Miss Minerva Snooker
Punch (Melbourne), Thursday 12 December, 1907 Herbert, always called it the “Mangling Society,” but that was because he didn’t like Miss Minerva Snooker, the directress…
A comedic character named Snooker first appeared around the mid-nineteenth century. He was initially paired with Hooker (according to some sources as a pirate version of the French comedians Box and Cox), and from the end of the century onwards he appeared in solo or duo performances with other comedians. Snooker was the subject of novels and stories, performed on the theatre stage and in the circus, and humorous sketches about his adventures were published in almost all newspapers in the UK and the USA. It is notable that books were published in which the main or secondary character was a person named or nicknamed Snooker. This raises the question of whether this story has any influence on the fact that the game of billiards was named snooker. It is quite possible that it did.