An important piece of British public school sporting history, this is a photograph of the 1889-90 St. Paul's School football team, dressed in their kit and posing in front of some cloisters at the school, their captain clutching a ball.

During the Victorian era, when sports of all kind flourished in Britain, England's grand old public schools forged a close relationship with football, cricket and rugby, among others, even influencing their respective laws. Pupils, former pupils and teachers at English public schools developed and wrote down the first codes of football, most notably the Eton College (1815) and Aldenham school (1825) football rules. British public schools football also directly influenced the rules of Association football.

St. Paul's School in London, founded in 1519 by John Colet is one of the most prominent public schools in the country, and was among of the original nine investigated by the 1861 Clarendon Commission.

Elliott & Fry was a Victorian photography studio founded in 1863 by Joseph John Elliott (14 October 1835 – 30 March 1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840 – 12 April 1897).[1] For a century the firm's core business was taking and publishing photographs of the Victorian public and social, artistic, scientific and political luminaries. In the 1880s the company operated three studios and four large storage facilities for negatives, with a printing works at Barnet.