William Snook

William Snook

William Snook, born into a well-off Shropshire family in 1861, died in the workhouse at Highcroft Hall in 1916, after a life filled with controversy.

Standing 5’6’’ tall, with a 42” chest, Snook and W G George from his original club, Moseley, could have been described as the Coe and Ovett of their day. But in 1881the AAA suspended him from competing in competitions organised by any of their affiliated clubs, and decreed that any athlete competing with him in defiance of this should also be suspended. This led to a “a senseless farce” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph 1882) because, after he had competed in events at Ludlow, Oswestry and Aston, the AAA decided that 60 further athletes should be suspended. The reporter mused that, if all those who had competed against these 60 were also suspended,“it will be a mere sum of arithmetic to decide when every athlete in England shall be incapacitated under these rules”.

Having served his suspension, Snook moved to Birchfield in 1884 and his career peaked in 1885 when he not only won the National Cross Country, but also the AAA mile, 4 miles, 10 miles and steeplechase within 2 days at Southport.

But in 1886 his competitive life as an amateur was ended by a AAA lifetime ban after he finished 2^nd in the National Cross Country and was accused of fixing the result in league with the bookmakers. By 1892 his marriage ended more than messily in a nationally reported divorce and he apparently left the pubs he ran in Birmingham to live in Paris, returning destitute in 1916 to Birmingham.