Henry Haslam was the the only son of Joel Haslam, the estate manager for the Duke of Newcastle’s Newark and Nottingham estates. He was educated at Uppingham school and played cricket and football for Worksop, his home-town team. He also played football for several southern clubs including Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Barnet, and West Norwood. He was also reported to have been on the books of Shrewsbury Town at one time. He toured Belgium with Tunbridge Wells at Easter 1900 and a few months later went on one of his four Continental tours with Upton Park, and in Paris he captained the team in the Olympic Games against France and was probably the smallest player on the team at just over 5’3”. Haslam served as a reservist with the West Yorkshire Infantry between 1915-20 and worked as a clerk, but In the mid-1920s he fell on hard times and found himself out of work and trying to live of the allowance he received from his father’s estate. He was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour for shopbreaking in 1926. Apart from some minor drink related instances over the next ten years he stayed out of prison until being sentenced to three months in 1937 on four counts of theft. (Extra information was supplied by Peter Hamersley, Upton Park FC Historian)
Great Britain