Vic D’Arcy (left) of the Polytechnic Harriers winning the 4 x 100 metres relay for Great Britain at the 1912 Olympic Games
The University of Westminster has just launched a wonderful new resource for historians, and any historian of sport in London, or of the links between sport and education, should check it out immediately.
It’s a digitised run of the Polytechnic Magazine from 1879 to 1960. The Regent Street Polytechnic ran a range of sports clubs, including the famous Polytechnic Harriers athletics club which, among other things, organised the 1908 London Olympic Marathon and provided numerous Olympians, including sprinters Willie Applegarth and Vic D’Arcy (Stockholm 1912), Jack London (Amsterdam 1928), and McDonald Bailey (Helsinki 1952), and middle distance runner Albert Hill (Antwerp 1920). The Polytechnic Magazine carried stories and results on all of the institution’s sports clubs, for both men and women, and it provides many fascinating insights on the sporting life of London and it suburbs. You can browse copies and search by theme to get full pdfs of magazines and articles.