The Royal Bachelors' Club is a

gentlemen's club A gentlemen's club is a private social club of a type originally established by males from Britain's upper classes starting in the 17th century. Many countries outside Britain have prominent gentlemen's clubs, mostly those associated with the ...

founded in 1769 in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. In 1787, the club got royal appropriation and exists still today. It was founded by Scottish expats who had settled in the city, including Thomas Erskine, a Jacobite who became the British Consul in Gothenburg and later became the 8th Earl Kellie. Many expats were interested in

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . Cue sports, a category of stic ...

, which was banned in Sweden at the time on public premises. Many were fairly young men who had no private homes to play in; they founded the Bachelors’ Club, for "billiards, and pleasant, undisturbed fellowship". Erskine was Member Number 1.

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* {{Authority control 1769 establishments in Sweden Gentlemen's clubs in Sweden Organizations based in Gothenburg Scottish diaspora in Europe 18th-century establishments in Gothenburg and Bohus County