In the first part of this series, we went back to the 1920s and 1930s and discovered that women were already competing against men in the News of the World Championship.
Eileen Turnage, an 18-year-old from Essex, reached the last eight of the Chelmsford Area Final in 1936.
A year later, Mrs A. Morgan went even further, winning the Winchester Area competition and qualifying for the News of the World Grand Finals.
Both were remarkable achievements for the time.
But as I've continued looking into the history of women's darts, something else has become apparent.
By the late 1930s, women weren't simply making occasional appearances in men's tournaments.
There were women's competitions attracting thousands of entries, darts was receiving national publicity, and the BBC was even broadcasting a women's final.
And perhaps most surprisingly, the woman who helped bring darts to a much wider female audience wasn't a professional player.
It was the Queen.
A royal game of darts
In December 1937, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited a community centre in Slough.
During their visit, they came across a dartboard and decided to have a throw.
The Queen scored 21.
The King managed 19.
Now, before anyone gets too excited about the Queen beating the King, there was apparently a slight advantage involved.
She was allowed to stand a foot closer to the board.
So perhaps not quite the level playing field we might expect today.
But the result wasn't really the important part.
The following day, photographs of Queen Elizabeth playing darts appeared in national newspapers.
And suddenly darts was attracting attention from people who might never previously have considered picking up a set of arrows.
Historical accounts describe a considerable increase in interest among women, with the British Darts Council reportedly receiving enquiries about where women could learn to play.
It's difficult to know exactly how many women were inspired by those photographs.
But there is something quite interesting about the whole episode.
At a time when darts was still strongly associated with working-class pubs and predominantly male players, the Queen had been photographed enjoying the game.
And if the Queen could play darts, why shouldn't other women?
Two thousand women enter a darts competition
This is probably my favourite discovery from this period so far.
On 19 April 1938, a women's darts final was broadcast by the BBC.
That might not sound particularly extraordinary today.
But remember, we're talking about 1938.
There was no television darts as we know it, no professional women's circuit and certainly no Women's Series.
The broadcast was on the wireless.
And here's the remarkable part.
The competition had attracted approximately 2,000 entrants.
Two thousand women entering a darts competition in 1938.
I certainly wasn't expecting to find that.
The final took place at the Adam and Eve pub in Homerton, London.
The finalists were Miss Champion from Ware and Mrs Westlake from London.
Unfortunately, the contemporary account I've found doesn't provide their first names, something that seems to happen rather frequently when researching women's sport from this period.
But at least we know something about their performances.
Miss Champion lives up to her name
The BBC broadcast featured commentary from Charles and Mrs Garner, who described the action for listeners.
The players competed at 501, with double-in and double-out rules.
The match was played over three legs, with two on the short throw and one on the long throw.
Miss Champion won the opening leg.
Mrs Westlake levelled the match.
And in the deciding leg, Miss Champion proved the stronger player.
The contemporary report mentions her hitting treble 20 and finishing on double top.
She won the match 2–1.
And there was something rather amusing about the prizes.
Miss Champion received a canteen of cutlery.
Mrs Westlake, the runner-up, received a fox-fur cape.
Not quite the prize funds we're accustomed to discussing today.
But then again, this was nearly 90 years ago.
The BBC broadcast was subsequently discussed in the 8 July 1938 edition of Radio Pictorial.
What particularly interests me is that the final wasn't simply mentioned in passing.
The magazine treated women's sporting broadcasts as something worth discussing in their own right.
And that's an important distinction.
Women's darts was no longer necessarily just a novelty involving the occasional woman taking on the men.
Here was an organised competition involving thousands of women, with its final considered worthy of national radio coverage.
I would love to know more about Miss Champion and Mrs Westlake.
Were they regular competitors? Did they play for pub teams? Did either continue playing after the war?
At the moment, I don't have those answers.
But I suspect their names may appear in other newspaper archives somewhere.
Women were hitting 180s too
Another interesting development came in 1938, when the News of the World introduced its Treble 20 Guild.
The idea was to recognise players who could provide the required confirmation that they had scored 180.
We tend to associate 180s with the professional game today, but naturally players were recording maximums long before television made them famous.
And women were among them.
Historical records relating to the Guild acknowledge that numerous women had qualified during the pre-war years.
Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a reliable complete list of those female players.
That's something I'd particularly like to uncover as this series develops.
Because there is a difference between knowing that women were playing darts and having evidence that some were producing genuinely impressive performances.
A 180 is a 180, regardless of whether it was thrown in 1938 or 2026.
Of course, one maximum doesn't tell us how strong a player was over an entire match.
But it certainly suggests that some women were taking their darts seriously.
From the public bar to the upper classes
Another aspect of darts during the late 1930s is how its appeal was spreading across society.
The game had traditionally been associated with pubs and working-class communities.
But darts was increasingly appearing in social clubs, organised events and even fashionable gatherings.
One particularly unusual name connected with this period is Lucy Baldwin, wife of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
In August 1938, Lady Baldwin was reported to have won a women's darts competition at the Astley Horticultural Show.
Her prize was a silver perfume set.
There's something rather wonderful about that.
At one end of the country, ordinary women were playing darts in their local pubs.
At the other end of the social scale, the wife of a former prime minister was winning a darts competition at a horticultural show.
It doesn't necessarily mean the social barriers surrounding the game had disappeared.
They certainly hadn't.
But it does suggest darts was becoming a pastime enjoyed by a much wider range of people.
And women were part of that change.
Was there really a women's darts boom?
I think we have to be a little careful here.
It's tempting to look at the Queen's appearance, the BBC broadcast and the growing number of women's competitions and conclude that women's darts was suddenly booming everywhere.
But we don't yet have enough evidence to establish how widespread or permanent that growth was.
What we can say is that there was clearly considerable activity.
We have evidence of women competing against men in the News of the World.
We have a women's competition attracting around 2,000 entrants.
We have national radio coverage.
We have reports of women recording maximum scores.
And we have examples of darts attracting women from very different social backgrounds.
That is already considerably more than I expected to find when I started researching this series.
And I suspect there are many other competitions whose results have never made it into modern darts records.
Perhaps they appeared in local newspapers for a week and were then forgotten.
Perhaps some were organised by employers, social clubs or individual pubs.
Perhaps some of the better female players of the era never entered the larger competitions at all.
There is still a lot to discover.
Then came 1939
By the summer of 1939, darts had become an established part of British popular culture.
Women were increasingly visible within the game, although it remained a predominantly male pastime.
And then everything changed.
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland.
Two days later, Britain declared war.
The Second World War would transform almost every aspect of everyday life.
Sport was no exception.
But I don't think we should automatically assume that women's darts simply stopped.
In fact, that's one of the questions I want to investigate next.
With so many men serving in the armed forces, women took on new responsibilities in workplaces and communities.
Did that create more opportunities for women to play darts?
Were there competitions in factories, military establishments or social clubs?
Did women's teams continue playing during the war?
And what happened to players such as Miss Champion, Mrs Westlake and the women who had been competing during the late 1930s?
Were they still playing when peace returned?
Or did an entire generation of female darts players gradually disappear from the record?
I don't know yet.
But that's the next part of the story.
A history that deserves remembering
When I began this series, I thought we would probably spend a little time on the early years before moving towards the more familiar names of the 1970s onwards.
Instead, we've already found enough material for two articles covering the period before the Second World War.
And some of the discoveries have genuinely surprised me.
The idea that 2,000 women entered a darts competition in 1938, with the final broadcast by the BBC, is particularly fascinating.
How many darts fans today would know that happened?
I certainly didn't.
And that is really the point of this series.
Not to take anything away from the achievements of the modern players, but to discover the women who helped establish the game long before most of us were watching.
Women's darts has a much longer history than its modern television coverage might suggest.
And we're only just getting started.
Coming next: Women's Darts During the Second World War
In Part Three, I'll be looking at what happened to women's darts between 1939 and 1945.
Did the war bring women's competitive darts to a halt, or did the changing role of women in British society create new opportunities?
And did any of the leading female players from the 1930s reappear after the war?
That's where the research takes us next.
Can you help?
I'm continuing to research the history of women's darts for Quest For Q School.
If you have old newspaper cuttings, tournament programmes, photographs or family stories involving female darts players, I'd be very interested to hear from you.
In particular, I'd love to find out more about Miss Champion of Ware and Mrs Westlake of London, who contested that remarkable BBC-broadcast final in 1938.
There must be many more stories still waiting to be discovered.
The Forgotten Women of Darts is a Q4QS historical series tracing women's involvement in the game from the earliest organised competitions through to the modern professional era.
Sources and Further Reading
This article forms part of the Q4QS series The Forgotten Women of Darts, researching the history of women's involvement in competitive darts.
The following sources have been used to help establish the historical background, events and developments covered in this instalment.
Dr Patrick Chaplin – A Brief History of Ladies Darts (1937–1997)
Research into the growth of women's darts, Queen Elizabeth's appearance in 1937 and the development of organised women's competition.
https://patrickchaplin.com/2019/05/22/a-brief-history-of-ladies-darts/Dr Patrick Chaplin – Darts on the Wireless
Historical research into early BBC darts broadcasts and the increasing popularity of the game during the 1930s.
https://patrickchaplin.com/2019/05/22/darts-on-the-wireless/Radio Pictorial – 8 July 1938
Contemporary coverage of the women's darts final between Miss Champion and Mrs Westlake, broadcast by the BBC in April 1938.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Radio-Pictorial/Radio-Pictorial-1938-07-08-S-OCR.pdfDr Patrick Chaplin – Darts in England, 1900–1939: A Social History
Manchester University Press, 2009. Historical background on darts, its popularity and the changing participation of women during the inter-war years.Historical Perspectives of Women in Darts
Academic research discussing women's involvement in darts, social barriers and the development of competitive opportunities.
https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/7837/1/FINAL%20VERSION%20-%20The%20impact%20of%20Fallon%20Sherrock%20and%20the%20increasing%20prominence%20of%20women%20within%20professional%20darts%20events.pdf
Research note: Particular acknowledgement is given to darts historian Dr Patrick Chaplin, whose extensive work documenting the early history of darts has provided valuable leads and historical context for this series. The articles are independently written for Quest For Q School, with the intention of developing the research further as additional contemporary records and personal accounts become available.
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