Football in the early nineteenth-century public schools

 1. Although, starting around 1800, the folk forms of football began gradually to decline, in the public schools they survived intact. As we shall show, they enjoyed immunity in that context partly because, there, they were not perceived as a threat to property and public order, and partly because, even when public school masters tried to suppress them, e.g. because they believed them to be a threat to property and order in the schools, they lacked the power to put their wishes into effect. The reasons why will emerge from a brief discussion.