The game of rugby union has a long and colourful history and it must be said its fair share of mysteries. Perhaps one of the biggest mysteries involved the player known as Frederick Stanley Jackson. Why the mystery, simple, it was not his real name but one he would use for the majority of his life. In 1908, while playing with Leicester, Fred was regarded as the pre-eminent forward playing the game and tipped for international honours. The problem was that all was not as it seemed and in 1908 he was involved in a scandal that almost ruined the game.
From The Vaults
12 October 2025
Rugby’s Fred Jackson: The Full Story by Tom Mather
1908 Anglo-Welsh team
As the 1907-08 season was coming to a close Fred Jackson was to be involved in two big events. Firstly, he was selected to go on the tour to New Zealand and Australia with the Anglo-Welsh team, so called because the Scottish and Irish authorities refused permission for their players to go due to issues regarding professionalism but now considered the seventh official British & Irish Lions tour.
County Championships
The second event which attracted much more publicity was that he was instrumental in leading the Cornwall County team in defeating Durham in the County Championship final, played down in Cornwall. Obviously a good many photographs of the game and the winning team were taken, something Fred was very much averse to. He was notoriously difficult to get a photograph of, and for good reason.
Rumours had been circulating for a number of years that the authorities were turning a blind eye to veiled professionalism. There were also growing beliefs that the Leicester club were guilty of such crimes and that Fred Jackson was involved. In 1906 Fred was referred to the Rugby Football Union sub-committee that had been set up to investigate such claims. When Tom Crumbie the Leicester Secretary was questioned, he was forced to admit that Fred Jackson was not the player's true identity, rather he was one Ivor Gabe. This in itself broke no rules in place at the time with regard to professionalism, it was a further claim that did just that.
While Fred Jackson was on his way to New Zealand the RFU held its AGM in 1908 and it was there that explosive claims were made by officials from the Moseley club. The main thrust of their claims was that Fred Jackson was in fact Ivor Gabe and that the same Ivor Gabe was guilty of professionalism. They stated that he had signed a contract to play for the Swinton club in the Northern Union in the 1901-02 season. They actually stated they had an affidavit from the Swinton club to that effect, however when a vote was taken the Moseley motion was defeated for a variety of reasons. While the game in general and the Leicester club in particular avoided any sanctions, Fred Jackson was not so lucky.
Fred Jackson
The Newspapers, once they got wind of the story, began investigating the claims made with regard to Jackson. When he had been selected for the tour Down Under, in his 'pen-picture' he claimed to have been born in Cornwall and attended the Camborne School of Mines. Those claims were soon exposed as being untrue. The investigations then switched to the claims he had played for the Swinton club in Manchester. The problem was that at Swinton he had used the name John R. Jones and it was an open secret however that this was not his real name. It was also established that he was a Welshman named Ivor Gabe. This of course had implications for the rugby union authorities the main one being, all of those players and clubs that said they knew Jackson and Gabe were one and the same when they played against him. The question was a simple one, did they also know that he was Jones the Swinton professional as well?
In 2012 when I wrote the initial book concerning Fred, 'Rugby's Greatest Mystery: Who Really was F.S. Jackson?', published by London League Publications, I carried out intensive research and uncovered the truth regarding Fred Jackson's true identity. There was no doubt that he was Welsh not Cornish or English. This was confirmed remarkably by a gentleman who claimed to be Fred's nephew, a claim substantiated by the fact that the claimant was ninety-three years old when making contact with me. It was also confirmed that Fred Jackson had actually left Wales under a cloud as a youngster and enlisted in a Lancer Regiment. He always claimed to be a war veteran serving in the Boer War.
Since writing that first book I always felt that I had not really fully covered events and so undertook further research, uncovering new information with regard to Fred Jackson and his life and career. The new book, 'Rugby's Fred Jackson: The Full Story', was the result. The Jackson mystery is one that has existed since the story first emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. In truth, he adopted not one, but four identities and when he passed away in 1957 not even his own family knew that he really had been born Ivor Thomas Gabe!
Rugby's Fred Jackson: The Full Story' by Tom Mather is available to buy now.
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