Last year an article in "The Field" put forward the theory
that the game of snooker had its origin at the Royal Military
Academy (RMA), Woolwich, where officers of the Royal Artillery
and the Royal Engineers receive their training as cadets.
The theory was plausible, because a first-year
cadet at "The Shop", as the RMA is familiarly known, is called
a "snooker," the soubriquet being time's corruption of the
original word for a newly-joined cadet, which was "Neux." It
must be remembered that the RMA was founded as long ago as 1741.
The writer of the article stated that the
original rules of snooker were copied out by Lord Kitchener
from those at "The Shop," brought by him to Ootacamund, India,
and there hung up in the Club.
This assertion was formally contradicted by
General Sir Ian Hamilton in a letter to "The Field" of July
11, 1938. In point of fact Lord Kitchener never visited
India until many years after snooker had become a popular
game out there.
Investigation has established that so far from
snooker having originated at "The Shop," the game was invented
at Jubbulpore in the year 1875 by Colonel Sir Neville
Chamberlain, who is fortunately still with us and whose memory
is perfectly clear on the subject.
It befell during the "Rains" that Sir Neville,
then a young subaltern in the Devonshire Regiment, anxious
to vary the game of Black Pool which was being played every
long wet afternoon on the Mess billiard table, suggested
putting down another coloured ball, to which others of different
values were gradually added.
One day a subaltern of the Field Battery at
Jubbulpore was being entertained by the Devons, and in the
course of conversation told young Chamberlain about the
soubriquet "snooker" for first year cadets at Woolwich. To
quote Sir Neville's own words: "The term was a new one to me,
but I soon had an opportunity of exploiting it when one of
our party failed to hole a coloured ball which was close to
a corner pocket. I called out to him: 'Why, you're a regular
snooker!'
"I had to explain to the company the definition
of the word, and, to soothe the feelings of the culprit, I
added that we were all, so to speak, snookers at the game,
so it would he very appropriate to call the game snooker.
The suggestion was adopted with enthusiasm and the game has
been called snooker ever since."
In 1876 Sir Neville Chamberlain left the Devons
to join the Central-India Horse, taking with him the new game.
A year or two later came the Afghan War, a more serious
potting game in which young Chamberlain was himself potted.
However, fortunately for himself and the great
game which we enjoy so much today, he recovered from his
wound, and when at the close of 1881 General Sir Frederick
Roberts became Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, the
inventor of snooker served on his personal staff, and was
with Roberts when every summer he moved to the hill station
at Ootacamund known to all and sundry as "Ooty"
Here came officers from big garrisons like
Bangalore and Secundderabad and planters from Mysore. All
of them enjoyed snooker as a speciality of the "Ooty" Club
where the rules of the game were drawn up and posted in the
billiards room, but not by Lord Kitchener.
During the eighties rumours of the new game in
India reached England. One evening Sir Neville Chamberlain
when dining in Calcutta with the Maharaja of Cooch Behar
was introduced to a well-known professional billiards player
whom he had engaged from England for some lessons.
This professional told the Maharaja he had
been asked in England to obtain the rules of the new game
snooker and the Maharaja introduced Sir Neville Chamberlain
to him as the best person to give him the information he
wanted because he was the inventor of it.
In a letter to "The Field" of March 19, 1938,
Sir Neville regretted he did not know the name of the
professional but thought he was probably a contemporary of
John Roberts and W. Cook. A week or two later Mr. F. H.
Cumberlege wrote to Sir Neville Chamberlain to say that the
professional must have been John Roberts himself who came
out to Calcutta in 1885. Mr. Cumberlege added that he
remembered showing the Maharaja the new game of snooker at
Cooch Behar after a shooting party in the spring of 1884.
Sir Neville Chamberlain has received from
several other distinguished authorities confirmation of his
claim to be the inventor of snooker. Major-General W. A.
Watson, Colonel of the Central India Horse (his old regiment)
wrote: "I have a clear recollection of you rejoining the
regiment in 1884. You brought with you a brand new game,
which you called snooker or snookers. There were the black,
the pink, the yellow and the green. We all understood it was
your own invention. We took to it very keenly."
Major-General Sir John Hanbury Williams
(Colonel of the 43rd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light
Infantry) wrote: "I was always under the impression that you
introduced the game of snooker to the 43rd. in 1884-5.
Certainly the 43rd never played snooker till you came and
introduced it to us. Hope you will stick to the honour of its
invention."
Field Marshal Lord Birdwood wrote: "I remember
well you introducing the game of snookers into the 12th
Lancers' Mess, when I was a subaltern in the Regiment at
Bangalore in '85."
Sir Walter Lawrence, Bt., wrote: "When we first
met in Simla in 1886, when you were with Lord Roberts, the
Commander-in-Chief, and afterwards when we served together
in Kashmir, I always looked upon you as the inventor of
snooker, and I know that this idea was common to many of my
friends. Quite recently, last year (1937) I was telling some
of my friends in England who were discussing snooker, that
I had the honour of knowing very intimately the inventor of
the game."
The testimony of these and other highly
distinguished officers finally disposes of the theory
advanced with some emphasis by the writer in "The Field"
that the game of snooker originated at the Royal Military
Academy, Woolwich, and it has been a privilege for me to
assemble in print such incontrovertible evidence.
There is nothing to add except that all the
many thousands of snooker players the world over will wish
Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain, who is now in his 84th year,
many another year to enjoy the honour of being the inventor
of a game, now 63 years old, which has added so much to the
gaiety of nations.
– Compton McKenzie. (1938)
