Harry Gem | |
|---|---|
 Captain Harry Gem in his Birmingham Rifle Volunteer Corps uniform in 1868 | |
| Born | (1819-05-21)21 May 1819 Birmingham, England |
| Died | 4 November 1881(1881-11-04) (aged 62) Birmingham, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | King's College, London |
MajorThomas Henry Gem (21 May 1819 – 4 November 1881),[1] known asHarry Gem, was an English lawyer, soldier, writer andsportsman.
Alongside his friendAugurio Perera, he is credited as alawn tennis pioneer.[2][3]
Gem was born inBirmingham, the son of William Gem, also a solicitor, and was educated atKing's College London. From 1841 he practised as a solicitor in Birmingham, becoming amagistrate's clerk in 1856.[2]
Highly active in local life, Gem wrote journalism and drama for several local publications, rose to the rank of Major in the1st Warwickshire Rifle Volunteer Corps and was active in numerous sports includingcricket andathletics.[2] He is recorded as having won a bet by running the 21 miles from Birmingham toWarwick in under three and a half hours.[4]
Among Gem's sporting interests was the game ofrackets, which he played at the Bath Street Racquets Club adjacent to the Racquet Court Inn in Bath Street, Birmingham with his friendAugurio Perera, a Spanish merchant based in Birmingham. Frustrated at the complex and expensive facilities required for rackets, however, the two developed a similar game that could be played outdoors and may have been played on Perera'scroquet lawn at 8 Ampton Road inEdgbaston, incorporating elements of rackets alongside features of theBasque game ofpelota.[5]
This game is known to have been being played by 1865, though research has suggested that experimentation may have started as early as 1859.[5] It thus clearly pre-dates the game ofsphairistikè, whose rules were published and for which equipment was sold by MajorWalter Clopton Wingfield from March 1874.
Gem and Perera's game also bore a closer resemblance to modern tennis than Wingfield's in several significant respects, most notably in being played on a similarly sized and configured rectangular grass court, rather than the hourglass-shaped court with a 'waist' at the net that featured in Wingfield'ssphairistikè.[6]
Gem and Perera’s game was originally known asLawn rackets orpelota.[4]
Some time between 1873 and 1874 both Gem and Perera moved toLeamington Spa and in 1874 formed theLeamington Club with Frederic Haynes and Arthur Tomkins, two doctors from a local hospital, specifically to play the new game of lawn tennis.[7][8] TheLeamington Club, renamed toLeamington Lawn Tennis Club at the end of 1874, thus became the world's first tennis club, playing on the lawns of the Manor House Hotel opposite Perera's new home in Avenue Road.[8][4][9]
Gem had also been a member of the Edgbaston Archery Society from 1864 to 1867 and, although there is no direct evidence to demonstrate that he personally introduced lawn tennis to the society, the game was certainly a fixture in the society's calendar by 1875, with the society being renamed theEdgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society in 1877.[3]
Gem died on 4 November 1881 as the result of an accident which occurred on 25 June that year, at the military camp inSutton Park.[10]