Arthur Pember

Sportsman

Arthur Pember became involved with N.N. Football Club, which used fields directly across from his home. Both Arthur and his younger brother George were listed as players for N.N. in an April 1863 win over Barnes F.C. Pember served as N.N.'s club captain at the inaugural gathering of the Football Association on 26 October 1863. At that meeting, he was asked to chair the proceedings and was later formally elected the FA's first president. During this period, some football clubs allowed players to carry the ball in their hands and permitted hacking—kicking opponents in the shins—while others banned both actions.

Creation of the FA's 1863 Laws

As the FA laws were being drafted, a bitter split emerged between clubs that supported hacking and those that opposed it, with Pember firmly against the practice. At an FA meeting on 17 November 1863, the hacking clubs held the majority, and a follow-up meeting was arranged to finalize the rules. At the decisive 24 November meeting, the hackers again held a slim majority. However, FA secretary Ebenezer Morley drew attention to a newly published set of Cambridge University football laws that prohibited both carrying and hacking.

Debate over the Cambridge rules and possible contact with Cambridge delayed the final adoption of the laws until a further meeting on 1 December. Several representatives from rugby-style clubs did not show up for this additional meeting, leading to the banning of hacking and carrying. Francis Campbell of Blackheath, the leading hacking club, accused Pember of mishandling the 24 November meeting to block the pro-hacking rules. Pember strongly denied this charge of ungentlemanly conduct.

Historians have disagreed on the matter: Young called Campbell arrogant, while Harvey backed Campbell's claims, alleging that Pember, Morley, and their allies staged a coup against the hacking clubs. The final FA laws were formally adopted and published in December 1863. On 2 January 1864, Pember captained his President's Side to victory over the Secretary's Side in a friendly match at Battersea Park to test the new rules.

Journalist

Arthur Pember moved to New York in 1868 with his wife and two sons, shifting careers to journalism. He began at the New York Tribune, digging into city crime and corruption. In 1871, with Edward Breck, he revealed so-called panel-houses—robbery dens disguised as brothels—naming the owners and the police officers paid off to allow the operations. His reporting style was compared to a terrier attacking rats, unafraid of any dirty corner or vile creature.

From 1871 to 1872, he wrote for a New York Times series on state institutions. The next two years, he produced another Times series on how the other half lives, going undercover as a beggar and a circus performer. Those articles, expanded with extra material, became his 1874 book The Mysteries and Miseries of the Great Metropolis. In 1875, he testified before a New York state legislative crime committee about the police corruption he had uncovered four years earlier.

Later life

Pember's wife Alice died of typhoid in 1881 at age 36, after having ten children in fourteen years. In May 1884, Pember relocated from New York to LaMoure, Dakota Territory, with his five sons to work as a stock farmer.

One story claims his doctor warned that if he kept "pumping his brains into a daily paper," his heart would stop pumping blood to his brain. His obituary, however, says he moved to remove his boys from city temptations. A newspaper from 1885 noted Pember was working on a book called "Twenty Years in New York Journalism."

Descendants

Arthur Pember and his wife Alice had ten children, but only six lived past infancy. Their daughter Lillian, born in London in 1866, was adopted by Pember's brother Edward and spent her life in England, dying there in 1925.

Two sons born in London, Cyril Fugion (1865–1936) and St. John Bentley (1867–1888), moved with their parents to New York in 1868. The three sons born in the United States who survived were Roosa Herbert (born in Connecticut in 1869, who had three children), Gilbert Edward (born in New York in 1876, died in Pennsylvania in 1934), and Godfrey Churchill (born in New York in 1879, died in Poughkeepsie in 1970, father of four). Four children died very young: twin daughters Mabel and Alice Richardson, who died in July 1875, and sons Valentine (died July 1874) and Geoffrey Francis (died July 1872).

Did You Know?

• Pember was born into a wealthy family, the third child and second son of a stockbroker, and grew up in the Brixton Hill and Clapham Park suburbs of London.
• He married Elizabeth Hoghton in March 1860, but she died of complications of a miscarriage in December of that same year; he remarried in October 1862 to Alice Mary Grieve.