Early Forms of Fives and Rackets at Harrow: A Glimpse into 18th Century School Sports
Sir William Jones, the distinguished orientalist and polymath, who was a tutor at Harrow for a while, wrote to his pupil’s mother in 1769:
“I strive to encourage him to play at cricket and fives and good exercises for I cannot bear to see a boy idling about with no object and spending hour after hour in making ducks and drakes in a pond or sauntering under a tree.”
[Ref Cannon, Letters of William Jones, i. 28-9, no 16.]
As we have seen, the term ‘fives’ was used rather loosely at this time and could well have been describing the game of rackets, which is known to have been played in the School Yard. In all probability, games were played both by hand and by racquet, depending on whether an implement was available.
There was no Eton fives court at Harrow until 1862 but this quotation shows that a form of fives was being played there much earlier. An added confusion is that the balls sold by Mrs Arnold at her shop in the High Street in the first half of the 19th century were called “best fives”