CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB - HOME OF THE SEAGULLS

PLAYERS - JACKSON, Henry

Henry Ernest JACKSON

STATISTICS

Guernsey Number:
Career: 1882 to 1883
NFC Games:
NFC Goals:
Debut:
Finale:

Premierships: 1882, 1883

BIO

Harry Jackson blazed a trail for his younger brother, Arthur.  Both were Kapunda boys who showed football ability at Prince Alfred College, both earned the nickname ‘Stonewall’ as Norwood premiership players, both worked for the railways and both ended their days in Western Australia.

Harry was born in 1863. His father, Henry Jackson, a popular chemist and druggist at Kapunda for 45 years, also served as mayor and died in 1912, one week short of the golden jubilee of his marriage to Agnes Fickert.  

Harry was an imposing player in the second intercollegiate football match played at Adelaide Oval, on 18 May 1882.  He marked at a critical stage and from a difficult angle slotted Prince Alfred’s third goal. That was enough to clinch victory over St Peter’s, 3.15 to 1.5 (behinds  not counting).

Norwood was impressed and took him to Victoria in June as a member of the party which played matches against Carlton, Melbourne, South Melbourne, Essendon and Ballarat. By the end of the season he was a Norwood premiership player and rated among the top followers of the colony. ‘Goalpost’ said in The South Australian Advertiser of 23 September 1882: “ Roachock, Jackson and Lyall made a very effective centre.”

At the start of the 1883 season, ‘Goalpost’ noted that Norwood had lost a number of good players but had gained others, such as Fred Letchford,  back from England,  and young Alf Roberts from Kensington, and forecast that the champions of 1882 would make it six premierships in a row.  So it proved, though there is no evidence that Harry was there to celebrate. He was named in the team which kicked off with a 3.13 to 0.2 demolition of the new team, North Adelaide, formerly Victorians, but he was not mentioned in scanty newspaper reports of the match and from that point mysteriously disappeared from the football scene.

Harry married Margaret Eva Moyle at the Terowie Baptist Church in 1889.  He sailed in the Colac to Western Australia in 1895, arriving at Albany where his brother Arthur may well have been the Jackson who was playing football with West Albany.

When the family matriarch, Agnes Elizabeth Jackson, died at North Adelaide in March 1924, she was survived by children Henry of West Midland Junction, Ida (Mrs J. T. Knox) of North Adelaide, Arthur of Cottesloe and Mabel (Mrs C. J. Coles) of North Adelaide.

 Harry Jackson was a resident of Maylands, WA, when he was admitted to the St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, and died at the age of 64 on 24 June 1927. He is buried in an Anglican plot at the Karratha Cemetery.  His widow survived him by nearly 16 years.  There were no children.

P Robins, T Gyss, D Cox July 2020

 

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