Before 1870 no rugby team in England featured the Rangers name, although other wonderful handles included the Mohicans, Owls, Pirates and Red Rovers. However, in the 1870 edition of Alcock’s annuals a team called Rangers does appear, based in Swindon, with a kit that included white trousers, white jersey with a blue star on the breast, and a white cap. The Rangers football team that lost the Scottish Cup to Vale of Leven after three games in 1877 were pictured in the photographer’s studio shortly afterwards in a very similar kit, including the blue star on the breast of their shirts, but it can be no more than a coincidence as the blue star arguably owed more to their connection with Clyde Rowing Club, who used it then (and still do now) as their club emblem.
In Alcock’s 1871 edition Rangers are again mentioned, still at Gorse Hill in Swindon, but with the additional information that they had been formed in 1868 and played a form of rugby known as Marlborough. If it is accepted that Rangers were formed in the spring of 1872, as the weight of evidence suggests, and Moses McNeil named the club immediately, then the Swindon rugby team are the club from whom the Glasgow side took its name. Still, as always, there is scope for debate, because by the publication of the next edition, in the autumn of 1872, the Swindon club had disappeared and another club named Rangers (formed in 1870, but making its first appearance in Alcock’s annual) had taken its place. This second club played rugby union and were based on Clapham Common in London. They were listed next to a club named Old Paulines – from Battersea Park to the south of the Thames, not Walford in the east. Another rugby union rival, from Stamford Hill near Stoke Newington, was named Red, White and Blue. Now, would that not have been a name for Moses to have contemplated?
The Alcock Annual of 1870: the Rangers name appears for the first time, belonging to a club in Swindon (not specified as a rugby team until the 1871 edition) and with a design of kit similar to the one in which their Glasgow namesakes were pictured in the aftermath of their Scottish Cup Final appearance in 1877.
The year of formation and the origins of the club name may still inspire debate almost 140 years later, but what cannot be doubted is the royal connection Rangers were able to boast in its very infancy, as a membership card from season 1874–75 announced the patron of the club as the Most Noble, the Marquis of Lorne, who would go on to become the 9th Duke of Argyll. Unfortunately, the reasons behind his formal relationship with Rangers have been lost in the mists of time as the minutes of the club from that era no longer exist, while the archives from the Duke’s ancestral seat at Inverary Castle sadly, for the most part, are closed to the general public and have yet to undergo indexing.
However, it is clear that the new association football clubs saw patronage by the aristocracy as lending authority to their new ventures – not to forget, of course, the financial support that often came with the acceptance of an honorary position at the fledgling clubs. Queen’s Park, for example, charged captain William Ker with finding a patron in 1873 and he immediately set his sights on the Prince of Wales, who politely declined. The Earl of Glasgow, however, agreed and quickly forwarded a donation of £5 to his new found favourites. In all likelihood the Marquis of Lorne, John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, better known as Ian, would have donated a similar sum to his fellow lads from Argyll to boost their new enterprise. The Marquis was 27 years old when Rangers were formed and clearly had a level of interest in the association game as he was also an honorary president of the SFA at the time and was still listed as a patron of the association in the 1890s. It was something of a coup for the Rangers committee to persuade him to patronise their infant venture, not least because only a year earlier he had married Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, at Windsor, and had become one of the most high profile figures in British public life even if, as a Liberal member of parliament, he was regarded as something of a political plodder on the back benches at Westminster.
The Charles W. Alcock Football Annual from 1871. Rangers, from Swindon, are listed and confirmation is given of their preference for the Marlborough rugby code of football, as opposed to the association game.
As future Clan Campbell chief, the Marquis of Lorne is likely to have been acquainted with John Campbell, his namesake and father of Peter, who would have enjoyed a position of standing in the Argyll community as a result of his successful steamboat enterprises. The McNeils would also surely have had access to high society, even if indirectly, through their father’s position as head gardener at Belmore House on the shores of the Gare Loch. The Marquis, or Lorne as he was best known, was also a keen supporter of sporting pastimes, particularly those with an Argyll connection. The landed gentry viewed patronage of such healthy pastimes as an extension of their traditional responsibilities as clan chiefs, even in the latter half of the 19th century. In many instances, they would make prizes available or give financial support through an annual subscription to cover the cost of hosting get-togethers in sports such as shinty, cricket, curling, bowls and football. In addition to Rangers and the SFA, Lorne was also a patron of the Inverary shinty club and the local curling club.13
Left: The Marquis of Lorne, first honorary president of Rangers, before his wedding to Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. Right: One of the first members’ cards, from season 1874–1875. The names of all the founding fathers are to the fore, along with the patron, The Most Noble The Marquis of Lorne.
It is unlikely Lorne ever watched Rangers play in the early years – there is no record of it – as his life in London and Argyll was demanding, not to mention the fact that in 1878 he left British shores to become Governor General of Canada. He and Louise made a massive contribution to Canadian life at the time and their patronage of the arts and letters was underlined with the establishment of institutions such as the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the National Gallery of Canada. Lorne and Louise returned to Britain in 1883 and he became ninth Duke of Argyll following the death of his father in April 1900. Lorne died of pneumonia on the Isle of Wight in May 1914, aged 68 and was buried at Kilmun – not the first with a Rangers connection to be buried at that peaceful graveyard by the shores of the Holy Loch. Louise, his wife of 43 years, lived out the rest of her long life at Rosneath Castle, although she died at Kensington Palace in 1939, aged 91. In her latter years she thought nothing of using her royal status to walk into any house in Rosneath unannounced to ensure all within were well. She shared the village for many years with Moses McNeil, who lived out his latter years in the close-knit community where he had been raised for part of his younger life. History has not recorded if they were ever on speaking terms. They may have led two very different existences, but they could claim without fear of contradiction membership of special institutions that still mean so much to so many.
It is to the credit of the founding fathers that they quickly attracted supporters of means and substance, not just financially, that would give their infant club the best chance of survival beyond a few short years – it was a feat few teams would manage in those chaotic times of the game’s development. In addition to the Marquis of Lorne, the McNeils also used their family connections at Gare Loch to secure the backing of the two most important families in the Glasgow retail trade, who built a palace for high-class shoppers, that is still in use in the city in the 21st century.
John McNeil, father of Moses, was a master gardener at Belmore House which still stands as part of the Faslane Naval Base. In 1856, within 12 months of the birth of Moses, the house was sold by corn merchant John Honeyman to a family of impeccable merchant class who would, with one small gesture, have Rangers off and running 16 years later. The McDonald family had been significant players in the Glasgow retail industry since 1826 when John McDonald, a tailor from Vale of Leven, joined forces with Robertson Buchanan Stewart, a soldier from Rothesay. Their company, Stewart and McDonald, would become such giants of the industry that by 1866 it was turning over a colossal £1 million a year.
Stewart and McDonald opened a wholesale drapery business in the upstairs of a tenement
building at No. 5 Buchanan Street, taking a bold risk on the expansion of the city centre westwards from its main thoroughfare on Argyle Street. It was a calculated gamble that paid off within three years when the Argyll Arcade, a glass-covered thoroughfare of jewellers and upper-class outfitters, which retains much of its elegance to this day, was opened and lured more and more shoppers to an area of the town that had hitherto been under-developed for the fashionistas of the age. Stewart and McDonald expanded to meet the demand from the growing population and by 1866 it occupied a massive 4,000 square yards and its huge warehouses dominated Argyle Street, Buchanan Street and Mitchell Street. The first Hugh Fraser was a lace buyer to the company and rose to become a manager in 1849. A series of buyouts and mergers over the next 100 years finally led to it becoming known as House of Fraser. The current Fraser’s department store on the west side of Buchanan Street still occupies the building that was first constructed for Stewart and McDonald.
John McDonald died in May 1860 aged just 51 and the debt of gratitude Rangers owe is to his sons, Alexander or, most probably, John junior. Alexander had been made a director of Stewart and McDonald in 1859 but passed away in his prime, dying of consumption during a tour of the Upper Nile in March 1869, aged only 31. The family fortune, including Belmore, passed in trust to John, then aged only 18, but the McDonald family would help develop a football legacy with one act of kindness, revealed by John Allan in his early history of Rangers. He wrote: ‘To William (McNeil) there fell the rare gift of a football from the son of a gentleman by whom his father was employed in the Gareloch. The generous donor was a Mr McDonald of the firm Stewart and McDonald, in Buchanan Street.’14 It was the same ball Willie would stuff under his arm before storming off in a huff at the prospect of being refused permission to play for the newly formed Rangers, telling his brother and their pals: ‘If you can’t have me, you can’t have my ball.’15 He was not allowed to wander far, as Moses admitted in later years: ‘Willie was the proud possessor of a ball so, although he was the veteran of the little company, it was indispensable that he should be a member of our team.’16
The memorial at Garelochhead Parish Church to John McDonald of Belmore, credited with gifting the first football to Rangers. He was also an early patron of the Clydesdale Harriers, who had close links with the Kinning Park club. The inscription at the base of the monument reads: ‘This cross was erected by the earliest and most intimate friends of John McDonald of Belmore and Torlochan in affectionate remembrance of his many excellent qualities and the noble example of his manly and blameless life. He died at St Leonard’s Windsor, 17th June 1891, aged 40 years, and rests in Clewer Churchyard.’
A 12ft tall Celtic cross still stands in honour of John McDonald junior at Garelochhead Parish Church. He lived long enough to see the club flourish from birth into one of renown but he did not survive into old age and died, after complications arising from flu, in June 1891, aged just 40.
The influence of Stewart and McDonald on the early years of Rangers was more than just an accidental donation of the club’s first football and it is entirely reasonable to conclude that it was through the relationship with the McDonalds that Rangers also secured the support from their business partners, the Stewarts. John Stevenson Stewart was another notable patron of the club and was listed as honorary president of Rangers in the Scottish Football Annuals across various seasons between 1878–85. Born in 1862, he was still a teenager at the time, but would no doubt have been encouraged by his father, Alexander Bannatyne Stewart, to take an active role in public life and choose an association with the Light Blues, perhaps on the back of the growing reputation of the club as a result of their appearance in the 1877 Scottish Cup Final. The title passed to his younger brother Ninian at the Rangers annual meeting in May 1885 and he also gave good service. Certainly, it would not have harmed the reputation of the club to be so closely associated with two of the leading business figures in the city at the time.
The Scottish Football Annual of 1878–79 was in no doubt about when Rangers were formed, as it announced that the Light Blues had been a junior club on Glasgow Green between 1872–74.
Their father Alexander, born in 1836, had a residence in Langside on Glasgow’s south side known as Rawcliffe, as well as a country retreat, Ascog House on the Isle of Bute, and was a man of substantial means. He died in the Midland Hotel in London during a trip to the capital in 1880 and left an estate worth a staggering £350,000. Alexander had become a partner in the family firm in 1866, six years after the death of his father, and while the business continued to prosper under his command he also had a strong charitable nature. For example, the Robertson-Stewart Hospital in Rothesay was established and supported financially by the family, while the local parish church also benefitted from his largesse. Alexander was a financial backer of the construction of the aquarium and esplanade in the seaside town and many other good causes locally received substantial donations. Indeed, Rangers opened their season in 1879–80 with a game on a public park in Rothesay to raise funds for charities on the Isle of Bute, undoubtedly at the request of John Stevenson Stewart and his father. The Light Blues lost the game 1–0 against Queen’s Park. Clearly, even in those days, charity never extended onto the field of play.
Moses McNeil
There are still those of a certain vintage around today who can remember Moses McNeil living out his latter years in the village of Rosneath on his beloved Clyde peninsula, where he was born on 29 October 1855. He lived modestly for much of the final part of his life before his death from heart disease at the age of 82 on 9 April 1938 at Townend Hospital in Dumbarton. The house he shared latterly with his sister Isabella, Craig Cottage, is still standing, tucked up off the main road leading into the village, away from prying eyes. It is somehow fitting because this giant of Scottish football appeared to withdraw gradually in his latter years from all he had helped create, including Rangers. Even in death, Moses continues to play hide and seek with those keen to acknowledge the enormous role he played in establishing Rangers as a club of stature and also pay tribute to the former Scottish international for his contribution to the game in general. He is buried in the nearby Rosneath graveyard, for sure – his death notice in the Glasgow Herald and records at Cardross Cemetery confirm it – but only recently has the paperwork from the time been uncovered to confirm his interment in a double plot with Isabella and her husband, former sea captain Duncan Gray, and the McNeils’s eldest sister, Elizabeth. As the last of his family line, it is unsurprising that the name of Moses is missing from the gravestone under which he lies. For decades he has given Rangers historians the slip, in the same way he dashed past opposition defences in the 1870s and 1880s as a will-o’-the-wisp left-winger.
A couple of miles beyond Rosneath, in the village of Kilcreggan, Ian and Ronnie MacGrowther potter around the boatyard they own and which has provided them with a living for more years than they care to remember. The sheds in which they work may be beginning to show signs of age, but the recollections of the brothers from yesteryear in the community in which they were born and raised remain as sharp and mischievous as ever. If Ronnie, born in 1932, closes his eyes he can still picture Moses McNeil, a small man with a navy blue suit and walking stick and very rarely without his bowler hat. ‘He always looked respectable, but I don’t think there was a lot of money around,’ he recalled. ‘A lot of people in the community didn’t know about his connection with Rangers, but my father did. Moses was a nice old man, but he could also be a wee bit prickly on occasions.’ Another former neighbour recalls Moses leaving for Glasgow once a month, they believed to pick up a pension from Rangers. More often than not, there was a spring in his step, a glint in his eye and a slight slur in his speech by the time he returned home much later in the day.
Moses McNeil (right) in a family snapshot – the bowler hat was to remain a feature throughout his life.
Moses, like most of the children of John and Jean McNeil, was raised in a world of wealth and privilege which, u
nfortunately, was not their own. John McNeil was born in Comrie, Perthshire, in 1809, the son of a farmer, also named John, and mother Catherine Drummond. He came to Glasgow in the early part of the 19th century where he met Jean Loudon Bain, born in around 1815, the daughter of Henry Bain, a grocer and general merchant from Downpatrick in Ireland. They married in Glasgow on 31 December 1839 and although little is known about their early years, religion was clearly important in their lives judging by the grand standing of the minister who conducted their wedding service. The very reverend Duncan McFarlan had been named principal of Glasgow University in 1823 and minister for Glasgow Cathedral in 1824. At the time of the marriage of John and Jean, he had already been Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1819, and was appointed for his second spell in 1843.
According to census records of 1841, John was a gardener at rural Hogganfield Farm, in the north-east of the fledgling city, which only expanded to swallow well-known districts of today such as Anderston, Bridgeton, North Kelvinside and the Gorbals into its boundaries as late as 1846. The young couple’s joy continued when daughter Elizabeth was born the year after they wed and they remained in Glasgow until 1842, celebrating the birth of their first son, John junior. In total, the couple had 11 children, including footballers Moses, Henry, William and Peter, but two boys did not survive infancy, a sad but all too common aspect of childhood at the time.
By the time second son James was born in 1843 the family were living in Rhu and had begun a relationship with the Gareloch that would continue until the death of Moses almost a century later. John, who was now a master gardener, had accepted an offer of employment from John Honeyman at Belmore House near Shandon, on the east side of the Gare Loch now occupied by the Faslane Naval Base. The house, which still stands, had been built to modest dimensions in around 1830 by a local fishing family, the MacFarlanes, but Honeyman, showing an eye for architectural design that would later earn his son his fame and fortune, subsequently bought the house and set about remodelling it, as John took control of its sizeable gardens and brought to fruition his own landscape design skills and vision.
The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 Page 4