Talk:Helen Matthews

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This article was improved during WiR 43 in December 2020 by adding more information and links, and further improvement is welcomed. Kaybeesquared (talk) 17:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

1857 birth wrong by 15 years, she wasn't involved in 1881, and her name isn't "Helen Matthews"

The trouble with rush-job edit projects, when the history is obscure, is that you end up with articles like this. A jumble of rumours printed as facts, repeated mainly from tabloid sources and books that repeat the same rumours.

Helen Matthew was an outstanding person, but to wrongly place her as the inventor of women's football without evidence was a major boo-boo by Wikipedia, and one that will have effects for years. Falsehoods here become facts elsewhere. It's also ironic that such a great feminist is written up using the discredited "Great Man" theory, distorting her achievements and sidelining other women's, as if the sport couldn't have had more than one pioneer.

There was little trustworthy information in a main source of this article, Tim Tate's book Girls With Balls (cringe). The book was widely criticised for factual errors over the (much better-documented) men's football, let alone women's football.

The 1881 Scotland–England women's matches are a significant event in football history and have been seriously researched since at least 2008. Stuart Gibbs published an entire book on the 1881 games and can be regarded as a world expert on this event. Being Scottish like her, he also did important research into Helen Matthew's life and her art. None of this aligns with the Wikipedia article as written in 2020/21.

"The background of the Lady Players has been the subject of some debate for example an article for the New York Times in 2012 that suggested that the suffragette Helen Graham Matthews (who would later keep goal for the British Ladies Club as Mrs Graham) organised the sides. This however is unlikely, as 'Mrs Graham' was born in 1871, and at 10 years of age was perhaps too young to be organising a football side. The names 'Mrs Graham' and 'Helen Graham Matthews' were fake anyway used mainly for her court appearances" - (Lady Players: The Strange Birth of Women's Football, 2018)

"At the trial [in 1900] Helen was named as ‘Helen Graham Matthews’ and this has formed the basis for a whole alternative history in which Helen organised the Lady Players of 1881 before becoming a suffragette.[15] However, investigations into name listed in trial coverage reveal it to be a fake. She often referred to herself as Mrs Helen Graham and signed some of her artwork; H.M.G so it’s likely that the ‘Helen Graham Matthews’ listed in reports was an error by the court clerk." - THE LOTHIAN LASSES, Playing Pasts, Jan 10, 2022

"It was the growing popularity of men’s international football which would give an Edinburgh born theatre entrepreneur, Alec Gordon, the inspiration to organise women’s association sides. The 1881 England vs. Scotland match was particularly notable. [...] One of [Charles] Scholes’ theatre managers, George Frederick Charles (known in London as George Imbert), was also roped into the enterprise as was Scholes’ wife Nancy." - The strange birth of women’s football, Football Pink, 24 Oct 2018

Earlier, the football historian Patrick Brennan researched both 1881 and the BLFC of 1895–97 & 1903:

"5. In an interview given to the Dundee Courier and Argus in May 1896, "Mrs Graham" disclosed that she had been born in Montrose, but had lived for 20 of her 23 years in Lancashire. She also claimed that all the members of her team were, like her, from Lancashire. Her true identity - Miss Helen Graham Matthews, emerged in 1900. Her team allegedly still owed money to a Liverpool sports shop for some jerseys, and an over-zealous manager sent her a forged County Court notice ordering her to pay. The manager was prosecuted and bound over." - The British Ladies' Football Club, Patrick Brennan, Donmouth

etc, etc etc, etc.
- Demokra (talk) 20:19, 14 March 2022 (UTC)