Earlly victorian chess clubs

[Souheil Marine]

Discussion of this issue started in another thread (sorry for it) and i am starting a new one to continue it.
Assuming that Staunton’s affirmation in the first issue of « the chess world » in 1865 that « the number of chess clubs (in Britain?) had fallen from 140 to 40 » is right. Any clues about the reasons behind this phenomenon ? This seems to have happened shortly before a revival of the Chess Player’s Chronicle late in the decade by Skipworth particularly focused on national chess activities.

[John Townsend]

I wouldn't know where numbers of chess clubs can be found, unless somewhere in Chess Player's Chronicle. Sergeant (pp. 104 - 105) refers to a review of the state of affairs at the start of the 1859 Chess Player's Chronicle, and you may find that enlightening. He notes that an apathy had descended, and that there had been a reaction in English chess since Morphy's departure from England. That suggests that Morphy had been a factor that had been buoying the market for a while. Further back, one could point to the Labourdonnais - McDonnell games of 1834, then the Staunton 1843 victory in Paris, and possibly the 1851 London tournament, as shots in the arm.

[Geoff Chandler]

You can see what Staunton actually wrote and other Staunton's comments on page 137 of Tim's thesis.

http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle ... sAllowed=y

The original link to Tim's thesis was posted on here in 2018.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=7915&p=211911&hili ... is#p211911

I spent a few weeks dipping in and out of it. A well researched and very informative piece of work.

[Tim Harding]

Thanks, Geoff, that's saved me looking it up.

I don't think I can improve on what I wrote on page 143.
The collapse of the Overend Gurney bank in 1866 may have had a limited impact on chess clubs in some areas but of course that was a year after the Staunton quotation.

John is right that several early issues of CPC had lists of contacts for chess clubs but, because these were often on the inside front or back covers, they are sometimes absent from bound volumes and digitised editions.

The first systematic attempt to list chess clubs in the UK was in W. R. Bland's 1880 Chess Club Directory but inevitably it was incomplete and later editions had more clubs as people wrote in to Bland (a Derby player who was chess editor of Design and Work magazine) with more information. Later Frideswide and Thomas Rowland took over editing the directory.
But it's many years since I looked at these sources.