Walter Bradford Woodgate

Walter Bradford Woodgate (1841-1920), British oarsman and barrister, was born at Belbroughton, Worcestershire on 20 September 1841. He died at Southampton on 1 November 1920.

in 1858 where he lingered well into the 1860s, mainly on the river. A larger than life character he once went straight out of a London pub and walked non-stop to Oxford for a bet.

At Oxford the Reverend Woodgate's son earned pocket money by writing sermons. As a fresh-faced Brasenose freshman, he appeared as Lady Barbara in the College play, partook liberally of the wine and four kinds of punch at dinner afterwards, woke in his petticoats, and attended chapel with the rouge still on his cheeks. And two years later he founded Vincent's Club.

A lifelong bachelor, in 1872 Woodgate was called to the bar. He practiced for forty years but took neither the law nor anything else save rowing too seriously and it is as a first-class oarsman and journalistic critic of rowing that he is remembered.

He helped coach numerous Oxford crews and was president of Kingston Rowing Club.

Achievements

An accomplished oarsman and sculler he won the University Pairs three times, the Sculls twice and as well as rowing for his own college, he rowed for Oxford in the Boat Race twice: 1862 (in the bow seat) and 1863 (in the 4 seat).ref|Boatrace, winning both.

The Wingfield Sculls

* 1862
* 1864
* 1867

Henley Royal Regatta

* 1861 - Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup
* 1862 - Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup
* 1862 - Stewards' Challenge Cup
* 1863 - Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup
* 1864 - Diamond Challenge Sculls (after a dead heat two years previously)
* 1865 - Grand Challenge Cup
* 1866 - Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup
* 1868 - Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup

By entering for the Diamonds in 1866 under a false name, and for having his Brasenose coxswain jump overboard at the start of the 1868 Stewards’ to lighten his Brasenose four, Woodgate caused the adoption of Henley Regatta rules specifically prohibiting such conduct. While the unwanted cox narrowly escaped strangulation by the water lilies, Woodgate and his home-made steering device triumphed by 100 yards and were promptly disqualified.. ref|HRR

A special Prize for four-oared crews without coxswains was offered at the regatta in 1869 where it was won by the Oxford Radleian Club and when coxswains were dropped from the Stewards’ in 1873, Woodgate “won his moral victory,” the Rowing Almanack later recalled. “Nothing but defeating a railway in an action at law could have given him so much pleasure.”ref|Almanac

Vincent's Club

Woodgate’s major non-aquatic accomplishment at Oxford was the founding in 1863 of Vincent’s Club (named for the landlord who rented the rooms), in reaction against the Union Society. The Union at the time barred smoking and drinking and, in Woodgate’s view, “went through the farce of socially ‘vetting’ every candidate, and after all, passing all sorts and conditions of men as ‘sound,’ despite notorious antecedents.”ref|Woodgate1 So he and his friends made Vincent’s selective (“a magic number -- 100 -- to give prestige”) and offered beer, tea, and coffee, all for free lest the proctors intervene were drinks “for sale.”ref|Woodgate2 An immediate success, Vincent’s climbed straight to the top of the undergraduate social heap. Among its later presidents were rowers Bankes, Nickalls, and Cotton.

Woodgate created Vincent's very much in his own image. He wanted an elite social club of 'the picked hundred of the University, selected for all round qualities; social, physical and intellectual'. He loathed the Union, which he felt made only a pretence at selectivity, and finally he gathered forty of his friends and rented rooms at 90, High Street, above Vincent's, the printers and publisher's shop. If you were invited to subscribe, your 30 shillings per term included free beer, coffee and tea, none of which could be had at the Union, even for payment; and free postage on letters. Smoking was also allowed, again in contrast to the Union, and dogs were admitted to the clubroom, presumably to accommodate Woodgate's fox terrier, Jenny, a notorious shredder of trouser legs.

Writing

As well as providng the rowing coverage in Vanity Fair for most of the years there was any to speak of, Woodgate also had several books published:
* Oars and Sculls, and How to Use Them (1874)
* Boating (1888, for the Badminton Library set),
* Rowing and Sculling ... Illustrated. (1889 for the All England Series)
* A Modern Layman's Faith (1893)
* Tandem (A novel) (1895)
* Reminiscences of an Old Sportsman (1909),

He contributed to The Field for half a century, frequently “produc [ing] the leading article in a curious but flexible English, which was quite unmistakable.”ref|Almanac2 Woodgate’s writing attests to his clerical family background, classical Greek and Latin schooling, years of lawyering, and an unsuppressable urge to storytell, laced with legalisms and couplets from Horace. He could, wrote T.A. Cook, who rowed for Oxford in 1889 with Vanity Fair’s Guy Nickalls, “write anything from a curate’s sermon to a leading article on the Torts of Landlords or a racy description of a prize fight and a sculling match.”ref|Cook

References

reflist

#W.B. Woodgate, Reminiscences of an Old Sportsman.
#G Ross, The Boat Race, p.213
# H.T. Steward Henley Royal Regatta, 1903, pp. 133-34
#The Rowing Almanack, 1921, pp. 148-49
#W.B. Woodgate, p. 185
#W.B. Woodgate, p. 187
#The Rowing Almanack, 1921, p. 149.
#T.A. Cook, The Sunlit Hours, pp. 275-76.

External links

* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Rowers_of_Vanity_Fair/Fogg-Elliot_CT The Rowers of Vanity Fair/Fogg-Elliot CT - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks ] at en.wikibooks.org
* [http://www.vincents.org/ Home - Vincent's Club Oxford ] at www.vincents.org