Egg-and-spoon Race - History

History

The earliest recorded usage in the Oxford English Dictionary is in an article of 8 September 1894 featured in The Daily News: "the gentlemen had a turn in the egg-and-spoon race, in which the competitors had to punt with one hand and balance an egg on a spoon with the other". An earlier origin in colonial USA has been claimed. Egg-and-spoon races formed part of village celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, alongside the tug of war and blindfold wheelbarrow races. A set of turned and stained wooden eggs and spoons designed for racing and dating to the 1920s forms part of the Good Time Gallery of the Museum of Childhood in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It reached Canada by at least 1922, the first time it was mentioned in The Globe. By the 1930s, the phenomenon of the parents' egg-and-spoon race was sufficiently well-established to be satirized in Punch. Races were held among the staff of Trinity College, Cambridge until the 1950s. Egg-and-spoon races were held as part of the celebrations for both the 1977 Silver Jubilee and 2012 Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. In 2012, the British Council promoted the egg-and-spoon race as a suitable event for "English days", alongside the celebration of Charles Dickens and of the Victorian era.