Dick Kerr Ladies

Dick, Kerr and Co Ltd produced tramway and light railway equipment.

The Ladies football team at the factory was founded by Grace Sibbert in October 1917 and intially games were played for the benefit of local and war charities.

The first big match played on Christmas Day 1917 when the Ladies played a team from the neighbouring Arundel Coulthard Foundry in front of 10,000 at Deepdale, the home of Preton North End. The Dick, Kerr Ladies won 4-0.

The team carried on, occasionally playing in front of huge crowds - the most amazing being the 53,000 who paid to watch them take on the St Helen's Ladies at Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920.

This success almost naturally attracted the wrath of the committee men of the men's game and the FA banned women from playing on FA affiliated pitches (a ban that would last into the 1970's).

n that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged. Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of the matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of receipts to other than charitable objects. 
The Council are further of the opinion that an excessive proportion of the receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects. 
For these reasons the Clubs belonging to the Association refuse the use of their grounds for such matches

The Dick, Kerr Ladies lasted until 1965, the club folding just before the modern upsurge in the game.
Their final record reads

They had raised around £175,000 for charity.

To find out more, I would strongly suggest reading Gail Newsham's "In a League of Their Own" 

Below are a couple of articles, one about the Dick, Kerr Ladies tour of the U.S.A. in 1922 , and the second a short account of how the Dick, Kerr Ladies inspired others.

The Early Game in the United States

For much of the 20th century, women’s soccer had consisted primarily of informational recreational games and intramural college games, particularly at women’s colleges. The first notable exhibition took place in 1922 when the Dick, Kerr Ladies team made a tour of the United States. After having been snubbed by the Canadian association, the team arrived in the States to find that there were no established women’s teams for them to play. So they resolved to play against men’s teams, and these included some of the top teams in the country. They opened with a 6-3 loss to Paterson F. C., but drew with J&P Coates, and Fall River Marksmen, and defeated New Bedford Whalers, all; of the professional American Soccer League. Overall, their record was 3 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses, an impressive record against such high caliber talent, although the men’s sides were sometimes going easy on the Ladies, much to their chagrin.

One of the factories employing women to do war work was in Preston, in Lancashire, in the north of England. There in a factory owned and operated by two Scots, W.B. Dick and John Kerr, makers of tramway and light railway equipment, women were employed producing ammunition when the war started in 1914.

As is the custom in Europe, and was in the United States in the 1920s, the factory ran a soccer team and in October of 1917 it wasn't doing very well. During their tea breaks and at lunch times, the girls would often join in with the apprentices having a kick about in the factory yard, and it wasn't long before the girls were needling the guys saying that they could do better.

Naturally, as boys will be boys, this didn't go over too well and soon they were challenging the girls to a game. So the girls got together and formed a team, and while history records that they played against the men, it does not record the result.

However, the die was cast, and Dick, Kerr Ladies soccer team was formed. It was a team that was to remain in existence for over 48 years and send shock waves through the male dominated world of British soccer. Obviously at a time in history when women wore skirts down to the ground, the sight of women playing soccer was a novelty and it attracted a lot of attention. Soon other women's teams followed the example of Dick, Kerr's and the teams played one another, often in front of large crowds. The money raised from these games went to charity, in particular to the families of men killed during the war.

One of the most famous of these games was played on Boxing Day in 1920, at Goodison Park in Liverpool. There, on the hallowed turf of one of England's greatest soccer grounds, Dick, Kerr Ladies, played another Lancashire team, St. Helen's Ladies, before a crowd of 53,000 with another 10 to 15,000 fans locked out when the ground was full.

This game, and in particular the size of the crowd, set alarm bells ringing in the headquarters of the austere Football Association in London. Women's soccer was now seen as a threat to the professional men's game and something had to be done. So in 1921, under pressure, the all powerful governing body of the game in England barred women from playing soccer for an incredible 50 years.

Part of the resolution of the council "Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, the council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged."

However, as you might expect, women ignored the ban and went on playing, for while the Football Association could bar women from playing within the orbit of its jurisdiction, there was no law against women playing soccer. But the Football Association was successful in stopping women's teams from playing on the grounds of the country's top teams.

But before that time Dick, Kerr's had extended an invitation to a French Ladies team to play four games in England. The French ladies accepted and arrived in England on April 28, 1920. The tour opened in Preston and a crowd of 25,000 looked on as Dick, Kerr's won 2-0. In the second game played in Stockport Dick, Kerr's won 5-2, the third game played in Manchester ended in a 1-1 tie before in the final game played in London, the French Ladies won 2-1.

Later that same year Dick, Kerr's returned the favour and played in France. The team played in Paris, Roubaix, Havre and finally Rouen. One game ended in a tie and Dick, Kerr's won the other three.

Next came an invitation for the team to travel to North America to play in Canada and the United States. The women set sail from Liverpool in September of 1922, aboard the S.S. Montclare and arrived in Quebec City on Friday September 22.

But at the annual general meeting of the Dominion of Canada Football Association, held in Winnipeg, in early September of 1922 the coming arrival of Dick, Kerr Ladies was debated and a motion was passed to the effect that "We do not approve of the proposal of Ladies Football". The minutes of the meeting reflect the same bias against the women's game as shown in England and consequently the team was not allowed to play in Canada. So the women crossed to border into the United States fully expecting to play against women's teams, but it would seem that there were no women's teams for them to play, and they ended up playing against men's teams, not just ordinary mens teams but some of the top professional teams in the American Soccer League.

The tour opened in Paterson, New Jersey on September 24 and Dick, Kerr's were beaten by 6 goals to 3. There followed games against J&P Coats of Pawtucket, New York Centro-Hispano, Washington Stars, New Bedford Whalers, New York Football Club, Fall River Marksmen, and Baltimore Soccer Club. Eight games in all of which the Ladies won three, against New Bedford, New York and Baltimore, tried three against Coats, Washington and Fall River, and were only defeated by Paterson and Centro-Hispano. Quite a record. As you might expect the games in each city were looked upon as something of a curiosity. According to the Fall River Herald News, for the game there, a half section of the grand stand was reserved for ladies, and ladies accompanied by gentlemen, with the ladies being charged a special price of 25 cents to attend.

from The USA Soccer History Archives
USA Soccer Archives main page

'Plucky Lasses', 'Pea Soup' and Politics: The Role of Ladies' Football during the 1921 Miners' Lock-out in Wigan and Leigh by Alethea Melling

• 'Pea soup' football matches were played and organized by women from the working-class communities of Wigan and Leigh during the miners' lock out of 1921. Encouraged by local labour movements and by their menfolk and inspired by the famous Dick, Kerr's Ladies Football team from Preston, they played on farmer's fields in front of crowds exceeding 5,000 to raise money for the soup kitchens which fed the miners' children. 'Pea soup' football is highly significant in two fundamental areas. Firstly, it reveals how football was regarded as both a vehicle of community cohesion and social emancipation for women, and secondly, it is representative of what Ouditt defines as the 'plucky heroine' ideology contrived during the war effort, where women and girls were thrown into traditional male roles at home, in the work place and on the sports field.

from The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Abstracts of articles in Issue 16.1