First published Lawn Tennis rules

The first rules and laws of the game finalised by Gem and Perera, written for the Leamington Club and published by local printer D. Sarney.

The two documents are very similar the first contains just the laws of the game for Lawn Tennis or Pelota, this document is heavily annotated. The annotations are initialled by Gem and are mainly grammatical changes, punctuation additions, and some re-wording. These identified changes have been made, by the time the second document was published, which is noted as 1 January 1875.

As well as the modifications to the laws of the game, which interestingly is now called Lawn Rackets as opposed to its previous name of Lawn Tennis, Gem has included the Rules of the Leamington Club, in this publication. These detail the structure of the club, membership, playing days, uniform and equipment. The rules are also designed to help fundraising for the club, and to pay for lost equipment such as one shilling to be paid for each lost ball, and players were to pay a shilling if losing a love game.

Reference:

The Gem Scrapbook MS 3057