Figure 1.--.

Rugby School was and still is an independent boarding school in Warwickshire. This is in the middle of England. These schools are called public schools in England even though they are exclusive private schools. Rugby is one of the most famous of these schools. The school was founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, a local resident, as a boys' boarding school. Sheriff was one of the Gentlemen of the Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen), a grocer, and Second Warden of the Grocer's Compoany. The school was endowed with estates in the Rugby area and in London suburbs. The school did not, however, for a variety of reasons, get the full benefit of those endowments until 1653. A reader writes, "What uniform would boys at Rugby School wear in 1823 when William Webb Ellis attended. Would there be a tie and if so what colour would it be? Was there any special clothing worn for the game of rugby and if so what was it?" We do not have information about what the boys wore in the early 19th century. We are not sure there was an official uniform at the time. Younger boys may have worn skeleton suits and tunics. Older boys more adult suits. I also do not think there was a first any kind of uniform to olay rugby. Presumably the boys would have worn their older clothes, but I don't think there was a first a sports uniform. Hopefully some of our English readers will know more. Rugby School is renowned as the school where the modern game of Rugby football developed during the 19th century. It was also the setting for Tom Broen's Schooldays which introduced one of the great boy characters in British literatute, Tom Brown.

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Created: 7:21 PM 2/8/2007
Last updated: 7:21 PM 2/8/2007