Possible first reference to women playing base ball
 

The 1861 edition (first american), of Titcombs, Lessons on Life, contains an essay entitled the Rights of Women. Titcomb argues women should be able to do a number of the things men do, including play base ball. As the father of a daughter who played shortstop in college, I especially liked his comment about throwing.
If anyone knows of any other direct references to actual baseball in an American book, I would love to hear about it.
Photos are of the title page and relevant part of the essay.

I collect woodcuts, and the earliest that I have that involves a female playing baseball is a Police Gazette cover from 1899 with a girl batting against a male pitcher.

On a related topic, the earliest image I have of females playing cricket is from 1884, with others in 1888, 1889, and a couple from 1890. All are female teams.

The 1889 image is a fantastic view of a fielder robbing the batsman of a six. The cricket equivalent of a baseball outfielder robbing a batter of a home run.

Doug

I like those Doug. Sorry I didn’t know how to make my photos that big so the pages could read easier. Oddly enough, later in the essay, he opposes women being allowed to vote.

Great stuff as always Bruce and 1861 is an extremely early reference. I believe there are also a few unique tintypes depicting women.

Re woodcuts, here are a few. It's interesting to see that the Police Gazette images are identical although separated by 5 years.

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Excellent woodcuts George, unusual to have identical covers years apart.

Police Gazette frequently used the same pictures for both covers, and inside the issues.

I know of no less than three other baseball pictures that were used for multiple covers, and of baseball pictures granted full pages as many as four different times on the inside of issues.

I'm not posting examples because I would prefer to not hijack this thread.

Girls Rock!

Doug



PS - note that the Police Gazette covers are not "identical". The captions are different and describe the scene as being in two locations. Also, the girls became better players for the latter issue.

well
 

representing but paid to do so - circa 1887

I owned a few cabinet photos and CDV's of actual teams featuring women while trying to collect real life images but abandoned them long ago. Finding them was a task of too far and too few between. They were all circa 1890 and beyond. I never encountered anything in print as it was never my focus.
I had always thought the Allen & Ginter examples featured the women from their factories and might have represented their "factory team" (Don Flanagan once told me he had a contract) but a contemporaneous newspaper article unearthed by super sleuth Tim explained their hire. I once owned a full set of the giant examples and I still have type examples of a few different "series" and styles as well as a few insert cards. Neat subject area but examples of this type are more art than substance - expensive - but intriguing .