Gipsies Football Club
| Full name | Gipsies Football Club |
|---|---|
| Union | Rugby Football Union |
| Nickname(s) | Gipsies |
| Founded | 17th Oct 1868 |
| Disbanded | 1880 |
| Location | London, England |
| Ground(s) | Peckham - unknown precisely |
The Gipsies Football Club was a short lived 19th century rugby football club that was notable for being one of the twenty-one founding members of the Rugby Football Union, as well as producing a number of international players in the sport's early international fixtures.
The Gipsies Football Club was founded in October 1868, by three Old Tonbridgians,Francis Luscombe, James Alfred Body, and William James Parker. These three men were keen on football and wanted to provide a football club in London with which Tonbridge's former pupils could affiliate, much as the Marlborough Nomads served Marlborough College. These three soon recruited a number of likeminded individuals and in the summer of 1868 they were able to arrange a card of matches for the season 1868-69. After the two first matches had been played a meeting was called on 17 October 1868 and "The Gipsies Football Club" was formed with Francis Luscombe elected as honorary secretary, the rest of the committee made up of Henry Howard Batten, James Alfred Body, Jeaffreson Vennor Brewer, William James Parker, and James Morgan Streeten. Of the six members of the committee, five were Old Tonbridgians, with J Brewer being a pupil of Epsom College. Three of the committee, Brewer, Luscombe and Body would go on to play for England. Of the others, Henry Howard Batten was working in the Charity Commission at the time and was later called to the Bar (Lincoln's Inn) and became a J.P. for Westmorland; Parker, an exceptional sportsman at Tonbridge, became a member of the ; and Streeten, who played in Tonbridge's Football team for three years in a row, became the Manager of the San Francisco operations of the London and San Francisco Bank and later died in Nome, Alaska. The team was based in Peckham.
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