Foil, Individual, Open

Foil was not an official event at the London Olympics in 1908, but a small foil demonstration was given on the evening of 23 July, at Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly, London. There were 22 fencers who fenced 12 matches, eight in the French style and four used the Italian style. One interesting note about the foil demonstration is that one woman fenced against the men, Millicent Hall, who was the British ladies’ foil champion in 1907-08 and 1922.

There were no real final standings because the event was meant to demonstrate the different styles of foil fencing being practiced in the 12 countries, and those styles were so different that there was no basis for comparing them to each other. No scores were kept during the bouts. The description of the event in the 1908 Official Report says that neither hits scored nor form were used to award touches: “To base decisions purely on the hits scored encourages a degraded form of foil-play, and the differences of style in so many nations would have made it an invidious matter to take form into consideration.”