On June 27, 1891, Irish woman Mabel Cahill beat defending champion Ellen Roosevelt 6-4, 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 for the United States Women’s Tennis National Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. Mabel became the first foreign woman to win a major tournament with her victory. If you are wondering, Ellen Roosevelt was a cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mabel successfully defended her title by winning the singles championship in 1892 as well as winning the doubles championship with Adeline McKinlay and the mixed doubles championship with Clarence Hobart.
Mabel Cahill was born the twelfth of thirteen children to a wealthy Irish family. She became an orphan by the age of seventeen and eventually emigrated to the United States settling in New York in 1889. Mabel joined the New York Tennis Club and after winning multiple club tournaments decided to compete in professional tournaments in 1890. She reached the semi finals of the US National Tournament in 1890 and went on to win five championship titles in 1891 and 1892.
At the time, tennis was not a lucrative profession as it was still an amateur sport and Cahill needed to find another source of income. She wrote several novels and received a book publishing deal but was unsuccessful in her literary career. Mabel Cahill stopped competing in tennis tournaments in 1893 and sadly became mired in poverty after her inheritance and literary income dried up. In 1897 she left New York and moved to England where she began to perform in music halls. This is a world far removed from her past as a socialite tennis player in New York. Mabel continued her downward spiral financially and physically. In 1905, at the age of forty-one, she contracted tuberculosis of the larynx and died in the infirmary of a workhouse. Mabel was probably buried in an unmarked, pauper’s grave and sadly Ireland’s greatest tennis player’s final location is unknown.
Time Out With Jenn & Lisa 