Golf has been a popular game in Scotland for many centuries. So popular in fact that in the middle of the C15th it was forbidden by King James 11 who considered archery, a vital skill to be honed ready to overcome any incursion by the English, was being neglected. How effective the ban was is unclear but a few decades later, when his grandson, King James 1V, acceded to the throne there must have been hope of a relaxation of the law, given the new monarch was a golf enthusiast himself. Unfortunately, this did not happen but as the king purchased a set of golf clubs from a bowmaker in Perth, it would appear golfing and archery businesses could exist happily side by side. So the ban continued, and although a blind eye seems to have been turned to nobility playing golf on the links (a term generally used for a course on sandy coastal areas) ordinary folk, if they decided to do the same, were restricted to the streets, churchyards and ground hidden from the view of the authorities.
It appears that some golf balls in these early times were made from wood but during the reign of James 1V what became known as Hairy golf balls began to arrive in Scotland from the Netherlands where the Dutch had long played a game called colf, similar in many respects to golf. These imported balls had animal hair stuffed into a tiny leather case, a method eventually copied by local artisans. The Hairy saw service right through the following century until partially superseded by the Featherie, a ball in which hair was replaced by the feathers of chickens or geese. Making a Featherie was an arduous and skilful process. It could take a bucket full of feathers, which were boiled up before use, to fill this kind of ball. A good maker might only be able to produce a handful a day, which added to the cost, but because it was heavier a Featherie flew further than a Hairy. This advantage outweighed the expense for those wealthy enough to afford a ball stuffed with feathers, but those who could not find the wherewithal simply continued to use a Hairy, which became known as a ‘common ball’.
The Featherie came into use almost at the same time as golf began to be played just outside London. This was as a result of a significant change in a political relationship. Scotland had quite a few kings named James, but England had none until, in 1603, the two countries settled some of their differences and united their thrones under a king referred to as James V1 in Scotland and James 1 in England. Some members of the Scottish court moved to the English capital after this fusion of the crowns and it appears they rather missed their golfing. Consequently, a playing area was set up south of the Thames at Blackheath, close to the Royal Palace in Greenwich.
A connection between Scottish golfing and Blackheath has been maintained until the present day, but golf never developed as a national sport in England as it did in Scotland. North of the border, the C17th and C18th saw the establishment of a number of golf clubs and associations, although these did not always have a continuous existence and in some cases might have been initially focused more on social life than on developing skill in the game. However, whatever the debate about club origins, it is certainly true that more and more golf was being played. Regular competitions were started and in 1744, a codification of golfing rules was made by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which came to be accepted quite widely. Today Scotland has more golf courses per head of the population than any other country on earth and although several that are internationally known are concentrated close to Edinburgh on the coast of East Lothian, the most famous, St Andrews, lies to the north, across the Firth of Forth. To the north of St Andrews lies the Firth of Tay where, on the northern bank, stands Dundee.
As someone who kept themselves well up to date with what was going on around the globe, the advocate of the Dundee to Calcutta ocean-bed telegraph line was doubtless interested in the latest news from the world of golf and may even have used the daily stagecoach service to visit St Andrews. If so, perhaps they were amongst the first to hear about an innovation that would turn the business of leather and feather golf ball production upside down. Not surprisingly there is more than a single version about the origin of this important advance. One, which we might call the traditional, asserts it was related to a parcel received from Singapore.
In the 1840s St Andrews, which, until the Reformation had been the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland, was in the early stages of a recovery from centuries of decline, at least in terms of a falling population. Although St Andrews University, originally founded in the early C15th and considered one of the best in the United Kingdom, continued to thrive, there was little industry beyond the production of golf equipment. This was kept buoyant by golfers playing on what were reckoned to be the finest links in Scotland. The The Royal Society of St Andrews Golfers (later to be called the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) had been established nearly a century earlier and had a membership of around 400, all of whom were men of some position in society and many of whom were members of the nobility. A number of regular meetings were scheduled throughout the year, the most important being that called in the autumn when a great match was held after a procession of members, led by pipers, drummers and clarinettists, had made their way to the playing area. It seemed most of the population keenly watched this annual match, commenting, as it progressed, on the quality of every stroke made by the red coated golfers. Amongst the crowd there were always a large number of young women who cheered the winner of the Club Medal by waving their handkerchiefs and when the golfers and spectators returned from the links there would be the sound of celebratory cannon fire as the final preparations were made for a grand ball. This was attended, according to one report, by the elite of the beauty and fashion of the county.
St Andrews could rightly claim the title ‘Home of Golf’ and it was where Robert Adams Paterson made, according to tradition, a new type of ball. Although Robert was a student at the university his brother, James, was a missionary on the Malay Peninsula. Evidently James sent a statue of a Hindu deity to the Paterson family home in St Andrews. It is said the statue arrived in a parcel in which it was protected from damage by flakes of gutta percha. This is quite possible for, although solidified gutta percha gum was new in Britain, it may have been available on the Peninsula as a cheap byproduct when gutta percha trees were felled for construction work. There was enough packing for Robert’s father to use in repairing some shoes, which is quite plausible too because although William Montgomerie is credited with introducing raw gutta percha to Britain, it is certainly possible that a missionary living in a rural area would have seen what local people could do with the congealed gum and tried to replicate the process themselves. They might then have passed on their observations, adding a little local colour, through a letter home. Given 1843 was the year in which the shoe repairs took place it is also possible the patriarch of Paterson family had read, or heard, about José d’Almeida’s presentation and decided to see if the gum in the box could prove to be a useful glue.
After watching how malleable gutta percha became when heated Robert decided to see what he could do with the remainder of the flakes. Given where he lived it is no surprise he chose to try and create a golf ball, which would, like the old wooden balls, be solid. Unfortunately, the results proved poorer than Robert had hoped. Had a breakthrough been made then the young student’s life may have taken a very different turn, but, instead, he emigrated and became very successful in the United States in a profession that had nothing to do with golf. Nonetheless, this son of St Andrews always thought he should be regarded as having made the first gutta percha golf ball, which, following the pattern of naming the Hairy and the Featherie, became known in Scotland as the Guttie.
Before leaving for America Robert wrote to his missionary brother suggesting it might be worthwhile taking his innovation forward. This James did, producing a ball that was, at least in his own eyes, of a satisfactory standard. In 1846, he sent a sample to London but found it generated little interest, which must have been a disappointment. Perhaps if the label on his package had shown ‘To the Gutta Percha Company, 18 Wharf Road, City Road’, there might have been a better reaction, but that is not necessarily the case. In 1846 the Gutta Percha Company was constantly expanding its product range, but, as yet, did not offer anything to do with sport. However, if a golf ball from South-East Asia had turned up it could well have influenced a decision to look more closely at the possibility of expanding the sales list to include balls used in a variety of games, although it would probably have been thought unnecessary to acknowledge this publicly.
It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that an alternative to the traditional view suggests Robert Paterson invented the Guttie in 1848, but, surely, the advert shown on the right, which comes from an edition of the Manchester Courier published in September 1847, indicates this type of ball had, by that time, already been invented elsewhere. Only if the package from Singapore arrived in 1843 does Robert’s claim remain strong.
Half a century after Robert Paterson tried to mould a replacement for the Featherie, The Golf Book of East Lothian was published. The author was Reverend John Kerr, sometimes called the ‘Sporting Padre’ and an expert on both curling, another Scottish sport, and golf. The book provided an encyclopedic overview of the development of golf in an area in which a number of clubs were based. In a very short section, called Anecdotes and Notes, the Guttie is briefly mentioned. Although no reference is made to the Paterson family, Montgomerie and José d’Almeida are included. So are Hancock, Wheatstone and Faraday, but only in the context of their identification of the properties of gutta percha. Of these three it seems probable that Hancock (and this would have been Charles rather than Thomas or Walter) would have been the person most likely to investigate the possibility of creating balls for sport. In his capacity as the main researcher of gutta percha compounds Charles Hancock had the ability, means and incentive to create a sound golf ball. The factory in which he worked could also, of course, provide such products in quantity and, additionally, the way in which the Gutta Percha Company organised distribution meant they might soon be available all over Britain.
It is not quite clear when the first golf balls produced from the gutta percha blocks, which had been transported from Singapore to London’s docks and then carried along the Regents Canal to Wenlock basin, reached the shops. However, in the spring of 1848 the sporting products promised in the autumn of the previous year were being advertised by new Gutta Percha Company agencies in Glasgow and Aberdeen so they were likely to have reached Edinburgh at that time also. The Reverend Kerr cited a Mr H.T. Peter as claiming to be the first person to take the final step in introducing the gutta percha ball to the notice of the golfing world. Mr Peter was probably Henry Peter, Captain of the Innerleven Golf Club, and the introduction was at his club’s spring meeting. The Innerleven Golf Club had originally been formed in 1820 as the Inverleven Golf Society and certainly seems to have been very progressive in its views about developments in the game. Evidently, Mr Peter had been passing through Edinburgh when he saw a placard in a window of a shop ‘down a stair’ in St David Street. The placard said ‘New golf balls for sale’ so with no further ado Mr Peter pressed coins into the hand of the shopkeeper at the rate of a shilling a ball and then took his purchases and departed. There must, surely, have been some testing of the ball on the links before it was formally introduced to club members because, prior to formal business, a song had been composed and this was sung at the dinner which followed. Clearly, the day of the Featherie was drawing to a close for the rousing title of the song was In Praise of Gutta Percha!
New products based on developing technology in a well established industry or sport are rarely introduced without some dispute or other. The gutta percha ball was no exception. Although it might have been expected that many golfers would have welcomed a less expensive piece of equipment that was as good as, if not better, than that currently in use, it was clear factory produced balls could sound the death knell for those made by hand of leather and feathers. The recent abolition of the Corn Laws had removed protection from a large and important section of the economy so why would this tiny fraction of old fashioned production expect to be considered a special case? Like the handloom weavers before them, the artisan golf ball makers would need to adapt, reduce their prices or find a new way to make a living.
According to The Fife Herald, and Kinross, Strathearn and Clackmannan Advertiser the cost of a Featherie golf ball in 1847 in St Andrews varied between 4 pence and two shillings. Presumably most golfers preferred to have the very best and did not begrudge spending two shillings or even more but if the Guttie proved as good as a Featherie and were being offered for sale at a shilling each then some quick adaptation would be needed. Old techniques would need to be abandoned and new ones speedily learnt.
One of the most famous ball producers was Allan Robertson. Robertson also manufactured other golf equipment and was regarded as the best golfer in the world from the early 1840s until his death in 1859. As he was based in St Andrews, Robertson, the master of his craft, would have known his market intimately and presented his Featheries, which bore the word Allan on the surface, as the premium product. One guaranteed source of repeat sales were incoming university students who had a tendency to destroy their clubs if, when they began playing, they found their supply of balls was soon lost. This happened so frequently it provided golf club makers with a steady demand for replacements and, presumably, for more Featheries too. The links themselves were, moreover, by no means confined to use by members of the golf club, hardly a day going by when games were not being played there by the general public. The days of a royal prohibition were long over.
In the mid-1830s, Robertson took on an apprentice named Tom Morris, who was only five years younger than himself. Initially Morris was engaged in the production of golf equipment, including Featheries, but he also turned out to be a first class golfer. The two rarely played each other as Morris was employed by Robertson, which could have made for an awkward situation if the apprentice was seen to have beaten the master. However, when they began to play as a team in challenge matches against other pairs of golfers they were formidable and it appears they were never defeated in a foursome played for prize money. Given their invincibility, it is no surprise everything seemed to go well in the relationship. Then gutta percha came along.
Robertson’s Featherie business had originally been started by his grandfather and perhaps Robertson took the view Morris should show loyalty to his family enterprise by not using a Guttie because other golfers, observing the new ball being used by such a proficient player, might want to follow suite. This placed the younger man in a difficult predicament when he found himself on the links with a golfer referred to as Campbell of Saddell by the Reverend Kerr.
According to the Sporting Padre it was Campbell of Saddell, a member of the North Berwick Golf Club, who, in 1848, brought golf balls directly from London to St Andrews. Morris recorded what happened next;
I can remember the circumstances well. Allan could not reconcile himself to the new ball at first at all. But the gutta became the fashion very quickly, so what could we do? One day, and it is one that will always be clearly stamped on my memory, I had been playing golf with a Mr. Campbell of Saddell, and I had the misfortune to loose all my supply of balls, which were, you can understand, very much easier lost in those days, and Mr Campbell kindly gave me a gutta to try. I took it at once, and as we were playing in, it so happened that we met Allan coming out, and someone told him that I was playing a very good game with one of the new gutta balls, and I could see fine from the expression on his face, that he did not like it at all. And, when we met afterwards in his shop, we had some high words about the matter, and then we parted company, I leaving his employment.
Although the gutta percha ball had caused its first upset it appears any bad feeling dissipated fairly quickly as in the following year Robertson and Morris were again battling for prize money, this time with two golfers who were also exceptionally good. The Dunn brothers were twins and in August 1849 they played against Robertson and Morris in three sequential games. The first was at Mussleburgh, home of the Dunns, the second at St Andrews, home of Robertson and Morris and the third at North Berwick, recognised as being a neutral arena. Contemporary reports did justice to the game so click here to read the one published in the Montrose Standard.
Despite continuing to find success with Morris as his partner, the introduction of the gutta percha ball affected Featherie demand in the way Robertson feared. In 1844 his business produced nearly 2500 balls but collapsed only a few years later. However, it was not long until, having made the adaptation demanded by a laissez faire economy, he re-emerged as a Guttie manufacturer. Robertson probably made more money from these balls than he ever had from Featheries but, unfortunately, it appears the incessant process of compressing feathers may have already damaged his health. It was not uncommon for workers who made these kinds of balls to die young and Robertson himself passed away aged 44. Morris had begun to help manufacture Featheries when an apprentice, but worked at the process for a shorter time than Robertson. His son Tom, also proved to be a champion golfer and father and son became known as ‘Old Tom Morris’ and ‘Young Tom Morris’. Old Tom Morris continued working in various aspects of golf right until his death in the early C20th aged 87. He was buried in the churchyard of St Andrews Cathedral. Allan Robertson lies there too as does Young Tom Morris.
The consequences of the introduction of the Guttie were far reaching. Being, according to one contemporary commentator, much cheaper, more lasting and better to play with than the Featherie, its introduction coincided with the rise of an increased regard for Scotland and all things Scottish. This enthusiasm was stimulated by, amongst other things, the building of Balmoral Castle and the expansion of the railway network, which reached St Andrews in 1852. There was also a notable respect shown to those who had been through the Scottish education system and put their technical skills to good use all over the world. Meanwhile, south of the border, new golf courses were planned and soon Blackheath was no longer the only one in England.
As in Scotland, the gutta percha ball was soon adopted at Blackheath, the first player to use such a ball there being a naval officer, W.H. Maitland Dougall, who had been invalided out of active service as a result of an injury sustained in action. Maitland Dougall was possibly alerted to the new golf balls by press adverts and was quick off the mark, adopting gutta percha balls as soon as they became available.
Maitland Dougall would eventually return to Scotland and played a notable game at the autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1860. The weather initially looked promising but after two fine days a storm blew up overnight night with a gale force wind that uprooted trees which had withstood the blasts of centuries. On the third day, as players assembled on the links, preparations were being made to launch ‘Annie’, the local lifeboat, to aid fishing boats in distress in the bay. When it was realised the crew was a member short, Maitland-Dougall, who at that time held the naval rank of Captain, immediately offered his services and after taking the strike oar was out at sea for the next five hours. When he returned he exchanged the oar for his clubs and, because the windy weather had slowed play, was able to rejoin the game. He then went on to win the Club Medal!
Only twelve years after the first gutta percha ball had been seen on Scottish links they had displaced the Featherie completely and were in use in the famous game of 1860. However, the balls used would, surely, have been made in St Andrews, the brief incursion of English golf balls at club level probably having long been overcome without the need for archers.
Back to Chapter 8 On to Chapter 10
When London Became An Island
Gutta Percha comes to the Metropolis
Chapter 9 - In Praise of Gutta Percha
Commanders and clippers
Golf balls in preparation for manufacture
1847 advert
Old Tom Morris
