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Aston Villa 1903/1904 season?

H

holtsedge

proper brummie kid
I wonder if anyone can help. I have a couple of Family Photographs from 1903/1904 season of my partners Gt. Grandfather William Edgar Juggins. We understand he played for Aston Villa and have one photograph of him in a team photograph with a ball at the front with 1903/1904 painted on it and another taken in a back garden of a terraced house in Aston Cross. In both photographs they are wearing what certainly looks like the Aston Villa kit of the time.
We know the Juggins family were in Witton, William was born there in 1884, making him around twenty at the time of the team photograph. Any information would be great.
Juggins AVFC 1903.jpgE Juggins 1903.jpg
Thanks in advance and if nobody can help, well a couple of photos for those with an interest in Aston Villa's history anyway.
 
Louisa said:
Hi Holtsedge
This link may be of help to you and contact with the owner of the Lerwill website may answer your questions, he is a mine of information
https://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/astonvilla/

There is a mention of a William Juggins born 1888 on this website about Aston Manor

https://www.astonbrook-through-astonmanor.co.uk/summerlane_2.html

Louisa
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Thanks Louisa, believe it or not with a name like Juggins, not that common is it, this is a different William, although they must be related Aston Manor to Witton is just too close, most of our Juggins family traveled as far as Bromsgrove to Witton you know! I will have a closer inspection though. The Lerwill website might be more helpfull though, will spend more time with this one later (got to work now unfortunately) it does show promise. Many thanks for your help, any answers will be posted here.
 
Hello Holtsedge, I have an early photo of Aston Villa around 1900 and after taking a look at it with yours the one thing that struck me was the players in your photo look young compared to the one I have. I don't know if Aston Villa have an archivist or historian. I know other clubs do. The one for West Bromwich Albion is fantastic. It may be worth contacting the club.

Aston_Villa.jpg
 

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Wendy said:
Hello Holtsedge, I have an early photo of Aston Villa around 1900 and after taking a look at it with yours the one thing that struck me was the players in your photo look young compared to the one I have. I don't know if Aston Villa have an archivist or historian. I know other clubs do. The one for West Bromwich Albion is fantastic. It may be worth contacting the club.

Wendy, I have attempted to contact Aston Villa direct but with very little joy, there is an archivist at Kew who looks after the Aston Villa archives, have contacted her, had no reply as yet. Now, I have also contacted an Aston Villa Archive forum see the link who, although in its early stages of development may be the way forward, she has said - site is currently under development, and I have a little work to do in order to make it easier for people to upload content, (a 10 month old little girl leaves you little room for maneuver!). I am working with Aston Villa on this, but due to the current league status of the team, all resource into archiving is being pulled to help focus the attention on the team to get them out of the drop zone! However this doesn’t mean that like minded fans such as ourselves can’t help to do our bit. To that end my personal email address is -------------, please feel free to send any content my way and I can upload it onto the site for now. In the meantime, in order to check the facts so to speak, the best person I can recommend to speak to is a lady called Laura Brett, (ironic her surname being your first!). She is the archivist at Villa Park, and someone I have been working closely with on this project. She has access to all of the records going all of the way back to 1874, and will definitely be able to help. Her email address is Laura.Brett@avfc.co.uk, although please do give her time to respond as she is a very busy lady. I will email her as well just to be on the safe side. Thanks again for taking the time to inquire on the site Brett, I look forward to receiving your content, and hope you get some information from Laura, sooooo, promising I hope. I will contact Laura Brett and forward the photographs onto Miles at the Aston Villa Archive.
For anyone interested the AVFC archive is https://avfcarchive.co.uk/

ps - I had noticed too how young they looked, wondered if they were a 2nd or even 3rd team, possibly even another club that had an association with Aston Villa. Time will tell, as an Aston Villa fan and from a family of die hard Villa fans, don't want this family story to be proved wrong in a way, so I might have to keep it to myself! lol Great Picture by the way.

Thanks

Brett
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I wish you luck in your quest and hope the historians for the club will be able to help you. I don't follow football much, I think it comes from my childhood Dad being a Villa fan and Mom a West Brom fan also her grandfather was club secretery. That's another story...
 
Louisa said:
Hi Holtsedge
This link may be of help to you and contact with the owner of the Lerwill website may answer your questions, he is a mine of information
https://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/astonvilla/

There is a mention of a William Juggins born 1888 on this website about Aston Manor

https://www.astonbrook-through-astonmanor.co.uk/summerlane_2.html

Louisa
Click to expand...

Hello there...

If there is any query I can help you with please contact me, John Lerwill, the former in-house historian at Aston Villa, at the above link. I have published histories on Aston Villa the latest being 'Aston Villa : The First Superclub', a 500-pages history of the club.

I see that a Villa archives link has been initiated (as referred to elsewhere) but you will see my site is already well-established and is always getting bigger.

Cheers,

John
 
jlerwill said:
Hello there...

If there is any query I can help you with please contact me, John Lerwill, the former in-house historian at Aston Villa, at the above link. I have published histories on Aston Villa the latest being 'Aston Villa : The First Superclub', a 500-pages history of the club.

I see that a Villa archives link has been initiated (as referred to elsewhere) but you will see my site is already well-established and is always getting bigger.

Cheers,

John
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply John, had a look at your site and can find no Juggins listed there, I have literally just sent an email to both Aston Villa FC Archive and Laura Brett - Aston Villa Archivist requesting information / help, as your post came up. Anything forthcoming will be posted here. Thanks for the offer of your services, but as you can see, at the moment I am waiting for information from elsewhere, I will however be in touch should these draw a blank.

Regards

Brett
 
Thanks Wendy, fingers are crossed something will crop up, if not well it's a family story we will enjoy - WBA Secretary - wow, information there should be a little easier for you than me.
 
Jlerwill thank you for your post even if it doesn't help Brett your info and site may help others.

Brett I was so lucky to get the info on my gt grandfather. By pure chance I read a book entitled the Gangs of Birmingham by Phillip Gooderson. In the book there was a reference to WBA club secretary T Smith. I contacted their archivist who did some digging in the club minutes. He found out my gt grandfather Thomas Smith actually designed the club insignia, a Throssle on a Hawthorn branch. He also attended a meeting in London which founded the football league. I have his letter scales which must have been well used as in those days matches were arranged by post. I will donate them to WBA when they have a museum as good as the Villa have.
 
Hi Holtsedge being a ardent fan of the Villa and the beautifull game refered to a book I have of paper snippets of the Villa unfortunately the earliest years start at 1905 but I have more books in fact a shedfull (sad I know) I can refer to but sadly no time to look to-day as I have to go out shortly to serve teas for our local youth team but will have a look to see if there is any-thing in the shed tomorrow.

p.s. Hope this makes sense in a rush at the moment.
 
Wendy said:
Jlerwill thank you for your post even if it doesn't help Brett your info and site may help others.

Brett I was so lucky to get the info on my gt grandfather. By pure chance I read a book entitled the Gangs of Birmingham by Phillip Gooderson. In the book there was a reference to WBA club secretary T Smith. I contacted their archivist who did some digging in the club minutes. He found out my gt grandfather Thomas Smith actually designed the club insignia, a Throssle on a Hawthorn branch. He also attended a meeting in London which founded the football league. I have his letter scales which must have been well used as in those days matches were arranged by post. I will donate them to WBA when they have a museum as good as the Villa have.
Click to expand...
Fantastic Wendy, not sure we will scale such heady heights.
 
Thanks for your time the smiths, you may well say you're sad, but trust me, you are not alone! I will be at Villa Park on Sunday, traveling from Somerset, again! - how sad is that!!! lol
 
holtsedge said:
Thanks for your reply John, had a look at your site and can find no Juggins listed there, I have literally just sent an email to both Aston Villa FC Archive and Laura Brett - Aston Villa Archivist requesting information / help, as your post came up. Anything forthcoming will be posted here. Thanks for the offer of your services, but as you can see, at the moment I am waiting for information from elsewhere, I will however be in touch should these draw a blank.

Regards

Brett
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Brett, there's a link on my site to https://www.astonvillaplayerdatabase.com/

If that site doesn't contain your JUGGINS then it most likely means that he was a junior team player if he played for Aston Villa. The Villa had several teams at different levels. The trouble is that the records for junior team players are extremely sparse for those days so I doubt that Laura Brett will be able to help you further. If she can, then fine, but knowing what is in Villa's archives I feel that there will be nothing to find.

Very sorry.

Cheers,

John
 
jlerwill said:
Brett, there's a link on my site to https://www.astonvillaplayerdatabase.com/

If that site doesn't contain your JUGGINS then it most likely means that he was a junior team player if he played for Aston Villa. The Villa had several teams at different levels. The trouble is that the records for junior team players are extremely sparse for those days so I doubt that Laura Brett will be able to help you further. If she can, then fine, but knowing what is in Villa's archives I feel that there will be nothing to find.

Very sorry.

Cheers,

John
Click to expand...

Thanks John
Somehow we suspected that might be the case, visited your site and he isn't listed there, think you might be right. Would be nice if it could be confirmed that it is a Villa side though at what ever level, maybe someone might even know where the team photo was taken by the background in the image. Thanks for your help anyway, at least if there is no positive outcome, the family story can continue - we had an ancestor who played for the Villa you know!

Brett
 
I don't know if you have this but in the 1911 census

William Edgar Juggins, age 26, occupation Jewellers Patentie. Born Handsworth
Fanny Juggins age 29 Born Wiltshire
Edgar Jugguns 3 months Born Selly Park

Address 18 Wallace Road, Selly Park, Birmingham.
 
Wendy said:
I don't know if you have this but in the 1911 census

William Edgar Juggins, age 26, occupation Jewellers Patentie. Born Handsworth
Fanny Juggins age 29 Born Wiltshire
Edgar Jugguns 3 months Born Selly Park

Address 18 Wallace Road, Selly Park, Birmingham.
Click to expand...

Thanks Wendy, we have this information apart from we understood William was born in Witton not Handsworth - interesting..............................
 
Thanks to all for your help, have had a reply from Laura Brett at Aston Villa Archives who said; I [FONT=&amp]have searched through our players registers for the 1903-1904 season and, unfortunately, I can find no reference to a Juggins. I am also unable to confirm whether this youth team were ever connected to Villa as our records on youth players are almost non-existent from the early period of the club’s history. Looks like John was right, we may never find out for sure.[/FONT][FONT=&amp]
[/FONT]
 
Oh dear what a shame. At least you have the lovely photo's to treasure. Well done to Laura Brett for responding so quickly. I imagine it's quite a task going through all the old records.
 
Hello wendy
your villa photo is from 1892 Gorman is the trainer on back row on the left and that is the great Archie hunter in the bowler hat will dig out the rest of the names when I get home
 
I hope that Villa did better in 1903/04, because a friend has just informed me that his mate has more points on his driving licence than the current Villa team have in the Premier League!!

Eddie
 
My great grandfather's cousin (a tenuous link I know) played for the Villa - George Hugh Tranter. In 1911 he's listed as a professional footballer.
 
Browsing through the forum I came across the photo at Post 20. I wonder why two players at the back did not have moustaches. Perhaps they were starting a new fashion.
Old Boy
 
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