British bulldog (game)

British Bulldog is a tag-based playground and sporting game, commonly played in schoolyards and on athletic fields in the UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and related Commonwealth countries, as well as in the U.S. and Ireland.

British Bulldog is characterised by its physicality (i.e. the captor inevitably has to use force to stop a player from crossing[2]) and is often regarded as violent, leading it to be banned from many schools due to injuries to the participants.

In his book The Nation's Favourite, Guardian author Mathew Clayton (Free University of Glastonbury) clarified that, unlike other games, British Bulldog did not emerge until the 1930s.

[9] Around that time, the game is mentioned in various newspapers, e. g. in February 1933 in The Kingston Whig-Standard, Ontario, Canada,[10] and in April 1934 in the Londonderry Sentinel, Derry, Northern Ireland.

In an article from the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, it is described how Cub Scouts managed to lift a player off the ground as they shouted "British Bulldog!

Its patriotic title suggests the ultimate playground test of true pluck and grit, of the kind that once built the Empire and inspired victory over Nazi Germany.

Apart from that, extensive game descriptions in connection with the name 'British Bulldog' did not appear in scientific treatises and periodical literature until the 1940s (e.g. in January 1941 in a dissertation by athlete Winston Alexander McCatty in the Canadian journal The School, Secondary Edition, published by the Ontario College of Education, University of Toronto,[22] and in June 1944 in Boys' Life magazine in an article by William "Bill" Hillcourt, Boy Scouts of America[20]).

Earlier references appear under different titles ... One of the predecessors of 'Take-down Bulldog' was described in 1935 by Elmer Dayton Mitchell and Bernard Sterling Mason in the widely received publication Active Games and Contests under the name 'Tackling Pom-Pom-Pull-Away'.

[35] The book is primarily concerned with tag, running and combat games and provides further instructions of exercises solely connected to sports such as soccer and rugby football, basketball, baseball, and hockey.

[4] British Bulldog is a descendant of a range of games from the 18th and 19th centuries,[4] which were widespread in Western and Central Europe (UK and Germany in particular) and later – in the course of emigration – in North America and Australia.

Many of the games played by children contain traces of very ancient and even primitive beliefs and practices: water worship, the foundation sacrifice, the symbolism of colours, the efficiency of spittle as a fuga daemonum, the witch, the Black Man, crossing fingers to avoid being taken prisoner, and many many others, all of them of interest to the ethnologist and the folklorist."

[38][39][40] Some of the games, especially Black Man and Pom-Pom-Pull-Away, had been systematically enhanced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the inclusion of tackling and lifting techniques and thus became progenitors of British Bulldog.

The game of Black Man spread across the globe by the rise of the German Turner movement with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn as its iconic figure.

[47] The game was brought to Australia by German settlers, and has been mentioned by Gustav Adolph Techow in the Manual of Gymnastic Exercises, published in 1866 in Melbourne.

[52] Other prominent players include Bernard Darwin,[53] Dwight D. and Edgar N. Eisenhower,[54] Daniel Carter Beard,[55] Annette Kellerman[56] and Luther Halsey Gulick Jr.[57] who have mentioned the game of Black Man in their literary works and (auto-)biographies.

[55] Due to the risk of significant injuries (e. g. if the children crowd too close to one another, accidents occur as they turn and run), Black Man was originally intended to be played by boys only.

Comparable games and derivatives from the 19th century were Black Tom, Blackthorn, Pom-Pom-Pull-Away, Rushing Bases (also known as King Cæsar) and Hill Dill, mostly with different dialogues and with the catcher placed in the middle of the field.

[88][89] The game of Blackthorn may be a possible predecessor of British Bulldog, as it was described in 1897 as a tackling variation after "carrying away became obsolete", but it only appears in a fictional school story by author Don Ralpho in The Boy's Own Paper.

[95][93] On each end of the playground, a line is drawn across parallel to the building ground at a distance of fifteen to thirty feet, which marks the goal for the runners.

After crossing the ground several times, the remaining runners must attempt to break through the increasing wall, which gradually becomes denser due to the growing number of catchers.

[93][96] A catch-and-hold game, related to King Cæsar and Blackthorn, was recorded in 19th century Lancashire[97] and Warwickshire[98] under the name of Fox and Dowdy[97] (or Fox-a'-Dowdy[98]).

If the last remaining player successfully made the run between the home areas three times without being caught, they could nominate a person to "go Click" in the next game; if they failed then they had to do it themselves.

[114] Similar to the German game of Black Man, the runners in Pom-Pom-Pull-Away start in one of the home areas but with the catcher standing in the middle of the playground, as standard.

[116] In 1949 Warren E. Roberts of the Indiana University Folklore Institute tried to delineate the particularities of the traditional Red Rover and the team game of the same name and phrase.

The guardian responds and lays down conditions, e. g. by choosing a colour or something else: "You may not cross my river unless you... [are wearing blue; have green eyes; have laced shoes etc.]."

[129] The game continues with a specific condition each time (such as age, hair colour, owning a pet, having a certain letter in the name) until all the players have been caught.

[56] One player is selected as the "shark" and starts at one side (or alternatively in the middle) of the pool while the "minnows" (i.e. runners) take place on the opposite area.

Parents tend to deplore the game since it results in muddied and even torn clothes, bruises, bloody noses, knees and elbows and sometimes tears (when played on tarmac) but both boys and girls participate in it.

As a game of physical contact that results in a mêlée of people attempting to drag others down to the ground, British Bulldog bears some similarity to rugby.

[146] "His neck was flexed forcibly while his head was against the floor, and immediately after the injury he had severe pain of the cervical spine ... [which] shows that games such as British Bulldog can be as dangerous as rugby football."

Game description by Edith Fowke from the book Children's Games Played in Canada , published in Toronto in 1988 [ 29 ]
Early Lift-up variant, published in May 1922 in The Scientific Method in Physical Education by Charles Harold McCloy. Book pages from Physical Training , Volume 19, Issue 7, New York 1922. [ 32 ]
Prototype of British Bulldog from October 1918. A variation of the game of Black Man , taken from the Manual of Physical Training and Recreation in Army Camps , Mind & Body Publ. Co., Minnesota 1918. [ 33 ]
Prototype of Take-down Bulldog , Michigan 1935, taken from the book Active Games and Contests by Elmer Dayton Mitchell and Bernard Sterling Mason
Schoolchildren playing a game of tag. Photo from 1909.
Description of the German game of Black Man by William Albin Stecher, Philadelphia 1907, from the Handbook of Graded Lessons in Physical Training and Games for Primary and Grammar Grades [ 41 ]
Fountain pen sketch from 1796 showing the oldest known match field drawing of the German game of Black Man ( Wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann? ) by J. C. F. GutsMuths , Schnepfenthal, Germany [ 60 ]
Newspaper article from November 24th, 1899, describing the deadly head injury of a young boy caused by a football "pile-on" during a game of "Black Man" [ 67 ]
Playing area of Pom-Pom-Pull-Away and King Cæsar from 1890 by John Denison Champlin Jr. & Arthur Elmore Bostwick , similar to the field sketches of Black Man and related chasing games [ 105 ]
Newspaper article from April 5, 1951, describing the fatal accident of an 11-year-old boy while playing "Black Man" as a tackle game (cf. British Bulldog) instead of playing it as a regular tag game [ 141 ]