5 September 2025

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch engages in menial duty.

From its foundation in 1882, The Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) imposed strict rules to preserve rowing as a gentleman’s sport. Its definition of “amateur” excluded anyone who had ever been employed as a “mechanic, artisan, or labourer or engaged in any menial duty”, effectively barring the working classes from ARA competition.

The ban remained in place for decades, delaying the democratisation of British rowing and shaping its elitist reputation. Reform came gradually and hesitatingly, initially spurred by the changes in social attitudes brought about by the 1914-1918 War.

In a report on that year’s Staines Regatta, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (ISDN) of 23 July 1921 wrote:

In one important matter, Staines was making rowing history. In the Junior Eights the Harrodian R.C. made their first appearance at one of the chief regattas after their election to membership of the Amateur Rowing Association, and the governing body of the sport are to be congratulated on a very important step in the right direction. 

It is a definite acknowledgment that a shop assistant in a retail establishment, is an amateur under A.R.A. rules, a point which has not hitherto been too clear, although certain clubs have already settled for themselves that a shop assistant is not “engaged in any menial duty.” 

However, it transpired that this was not part of immediate wholesale reforms. The next week’s edition of the ISDN reported:

At (a meeting in July 1921), the A.R.A. decided unanimously “That it is not advisable to alter the existing definition of an amateur.” 

We should have thought, by the very literal way in which the Association and its affiliated clubs are now reading the rule, that the time had come for re-drafting it, or at any rate for an explanatory note to be issued and widely circulated, clearly setting out the doubtful classes who are really entitled to row as amateurs. 

As we pointed out in connection with the affiliation of the Harrodian R.C., the A.R.A. had by this step definitely acknowledged the retail shop-assistant as an amateur. But not so long ago the shop-assistant would have been considered as “engaged in menial duty.” 

The 6 August 1921 edition of the ISDN had a follow up cartoon by Chas Grave titled, Are you a menial?

The accompanying text read:

Between 1914 and 1918 it was said that the war had abolished class distinctions, a strange delusion having then arisen that, if a man was good enough to fight for your hearth and home, he was good enough to row at your regattas. 

That such insanity is fortunately a thing of the past is proved by the fact that a fortnight ago the Amateur Rowing Association declared, “It is not advisable to alter the existing definition of an amateur.” 

This means that if you have ever been a paid “mechanic, artisan, or labourer, or engaged in any menial capacity,” you must not row with the A.R.A. 

So now, you menials, you know where you stand. As W. S. Gilbert wrote in Iolanthe “Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! Bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses!

In 2023, I wrote about the struggle that rowing clubs for the staff of department stores and other “business houses” had to be accepted by the rowing establishment in a piece titled, Serving Rowing: The West End ARA.

Rowing Classifieds was a 2017 HTBS article about the Harrodian Rowing Club in the 1950s and 1960s.