THE SAVIOUR OF SOCCER
shoes, many holed and worn, trudged towards the Empire Stadium. Veterans from the great war on crutches, small boys pulling and pushing each other on every species of cart...a sea of claret and blue was rising towardwembley.
“A cacophony of singing, hooters, horns, klaxons and rattles filled the air. Everywhere there were hammers being waved about, some purloined from fireplaces, others six-foot creations of wood and cardboard; white, silver and gold.the Irons were on the march!”
Many travelled by train with London Underground selling more than 241,000 tickets from stations within London towembley.
Among thewest Ham supporters was a Pathe News cameraman disguised as a fan. Pathe had failed to win the rights to film the event, so their cameraman was wearing fake spectacles, a false moustache and carrying a camera hidden in a large cardboard hammer.
The gates were opened three and a half hours before the match at 11:30am, and until 1pm the flow of people into the stadium was orderly. But as the vast crowd grew even bigger, at 1.45pm the 104 turnstiles were shuttered.
Spectator William Rose said later that the route to the stadium was “seething with people” and that “the nearer I got to the stadium the worse it got, by the time I got there the turnstiles had been closed”.
Teenager Denis Higham said: “When we got out at Wembley Park, we were in a huge wave of humanity all going in the same direction. It was just a solid mass of people, though I don’t ever remember feeling scared because the crowd was so good-natured.”
Thousands continued to arrive and mass outside the gates. One match reporter described the stewarding as “useless” and stated that officials in and around the stadium “seemed to know nothing”. Fans were not directed to any specific area, and the tiers in the lower half of the stadium filled to crowd-crushing levels. At 2:15pm, the crowds outside the stadium rushed at the barriers and forced their way in.
Spectators in the lower tiers had to climb the fences to escape the crush and flowed on to the pitch. Roads around the stadium were blocked and Bolton players had to abandon their coach a mile away and make their way through the crowds on foot. The overall intake was estimated at between 240,000 and 300,000.
The King arrived at 2:45pm and the crowd enthusiastically sang the national anthem.
AT 3:10PM THE players entered the field and joined the police in asking the crowd to withdraw so that the game could be played, but the players were enthusiastically mobbed and found themselves trapped on the pitch. The scene seemed set for tragedy on a scale later seen at Hillsborough and Heysel.
The match was set to be cancelled until the arrival of nine mounted police including PC George Scorey and his horse Billy.
Scorey, a 40-year-old Army veteran, had served in both the Boerwar and the Firstworld War, and had seen bloody action in the battles of Mons,ypres andarras.
He had served for four years in the police where he was regarded as a tough, no-nonsense authority figure despite his diminutive height – he was below the official police requirement of 5ft 8in. Scorey had not been on duty that day but answered a call for emergency assistance as the throng of spectators grew.
Billy, a grey horse, appeared white in the Pathe cameraman’s high contrast black and white newsreel and was the most visible in the news footage. He became the defining image of the day and the match is still known as “The White Horse Final”.
Scorey later recalled: “As my horse picked his way on to the field, I saw nothing but a sea of heads. I thought, ‘We can’t do it. It’s impossible.’ But I happened to see an opening near one of the goals and the horse was very good – easing them back with his nose and tail until we got a goal-line cleared.
“I told them in front to join hands and heave and they went back step by step until we reached the line. Then they sat down and we went on like that ... he seemed to understand what was required of him. The other helpful thing was the good nature of the crowd.”
They and the other mounted police slowly pushed the crowds back to the sides of the field.
Eventually the game began approximately 45 minutes late. Bolton proved the dominant team for most of the match and won 2–0.
Although around 900 spectators were treated for slight injuries, only 22 were taken to hospital and 10 of those were quickly discharged. Two policemen were also injured.
The FA was widely blamed for chaotic scenes which could easily have ended in tragedy and refunded 10 per cent of the total gate money to fans who were unable to reach assigned seats. The shambles was debated in the House of Commons where home secretary William Bridgeman praised the police and the general behaviour of the crowd.
A month after the match, an official committee demanded the replacement of turnstiles with better models, the division of the terraces into sections with their own entrances, and compulsory pre-purchasing of tickets.
Scorey refused invitations to appear in public and resumed duties with Billy, who died in December 1930. Scorey was presented with an inkwell made from one of his hooves, which is held by the Metropolitan Police mounted branch museum in Surrey.
Declining eyesight forced Scorey to retire in 1939, and he died in hospital from bronchial pneumonia in April 1965, aged 82.
The image of Billy the horse remains famous within English football lore and is among the most enduring in British football history.
‘Players joined the police in asking the crowd to withdraw so that the game could be played, but they were mobbed and found themselves trapped on the pitch’