ABSTRACT
More tender-hearted amusement was parented by the growth of humanitarianism and by technological and scientific developments. New, placid, harmless amusements like the music-hall and brass bands were replacing traditional coarse, cruel amusements. Cock-fighting had been popular and respectable in the eighteenth century. Between 1850 and 1880 about 500 new music-halls were built. In the north and the Midlands, however, brass bands kept many men from the music-halls. Playing a cornet or a tuba was even more companionable and a much cheaper amusement than the music-halls. By 1900 it served all the main London railway stations, football grounds, parks, theatres, music-halls, shopping and business centres. By 1900 Association football, or soccer as it came to be called, had no rivals as a crowd-pleasing sport. The rugby football which Tom Brown played in his schooldays at Rugby in the 1850s was formalised as Rugby Union in 1871, the year the first international was played.
