British Ladies' Football Club

The British Ladies' Football Club was an all-woman football team formed in the United Kingdom in 1895. The team had as its patron Lady Florence Dixie, an aristocrat from Dumfries, and its first captain was Nettie Honeyball (real name Mary Hutson).

The club's first public match took place at Crouch End, London on 23 March 1895, between teams representing 'The North' and 'The South'. The North won 7–1 in front of an estimated 11,000 spectators.

Until the 19th century, women's participation in football was limited to folk rituals linked with marriage customs. In Inverness, for example, single women would annually play a match with married women, whilst prospective husbands watched from the sidelines.

The first record of a woman's team coming together to play football occurred on 7 May 1881, at Edinburgh's Easter Road Stadium. The match, billed as a Scotland v England international, was organised by Scottish suffragist Helen Matthews, who remains the only "known" player as all others used pseudonyms.

Just over a week later, on 20 May 1881, the teams played in Glasgow in front of a crowd of 5,000. This match had to be abandoned following a violent pitch invasion during which the women were "roughly jostled", and chased by a mob as they left the grounds. Further games resulted in similar pitch invasions, which soon resulting in ending this early attempt to introduce women's football.

It is uncertain, from the coverage of the time, what the pitch invasions were in protest against. However, the press tone, which would dominate coverage of women's football for the next century, was clearly established in 1881: barely disguised contempt regarding player appearance, including costume, and the standard of play, overlaid with a certainty that football was a rough man's game unsuitable for women.

Feminist Nettie Honeyball attempted to revive the game for women by founding the British Ladies Football Club on 1 January 1895. Lady Florence Dixie, youngest daughter of the Marquess of Queensbury, acted as chairman and sponsor. In 1894, Honeyball placed an advertisement in the Daily Graphic seeking those interested in forming a football club for women which attracted around 30 women, who trained twice weekly under the tutelage of Tottenham Hotspur wing-half Bill Julian.

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