MR. C. DUNDAS SLATER has introduced a novel turn into the programme at the Alhambra in the shape of the new American game called "Net Ball." The game is extensively played in America, where its novelty has created a sensation and commands large audiences. The inventor, Mr. Hart, has been over here some months selecting a team to give exhibitions in England, which has made such rapid progress that on its behalf, Mr. Hart challenged the champion American team to come over and play them. The Alhambra management approached Mr. Hart with a view to having the games decided at their theatre, and, terms being considered satisfactory, the game is being played nightly.[1]

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the world of the Music Hall that the above account of how, in May 1900, a game its originators called ‘Net Ball’ came to be played nightly at the Alhambra Theatre, London, is largely flim flam, a story invented to give a spurious pedigree to a brand new theatrical entertainment. However, what is interesting is that, while by May 1900, the game we now know as ‘netball’ had already been invented, it had not yet acquired that name, at least, not in the public sphere, and possibly, not at all. So, in this article, I explore the origins of what one modern scholar has dubbed ‘stage netball’[2] and its connections to the world of women’s team sports in late Victorian England.

The game of “basquette”, as rearranged by Miss Baer, is a modification of the popular game, basket ball, and for it is alleged the training of the faculties which induce speed, courage, self-reliance, control of mind and body, and the ability to quickly decide and the power to execute.[3]

‘Miss Baer’ is a reference to Clara Gregory Baer (1863–1938), head of the physical education department at Newcomb College, New Orleans. Famously, in 1895, Baer obtained a book of rules for the game of basketball from its inventor, James Naismith (1861–1939), and, misinterpreting a diagram that Naismith had created suggesting the best areas for each player to cover on the court as indicating zones inside which each player had to remain, created the game that would later acquire the name ‘netball’ but at the time, Baer dubbed ‘basquette’.[4]

Two years earlier and separately, another pioneer of physical education for women and girls, Martina Bergman-Österberg (1849–1915), a Swedish educator and advocate of Swedish gymnastics who had settled in England, had been introduced to basketball during a trip to America. She returned to England and introduced a version of the game at the Hampstead Physical Training College and Gymnasium for women that she had founded. Her efforts in this regard were, in some form, aided by the visit to the College two years later of a man who introduced himself as ‘Dr Justin K Toles’. Toles, who modern research suggests was a fraud and conman, appeared to at least have had more knowledge of the rules of the game than Madame Bergman-Österberg. Interestingly, photographs from the period show that at the College, the game was played with balls smaller in size than the standard Association Football ball used in ‘conventional’ basketball. The development of the sport in the direction of the modern game of ‘netball’ was helped in 1897 by the visit to the College (at its new Dartford site) of an American gynmast named Ester Porter, who brought with her knowledge of the rules of ‘women’s basket ball’, which borrowed from the rules that Baer had developed for basquette to turn basketball into a non-contact sport. The final step from basketball to netball was made in 1901 when the Ling Association of Gymnastic Teachers, which was largely the creation of Madame Bergman-Österberg, published the first rules of the game, renamed ‘netball’ for this publication (we will return to the timing of the name change later).[5]

These developments were taking place at a time when there was much debate about physical education for women and much hand-wringing over the virtues or otherwise of women engaging in sport, particularly team sports. As J.A. Kennard writes in regard to women’s sport in the Victorian era, ‘Women's sport was conditioned by the powerful bias of the feminine ideal in relation to techniques, equipment, clothing and playing facilities. The more attention the sportswoman paid to these requisites, the more favorable was public opinion. Even the most ardent protagonists of women's sport held some reservations in connection with strenuousness, roughness and endurance, particularly with reference to team sports.’[6]

This attitude was apparent in newspaper commentaries of women’s basketball games in the US played under the Naismith rules.

The ladies’ game of basketball goes on its way rejoicing. One lady was thrown down this past week and had two of her ribs kicked in. Otherwise, the game has been most ladylike, resulting in nothing worse than the loss of a few handfuls of hair to the contestants.[7]

As Ian Jobling and Pamela Barham write in their history of netball in Australia, netball found favour because, in contrast, it was ‘[…]a non-contact activity, the skills were simple and basic and the playing attire was decorous and appropriate’.[8]

As we will see, stage netball tried to find the middle ground between decorum and entertainment, retaining just enough physical contact to excite the interest of the Music Hall audience but not enough to offend the sensibilities of Society.

THE PEERLESS JERRY HART & BEATRICE LEO. Congratulated by Managers, Artistes, the Press, and Public as the Most Versatile Duo that have ever come from America. Jerry Hart, The Straight Man. Beatrice Leo, The Comedy Soubrette. Jerry Hart, The Comedian. Beatrice Leo, The Sweet Vocalist. Jerry Hart, The Gay Old Colonel. Beatrice Leo, The Opera Prima Donna. Jerry Hart, The Musical Director. Beatrice Leo, The Melba of the Music Halls [9]

Stage netball was the creation of husband-and-wife vaudeville team Jerry Hart and Beatrice Leo, 20-year veterans of the US variety circuit. Jerry Hart (1858–?) was a Bostonian who spent most of his 40-year stage career performing in blackface, first in blackface minstrel troupes, working for or with some of the most prominent figures in blackface minstrelsy, men like J.H. Haverly, Al G. Field, and Billy Emerson, and later on the ‘legitimate’ stage. Attempts to discover information on his early life are complicated by the fact that he rarely gave his true age to officials, and because there were a number of Harts who found fame as blackface minstrels in the same period. Jerry Hart’s given name may have been Daniel, with Jerry being the name he adopted because there was already a famous minstrel by the name of Dan Hart, whom Jerry Hart would later state was a ‘pal’ but not a relative.[10]

Beatrice Leo was the stage name of French-born Marie Babize (1862–1941). Marie moved to the USA with her family when she was just 8 years old. The family settled in Kansas, where Marie’s father, Charles Babize, started a carpentry business. By the age of 17, Marie Babize had left home and begun performing, first as a dancer and later as a singer. She had adopted the Beatrice Leo stage name by no later than the summer of 1882 and by the winter of that year was a featured singer at Smith’s Bijou Theater in Seattle, Washington. Jerry Hart was on the same bill.[11]

By the summer of 1883, the Harts had married and, sometimes billed as Jerry Hart and Beatrice Leo, sometimes as Mr and Mrs Jerry Hart, begun to tour together. They had also created the sketch that would become their signature piece once they travelled the Britain, ‘French Opera’, which centred on Hart as an incompetent teacher to a gifted vocalist played by Beatrice/Marie. Two years later, while on the road, Marie gave birth to the couple’s one and only child, Jerry Jr, who, alas, was to have a relatively short life, dying in 1908 of complications arising from alcoholism, aged just 23.[12]

For the first few years after the birth of Jerry Jr, Jerry Sr and Marie continued to tour, adding ‘Jerry Hart and Miss Marie Hart’ to their list of billings. However, after 1889, the family settled in Kansas to be near Marie’s family. For the next few years, Jerry mostly worked separately from Marie as an endman (comedian) with various blackface minstrel troupes, most notably that of Al G. Field. By 1895, the Harts had moved to Chicago, where Marie’s older brother, Auguste, was making a name for himself as a journalist, and Marie had restarted her own career, forming a double act with husband Jerry once more. This was also the year that Angelique Babize, Marie’s mother, died. The double act continued to be active on the vaudeville circuit for the next few years, with engagements in Canada and an extended engagement at the Chicago Opera House in 1898. Based on later reporting, it seems likely that by this time, Jerry Jr had joined the act—a review of the act from a year later mentions Marie dueting with ‘a little boy in the dress circle’; this was almost certainly Jerry Jr, planted in the audience for this purpose.[13]

In January of 1899, the Harts set sail for Europe to visit family in France and Ireland and to try their luck in the British and Irish halls, bringing to an end the first phase of their career. A decade earlier, a newspaper had reported that Jerry Hart had invented what might be termed ‘water baseball’—baseball played in shallow water at low tide, just off a beach, substituting a football struck by the fist for a baseball struck by a bat.[14] However, nowhere in any reporting of Jerry Hart and Beatrice Leo’s 20-year vaudeville career is there any mention of Jerry also inventing a game he called ‘Net Ball’.

THE ALHAMBRA. Always on the qui vive for novelties, Mr. C. Dundas Slater has secured for the Alhambra a merry one in the new American game of Net Ball, a sport invented by Mr. Jerry Hart, founded on the game of basket ball, and played by ladies. The new turn was duly given on Monday night and may be said in all fairness to have achieved a great success. The opposing teams numbered five each side, America being represented by Misses Nancy Smith (captain), Flo Beauchamp, Eva Green, Alice Rouse, and Madge Godfrey, and the English team comprising Misses May Conroy (captain), Edith Beechwood, Aggie Stirling, Alice Rainbow, and Annie Rose.[15]

Of course, the lack of any mention of ‘Net Ball’ in connection with Jerry Hart and Beatrice Leo before it was brought to the Alhambra stage in May 1900 is not really a surprise, not even given that Hart claimed to have invented the game in America in around 1885 and, as we saw at the start of this piece, there was supposed to be champion American team in existence that Hart brought to Britain.[16] This was all pure hokum. Instead, it is clear from the evidence that this entertainment was conceived in April 1900, specifically for the Alhambra stage, as a replacement for a short ballet called ‘Napoli’ that had been on the Alhambra bill for nearly a year but was due to finish in May 1900.

The Alhambra Music Hall, which until 1936 was on the site now occupied by the Odeon Leicester Square, billed itself as ‘the original home of ballet’. It retained its own corps de ballet and would usually mount at least two new ballets a season. These were short entertainments, rarely longer than 45 minutes, that shared the bill with variety staples such as stage magicians, acrobats, comedians, dancers, and singers (the complete bill lasted over three hours). For the 1900 season, the Alhambra’s ballet offerings were the hugely popular ‘grand military’ ballet ‘Soldiers of the Queen’, which had debuted at the end of 1899 and had been created to bolster public morale during the dark days of British defeats at the beginning of the Second Boer War, and the aforementioned ‘Napoli’, a lighthearted Neopolitan entertainment that had been popular on its debut but by the spring of 1900 had run its course.[17]

With the Second Boer War still raging, and patriotic entertainment like ‘The Soldiers of the Queen’ all the rage as a consequence, the Alhambra’s manager, Charles Dundas Slater (1852–1912), was looking for something similarly patriotic to replace ‘Napoli’ that could make use of the dancers that the ballet had employed. Step forward Jerry and Marie Hart, and their idea for a nightly game of ‘Net Ball’ between teams from ‘America’ and ‘England’, formed of female ‘athletes’.

The best evidence for the above version of events, beyond the timing and the certainty that ‘Net Ball’ did not feature in Jerry and Marie Hart’s repertoire before 1900, is in the identity of the players of the American team, which, it will be recalled, had supposedly been brought over from America especially for the Alhambra engagement. In fact, as I will show, they were all British-born music hall performers. To begin, we can point to the fact that three of the team members, Nancy Smith, Eva Green, and Madge Godfrey, had been featured dancers in the British and Irish halls for at least two years by the time of their debut as ‘Net Ball’ players, with Smith and Green even sharing the bill in a pantomime in Dublin in the winter 1899/1900 season. For the 1901 season, Madge Godfrey was replaced by Louie Newman, another featured dancer and actress of the English stage.[18]

More conclusively, we can look to returns from the 1901 England Census. After a successful run at the Alhambra, the Harts took the ‘Net Ball’ company on the road; the week that the returns for the 1901 England Census were filled out (the first week of April 1901), the company was appearing at the Palace Theatre in Manchester.[19] Sure enough, in the 1901 England Census returns, we find the Harts, Jerry Sr, Marie, and Jerry Jr, staying at a boarding house in Chorlton Upon Medlock in the centre of Manchester. A search of the returns for the immediate area locates most of the rest of the ‘Net Ball’ Company. Nancy Smith and Alice Rouse, members of the ‘America’ team, we find under their own names, with Nancy listed as a ‘stage dancer’ (Alice is listed as a ‘professional singer’; however, examining a scan of the actual return shows that this is only because whoever filled out the return for the boarding house she was staying at dittoed all the residents after entering ‘professional singer’ for the first resident on the list, a performer named Nancy Renshaw, unrelated to the ‘Net Ball’ company (see below for more on Nancy Renshaw)).[20]

Rather than being newly arrived from the US, the returns reveal that Nancy Smith was born in Sunderland, in the North-East of England, and Alice Rouse in London. Although no other names in the census returns for the two boarding houses that Alice Rouse and Nancy Smith are staying at match those given in lists of the two ‘Net Ball’ teams, we can reasonably assume that this is because the names in the lists are stage names and the performers gave their real names to whoever was filling out the return. This is supported by the fact that Alice Rouse was sharing digs with fellow performer, Evaline Lackenby, who, like Nancy Smith, was born in Sunderland. It will be remembered that Nancy Smith and fellow ‘America’ teammate Eva Green shared the bill in Dublin in 1899. It seems reasonable to assume, therefore, that Evaline Lackenby was Eva Green, and she and Nancy Smith were friends who had gone on the stage together. This is supported by how close the two were in age (20 and 19).

Looking at the ages and professions of the women with whom Nancy Smith and Alice Rouse were sharing digs, we can, with some degree of confidence, identify 7 of the 10 members of the 1901 ‘Net Ball’ company: Nancy Smith (aged 20, born in Sunderland), Alice Rouse (22, London), Evaline Lackenby (19, Sunderland), Lillian Williamson (20, London), Lillie Vernon (18, Manchester), Violet Holland (22, Swansea, Wales), and Elizabeth Restiaux (23, Swindon); all listed either as ‘stage dancers’ or ‘professional singers’, i.e., stage performers.[21]

In short: the ‘players’ in the ‘Net Ball’ teams were not athletes but dancers, British-born and in their late teens or early twenties.

(As an aside: by a remarkable coincidence, the professional singer with whom Alice Rouse, Eveline Lackenby, and others were sharing digs, Nancy Renshow, although having no connection to the ‘Net Ball’ company is someone whose career I have covered elsewhere; Renshaw was a ‘singer and bone soloist’ who, like Jerry Hart, spent most of her career performing in blackface[22]).

There is further strong evidence for ‘Net Ball’ being conceived as purely a stage entertainment in how the game was played.

The game is played with a ball, somewhat larger than an Association football—it is in fact the bladder of a football. The goal at each end consists of a net, just large enough to contain the ball, and is suspended some six feet above the heads of the players. Into the nets each side strive to throw the ball. Placing the ball inside those nets counts two points. At one side of the playing area there is another net—the neutral net—the playing of the ball into which counts one.[23]

The most obvious element of the gameplay that marks this as a stage entertainment was the size of the ball: it was twice the size of the Association Football ball used in basketball and many times the size of the ball used in the version of basketball for women played at Madame Bergman-Österberg’s College (it was the bladder extracted from an Association Football ball and inflated to its maximum—so something like a beachball). We can see in this a desire to use something that could be more readily seen from the furthest reaches of the auditorium than the standard-sized ball. We can also point to the use of a third basket set at the rear of the centre of the stage; this unique arrangement moved some of the gameplay to the centre of the stage that would otherwise be concentrated at one or other side of the stage (where the other baskets were as in the ‘normal’ arrangement), improving the experience for those parts of the audience down the sides of the auditorium whose view of the sides of the stage were blocked by the proscenium. The fact that this additional basket was at the back of the playing area, placed to avoid the players colliding with it, creating an asymmetrical playing area, is also indicative of this being a game that was designed to be viewed from one side. A final element of the game of interest to us here is that, although each game lasted 20 minutes in total, this was broken up into five sessions consisting of three minutes of play and one minute of rest. We can see in this the structure of the sequence of character dances or Grand Pas de Deux that is such a feature of classical ballets like ‘Napoli’, the ballet that ‘Net Ball’ replaced on the Alhambra bill. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the Alhambra orchestra provided musical accompaniment to the action on stage; it is not too much to suppose that these were pieces that more normally accompanied character dances in ballets. (The use of musical accompaniment of course makes the point that this was an entertainment, not a sport.)[24]

As an aside: the one-minute intervals between sessions would have also made it possible for Jerry or Marie Hart to exert some influence on the progress of play, providing opportunities for instructions to be issued in the wings, out of view of the audience. In this regard, it is interesting to note that, in the debut game, the ‘England’ team scored an overwhelming 11–1 victory over the supposedly much more experienced champion ‘America’ team—it will be remembered that this was conceived as a patriotic entertainment at the height of the Second Boer War.[25]

Finally, it is worth examining the evidence that this entertainment was conceived in April 1900, specifically for the Alhambra stage. Although it is possible, if not probable, that Jerry and Marie Hart had heard of women playing basketball in the US, even if they had never seen the game played, and this came to their minds when learning that C. Dundas Slater was looking for a replacement act for the ballet ‘Napoli’, I think there is a more direct inspiration. Around six weeks before ‘Net Ball’ debuted at the Alhambra, The Queen Magazine, published in London, printed an article that discussed women’s basketball in America.

In America the game of basket-ball seems to have been definitely adopted by women’s colleges and schools, both as an indoor—or gymnasium—and an outdoor pastime […] Basket-ball is a game somewhat resembling Association football, but the ball is propelled with the hands instead of the feet, and a basket on a high pedestal serves as a goal.[26]

The timing of the publication of the article, six weeks before ‘Net Ball’ debuted at the Alhambra, is, I believe, telling, as in interviews, Jerry Hart claimed to have started training the ‘England’ team six weeks before its debut. It is also worth noting that, although performers of the period were famous for scouring print publications in search of fresh material, the fact that the article was published in a magazine with a largely female readership suggests that it may have been Marie Hart who read the piece and conceived the idea of putting basketball for women on stage.[27]

Also of interest to us here is the fact that The Queen article mentioned the playing of women’s basketball at Madame Bergman-Österberg’s Dartford College a few years earlier, although the author was unsure if it was still played there. The source of the author’s information is almost certainly an article published in Windsor Magazine in October 1897 about Dartford College that featured a description of ‘basket-ball’ and a photograph of some of the students playing a game.[28] Regardless, the fact that the author was unsure if basketball was still being played at Dartford underscores the point that the continuing efforts of Madame Bergman-Österberg and her students to develop the game of women’s basketball into what they would later rename ‘netball’ were happening out of the public eye.

That latter point is significant as we address the last outstanding question with respect to stage netball: is it the origin of the name ‘netball’? As stated above, the sport that the students of Dartford College had been calling ‘basket-ball’ was renamed ‘netball’ at the time of the first publication of the rules of the sport by the Ling Association in 1901. This was done, as, in the words of Miss Hankinson, one of the members of the Ling Association involved in writing the rules, speaking in 1908, ‘….we had made so many changes from the American rules, and as we had given up the baskets for nets and rings, we called the game Net Ball.’.[29]

Note the spelling of ‘Net Ball’ in the above quote. Of course, as we have already seen, the stage entertainment created by the Harts had, similarly, replaced baskets with nets and adopted the name ‘Net Ball’, something it had done in May of 1900, as was widely reported in the newspapers of the time, upwards of a year before the Ling Association publication appeared. While the lateral shift in name from ‘basket ball’ to ‘net ball’ with the shift in goals from baskets to nets is an obvious one, and the parallel and independent invention of the name is, therefore, possible, at the same time, it seems to me not unreasonable to suggest that the members of the Ling Association, either consciously or unconsciously, were inspired to change the name of their game to ‘Net Ball’ because, from the summer of 1900 onwards, the British newspapers made frequent mention of a game with that name, played by teams of women, using nets in place of baskets, but otherwise inspired by basketball.

Thus, it seems to me not unreasonable to suggest that stage netball, while not the inspiration for the sport of netball, was the inspiration for the sport acquiring that name. The Harts had set out to create a patriotic spectacle at a time when Britain was at war, centred on what was, at the time, the novel idea of women playing team sports. In doing so, they created an entertainment that, for all its artificiality, captured the zeitgeist.

Hart and Leo, the popular Yankee entertainers, will appear in their successful song scena, " Follow the Crowd on a Sunday "—a mix-up of spoof comedy and singing.[30]

The Harts toured ‘Net Ball’ around the British and Irish halls for three years from 1900 to 1903, with the last performances in London in early June 1903.[31] By July of that year, the Harts, billed as ‘Hart and Leo’ but working as a trio with Jerry Jr, were touring the halls alone. Alas, I have been unable to determine what happened to the members of the ‘Net Ball’ company after it folded, although, intriguingly, someone with the initials ‘E.G.’ placed an ad in the Stage newspaper in January 1906 looking for ‘lady dancers’ and asking Annie Rose, Madge Godfrey, Alice Rainbow, Lillie Conroy, Florence Allen, and Ada Ryder to get in contact—was this Eva Green trying to re-establish contact with her fellow former members of the ‘Net Ball’ company?[32] (We might speculate that Lillie Conroy was the real name of May Conroy, and Florence Allen was Flo Beauchamp; however, it is worth noting here that those two names do not appear in the census returns for Chorlton in 1901 alongside those of the women we know were in the ‘Net Ball’ company that year.)

By 1904, the Harts had another success on their hands with their musical comedy scena (sketch) ‘Follow the Crowd on a Sunday’ and the title song sung by Marie (Follow the crowd on a Sunday/ Six days for labor and one day for joy/All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy./And take wifey along and the baby/That's her day, she, too, likes to play.).[33]

However, Jerry Hart’s thoughts turned increasingly to theatrical management, trying to recapture the success he had experienced with the ‘Net Ball’ company, and this was to prove the Harts’ undoing. In early 1906, the Harts joined forces with Eugene Stratton, the leading white performer of blackface minstrelsy in Britain, to create a new show; described by Jerry Hart as ‘piscatorial in character’, this was later revealed to be a show built around a new minstrel troupe to be called the ‘Mastadon Aggregation of Minstrelsy’, in imitation of the famous Haverly troupe of that name three decades earlier. However, in May 1906, the venture fell apart under murky circumstances.[34]

‘Gene Stratton and Jerry Hart have been doing much figuring lately. There seems to be some trouble with the petty cash in connection with their new enterprise, “The Mastadon Aggregation of Minstrelsy.”[35]

‘Some trouble with the petty cash’ is clearly a euphemism for money going missing. Alas, at this remove, it is impossible to determine where the fault lay. However, we do know that the venture failed and took the Harts’ savings with it: in later life, Marie Hart would reveal that the family lost all their money in connection with the events of 1906.[36]

 There is also evidence to suggest that this catastrophe marked the end of the Harts’ marriage, as, a week before the news of the failure of the Stratton–Hart venture broke, Marie and Jerry Jr returned to the US, leaving Jerry Sr behind in England. Although much of the Harts’ lives after 1906 is still a mystery, we know that Jerry Hart would not return to the US for another three years. Instead, by November 1906, he was on his way to Australia working as the manager of a troupe of illusionists called ‘The Four Kweeries’. he would also use this opportunity to try to restart his career as a solo comedian, remaining in Australia until at least September 1908 before making his return to the US via the UK in the Spring of 1909. Meanwhile, in the US, in March 1908, Jerry Jr succumbed to alcoholism (it is impossible to know if this was a pre-existing condition or if it was a result of the events of 1906). On the registration of his death, Marie Hart’s occupation was listed as ‘piano player’. The name of the deceased’s father was recorded as ‘not known’. This was a family broken up and scattered.[37]

Los Angeles, 26 March—(AP)—Beatrice Leo, 72, who said that she once sang at a command performance for Queen Victoria, was carried into an emergency hospital here last night—injured and poverty-stricken.[38]

Alas, Jerry and Marie Hart’s final years were not happy ones. Although much is still unknown, as they are hard to trace in official records due to their lifelong propensity for invention, particularly when it came to providing officials with demographic information, we do know that, by 1914, Jerry Hart was reduced to playing bit parts in ‘straight’ plays, usually in blackface. He died sometime between 1919 and 1941. Marie Hart’s story is even more tragic: she ended up alone and destitute in California. She died there in 1941 and was buried in San Gabriel Mission Cemetery, Los Angeles.[39]

Another “Goal!” from the audience, and the whistle blew for play to cease. As the girls trooped off, I noticed their heightened colour, the increased sparkle in the eyes, and all the other signs of hearty exercise. Some of them, I fancy, had experienced hard knocks besides. […] Miss Nancy Smith, the American captain, said that she considered the game the best possible for ladies; it brought every muscle into play, and was a magnificent cure for the dumps. Echoes of the same sentiments came from Misses Flo Beauchamp, Eva Green, Alice Rouse, and Louie Newman.[40]

We should not let the sad end of the Harts detract from our appreciation for their, albeit serendipitous, contribution to the growth of women’s team sports. Their only intention had been to capitalize on the appeal of watching a group of young women race about a stage in the name of patriotic entertainment; however, in doing so, they brought the idea of women’s team sports to the largest audience—and generated the most newspaper coverage—that it had yet known. Stage netball was frivolous and ephemeral, but even so, its legacy lives on.

Jamie Barras, September 2025.

Notes

[1] ‘Stage Gossip’, Boxing World and Mirror of Life, 30 June 1900.

[2] Samantha-Jane Oldfield, ‘The origins and formation of England Netball’. In: International Sport and

Leisure History Colloquium (MMU SpLeisH), 03 March 2017 - 04 March 2017, Crewe, UK. (Unpublished) available at: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620812/, accessed 28 September 2025.

[3] ‘Eve Up To Date’, Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA), 4 February 1896

[4] https://netball.sport/game/history-of-netball/, accessed 28 September 2025.

[5] The role of Martina Bergman-Österberg and her college of Physical Education in the development of netball, and modern research into ‘Justin K Tole’ are discussed in articles curated by Our Netball History: https://www.ournetballhistory.org.uk/content/category/topics/history-of-netball, accessed 28 September 2025.

[6] https://www.ishilearn.com/the-spectacle-all-the-worlds-on-wheels, accessed 28 September 2025. Kennard: June Arianna Kennard, ‘Woman, sport and society in Victorian England’, Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education, 1974. https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Kennard_uncg_7422020.PDF, accessed 24 August 2025. The quote comes from page 146.

[7] ‘American Sporting Notes’, Sportsman, 23 April 1903.

[8] Ian Jobling and Pamela Barham, ‘The Development of Netball and the All-Australia Women’s Basketball Association (AAWBBA): 1891-1939’, Sporting Traditions, 1991, 8, no. 1, 29–48.

[9] ‘American Sporting Notes’, Sportsman, 23 April 1903.

[10] Year of birth of Jerry Hart based on passenger list entry for Jerry Hart, Masaba, arriving New York, 29 November 1904, New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957. Bostonian: entry for Jerry Hart Sr, Chorlton Upon Medlock district, Manchester, 1901 England Census, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 September 2025. Hart possibly called Daniel Hart: reference to ‘“Jerry” Dan Hart’ here: ‘The Jones–Leavitt Benefit’, Boston Globe, 1 June 1879. Hart as minstrel: ‘Jerry Hart’, Boxing World and Mirror of Life, 20 April 1898. Hart’s later career as an actor specialising in blackface roles: ‘Notes of the Stage’, Indianapolis Star, 15 November 1917. Dan Hart, Jerry Hart’s ‘pal’: ‘Jerry Hart—Minstrel’, Brooklyn Eagle, 19 February 1919.

[11] Maiden name and years of birth and death of Marie Hart: "California, Deaths and Burials, 1776-2000", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:HGC9-DC6Z : Sat Jul 26 07:18:41UTC 2025), Entry for Marie Hart and Charles Babize, 9 June 1941. Story of Brabize family: ‘Mrs Chas. Babize’s Death’, Sterling Kansas Bulletin, 13 September 1895. The Harts visiting their in-laws, confirming the connection: Sterling Gazette (Sterling, KS), 19 August 1888. Marie dancer at 17: entry for Marie Brabize, 1880 US Federal Census, Caldwell, Sumner, Kansas, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 September 2025. ‘Beatrice Leo: ‘Missing Links’, Roseburg Review (Roseburg, OR), 29 July 1882. At Smith’s Bijou Theatre, Seattle: ‘Smith’s Bijou Theater’, Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, WA), 14 December 1882.

[12] Hart and Beatrice Leo: ‘Cremorne Theater’, Eureka Daily Sentinel (Eureka, NV), 1 June 1883. ‘Mr and Mrs Hart’ and ‘French Opera’: ‘Golden Gate Theater’, Morning Times (Oakland, CA), 14 April 1883. Jerry Hart Jr: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142916622/jeremiah-hart, accessed 28 September 2025. Death reported: ‘All the News of New York’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 24 April 1908.

[13] Jerry Hart and Miss Marie Hart: ‘Music and Mirth at the Gaiety’, Boston Globe, 5 June 1888. Harts living in Kansas: ‘Personal Mention’, Sterling Kansas Bulletin, 19 October 1894. Jerry Hart with Field Minstrels: ‘Field & Co.’s Minstrels’, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KN), 6 March 1892. Living in Chicago: See Note 11 above, second reference. Auguste Babize, Chicago journalist: ‘A Wedding’, Sterling Kansas Bulletin, 18 November 1892. Name and year of death of Angelique Babize: See Note 11 above, first and second references. Jerry Hart and Beatrice Leo renew double act: ‘Lyceum Theatre’, Boston Globe, 4 February 1896. ‘A litte boy in the dress circle’: ‘Hull Fair Programmes at the Variety Theatres’, Hull Daily Mail, 10 October 1899.

[14] Harts arrival in England: entry for Jerry Hart, passenger lists, St Paul, arrived Southampton 8 February 1899, UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 September 2025. ‘Beach baseball’: ‘A Novelty in Baseball’, Evening Herald (Fall River, Mass.), 24 August 1889.

[15] ‘The Alhambra’, Stage, 31 May 1900.

[16] In 1900, Hart claimed to have conceived the game ‘about fifteen years ago’: ‘A Game for Ladies’, Blackburn Standard,10 November 1900.

[17] History of the Alhambra: http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Alhambra.htm, accessed 29 September 2025. ‘Original home of ballet’, length of ballets and of full bill: ‘Alhambra’, Daily Telegraph & Courier (London), 05 March 1900. Soldiers of the Queen: ‘Soldiers of the Queen’, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 13 January 1900. Napoli: ‘Alhambra: the new ballet “Napoli”’, London Daily Chronicle, 22 August 1899.

[18] Nancy Smith and Eva Green in pantomime in Dublin:  ‘Amusements: Gaiety Theatre’, Dublin Daily Nation, 19 December 1899. Madge Godfrey, featured dancer: ‘Notices: Parkhurst Theatre’, North Middlesex Chronicle, 10 December 1898. Louie Newman in ‘Net Ball’ in 1901 and featured dancer: ‘The Holloway Empire’, Islington Gazette, 5 February 1901; ‘Amusements in South Shields’, Era, 8 January 1898. May Conroy, leading actress: ‘Melton Mowbray: Corn Exchange’, Era, 23 January 1904. Photograph of ‘Net Ball’ Teams: ‘Net-Ball Teams at the Alhambra’, Black and White, 2 June 1900. Six weeks training: See Note 16 above.

[19] ‘Manchester: Palace Theatre’, Stage, 4 April 1901.

[20] Harts: "England and Wales, Census, 1901", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X92C-1Y9 : Wed Feb 12 19:45:19UTC 2025); Nancy Smith: "England and Wales, Census, 1901", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X9GZ-3SP : Thu Feb 13 03:02:15 UTC 2025); Alice Rouse: "England and Wales, Census, 1901", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X92C-RRG : Thu Feb 13 03:01:46 UTC 2025). Accessed 29 September 2025.

[21] See Note 20 above.

[22] https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-cuckoos-and-nightingales, accessed 29 September 2025.

[23] ‘“Net Ball” at the Alhambra’, Morning Advertiser, 29 May 1900.

[24] See Note 19 above and  ‘A new game…’, Gentlewoman, 11 August 1900; ‘Stars of Stageland Interview: Jerry Hart’s Net-Ball Girls’, Football Post (Nottingham), 8 September 1900.

[25] See Note 19 above.

[26] ‘Ladies’ Outdoor Amusements’, The Queen, 21 April 1900.

[27] See Note 16 above.

[28] C.L. McCluer Stevens, ‘A Unique School’, Windsor Magazine, 1897, Vol 6, 589–593.

[29] Quoted in: Rosemary Moon, ‘Re: The Origins of Netball’, Bergman Österberg Union, https://www.ournetballhistory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-Origin-of-Netball-RM2019Nov.pdf, accessed 29 September 2025.

[30] ‘The Empire (Glasgow)’, Scottish Referee, 5 September 1904.

[31] ‘Professional Cards’, Music Hall and Theatre Review,  performing at Balham, 5 June 1903, ‘resting’ 12 June 1903.

[32] ‘Hart and Leo’ alone: ‘Palace Theatre, Manchester’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 17 July 1903. E.G. (Eva Green?) searching for former Net Ball company performers: ‘Wanted Artists’, Stage, 25 January 1906.

[33] ‘Purely Personal: Beatrice Leo’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 20 May 1904.

[34] ‘Piscatorial’: ‘Variety Gossip’, Stage, 19 April 1906. ‘Petty cash’: ‘A Page of Personalities: Gene Stratton and Jerry Hart’, London and Provincial Entr'acte, 8 June 1906.

[35] See Note 3 above.

[36] ‘Former Singer, Liked by the Queen, Found Penniless’, Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA), 26 April 1935.

[37] Marie and Jerry Hart Jr return to US: entry for Marie Hart, passenger lists for Philadelphia, departing UK 26 May 1906, UK and Ireland, Outbound Passenger Lists, 1890–1960, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 September 2025. Jerry Hart, manager for ‘The Four Kweeries’ and bound for Australia: ‘Advertisments and Notices’ Era, 17 November 1906. Arrival in Australia: passenger lists, Afric, arrived Sydney, 8 December 1906, Western Autralia, Australia, Crew and Passenger Lists, 1852–1930. Performing solo in Australia: ‘Evening Entertainments’, Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.), 30 March 1907. Still in Australia, September 1908: entry for Jerry Hart, American, Actor, South Australia, Australia, Adelaide, Hospital Admission Registers, 1841–1952. Reurn to US via UK: entry for Jerry Hart, passenger lists for Philadelphia, arriving New York, 7 March 1909, New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957. Marie Hart ‘piano player’: death registration of Jerry Hart (Jr), date of death, 30 March 1908, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Deaths, 1854–1911. ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 September 2025.

[38] See Note 3 above.

[39] Jerry Hart in bit parts: see Note 10 above, final two references. Marie alone and destitute in California: see Note 36 above. Marie’s death: See Note 11 above, first reference. We can estimate the year of Jerry Hart’s death from his last appearance in the press in 1919 and the fact that Marie was a widow at the time of her death in 1941.

[40] See Note 24, final reference.