Sports

Week 41 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge - "Sports"

"John Knight Meets George
Duntley on the Islington
Street Alleys"

This newspaper clipping is from the Portsmouth Herald, dated 13 August 1914, which involved my Great Great-Grandfather John Knight, in a bowling alley challenge against George Duntley. The latter was a Greenland painter, and was aged 56 at this time. John Knight Sr. was a 70-year-old farmer (representing Newington, though he had already moved to Portsmouth by then), but apparently could hold his own on the alley.

Thankfully, I have a photo of John Knight in his farming clothes (though taken at least a decade earlier than this event), so it is amusing to picture him tossing the candlepin balls down the lane in his overalls while wearing his "heavy pair of boots".

I've no clue if a score of 156 for three strings is any good, but HE WON!

John Knight Sr, with son Billy (date unknown but ca 1900)

Note:
There is a possibility that it was John Knight Jr who was the bowler, but he would have been only 25 in 1914. As competing against someone (Mr Duntley) twice his age wouldn't have seemed right, I believe it was the John Sr. who ruled the lanes that day.