Its match day at London's Wembley Stadium sometime in the nineteen seventies, photographer High Money clutches an oversized camera in one hand and her media pass in the other. As she approaches the entrance to the press area, High presents her pass to the security guard. Is there no where you women don't want to stick your noses in? In contrast, High Money was softly spoken and exceedingly polite. She'd been sent by a local newspaper to photograph the England match.
Male journalists that high had worked with for years walked past her, avoiding her pleading gaze. If only someone would vouch for her, but previous experience had made it clear that asking anyone for help would be useless. The security guard stood firm sneering down at her, refusing her entry. Over my dead body mate, Hi gave one look at the press area bustling with journalists before turning away. She knew that rightfully she should be in there with them,
getting ready to cover the upcoming game. Bus As England's first female sports photographer, High Money was unfortunately becoming used to this type of treatment. Hey, it's Tony Armstrong. Welcome to the poor room. Where we celebrate the winners, losers and the weird stuff. Between listening to High Money softly spoken, polite British accent, it could be easy to underestimate her
to be a big mistake. Although arguably still underappreciated, She's a towering presence in the history of sports photography in the UK, and it took an extraordinary amount of willpower to get where she is. Let's go back to the beginning. High Money was born in Bangalore, India, where at the age of eight she was sent to an elite military boarding school. The students were taught a British curriculum and
trained in rifle, shooting and marching. The school's motto was never given, was she seemed to have taken to heart. At nineteen, Hyde decided to leave India and moved to England. As a parting gift, her mother, a royalist, gave her a present, her first ever camera, and made her promise
to take photos of the royal family with it. This gift was to start a lifelong love of photography, although her subject matter ended up being a little different than either she or her mother could have guessed at the time. Once in London, High married had four children and settled into being a housewife. And then, on her son's seventh birthday, she asked him what he wanted to do to celebrate. He wanted to go to the palace. Why do you want to go to the palace, she asked, had her
son somehow inherited her mother's love for the British royal family. No, her son explained, not Buckingham Palace, Crystal Palace. He wanted to see his favorite football team play at Selhurst Park. Hi agreed to take him, despite never being interested in the game herself. Her husband was the football tragic of the family. But that visit with her son ended up opening her eyes to what I would later describe as
the beauty and the magic of football. Everywhere she looked, she saw a potential photograph, the families, the food vendors, and the goalkeeper rising above all the other players to save a goal like some sort of mythical being. Then and there, she resolved to return with her camera to capture these images. But it was putting this plan into action that she experienced her first taste of the sexism that was to come. Racism, sexism, and prejudice are still
rife in football. And in the seventies it was even worse. Unbelievably, the Football Association banned women from playing in nineteen twenty one, with the justification that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged. It wasn't until nineteen seventy one, when a Revel team represented England in an unofficial World Cup in Mexico, that the
process of lifting the band started to come into force. However, the misogyny those early female players faced is astounding to hear about. It still took twenty more years before FIFA staged the first official Women's World Cup in nineteen ninety one. Football was unequivocally a man's world, where the only women present were either there to be objectified or in serving roles, or both. When High Money decided she wanted to be a sports photographer, she must have been somewhat aware of
this backdrop, making her determination even more impressive. In her own words, she needed to photograph football and she wouldn't let anything stand in her way. After that first visit to Sellhurst Park with her son, Hi knew she wanted to return with her camera, but she needed to figure out the right approach. Firstly, she needed access to the pitch so she could capture close up shots of the players.
To do that, she discovered she needed a photographer's pass, but when she phoned Sellhurst Park's reception she was met with resistance. Her requests were shrugged off and her phone calls ignored. After multiple attempts of getting nowhere, Hi decided to turn up in person unannounced. The long suffering receptionist gave in and buzzed her through to Bert Heard, Crystal Palace's manager at the time, who was on his lunch break.
Hi must have been convincing in person, because after pleading her case to him, she walked away with both the press pass and the bonus portrait of Bert a bowl of soup on the stairs. Sadly, getting the media pass would turn out to be the easy part. When High arrived in the press room for the first match, she was unprepared for the outright rude reception she received. The other photographers, who were all male, jeered at her, asking her where a knitting was. One journalist knocked her over
and called her sir. Even the infrastructure was sexist. There wasn't a single female bathroom in the whole stadium at halftime. High would have to wait until all the men had left the bathrooms before she'd get to use them. And this wasn't just happening at Crystal Palace. It turned out that the Football Association had officially banned women from taking photos at Wembley Stadium, the so called home of football.
High was understandably upset. All she wanted to do was take a few photos, and instead she was being met by an avalanche of misogyny. But she knew she was good, and she knew she had as much right to be there as anyone else, and so she kept going. On any new project she was assigned, she'd always ask herself, how could she get the images that no one else could?
This curiosity served her in good stead. At a nineteen seventy six tennis match at Wimbledon, as the first female photographer allowed at the major, High faced the same discrimination she'd counted since day one. When she arrived, the smoky press room was already filled with the usual male photographers and journalists, drinking playing cards and completely ignoring the tennis outside.
But when they realized that a woman had been granted permission to take photos, they sprang into action, threatening a mass walkout if she was so much as allowed on center court. Tired of having to prove herself again and again, Hi couldn't face them, so she left the press room and prepared to leave. But, as always, High couldn't stop
herself from seeing photo worthy images everywhere she looked. So when she spotted Sue Barker, the tennis star tip to win that year, staring out the window, Hi knew she was onto something. She raised her camera to her eye. Sue, seeing her below, waved and smiled, and while all other photographers were still lounging around in the press room, Hi got her shot. As she always did. High Money went on to become the official photographer for Crystal Palace Football Club.
She also covered the English women's football team, the Lionesses, when no one else was interested. Throughout her career, High captured some of the most iconic images of Crystal Palace. She even managed to snap a few celebrities like Elton John and Sean Connery. They have taken a completely different path than what her parents imagine for her, but she never forgot her mother's original request. Displayed proudly alongside all the sporting Greats are candid photos of many members of
Britain's royal family. Written under a photo of the late Queen Elizabeth, a note reads Queen of Buckingham Palace by the self appointed Queen of Crystal Palace. Thanks for listening to the poolroom with me, Tony Armstrong. This has been an iHeart production. Join me next time for more cracking sports stories. See you then. Eight