Showing posts with label News of the World Darts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News of the World Darts. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

The Forgotten Women of Darts – Part Two: When Women's Darts Started Making Headlines (1937–1939)

 


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.

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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Monday, October 12, 2026

Introducing The Forgotten Women of Darts

 


When people talk about the history of women's darts, the same names understandably come up.

Fallon Sherrock, Beau Greaves, Lisa Ashton, Trina Gulliver, Anastasia Dobromyslova and, going back further, Maureen Flowers.

All have made enormous contributions to the game.

But what about the women who came before them?

Who was playing darts in the 1920s and 1930s? Were women entering competitions against men? Were there organised women's tournaments long before the BDO or PDC existed?

And perhaps most importantly, how many talented female players have simply disappeared from the history of the sport?

That's what I want to explore in a new Q4QS series, The Forgotten Women of Darts.

I'm going to start in the 1920s and work forwards, looking at the players, competitions, personalities and developments that helped shape women's darts.

Some names will be familiar. Others may be completely new to most readers, including me.

I'll be using historical records, contemporary newspaper reports and other available material to piece together the story. Where possible, I'd also like to hear directly from people who played, organised or witnessed women's darts in earlier decades.

And I suspect there will be a few surprises along the way.

The first instalment takes us back almost 100 years, to a time when darts was largely played in male-dominated pubs, yet women were already entering major competitions and beating men.

Welcome to The Forgotten Women of Darts.

The Forgotten Women of Darts – Part 1: The Women Who Played the Men (1920s–1937)

When you think about women playing competitive darts against men, what comes to mind?

For many people it will be Fallon Sherrock beating Ted Evetts at Alexandra Palace in December 2019.

Perhaps you think of Lisa Ashton earning a PDC Tour Card, or Beau Greaves competing against some of the best players in the world.

Go back further and you arrive at Maureen Flowers, arguably the first truly recognisable female darts star.

But what if I told you that women were entering major darts competitions against men nearly a century ago?

And not simply entering.

Some were winning matches, progressing through qualifying rounds and earning places in the biggest tournaments of their day.

For the first instalment of The Forgotten Women of Darts, I'm going right back to the beginnings of organised competitive darts.

Before the television cameras

Darts in the 1920s looked very different from the game we know today.

There were no packed arenas, televised World Championships or professional tours offering substantial prize money.

The pub was the centre of the darts world.

The National Darts Association was established in 1925, helping bring greater organisation to a sport that was growing rapidly in popularity.

Then, during the 1927–28 season, the News of the World Individual Darts Championship began.

It initially attracted around 1,000 entrants in the London area, but would eventually become one of the most prestigious competitions in the sport.

By the 1938–39 season, participation had reportedly grown to more than 280,000 entries.

Imagine trying to win your way through a competition of that size.

And here's something that surprised me when I started looking into this period.

Women were allowed to enter.

That doesn't mean they enjoyed the same opportunities as men.

Far from it.

A man's world?

We have to remember what Britain was like during the 1920s and 1930s.

Pubs, particularly public bars, were overwhelmingly male environments.

For men, playing darts regularly might simply mean visiting the local pub after work, joining a team and entering competitions.

For women, things weren't always so straightforward.

Even where there was no formal rule preventing them from competing, social attitudes and access to playing facilities created considerable barriers.

A woman might be perfectly capable of playing good darts but have far fewer opportunities to practise or compete.

That makes the achievements of some of the early female players all the more interesting.

Because despite those obstacles, women were playing.

And some were clearly very good.

Eileen Turnage — the teenager from Essex

One of the earliest names I've uncovered is Eileen Turnage.

Eileen grew up at the Cherry Tree pub in Witham, Essex, where her father William was the landlord.

Unlike many women of her generation, Eileen had regular access to a dartboard and the opportunity to develop her game.

She also played in the Cherry Tree darts team.

In 1936, aged just 18, she entered the News of the World competition.

Not a women's competition.

The same competition as the men.

Eileen won the Cherry Tree's qualifying event and progressed through the competition until she reached the Chelmsford Area Final, held at the Golden Fleece.

There she reached the last eight.

Her achievement was reported in the Essex Chronicle in May 1936.

Now, a quarter-final appearance might not sound particularly remarkable to somebody following modern darts.

But put yourself back in 1936.

An 18-year-old woman had entered a major darts competition, beaten male opponents and progressed far enough to attract newspaper attention.

And this was happening decades before organised women's darts became an established part of the sport.

I wonder how many other young women were doing something similar without their achievements being recorded.

Mrs Morgan — a remarkable achievement in 1937

If Eileen Turnage's story was impressive, what happened the following year was even more significant.

A woman recorded in historical accounts as Mrs A. Morgan represented the Old House at Home pub in Colden Common, Hampshire.

In April 1937, she competed in the Winchester Area section of the News of the World Championship.

And she won.

That victory earned Mrs Morgan a place in the News of the World Grand Finals in London.

She had qualified through the normal competition structure, playing against men.

She wasn't appearing as an exhibition player or receiving a special invitation because she was a woman.

She had earned her place.

Mrs Morgan lost in the first round of the Grand Finals, but that result hardly tells the full story.

As far as the surviving historical research establishes, she became the first woman to qualify for the News of the World Grand Finals.

Think about that for a moment.

In 1937, a woman was competing in the final stages of one of the most important darts tournaments in Britain.

This was nearly 40 years before the BDO was established and more than 80 years before Fallon Sherrock's famous victories at Alexandra Palace.

The circumstances were different, of course, and I wouldn't pretend the achievements are directly comparable.

But Mrs Morgan deserves a place in the history of competitive darts.

And yet how many darts supporters today have heard of her?

Were these women really exceptions?

This is the question I keep coming back to.

We know about Eileen Turnage because her progress was reported in a newspaper and later documented by darts historians.

We know about Mrs Morgan because she achieved something significant enough to enter the tournament's historical record.

But what about everyone else?

Were there women's pub teams competing regularly?

How many women entered local News of the World qualifying events?

Were there female players capable of matching the better male players in their areas, but who never progressed far enough to attract national attention?

And how many names have simply been lost?

I suspect there are considerably more stories waiting to be uncovered.

One of the difficulties with researching early women's darts is that the records are incomplete.

A newspaper might report that a woman won a competition without giving her first name. Other reports might mention a women's tournament without recording the results.

That makes building a complete picture difficult.

But it doesn't mean those competitions or players weren't important.

In fact, the gaps in the records are part of what makes this project interesting.

The day the Queen played darts

Towards the end of 1937, something rather unexpected happened.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited a community centre in Slough.

During the visit, they were invited to throw darts.

The Queen scored 21.

The King managed 19.

Apparently, the Queen was allowed to stand a little closer to the board, so perhaps we shouldn't read too much into the result.

But the scores weren't the important part.

The photographs were.

Pictures of Queen Elizabeth playing darts appeared in the newspapers, bringing the game to an audience far beyond the traditional pub environment.

Historical accounts suggest that the publicity encouraged greater interest among women, with enquiries being made about opportunities to learn and play.

It is difficult to measure precisely how much influence that royal appearance had.

But what happened next is certainly interesting.

During 1938, women's darts competitions were attracting substantial entries.

One tournament reportedly involved around 2,000 women, with its final broadcast by the BBC.

There were female players recording 180s, women's competitions appearing in local newspaper reports and growing evidence that darts was reaching women from very different backgrounds.

And all this was happening before the Second World War.

A forgotten beginning

When I started looking into women's darts history, I expected the story to become interesting around the 1970s, with Maureen Flowers and the development of organised women's competitions.

Instead, I've found women competing against men in the 1930s.

An 18-year-old from Essex reaching the last eight of an area final.

A woman from Hampshire qualifying for the News of the World Grand Finals.

And a Queen whose three darts helped bring national attention to women playing the game.

I certainly didn't expect to find all that in the first few years of research.

And I suspect we've only scratched the surface.

Women's darts didn't begin with the television era. Its roots go much further back.

The challenge now is to uncover as much of that history as possible.

Coming next: The Forgotten Women's Darts Boom, 1937–1939

In Part Two, I'll look at what happened after the Queen's famous visit.

A women's tournament attracting approximately 2,000 entrants.

A BBC broadcast of a women's darts final.

Women hitting 180s.

And some rather surprising names appearing in darts competitions.

It seems women's darts was developing momentum in the late 1930s.

Then came September 1939.

And the world changed.

Can you help uncover the forgotten history?

I'm researching this series for Quest For Q School and would love to hear from anybody with information about women's darts in earlier decades.

Perhaps a parent or grandparent played competitively. Perhaps you have old newspaper cuttings, tournament programmes, photographs or stories that have been passed down through your family.

I'm particularly interested in the players and competitions that have largely disappeared from the records.

You can get in touch through Q4QS or the Q4QS Facebook group

There are almost certainly many more stories waiting to be told.

The Forgotten Women of Darts is an ongoing Q4QS historical series, tracing women's involvement in competitive darts from its earliest organised years to the modern professional game.

The main sources supporting this first instalment are:



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