“The day of the armor helmet in football is over”. Headline from the March 23. 1903, Boston Journal
I came across this helmet at the May 2017 Brimfield (Quaker Acres field at daybreak), purchasing it and subsequently selling it to another collector that afternoon ,with a gentleman’s agreement that when he scaled back his extensive antique helmet collection he would sell the helmet back to me. Good to his word, he brought the helmet with him to this year’s May Brimfield and I bought it back.
When the Intercollegiate Football Rules Association met in March of 1903, it decided that the hard leather head piece, as worn during the past few years by many players on the gridiron, must be either modified so to lose its capacity of injuring an opponent or must be altogether eliminated. “It has been believed that many of the injuries received in football were due to the use of heavily protecting armor, particularly the head guards, which had grown so hard and unyielding as to give plenty of cause for this supposition”.
These “helmets made of hard sole leather have been used in mass plays as battering rams to butt down opponents…the committee believes this new rule will abolish that feature from the intercollegiate game and restore it to the old Rugby system of open play.”
The actual rule to be passed was not yet known. John C. Bell (U Penn), a member of the committee was quoted after this meeting as saying “What other changes will follow in the way of modifying football armor of all sort I do not know. No rule on the question has been adopted nor do I trust one will be at this meeting”. The committee was made up of John Bell (U. Penn.), Walter Camp (Yale), J. Burchard Fine (Princeton), Professor L.M. Dennis (Cornell), Paul Dashiell (Lehigh and Annapolis) and Robert Wrenn (Harvard).
It would have been at this time this helmet would have been produced, to satisfy the intent of what the initial suggested rule would address, a modification to prevent contact with sole leather, in this case by incorporating a felt/wool ring on the top of the helmet.
When the rules committee issued the final rule, a few short months later, it read “If head protectors are worn , no sole leather, papier mache, or other hard or unyielding material shall be used in their construction…” .
To conform to this rule, which specified that no sole leather whatsoever could be used in the manufacture of helmets, Spalding could not market this helmet, and came out with the pneumatic helmet (No. 70) as well a less expensive line of helmets they termed “Gray” head harnesses, made of soft leather (No.45) or canvas (No. 55).
This helmet is based on a helmet design that differs slightly from the Spalding No.60 (that was currently Spalding’s top of the line helmet), based on G.L. Pierce’s Head Harness Patent pictured below.
The helmet is embossed with “The Spalding” on both ear flaps, the designation reserved for its top of the line products.
This helmet is an absolute rarity, previously unknown to our hobby, being the only known example.
