The Pedestrianism Rage May Have Created The First Female Athletic Superstars

It was seasonably cold, with temperatures hanging in the 20s, as thousands of spectators poured into Cincinnati’s Exposition Hall on Monday morning, 14 February 1876. Once inside, the crowd packed into the stands to watch five days of … walking.Yes, walking. For a couple of decades in the Nineteenth Century, walking was a major spectator sport, attracting huge crowds and, this being the age when everyone bet on baseball, it attracted huge wagers, too. Cincinnati’s Exposition Hall, replaced just two years later by Music Hall, was the largest indoor arena in the city at the time. It swelled to capacity for a sport, all but forgotten now, that was awarded the elevated name of pedestrianism. Participants were pedestrians or, on this particular occasion, pedestriennes.The pedestriennes in question were Millie Rose of England and Anna Mattice, a Canadian. Although she billed herself as “the champion female pedestrian of America,” Rose’s biggest walking feat to-date was walking 500 miles in…