Today's Tidbit... Youth Football in 1895 Boston

While chasing down information on football in old newspapers, the line drawings in articles about top players or games always catch my eye. They are from before newspapers could reliably print half-tone "photographs" on their pages. Even then, the early photographs were still images (e.g., posed players or teams) since it was not until post-WWI that lighter cameras with fast lenses allowed game-action images to replace illustrations on the nation's sports pages.

So it was the illustration below that drew my attention to an October 1895 Boston Globe article about youth football in the Boston area.

('Boys In The Game,' Boston Daily Globe, October 28, 1895)