WILLIAM LEBEAU/TITT
a gymnast’s tale
as told by his son, Anthony LeBeau, his daughter-in-law, Marion LeBeau, and his grandson, Stephen LeBeau

Anthony LeBeau on his father, WILLIAM LEBEAU
My name is Anthony LeBeau. I was born on 9 April 1923 and I live in Cardiff. William LeBeau was my father. He was born in 1881.

My father’s main occupation was coal. It was in the coal age. He loved coal, he worshipped coal, as a matter of fact. He was a coal merchant. He had trucks on the line. We always used to go down and wave to them when they used to pass with his name, LeBeau, on them. He was a good man. He spent an awful lot of money on being good. When Cardiff Royal Infirmary was built, he put a large amount of money into that, thinking of other people. He was a religious man, well, over-religious, really, I would say. He would always put his church in front of everything, and on a Sunday we would be home and he would go to church at the eight o’clock service, then he would go to the eleven o’clock, then he’d go to the one in the afternoon, and then he’d go to the evening. It goes without saying you would never hear him swear, which is uncommon these days.

Besides being very religious – he was in St Saviour’s Church in Splott – he was very fond of athletics. He organised an athletics team for St Saviours Church. He was very proud of his body. I can always remember when I was a young boy, he used to say, “Come over here, Tony, feel my muscles”, and there used to be a great big lump on his arm! He started the youth team and paid for all the kit himself, he kitted them out, completely. Welsh Champions in the first year. The boys’ team from the church swept Wales with their achievements.

They won loads of prizes. There was no money. My mother was never very keen on all these prizes. She wouldn’t open them. She had about six canteens of cutlery, silver cutlery, in an oak box.

In those days, there was not such a thing as money. When he went to the Olympics (in 1908 and 1912), the Splott syndicate supported him and the church supported him. That’s how he was able to go. He was just a working man. He wasn’t short of money, but he wasn’t overwhelmed with it.

He was very athletic-minded but he never told anybody anything about it. Only when you see his medals and his achievements, you realise what he did. I only found out things when he died. He was shy. He’d keep all the things that he’d achieved, but they were in his wardrobe pushed away. All he’d tell me was, “Feel my arm or my leg!”. They were great big lumps. My poor little hands wouldn’t go around them.

He even had the papers, the Echo and the Western Mail, and the photographs were in there. I cut them out. He never boasted about anything. My sister and I – there were only the two of us – we had no idea of any of this, until he died.

When he’d finished with the sport, couldn’t do anything else about it because his muscles went. I was so sad. On the day he died, on the Saturday, it was the FA Cup Final, and he said to me, “Could you fix the radio up by my bed?”. Well, in those days, it wasn’t easy. 1956 it was, so I went and looked and I couldn’t get the aerial to work. So, what I did in the end, his metal bed, a metal frame I mean, I made that into his aerial, and it went beautifully. So I said, “There we are, dad. That will be alright for you”. And the poor man died in the morning, so he didn’t hear his football. Up to the very end, you see, he was attached to sport.

I consider that I’ve kept him alive, you know.

Marion LeBeau on her father-in-law, WILLIAM LEBEAU
My name is Marion LeBeau. I was born on 8 March 1926 and I’m the wife of Anthony LeBeau. I went to live with Tony’s mum and dad [William LeBeau] for a few years through the war, and, although William LeBeau was a very, very private person, I did get to know him a little.

The one thing I do know about him is that he had a rather large suitcase under the bed in which he would put all of his gymnastics’ prizes, gifts that occasionally he would pull out and give to his daughter Josie and his son Tony.
Stephen: I remember granddad gave Josie a set of six silver teaspoons, which I now keep for posterity after she gave them to me, on the occasion of my silver wedding anniversary.)
Marion: He was undoubtedly the most private person I have ever met. He was a lovely, lovely man. I never heard him swear or get into a temper. The time I lived with him, he had the coal round. He used to come in black as the ace of spades, and the first thing he would do was go up and have his bath and come down and be in pristine condition. I never heard him ever get into a rage or tell anyone off.
Anthony: He was such a strong man and athletic. It was amazing that he could be so mild in himself.
Marion: Regarding the name change from LeBeau to Titt, his father died, LeBeau died, and his mother remarried. She remarried a gentleman by the name of Titt.
Some of William’s medals have that name on them. It was Titt for the two Olympics, 1908 and 1912, but when his step-dad died, he changed it back to LeBeau. He lived and died as a LeBeau.
Anthony: He didn’t like to be a Titt. So, he changed his name and they never made him Titt again.
Marion: We had absolutely masses of medals after he died. As you’ll see, Tony had a lot put in a frame, hanging in our house ever since. There were trophies galore.
This Following the Flame exhibition is a wonderful opportunity that dad will have recognition at last.
Anthony: But Marion, he wouldn’t be looking for it.
No, but the Olympics have come up and I think for his children and his grandchildren, it’s just a wonderful thing. And for Wales, of course. It’s splendid, for the whole family, the fact that the name will be kept alive.
Anthony: I never knew him very well really, and I was his son.

Stephen LeBeau on his grandfather, WILLIAM LEBEAU My name is Stephen LeBeau. I was born on 28 August 1948, and I’m a Welshman from Cardiff.
The two things that impressed me most about my grandfather, William LeBeau, are one, he was a real all-round sportsman. We have a huge number of medals and salutations, and there are records of even more, something up to about two-hundred in total covering a wide range of sports – long jumps, hurdles, boxing, as well as the gymnastics for which he is rightly famous because of the Olympic medal that he won. The second thing that really impressed me, certainly compared with today’s athletes, is the length of his career. He was a sportsman from a young man and right through. We have records of him competing from as early as 1904, and before that when he was in his teens, right through until the 1930s. Even with the Olympics themselves in 1912, when he got his bronze medal, he was a 31 year old, which by today’s standards is positively geriatric in athletic terms.

The 1916 Olympics was cancelled because of the war, so who can say whether he’d have gone that extra four years and actually competed in that one which would have been his third? He probably would have done, because his sporting career certainly wasn’t over.

I am immensely proud of his memory, that he’s a Welshman. Wales always seems to get the short end of the stick as far as sport is concerned. We were out there competing in the Olympics right at the beginning of the modern Games and succeeding, doing well. And the way in which it was done as well, with the community sponsoring him and the church sponsoring him, as my dad has said, to raise the money to send him overseas. Okay, today, going to Sweden is nothing but, in those days, it was a big thing, and all the time he was away, obviously he wasn’t earning anything. It was much more of an effort, financially, than it would be today.

There are two reasons, perhaps, why we have forgotten about this man and his achievements. One, obviously, is the passing of time. I’ve been going into the background. They’re not so well-publicised through the media and through the immediacy of television and so forth. But, secondly, of course, is the man himself, so modest, so reserved; the fact that my father, his son and his daughter knew so little about his achievements until they started unearthing the trophies, the medals and the prizes that he won, only after he died.