It said that City’s most capped player was one Harry Hampton with nine caps for Ireland between 1910 and 1914. Nothing wrong with that, but by then I knew the FA Cup winning team off by heart and Harry wasn’t there so who was he? He must have been a decent player to gain international caps yet he wasn’t in the Cup final team. Could he have been injured or suspended and then left out as the star winger Dickie Bond was? Surely such an important player would be an integral part of the team? Imagine my confusion when it also said he also played for Aston Villa and had won several medals with them? How could we leave this lad out?
A couple of weeks later it was Aston Villa’s turn for the potted history and under the famous players was Harry Hampton, an ENGLISH international! This was getting really confusing now, and for many years the misinformation continued either through confusion or lazy journalism. To set the record straight, Villa’s Harry Hampton was three years older was indeed a great English international. He did win many medals with Villa and was, and still is, rightly regarded as a true Villa great.
As a Bradford City fan, our Harry Hampton interests me more. His career was far more modest by comparison but I think he deserves recognition in his own right, after all he held a club record for the most international caps for over seventy years until it was broken by Jamaican Jamie Lawrence in the 1990s.
Henry Hampton was born in Dublin, Ireland, one of six children to Henry Hampton Snr. and Ellen Manders. Henry Snr. was in the British Army and after his discharge he went to America where he met Ellen Manders in Illinois. Two children were born there before the family returned to Dublin and then to Scotland. Sadly, Henry Snr. died and left his widow with five children. She applied for poor relief, but had to give up two children to the Mossfield Industrial School. Glasgow was no place for a widow with a large family. These were schools that fed and educated poor children and tried to keep them on the straight and narrow. Sport was a major part of their education and young Harry must have shown promise as a footballer as according to family history he was taken on as a trainee at Glasgow Celtic. Celtic would have tried many hopefuls from the huge Irish Catholic population in Glasgow and, although he didn’t make it at Parkhead, he must have caught the eye whilst playing probably junior football as he was signed by Dundee FC.
Dundee at this time were a top side twice finishing runners-up to Celtic in the league and winning the Scottish Cup in 1910, so the young Harry understandably found it hard to make his mark at the club. Someone had noticed him though. When Bradford City’s England International half back Evelyn Lintott suffered a lengthy injury, City’s wily Scottish manager Peter O’Rourke used his extensive knowledge of the game north of the Border to bring the 22 year old Harry Hampton to Valley Parade.
One bonus for Harry was his selection for the Irish national team for the Home International fixture against Wales on 28th January 1911. He kept his place for the games against England and Scotland in the series and although all three games were lost he had made a step up to international football. He only played three more league games as the City team concentrated on winning the FA Cup. He did appear in the second round tie against Norwich City at Valley Parade, but then let Jimmy McDonald back in for the rest of the cup run.
The following 1911-12 season came with City one of the country’s leading teams in the wake of the FA Cup win and the strong fifth place in the league; which could have been better but for the resting of players for the more prestigious FA Cup competition. Harry managed a creditable thirteen appearances plus two FA Cup games as the deputy for the ever dependable stalwart George Robinson as the club tried valiantly to hold on to their prized trophy. He also gained two further caps for the Irish team being selected for the Wales and England games.
The following season saw a further eleven appearances for City, once again deputising for George Robinson at half-back and he was also an ever present in the year’s home internationals, appearing in all three games for the Irish team.
He started a new family in Derby which produced twin girls and a boy. I can’t say, or judge, what made him do this but after the carnage of the war was anyone thinking straight in those days? He lost two Brothers in the conflict, he had seen several playing colleagues killed in the horror of the trenches, he would have heard of the horrors of team mate Dickie Bond being a P.O.W. and Jock Ewart being gassed. Who knows how the horrific war affected anyone. These are just facts, not an excuse, I am not privy to his thought processes.
Whilst in Derby where he found work with the electricity board. His playing days were over and such was his plight that he sold several of his international caps just to make ends meet. Remember this was a time where the whole country’s infrastructure was having to come to terms with losing a whole generation of young men, not to mention the economic cost of five years of unforgiving warfare. He continued to live out his days in Derby until his death in 1946 from lung cancer and heart failure
His legacy was one of a young boy brought up in very hard circumstances and making something of himself. He managed to rise to the top of his chosen profession only to be hit by the tragedy of the generation he was born into having to face the horrors of the Great War; it surely had an affect on his way of thinking.
He was a part of a squad playing at the height of the English professional game for one of the top clubs of the period. Not only that but for almost four years he was a regular Irish international side when they were home international Champions for the first time. His record of nine caps whilst a City player was a record which stood for almost seventy years until finally broken by the hugely popular Jamie Lawrence and his caps for Jamaica.
Aston Villa may have had their Harry Hampton, but we at City had our own Harry. He may not have been a huge household name but he was a significant part of the club in its Golden Era and his story is here for all to see. Can I credit, and say a huge thank you, to Mrs Christine Duttine for her massive help and assistance in this piece. She is a member of the Hampton family who also wanted Harry’s story to be told and I am glad to be of help. I would also like to thank Christine for her kind loans of family documents and information and the picture of Harry’s Irish Cap which happily remains with the family to this day.
Ian Hemmens
