Item #CL201-22 East Sydney Swimming Club. Winners Of 500 Yards. Flying Squadron Championship Of NSW
Go Back

East Sydney Swimming Club. Winners Of 500 Yards. Flying Squadron Championship Of NSW

1905. Silver gelatin photograph, letterpress text on backing above and below image, 19 x 13.2cm. Repaired tears and missing portions, crinkles, laid down on original backing.

Provenance: Fred Lane estate.

Text includes “H.W. [sic] Baker, F.C.V. Lane (Capt.), C. Healy, A. Wickham, R. Baker. World’s record time: 5 min. 17 2/5 sec. The Exchange Studios. 47 & 49 Pitt Street, near Circular Quay [Sydney].”

Established in 1892, the East Sydney Swimming Club was one of the oldest clubs affiliated to the NSW Amateur Swimming Association. In 1905 the membership included nearly all the NSW champions, including the following:

(1) William Harold Baker (1887–1962) was an outstanding sportsman in swimming, water polo, rugby, boxing, and wrestling. He won the Albert Medal for bravery for surf rescue in 1910;

(2) Frederick Claude Vivian (Fred) Lane (1879–1969) was the first Australian to represent his country in swimming at the Olympic Games, when he competed at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, and won two gold medals. After the Olympics, Lane stayed in England for another two years working for a legal firm in Blackpool while he continued to swim and break records. On returning to Australia, Lane became a master printer and a partner in a printing and stationery firm on Bridge Street, Sydney. He worked with most of Australia’s major artists, including Norman Lindsay. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida, as well as the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1969 and 1985 respectively;

(3) Cecil Patrick (Cec) Healy (1881–1918) was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1900s and 1910s, who won silver and gold at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. He died during WWI at the Somme;

(4) Alick F. Wickham (1886–1967) was a Solomon Islander swimmer and diver. He resided in Sydney from 1901 to 1927 where he achieved several national and NSW titles for swimming. His swan dive into Melbourne’s Yarra River in 1918, which attracted over 70,000 spectators, is considered to be one of his most significant achievements in which he was credited with breaking a world diving record. Wickham is also widely known for being a pioneer of the modern front crawl;

(5) Reginald Leslie (Snowy) Baker (1884–1953), “Australia’s greatest all-round athlete, competed in 26 different sports, and excelled in all of them. He was an international footballer, swimmer, boxer and diver, and was in championship class as a horseman, rower, wrestler, polo and water polo player, track athlete, fencer and gymnast. He remains the only Australian to have represented the nation in three separate sports at the Olympic Games, and he played rugby union for Australia against the touring Great Britain team in 1904…Baker had a varied post-Olympic career, most notably as a boxing referee, boxing promoter, entrepreneur, writer, actor, film-maker, Hollywood stuntman…During the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, he was both Australia’s team attaché and a perceptive correspondent for The Referee, [Sydney]. Ref: The Sydney Mail, 8.3.1905; ADB; Wiki; Harry Gordon, AOC.

.
Item #CL201-22

Price (AUD): $5,500.00  other currencies

See all items in Photography