Fred Shaw (rugby union)
English rugby union player (1871–1938)
Fred Shaw (September 1871 – 27 October 1938) was an English rugby union forward who represented Yorkshire, the North of England and England in the late 1890s. He was the first player from Cleckheaton RUFC to be selected for the North of England and the first from the club to gain full international honours.
Early life and family
Shaw was born in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire, in September 1871. He was the son of Eliza Shaw, an unmarried domestic servant who in 1871 was working in Halifax.
Eliza never married and raised Fred as a single mother. He appears to have been her only child. By 1881 Shaw was living in Cleckheaton with his mother and grandmother, Mary Shaw.
Eliza later worked as a dressmaker and continued to do so for the rest of her working life. By 1911 she was recorded as living by independent means.
On 2 August 1897 Shaw married Jane Whitworth at St Peter’s Church, Birstall.
The public source identifies “Fred Shaw (rugby union)” as english rugby union player (1871–1938). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fred, Shaw and rugby.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q138312268. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1871, 1938, 1881 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fred Shaw (rugby union)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.