Juan Bautista Luis Augurio Perera (c.1822 – after 1889), known as Augurio Perera, was a Spanish-born merchant and sportsman based in England, credited alongside his friend Major Harry Gem as a

lawn tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...

pioneer.Rowley, Andrew,
Gem, Thomas Henry (1819–1881)
, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 10 July 2007Tyzack, Anna

''Country Life'', 22 June 2005

Life

Perera was born in Spain in around 1822. He moved to England with his parents Augurio and Francisca at the age of four, and the family lived in London for ten years, before moving to Birmingham in 1836. After the rest of the family relocated to Manchester in 1839, Perera remained in the Midlands, becoming naturalised in 1856, settling in the

Edgbaston Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre. In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family ...

area of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

and establishing a successful business importing Spanish merchandise.Osman, Arthur "Lawn tennis remembers its founding fathers", ''The Times'', Thursday 10 June 1982 His younger brothers,

Pedro Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for '' Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, mean ...

and Frederico, both played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

. A keen rackets player, he was a member with Gem of the Bath Street Racquets Club adjacent to the Racquet Court Inn in Bath Street, Birmingham, about two miles from his home Fairlight at 8 Ampton Road, Edgbaston. It was on the

croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the W ...

lawn of this house that Perera and Gem were to develop a game that combined elements of both the game of rackets and

Basque pelota Basque pelota ( Basque: '' pilota'', Spanish: '' pelota vasca'', French: '' pelote basque'') is the name for a variety of court sports played with a ball using one's hand, a racket, a wooden bat or a basket, against a wall (''frontis or fronto ...

between 1859 and 1865,Lawn Tennis and Major T. H. Gem
Birmingham Civic Society naming it ''Lawn rackets'', ''Lawn pelota'' or, eventually, ''Lawn tennis''. In 1873, Perera and Gem moved to

Royal Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

and established a club to play their game on the lawns of the Manor House Hotel, opposite Perera's new home in Avenue Road. Perera left Leamington three years after Gem's death in 1881, and his life after this date is unknown.

Tennis' true inventor?

The invention of tennis is traditionally ascribed to Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, who published rules for a game he called ''sphairistikè'' in 1874. It is Wingfield's statue that stands at the headquarters of the Lawn Tennis Association. However in his meticulously-researched work, ''Tennis: A Cultural History'', Heiner Gillmeister reveals that on 8 December 1874, Wingfield had written to Harry Gem, commenting that he’d been experimenting with his version of lawn tennis for only a year and a half. eamington Tennis Court Clu

It is now no longer in dispute (despite the traditional credit given to Wingfield) that Gem and Perera, who had established an organized lawn tennis club in Leamington Spa 1874, had been playing their invention for a decade or more. In addition, much less is known about Perera than his friend and fellow tennis pioneer

Harry Gem Major Thomas Henry Gem (21 May 1819 – 4 November 1881), known as Harry Gem, was an English lawyer, soldier, writer and sportsman. Alongside his friend Augurio Perera, he is credited as a lawn tennis pioneer.Rowley, Andrew,Gem, Thomas Henry ( ...

, whose life is well documented as a prominent figure in several walks of Birmingham society. In a letter to '' The Field'' in November 1874, however, Gem largely credited Perera with the development of the game.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perera, Augurio 19th-century English businesspeople 19th-century Spanish businesspeople English people of Spanish descent English male tennis players History of tennis Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom People from Birmingham, West Midlands Spanish emigrants to the United Kingdom Spanish male tennis players Year of birth missing Year of death missing Spanish merchants British male tennis players

Life

Tennis' true inventor?

See also

References