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Fourteen-year-old Robert 'Bob' Page [3], born in Hull, Yorkshire, was the son of a farm labourer and a laundress and lived in 3 Black Rock Cottages in Rifle Butt Road; the cottages were demolished in the 1970's but were near the current approach to Brighton Marina. He was injured by being hit by a football on 2nd February 1887 and died 47 days later. 

It is not known whether Bob Page died from an injury which would be less likely to be caused by a football today. Until Charles Goodyear patented vulcanised rubber in 1836, footballs took their exact size and shape from the pig’s bladder from which they were made. The first rubber football was made in 1855, and this was followed up with the first inflatable rubber bladder in 1862. (The inventor, H.J. Lindon, lost his wife to lung disease at a young age; he believed that blowing up thousands of pig's bladders had caused her death,  and he was motivated to invent a synthetic type, which then allowed footballs to be made to a uniform shape and size.) The Football Association in England was the first governing body to control the shape and dimensions of footballs — and these regulations remain in place at FIFA today. In 1863, the FA convened to thrash out the official laws of the game. They decided that a ball should be perfectly spherical, with a circumference of between 27 and 28 inches. In 1872 the weight of a regulation football was set at 14 to 16 ounces. Surprisingly, these regulations are still in place — it is only the materials and construction methods that have changed over the years.