The Fleet and squash

There is a widely believed story that the precursor of squash, rackets played against a single wall instead of over a net, was invented at the Fleet Prison for debtors in the early nineteenth century. While looking at medical adverts from around 1700 today I came across a handbill for a gentlewoman selling skin-conditioning washes from her house ‘in Racket Court near Fleet-bridge’. Clearly something to do with rackets was going on in the immediate area. Maybe the historical presence of rackets courts nearby, as well as a sturdy wall, led to this being the obvious choice of game to play in the prison.


Maybe the influence was directly from the sound of people 'making a racket' - a variation of the phrase is first used in the sixteenth century, and appears in Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 2 'But that the Tennis court keeper knows better than I, for it is a low eb of linnen with thee when thou keepest not racket there.' 'Keeping a racket' would now be 'making a racket', which dates from 1644. The OED gives the source of 'racket', first noted from 1565, as 'perhaps imitative'; 'racket' the game was documented from c1425, so maybe the sound being imitated was the sound of the ball game with paddles played in an indoor court.


So did people making a racket around Racket Court inspire the debtors directly to play rackets against the wall of the Fleet Prison? It must have been a penetrating noise to make it through the general hubbub of early-nineteenth century London over such a high wall.