Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

J S Crowley
Earlsferry/Glasgow

James Crowley began his career as a joiner (carpenter) in Elie and Earlsferry (where he was born on 22 January 1861, a son of James Crowley, a mason, and his wife, Margaret Tulloch) and is still so listed in the 1901 census though recorded as a clubmaker in Links Place, Earlsferry, in a trade directory of 1893. He lived a couple of houses down from George Forrester.

He married Maggie Manson in Pulteneytown, Wick on 27 October 1886. The couple travelled to New York from Glasgow aboard the Ethiopia the following year. Their eldest son, James R was born in New York in 1888. As the link suggests, I believe, this son was the professional at clubs on the south side of Glasgow around the end of the first decade of the 20th century. If James’s first sojourn to the United States involved golf or clubmaking I cannot yet say.

Crowley was back in Earlsferry by the time of the 1891 census and probably the year before as his daughter, Jane, was shown as one year old at the time of the census and born in Earlsferry.

Ronnie Sinclair has (and published in an article in Through the Green) a copy of a testimonial for Crowley from the Philadelphia Cricket Club dated 26 December 1904 stating he had been professional there for ‘nearly four years’ and was about to leave their employ to return to Scotland. So it seems he had a second spell in the United States on his own as he and all the family had been in Earlsferry in 1901 and the Crowley children, subsequent to John, were all born in the village during the 1890s. There are also numerous records of his clubmaking in the burgh during that period both in newspaper reports and patent applications. He must have travelled to the US sometime shortly after the 1901 census on 31 March (a piece in the Leven newspaper in May 1901 confirmed he had gone) and the Evening Telegraph in December 1902 described him as ‘engaged in Yankeeland’. The testimonial showed the Philadelphia club to have been pleased with his playing ability, his instruction and his clubmaking skills.

His innovations in clubmaking were around attempts to improve the neck of wooden clubs to add accuracy and distance to a shot by strengthening it. A description of an ‘invention’ (mentioning neither registered design nor patent) from 1895 states,

‘The shaft comes right through the heel of the club which, it is said, gives it a better spring. The heads can be easily renewed and no twine binding is required, the shaft being fitted. To prevent the head from splitting up there is a pin holding it a little in front of the neck. The club which is called “Eureka” has been tried with most satisfactory results.’

There is also a note of the application for/granting of (I have neither application nor patent number) a patent bulger, or at least so described, by Golf in September 1894. They expand on it the following year describing its distinguishing feature as ‘the strengthening of the club by a hickory wedge run right through the neck’. Apparently his patent driver (and I presume it is this club) had been bought by several members of the Alfreton club (maybe they had been on holiday in Elie) and he promoted the club further by offering two of them as prizes at that Derbyshire club in 1896.

His patent 26072 was for the insertion of a metal tube within the wooden hosel to strengthen it dating from 1911 and first published in 1912, he was still incorporating it in his Victory range of woods after the First World War.

He also patented ‘an improved captive golf ball’ in 1901 and ‘a device for practising golf putting’ in 1905.

Peter Georgiady (and the Olsons) write that he moved to Glasgow in 1911. Based on his youngest son, Alfred’s school record he moved earlier. However, he is in Stevenson Drive, Glasgow, in the census of that year described as a clubmaker but he is still listed as having a business in Earlsferry, James Crowley and Son, as late as 1921. Presumably he ran two establishments as he was a major reseller of clubs in Glasgow in the 1920s with a shop at 54 Union Street.

His clubs are marked both “J Crowley” and “J S Crowley”, the “S” being for Sidney. I do not know where this name comes from, it is not on his birth certificate. Perhaps he adopted it to differentiate himself from son, John, as it seems to be on his later clubs but a patent application in 1901 used it when his son was only 12 or 13.

The firm was dissolved in March 1933 on his retirement but the business carried on under the same name, run by his son, John Christopher Crowley (b 1895).

James died on 4 December 1937 and is buried in Kilconquhar Parish Churchyard.

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