Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Ernest Bishton

Something of a mystery Ernest Edward Bishton is listed as a professional golfer, aged 31, in the roll of British civilian prisoners taken by the US Embassy in Berlin, with the help of the prisoners themselves, twice in 1915 and once in 1916, [National Archives MT 9/1094].

This gives his pre-war address as New Road, Ascot, which checks out. He is listed, aged 27, four years earlier in the 1911 census, as a boarder there with the Barnard family. His place of birth, the parish of Sunninghill, shows he was born locally. However, his occupation is shown as General Labourer and that he was employed in the building trade. The 1891 census shows him with his grandparents in Sunninghill, similarly in 1901 where he is again listed as a labourer and is probably the same fellow fined a shilling for playing cards on a Sunday in Windsor Great Park in 1901 and 10 shillings for using foul language at Sunninghill in the Petty Sessions in 1903. He seems to have been born in Southwark in London in 1884 (and Ernest Edwin rather than Ernest Edward) and died in Windsor in 1967 aged 83.

How (or if) he genuinely made the transition to professional golfer and ended up in Germany at the outbreak of World War I and, thus, interned in Ruhleben sounds like an interesting story. I hope someone out there in Internetland can enlighten me. At the moment I can find no record of a golf professional of this name either before or after the First World War.

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