Juan Bautista Luis Augurio Perera Orfila (in Spanish; Joan Baptista Auguri Perera in Catalan, c.1822 – 1905), known as Augurio Perera, was a Catalan merchant and sportsman based in England, credited alongside his friend Harry Gem as a

lawn tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

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

Manresa Manresa () is the capital of Bages county, located in the central region of Catalonia, Spain. Crossed by the river Cardener, it is an industrial area with textile, metallurgical, and glass industries. The houses of Manresa are arranged aro ...

, Catalonia, 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 a suburb of Birmingham, West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It lies immediately south-west of Birmingham city centre, and was historically in Warwickshire. The Ward (electoral subdivision), wards of Edgbaston and Nort ...

area of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

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 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 of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

. 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 ) is a sport which involves hitting wooden, plastic, or composite balls with a mallet through hoops (often called Wicket, "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Variations In all forms of croquet, in ...

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 LeamingtonEven more colloquially, also referred to as Lem or Leam (). (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Pri ...

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 for Paris in December 1883. His life after this date was until recently unknown. However, new research has revealed that he relocated to Italy, where he died in

Siena Siena ( , ; traditionally spelled Sienna in English; ) is a city in Tuscany, in central Italy, and the capital of the province of Siena. It is the twelfth most populated city in the region by number of inhabitants, with a population of 52,991 ...

on 1 November 1905 and was buried two days later at the city's main cemetery.

Tennis

The invention of tennis is traditionally ascribed to 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 The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is the national governing body of tennis in Great Britain, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man founded in 1888. The LTA promotes all levels of lawn tennis. The organization believes tennis can provide ...

. 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.Leamington Tennis Court Club
/ref> 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, 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 British male tennis players History of tennis Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Businesspeople from Birmingham, West Midlands Spanish emigrants to the United Kingdom Spanish male tennis players Year of birth missing Year of death missing Spanish merchants

Life

Tennis

See also

References