On October 21, 2021, Walter Tull was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame of the National Football Museum. But who was Walter Tull? And what made this man’s short years on earth transcend even the sport of football for which he was honoured? Walter Tull was born in Folkestone, England, on April 28, 1888, to Barbadian father Daniel Tull and British-born Alice Palmer. Walter’s father was a ship’s carpenter in Barbados and he had migrated to England in 1876.
Walter’s paternal grandfather had been a slave in Barbados. In 1895, when Walter was seven, his mother died of cancer. A year later his father married Alice’s cousin, Clara Palmer. She gave birth to a daughter Miriam, on 11 September 1897.
Three months later, Daniel died from heart disease. The stepmother was unable to cope with five children so Walter and a brother Edward were eventually sent to an orphanage. He and his brother were later separated through Edward’s adoption by a couple from Glasgow.
Now alone in the orphanage, Walter excelled at sport and went on to play for amateur team Clapton FC. Spotted by Tottenham Hotspur, he was soon playing at White Hart Lane in front of crowds in the tens of thousands. One of the first black players in the English game, he was subjected to terrible racial abuse. One newspaper report at the time described how, during a match at Bristol City in 1909, “a section of the crowd made a cowardly attack on him in language lower than Billingsgate”.
The reporter wrote: “Let me tell those Bristol hooligans that Tull is so clean in mind and method as to be a model for all white men who play football. In point of ability, if not actual achievement, Tull was the best forward on the field.”
His career at Spurs drifted following the racial abuse he suffered. Confined to the reserves, his fortunes were revived when Herbert Chapman signed him for Northampton Town in 1911 for a “substantial fee”. He went on to play 111 games for the club before the outbreak of World War One took his life down a radically different path.
Tull enlisted with Middlesex Regiment, part of a ‘Footballers’ Battalion’ that drew professional players from a range of clubs. He fought extensively in the war, at one stage being sent home suffering from “shell shock” – what today would be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.
He returned to the conflict, having been made an officer, and served on the Italian Front from November 1917 to early March 1918. It was here he was cited for his “gallantry and coolness” by Major-General Sydney Lawford, after leading 26 men on a night raid against an enemy position. He and his men crossed the cold River Piave into enemy territory before returning, all unharmed despite coming under heavy fire.
Major Poole, the commanding officer of the 23rd Middlesex Regiment, and 2nd Lt Pickard said Tull had been put forward for a Military Cross. Pickard wrote Tull “had certainly earned it”. In the early hours of 21 March 1918, a fog hung over much of the British line on the Western Front in France.
At 4.40 a.m., a German bombardment began. It was of a different order to any that had come before it. It marked the start of what became known as the German Spring offensive – a last throw of the dice to turn the war in their favour and score a decisive breakthrough.
Over the next five hours more than 6,600 German guns fired 3.5 million explosive shells on British positions. The sound could be heard as far away as London. In the midst of this death, destruction and chaos was Tull. With the British Army fighting a fierce rearguard defensive action, Tull was shot and killed. He was just 29 years old. Tull’s death was not the end of his impact on British society. But he was not to know this in the chaos and confusion that followed the enormous
German offensive of March 1918. Such was the ferocity of the attack, the British Army had considered falling back to defend the Channel ports given the pressure they were under and the huge loss of life. British and French forces suffered a combined 250,000 casualties but, ultimately, the Germans ran out of momentum and the tide of the war was to eventually turn irrevocably against them by November that year.
It is reported that Private Tom Billingham – a former goalkeeper for Leicester Fosse – attempted to drag Tull’s body back to the British position so he could be buried. His efforts failed and Walter’s body lay in the soil of northern France, like so many that fought and died in the Great War.
Tull’s life is now commemorated at the Arras Memorial, meticulously maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves.
His name is engraved along with 34,785 other soldiers with no known grave, who died in the area between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918. A lasting memorial and remembrance garden in the shadow of Northampton Town’s stadium also remembers the life of one of Britain’s most unknown and under-appreciated heroes.
Tull’s name appeared on the war memorial at North Board School, Folkestone, unveiled on April 29, 1921. He is named on the Folkestone War Memorial, at the top of the Road of Remembrance in Folkestone, and in Dover his name is on the town war memorial outside Maison Dieu House, and on the parish memorial at River.
On July 4, 2017, five statues including one of Tull were unveiled in the courtyard of Northampton Guildhall. The bronze installations were commissioned by Northampton Borough Council from sculptor Richard Austin.
On March 25, 2018, to commemorate the centenary of his death, Rushden & District History Society unveiled a blue plaque at 26 Queen Street, Rushden where he lodged while playing at Northampton Town. In September 2018, to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, Royal Mail produced a set of stamps, one of which features Tull.
The Royal Mint included a £5 coin honouring Tull in the introductory First World War six-coin set, released in 2014 On 11 July 1999, Northampton Town F.C. unveiled a memorial wall to Tull in a garden of remembrance at Sixfields Stadium.
The text, written by Tull’s biographer, Phil Vasili, reads: “Through his actions, W. D. J. Tull ridiculed the barriers of ignorance that tried to deny people of colour equality with their contemporaries. His life stands testament to a determination to confront those people and those obstacles that sought to diminish him and the world in which he lived.
It reveals a man, though rendered breathless in his prime, whose strong heart still beats loudly.” (Adapted)
