Child Work or Child Labour? The Caddie Question in Edwardian Golf

Abstract

Introduction: Child labour in sport is often regarded as a relatively modern phenomenon, usually with exploitative implications, involving third-world workers producing sporting goods, the abused bodies of communist bloc girl gymnasts, and teenage African footballers discarded when they failed to make the grade in Europe. Although historical examples are Idrottsforumabsent from the academic literature, there are late nineteenth and early twentieth-century instances in Britain in the use of boy jockeys in horseracing and, the subject of this chapter, the child caddie in golf. For the purposes of this chapter children are considered to be young persons under the age of sixteen, the line generally taken by golf clubs. Hence the discussion of child caddies is not confined to those still at school but also includes school leavers, many of whom could be as young as twelve.