Marjory Gosset (27 May 1879 – 12 December 1965) was a noted hockey player in the early years of the 20th century.

Birth and education

Marjory Surtees Gosset was the third daughter and youngest child of

James Surtees Phillpotts James Surtees Phillpotts (18 July 1839 – 16 October 1930) was a reforming Headmaster of Bedford School and the author and editor of a number of educational books. Biography Born in Cornwall on 18 July 1839, James Surtees Phillpotts was a gra ...

and Marian Hadfield Phillpotts née Cordery. Her siblings included the Icelandic scholar Bertha Surtees Phillpotts and

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

hero

Brian Surtees Phillpotts Brian Surtees Phillpotts DSO (1875 – 4 September 1917) was an officer of the Royal Engineers who fought in the First World War and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He was killed in action in September 1917. Biography Brian "Broo ...

. She grew up at

Bedford School :''Bedford School is not to be confused with Bedford Girls' School, Bedford High School, Bedford Modern School, Old Bedford School in Bedford, Texas or Bedford Academy in Bedford, Nova Scotia.'' Bedford School is a public school (English indep ...

where her father was headmaster, but was educated at home, to a large extent by her mother.

Sporting career

Marjory Phillpotts (as she then was) started playing hockey at Bedford in 1896. At that time the standard hockey stick had a rounded face rather than a flat one and the ball had a covering of tightly wound string.''Prominent Lady Hockey Players and Officials'' in ''The Sports Mail'', London, 22 February 1930 In 1899 she joined Bedford Hockey Club and began her sporting career. She played for the Midlands from 1899 to 1903 and for England from 1900 to 1903. In 1903 she captained the

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

team against

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. As a hockey player in 1897 There was then a gap in her career while she married the industrial statistician

William Sealy Gosset William Sealy Gosset (13 June 1876 – 16 October 1937) was an English statistician, chemist and brewer who served as Head Brewer of Guinness and Head Experimental Brewer of Guinness and was a pioneer of modern statistics. He pioneered small sa ...

and moved to

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

where her husband and also her brother Geoffrey were employed at

Guinness brewery St. James's Gate Brewery is a brewery founded in 1759 in Dublin, Ireland, by Arthur Guinness. The company is now a part of Diageo, a company formed from the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997. The main product of the brewery is ...

.''A Phillpotts Scrapbook'', Roger Gwynn (editor), 2018 in 1910 Mrs Gosset resumed her hockey career. She was selected for Leinster in that year, and also for Ireland. She played for Ireland in 1910, 1912, 1913 and 1914 and captained the team in the last two of those years. She was in fact unusual, if not unique, in having captained the national teams of both England and Ireland at different times in her career. After another gap of nine years Mrs Gosset joined the Optimists Hockey Club, for which she played until the early 1930s, by which time she was over fifty years old. In addition to her playing career Marjory was a selector for the Leinster Hockey Association and Ireland and honorary secretary for the Umpires Association. She also served the

Girl Guides Girl Guides (known as Girl Scouts in the United States and some other countries) is a worldwide movement, originally and largely still designed for girls and women only. The movement began in 1909 when girls requested to join the then-grassroot ...

movement as a commissioner and in other roles.

Family

Marjory Gosset had three children. The eldest, Harry Gosset (1907-1965) was a consultant paediatrician;https://www.pulsus.com/scholarly-articles/dr-isaac-henry-gosset-northamptons-first-consultant-paediatrician-and-inventor-of-the-gosset-icterometer-4044.html (accessed 13 June 2019) the second, Bertha Marian Gosset (1909-2004) was a geographer and worked for some time as a nurse; the youngest, Ruth Gosset (1911–1953) married the Oxford mathematician Douglas Roaf and had five children, Dermot, Brigid, Rachel, Jane and

Michael Roaf Michael Douglas Roaf(born in May 20, 1947) is a British archaeologist specialising in ancient Iranian studies and Assyriology. Roaf studied the archaeology of Western Asia at University College London, and wrote his doctoral thesis, ''Sculptures ...

Later years

Marjory Gosset remained vigorous and active until after her mid-eighties, outliving two of her children. She died in Oxford in 1965.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gosset, Marjory 1879 births 1965 deaths English female field hockey players Irish female field hockey players Ireland international women's field hockey players Irish women referees and umpires Women's field hockey umpires Sportspeople from Bedfordshire Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting