William "Turkey" Smart was a champion speed skater

Speed skating

Speed skating, or speedskating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in traveling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating...

 and the first of a dynasty of skaters from the small village of Welney

Welney

Welney is a village and civil parish in the Fens of England, and the county of Norfolk. The village is situated immediately to the west of parallel Old Bedford River, River Delph and New Bedford River, which are here crossed by the A1101 road. The village is some south-west of the town of Downham...

, on the Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

/Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

 border in the centre of the Fens

The Fens

The Fens, also known as the , are a naturally marshy region in eastern England. Most of the fens were drained several centuries ago, resulting in a flat, damp, low-lying agricultural region....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Early life and marriage

Turkey Smart was born in 1830 on the banks of the Old Bedford River

Old Bedford River

The Old Bedford River is an artificial, partial diversion of the waters of the River Great Ouse in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, England. It was named after the fourth Earl of Bedford who contracted with the local Commission of Sewers to drain the Great Level of the Fens beginning in 1630.The idea of...

. He didn’t go to school and from an early age was working as an agricultural labourer. In 1852, aged 22, he married Susan See, also a 22-year-old agricultural labourer from Welney. They had 11 children (George, Robert, Emma, Henrietta, Harriett, Hannah, William, James, Joseph, Frederic and Mary Ann) of whom only one – James (born 1865) - became a skater.

Champion of the Fens

Turkey Smart’s reign as champion of the Fens began in 1854 when, in a 2 mile race at Welney, he took the title from Larman Register of Southery. With an exceptionally long stroke and low crouching style, Turkey Smart was able to outrun all opposition.

A month’s cold spell in early 1855 saw Turkey Smart winning 13 matches at Outwell, Salter’s Lode, Welney, Benwick, Mepal, March, Deeping, Ely, Peterborough and Wisbech in front of crowds of thousands. Each match consisted of four rounds skated in pairs over a 2 mile course, with the winner and runner-up skating a total of 8 miles in a day. His prize money for that month's skating came to £58 15s and a leg of mutton – the equivalent of about 2 years’ average earnings for an agricultural worker.

Turkey Smart continued his winning streak until 1861, when, hampered by a scythe injury to his leg, he shared the title with his brother-in-law and main rival on ice William "Gutta Percha" See. There followed a series of mild winters and when the championship was next held in 1867 Turkey Smart and Gutta Percha See were outpaced by younger men.

"A glorious has-been"

Undeterred by defeat and a leg injury, Turkey Smart continued to skate competitively into his fifties. An editorial in the Times, written 26 years after Turkey Smart’s death and looking back to the golden age of Fen skating in the last decades of the nineteenth century, described him as "a glorious has-been".

At one match in Mepal in 1878 Turkey Smart and Gutta Percha See (aged 48 and 45 respectively) both won their first rounds. In the second round they were drawn against each other and Gutta Percha See won in a close finish, only to be beaten by his 16-year-old son George "Young Gutty" See in the semi-final. Young Gutty See then lost to his cousin George "Flying Fish" Smart in the final.

Although he usually lost in the early rounds of matches, Turkey Smart was still a force to be reckoned with. In January 1879 he got through three rounds of a match at Littleport, defeating nephew Jarman Smart along the way, only to lose in the semi-final to nephew Young Gutty See. The following day he was beaten by nephew Fish Smart in the second round of a match at Ely. Three days later he was a second-round loser at Swavesey having easily beaten one of Lancashire's best skaters in the first round. Later that year the first British professional championship was held under the auspices of the recently set up National Skating Association

National Ice Skating Association

The National Ice Skating Association is a British organisation that is responsible for the development of ice skating careers. It is known as the biggest ice-skating company in the UK...

. Turkey Smart lost in the first round, but received an ovation from the crowd.

In 1881 Turkey Smart skated in a 1 mile race at Edgbaston Pool, Birmingham, and although coming in behind his fellow fenmen, managed to beat the best of Birmingham by 250 yards.

In his sixties, Turkey Smart was still taking to the ice for exhibition races.

The next generation

Six Smart and See cousins from Welney dominated British skating in the last 2 decades of the nineteenth century. Brothers Fish, James and Jarman Smart were the sons of Charles Smart and Phoebe See (sister of Susan Smart and Gutta Percha See). James "Young Turkey" Smart was Turkey Smart’s son. George and Isaac See were the sons of Gutta Percha See.

Fish Smart won three consecutive British professional championships in 1879, 1881 and 1887. His brother James was British professional champion in 1889, 1890 and 1895 and also took the title of world professional champion in Holland in 1895. George See was British champion in 1892.

Turkey Smart and his wife both died in 1919. They lost five grandsons in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

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See also

• Fen skating
  Fen skating
  Fen skating is a traditional form of ice skating in the Fenland of England. The Fens of East Anglia, with their easily flooded meadows, form an ideal skating terrain. Skates were introduced into Britain from Holland or France in the seventeenth century...