Vintage Athletes - Part 31

 Muybridge Wrestlers

Last time we saw some baseball players captured by Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering stop-motion photography for his 1887 book Animal Locomotion.

Today we look at Muybridge's wrestlers.  Muybridge did his work at the University of Pennsylvania, and his subjects were Penn students or graduates who excelled in the subject being portrayed.

Each plate in Animal Locomotion contained one or more series of photographs of the action being portrayed, taken a split-second apart (this was before the movie camera was invented).  I have made some of these photo series into gifs.  The gif above is from plate 347, described as Graeco-Roman wrestling. 

This gif is from plate 346, described as "Wrestling; lock."

This is from plate 348, Graeco-Roman wrestling.  The models for Muybridge's photos were only identified by number.  The models in these three wrestling plates were models 46 and 68.

However, some of Muybridge's models have been identified.  Model 68 was Frank Bird Gummey (1867-1955), shown above as a senior at Penn in 1887.

Gummey was quite an athlete.  He was in the Racket Club and on the tug-of-war, crew and football teams.  He won the 16-pound shot put with a throw of 30 feet 6 inches.  Above is Gummey throwing the shot.

In his junior year, Gummey enrolled in the Medical School.  A rowing enthusiast, he was a member of the college 4-oar shell crew and 8-oar shell crew, and he was also captain of the Medical School crew.  Above is Gummey rowing in a rowing machine.

After graduating from medical school, Gummey entered into private practice as a physician in Philadelphia.  He also served as an Army medical doctor during World War I.

The other wrestler in the wrestling photos, model 46, was Dr. Jacob Kinzer Shell (1862-1940), shown above later in life.  He was a talented football player at Penn, lettering four times in the late 1870s and early 1880s.  He graduated with a degree in medicine and dentistry.

Shell was also a versatile athlete.  In addition to football, he competed in track and field, baseball, lacrosse, golf, cricket, wrestling and boxing.  He held national championships as a middleweight in wrestling and boxing in 1888 and 1889.  Above, Muybridge photographed him pole vaulting, though he's not really vaulting over anything.

Muybridge photographed Shell doing a lot of things, including walking, running, carrying a stone, and heaving a rock, but we end today with Muybridge's depiction of Shell performing the "first ballet action."

Despite having a degree in dentistry, Shell pursued a career in athletics.  After a boxing match in 1888 in which his opponent received the title in an unfair decision, Shell was instrumental in founding the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union).  He became head football coach at Swarthmore College, athletics director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and finally athletics director at Penn.