1864.
First Technically Public Contest. Irving Hall, N. Y. City, afternoon of April 8th.—$250 a side, 6 × 12 four-pocket table, in aid of the Workingwomen’s Protective Union. Peter D. Braisted, Jr., 100; Wm. H. Freeman, 79. Players were not of the first class, and hence runs and averages were not tallied for publication.
There had, of course, been many earlier match-contests, both amateur and professional; but those and scores of others before them were of the nature of billiard-room contests, with the exception that Michael Phelan and Ralph Benjamin’s in Philadelphia, in 1857, was a formal match, although not public, each principal being limited to a certain number of friends as spectators.