards the end of the 19th century, it must have dawned on Pa that he had hitched his horse to the wrong wagon, and he turned away from the ‘cloth caps and scarves brigade’ to the rarefied air and exclusivity of the golf and country club.¹⁹ He would continue to be consulted by newspapers and magazines, and his reputation as ‘the grand old man of sport’ increased as the years passed. Anyway, his new love of golf was far more fitting for the persona he had carefully crafted and refined.

Yet Pa wasn’t happy to rest on his laurels. His desire for recognition resulted in a history of Corinthian shaped by his aspirations. Even though his success with the club brought him fame and renown and opened doors to business opportunities and aristocratic friendships, he obviously felt he deserved a more prominent place in the club’s history.

In the end, the history of Corinthian belongs to Nicholas Lane ‘Pa’ Jackson. His version of the club’s foundation and success is the source for all the volumes devoted to telling the club’s story. Pa’s account entered the historical record, which meant that for the past 100 years, whenever the Corinthian story is told, it always begins with Pa.

Many histories of football have been written by some of the game’s leading lights, and most mention the Corinthians: Percy Young, Geoffrey Green, Maurice Golesworthy, David Goldblatt, Brian Granville, Eric Dunning, and even the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopaedia Britannica subscribe to Pa’s version of the club’s history.

For over 100 years, Pa has been lauded as a footballing visionary responsible for creating one of the most important clubs of the era. He became an early football icon, to some a genius. But he was also a private man, a mysterious figure who carefully controlled the details of his life, and the information he shared in his ghostwritten autobiography raises more questions than answers. Therefore, albeit 100 years too late, it’s time to better understand ‘Mr Corinthian’.

Growing Up

ALTHOUGH THE Jackson family had lived at Freehamlet Farm in Ermington for generations, Pa’s grandfather was born in Hendon, London. He returned to Ermington and raised a family of 14 children, where the seventh child was named Nicholas Lane Jackson.²⁰ The seventh child moved to London around the time of Queen Victoria’s coronation and, in 1847, married Mary Prior, a tanner’s daughter, at St Giles, Cripplegate. Their marriage produced a child named after his father, and more children followed: Richard William was born two years later, followed by Susannah Winnington, John James, Alice Emma, and the youngest, Mary Margaret.²¹

As a young man, Jackson senior was a ‘jack-of-all-trades and master of none’. He found employment as a servant, a cheesemonger, a cattle salesperson, a loan shark and eventually a victualler.

Jackson senior’s first child was born in Hackney, London, on 1 November 1849. He was named after his father, Nicholas Lane Jackson. On the birth certificate, the father’s occupation is listed as ‘clerk’. When Pa’s brother Richard William was born in 1852, the father’s career had changed to ‘city officer’. Perhaps unexpectedly he had become Sergeant-at-Mace²² for the Sheriff of London²³ and, in 1854, was granted the Freedom of the City of London.

Around the same time, he became the proprietor of the Old Parr’s Head Tavern and Hotel on Little Knight Rider Street near St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1858, he oversaw the demolition and rebuilding of premises that had become ‘unfit for the reception of travellers’.²⁴ The new and upmarket Old Parr’s catered to the wealthy financiers and businessmen working in the City of London.

A GOOD DINNER, Soups, Fish, Poultry, and Joints, every day (except Sunday) at half-past One o’clock, for One Shilling. SMETHWICK’S IRISH ALE, the finest Ale on [sic] Town. Coates and Co.s’ Plymouth Gin, and other Spirits and Wines of the choicest selections. For samples and proof, call at the OLD PARR’S HEAD TAVERN, Little Knight Rider-street, Old Change.

Regular advertisements were placed in the newspapers advertising ‘first-class dinners, balls and wedding breakfasts’ and a connoisseur’s wine cellar. Old Parr’s Tavern was obviously a well-funded and upmarket establishment.

On Valentine’s Day 1860 the Jackson family welcomed their sixth child, a girl named Mary Margaret Jackson. Two weeks later, perhaps due to complications, the mother died. The loss of his wife seemed to have been a catalyst for a downward spiral for Pa’s father and, within a year, he was declared bankrupt and no longer the proprietor of the Old Parr’s Head. He had moved to Lambeth, becoming the landlord of the far less prestigious Lilford Arms.

Seemingly unable to manage a newborn baby, Mary Margaret was cared for by another sergeant-at-mace and his wife, where, perhaps out of necessity, she would remain. Without a mother, it’s unclear how much responsibility for raising the children was undertaken by Jackson senior, but some of these duties may have fallen to the eldest son, the ten-year-old Nicholas, the younger.

Although registered at 77 Basinghall Street in the City of London in the 1865 Post Office Directory, the following year the directory places Jackson in Edmonton, about ten miles away. The Jackson family had entered a turbulent period and would relocate several times in the mid-1860s. There’s no explanation for the move, but he’s still listed as the proprietor of two pubs: the Lilford Arms in Camberwell and the Three Tuns in Westminster.

Pa mentions Edmonton in his autobiography, where, as a 16-year-old, he says he joined the committee of Edmonton Cricket Club and set up the ‘Mutual Improvement Recreation Society’.²⁵

In 1867, Jackson senior was registered at Medina Villas, Dalston Road in Hackney, about three miles from the City of London, where they would stay until around 1870, when Jackson senior returned to his previous address on Basinghall Street. There’s little explanation for this brief nomadic period in Jackson’s life, but the move to Medina Villas in Hackney would be the last time Pa lived under the same roof as his father, as an event in 1867 would have a life-changing impact on the 17-year-old Nicholas.

His father had married Eliza Williams, a widow and the proprietor of The Father Red Cap public house in Camberwell, not far from the Lilford Arms. However, the marriage soon failed and by October 1868 his new wife had brought divorce proceedings against Nicholas senior, citing cruelty, drunkenness and domestic violence. Meanwhile, his son had befriended the daughter of his new stepmother. Three months after Eliza Williams filed divorce papers, a youthful Nicholas married his stepsister, Mary Ann Williams.

Perhaps the collapse of his father’s marriage and the drunken arguments and violence had created a bond between the two young people and, under the tumult, love had blossomed. Pa and Mary Ann were married in Hackney on 20 January 1869. The witnesses provided by the church were the same witnesses who had signed his father’s wedding certificate two years earlier, and their names appeared on numerous marriage records in the register. They were clearly engaged by the church for couples who desired to marry quickly or in private.

At 19 years old, the young couple were minors and needed parental consent to take their vows, yet Pa’s father’s signature on the wedding licence bears only a vague resemblance to the signature Jackson senior used when receiving the Freedom of the City of London.

Perhaps his father had been kept in the dark, and someone else signed the consent forms. The wedding certif icate states Nicholas junior’s occupation as ‘victualler’, and the same profession is listed for the bride’s deceased father.²⁶ Even though Jackson senior was a victualler and the sergeant-at-mace, he’s listed as a ‘gentleman’.

Although married in 1869, in his autobiography Jackson remembers getting married in 1868. Similarly, on the 1911 census, he stated he had been married 43 years, and although these appear to be careless errors, they were calculated mistakes. Five months after the wedding, Mary Ann gave birth to their first child, Mabel Jackson.²⁷ By then, the young couple had moved to Plaistow, and Mabel’s birth was registered at St Mary the Virgin, Essex.

The disgrace of a shotgun wedding in Victorian society would have brought humiliation and scandal to the family so, as often happened, the pregnant mother moved to another town or city where she was unknown and where she could carry the child to term without being confronted by the shame of conception outside wedlock. Pa would have been regarded as a seducer and philanderer and, even though he was still young, his reputation would have been tarnished, so he needed to move where he and his new wife would be unknown and their secret hidden.

Then, 12 months later, Pa and Mary Ann moved again, to Isleworth, a dozen miles away, and there’s no evidence that Jackson, the younger, ever returned to his father’s home or had any relationship with him afterwards.

For the rest of his life, Jackson senior lived in the City of London. He remained the sergeant-at-mace, became president of the Traders Association, a freemason and was active in local politics and philanthropic societies. Jackson senior would also spend two spells in the City of London Union Workhouse in 1876 and 1877. He died in Lambeth in 1887, aged 63. It’s unknown whether Pa attended the funeral, but by this time he was a well-known sporting gentleman, glowing in the Corinthians’ success.

The shotgun wedding and the circumstances of his marriage would have haunted Pa, and the more famous he became, the more terrified he would have been that his indiscretions, as perceived by Victorian society, would be exposed to public opinion. The fear of exposure and public humiliation may explain why Pa maintained such tight control over the details of his private life, and what he did share was often misleading or false.

Family

FROM THE brief references to Pa’s childhood in his autobiography and elsewhere, a reader could be forgiven for believing Pa was an only child. In fact, he had two brothers and three sisters who all appear to have successfully survived their upbringing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, none became victuallers, but they all scattered, settling away from the City of London and, evidently, their father. They would have known about Pa’s shotgun wedding and, therefore, wouldn’t be included in any of the few reminiscences Pa shared about his childhood and family life. There are indications that he kept in contact with his siblings, although it’s not clear how large a part of his life they were.

Like Mary Margaret, Pa’s younger brother, Richard William, was raised by others. Born three years after Pa, the nine-year-old Richard appeared in the 1861 census living with his aunt, Mary Ann Wyatt, in the Jackson ancestral hamlet of Ermington in Devon. He didn’t appear in any of the following censuses under the same roof as his father.

Richard William wasn’t destined for a career in sports administration, although in his early years he followed in his father’s footsteps for a while, appearing as a ‘potman’ in the Windsor Castle public house in Camberwell. Later, along with his elder brother, he became a committee member at the Finchley Football Club and played regularly in the early years. In 1885 Richard married the daughter of a horse trainer and, with Amelia Langley, had four children, two of whom sadly died in childhood. He became a shopkeeper in Harlesden, dealing in watches and jewellery.

Pa’s sister, Susannah Winnington, married a Bolton-born soldier, William Nimmo, in 1879, in Darmstadt, Germany, and appears to have lived a comfortable but childless life, dying in Kensington in 1908.

A year before Susannah married, John James signed on as a crew member on the Lady Jocelyn and, without informing his father, set sail for New Zealand. John would successfully raise a family of four and establish a dynasty that continues to grow today. The brothers stayed in touch, and the descendants still refer to Pa as ‘Uncle Nick’.²⁸

Alice Emma married a shipping clerk and spent her life in Plymouth, Devon, raising a family of six. Perhaps tellingly, two of her six children became namesakes to her paternal and maternal grandmothers, and Charles Winnington McDonald and Hector Charles Crocker McDonald preserved, perhaps significantly, only the matriarch’s names, ‘Winnington’ and ‘Crocker’. Alice died in 1959, aged 90 years old.

Mary Margaret was a witness on Richard William’s wedding certificate in 1885, confirming that the siblings remained in touch and may have had a close relationship. Curiously, Mary Margaret was baptised at the same time as Pa’s first child, which suggests she may have been taken in by Pa. Mary Margaret never married but spent several decades as a maiden aunt, living comfortably with a wealthy second cousin in Ashtead, Surrey.

Pa never discussed his own children, and as far as research can tell they lived unremarkable low-key lives, mostly staying close to home. In the 1911 census, two of the four surviving children, both in their late thirties, were unmarried and still living at home with their parents. After their first child, Mabel, had died at three years old, her name was passed to his next daughter, Marion Mabel. She was third in line behind Francis Nicholas and the second son, Walter William.

Like his uncle John James, Francis Nicholas emigrated when he was around 20 years old and, in 1890, settled in Vancouver, Canada. Twenty years later, he married Norwich-born divorcee Katie Emma Layland, nee Hicklenton. The marriage certificate names Pa and Mary Ann as the groom’s parents and says the betrothed couple were both 40 years old but, in reality, Katie Emma was four years older. Katie had a son named Lancelot from her first marriage, but the couple never produced any children of their own.

Walter William made little impact on the historical records but was identified as owning a smallholding near the family home. After his mother died in 1922 and his father and sister had moved to Devon, he stayed in Buckinghamshire. Walter William never married, dying in a nursing home in Slough in 1950, aged 78.

Marion Mabel never left her parents’ side. When her mother died, she moved with her father to Teignmouth, Devon, where she died seven years after her father, in Bridestowe, in 1944. Marion Mabel also never married.

The youngest, Alfred Sydney, played rugby for Mill Hill School and spent 17 years working with his father, as a director at Stoke Poges. Alfred also never married, and died aged 57 in 1931, having made Marion Mabel his beneficiary.

Pa had four children who reached maturity, none of whom gave him a grandchild. Not having another generation to carry on the Lane Jackson name meant that there would be no dynasty, his name lost at the passing of his children. In his darkest moments, he may have wondered what it was all for, but this may have motivated him to make sure ‘his’ Corinthian would be his final legacy.

Education

GROWING UP in a public house with a violent, alcoholic father and younger siblings to look after, it would seem remarkable that Pa received any education at all. It’s also surprising that a seemingly uneducated individual could swap the streets of Victorian Hackney for the elite world of country clubs and aristocrats.

Pa makes only a few brief references to his schooldays, all of which appear concocted. There’s nothing concrete to identify any schools or colleges he may have attended, and he seems to have had no formal education. He reminisced that he had received a home education and was destined for a career in the army that failed to materialise through no fault of his own.

He makes a brief reference in his autobiography to being at a prep school in Kent and being woken by room-mates to watch a procession of carriages en route to an illegal bare-knuckle prizefight:

It would be about 1857,²⁹ I think, that the two little boys with whom I shared a bedroom at my preparatory school excitedly called me to the window one morning to watch a heterogeneous collection of vehicles crossing the common …³⁰

The bare-knuckle prizefight for the Championship of Great Britain was between Tom Sayers and Bob Brettle on 20 September 1859 in Etchingham, Kent, and implies that Pa was at a local school, the identity of which is unknown.³¹ Of the schools active in the town at that time, Cranbrook would have been the most famous. However, of the few childhood memories Pa shares, all occurred in London. There are no other references to Kent in his childhood.

Pa was nine years old in 1859. His mother was pregnant and his father would have been busy with Old Parr’s, so it might have been an opportune time to send the young Nicholas to a boarding school if the finances were available. Five months after the prizefight fight, Pa’s mother died, beginning a period of turmoil in the family. Therefore, if Pa had been sent away to prep school in Kent, it was short-lived. For Lane Jackson senior, his namesake seems to have been his favourite, as records indicate that Pa spent his whole childhood under his father’s roof, unlike his other siblings.

Pa also stated that he spent four years as a member of the London Rifle Volunteers (LRV). However, he would later claim that he left the LRV and joined the Tower Hamlets Engineers in 1872. Although Pa would have been only nine years old when he joined the LRV, his association appears legitimate and can be verified. Pa recalled in Sporting Days and Sporting Ways that he was the best shot in the battalion, carrying off many prizes. Despite his boasting, none of the rifle