Simon Bullivant - The Bumper Book of Slightly Forgotten but Nevertheless Still Great British Olympians and Other Sporting Heroes

Bed-Making

One of the more surprising successes of the St Louis Olympics of 1904 had been the synchronized bed-sheet folding display. Crowds watched entranced as a hundred Missouri matrons in starched gingham dresses neatly folded enormous cotton sheets to a musical accompaniment. A bulky, new-fangled film camera recorded a few scratchy, speeded up seconds of the display, which would otherwise have been lost to posterity. A copy of the film became a treasured possession of E. Reginald Whipple, a travelling British cloth merchant, who was so impressed by what he saw that he felt compelled to persuade the London Olympic Organising Committee to include the event in their 1908 programme. They duly endorsed his suggestion, with a few amendments of their own, the most important one being the introduction of a competitive element.

Nowadays some might regard the fact that Whipple was sole supplier of cloth, flags and bunting to the London Olympics as an abuse of his position which of course it was but in Edwardian Britain it was regarded as perfectly acceptable for a gentleman to behave that way, and no shame was attached. For their part the organizers, under the redoubtable leadership of Sir Henry Rycroft, were less concerned about where the cloth came from than that the competition should attract the right sort of woman. After all, no self-respecting woman made her own bed in 1908 or at least, no self-respecting woman admitted to it, and the committee believed it would be unseemly to expect any of the more well-bred ladies of the Empire to display their bed-making credentials in the heat of Olympic combat, and in public to boot. To spare their blushes, they decided to stiffen the entry requirements and ensure the competition was restricted to servant girls.

There was no shortage of women working in domestic service in the first decade of the twentieth century, and with 1907 Britain experiencing a servant glut, entry numbers for the bed-sheet folding event were expected to be high. But that, of course, brought its own problems. Who was to say that the contestants were genuine? Might not a lady of breeding dress down and pass herself off as a woman of an inferior class? It was a knotty issue, and the gentlemen of the 1908 Olympic Committee smoked many a fine cigar while ruminating over it.

To ensure that no subterfuge happened, and that no proper ladies, undercover suffragettes or bluestockings took part, Sir Henry Rycrofts team devised a series of tests to check that every competitor was the servant girl they claimed to be. The first element of this test was comparatively straightforward and involved nothing more than a close examination of the girls hand for calluses. Only those with skin sufficiently hardened by years of scrubbing passed through. But that in itself was not a foolproof method. As Sir Henry pointed out to the committee, his own wife had rather rough fingers thanks to twenty years of light gardening and Lady Maud had never made a bed nor scrubbed so much as a single floor in her life.

Any remaining doubts regarding the suitability of the competitors would only be resolved by the second part of the test, and it was here that the controversy ensued. For the recommendation of Sir Henrys committee was that each surviving girl who claimed to be a servant should be subjected to the traditional drunken fumble by an aristocrat. It was a fair test on the face of it, and seemingly foolproof. A domestic servant or indeed anyone from below stairs would undoubtedly permit one of her social betters to fondle her behind the aspidistra, whereas the merest suggestion would naturally cause a lady of breeding to have a fit of the vapours and need reviving with smelling salts. It was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, no gentleman could be found drunken or otherwise who would be prepared to goose servant girls en masse. Even the guarantee of anonymity and a darkened room in which to commit the deed proved insufficient incentive. Discreet advertisements placed in gentlemens magazines drew a frustrating blank. It looked as though the event would have to be dropped from the Olympic programme altogether, and this might have happened had it not been for the selfless eleventh-hour intervention by one of Europes leading rous.

Baron Hargitay, a Hungarian nobleman of some wealth and ill repute, heard about the bed-making crisis and rushed to London, offering his considerable experience. The Baron had a notorious reputation amongst the titled families of Europe, and had left a trail of pregnant servant girls across the continent. Sir Henry offered him the job at once. No sooner had he thrown himself at the Organising Committee than Baron Hargitay threw himself at the young girls, and fondled the breasts and waists of over fifty servants in the spirit of international competition. A few dozen more he persuaded to sit on his knee, on the pretext of showing them how to play a traditional Hungarian dance on the piano.