Fleet Prison in London where prisoners in "The Fleet," mainly debtors, took their exercise by hitting a ball against walls with rackets and so started the game of "Rackets." By some strange route, rackets progressed to play at Harrow and other select English schools about 1820, and it was from this source that the sport of Squash, or Squash Rackets, developed. Squash was thus invented in Harrow school around 1830 when the pupils discovered that a punctured Rackets ball, which "squashed" on impact with the wall, led to a game with a greater variety of shots and one which required much more effort on the part of the players because they could not simply wait for the ball to bounce back to them as with Rackets. This variant proved popular so that in 1864, the first four Squash courts were constructed at the school. Squash was thus officially founded as a sport in its own right (Wallbutton).
In that early period, Squash had no form of international standardization, and inevitably, slight variations in the way it was played, and the equipment used, occurred. Once the game was given standardized rules, only two main streams emerged, one in England with its 21 feet wide courts and "soft" ball and the other in North America with its 18.5 feet wide courts and "hard" ball. Both courts have the same length of 32 feet (Wallbutton).
The first recorded reference to "Squash" outside Harrow school appeared in 1890 in the English book The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes written by the Duke of Beaufort. The first book on Squash was written by Eustace Miles, a world champion at both Tennis and Rackets, in 1901, and he stated that the sport was enjoyed by thousands of players in various parts of the world by that time. There were then courts in schools and universities in England and some also in private houses. The first professional Squash Championship was held in 1920 in England, at which C.R. Read (Queens Club) beat A.W.B. Joh...