The Secret Love Life of Ranjitsinhji

Ranji in his batting stance in 1899, photographed for WG Grace’s book “W.G.”, Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections (Image: Wikipedia)

Ranjitsinhji, the first non-white batsman to play for England, has long intrigued cricket historians. Going back to his playing days, when he practically redefined what was possible for a batsman, and later when he became, after a 35-year struggle, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, he has been a source of endless fascination. In more recent years, that fascination has extended into his personal life. The standard interpretation, which is backed up by a large body of evidence, has been that he fell in love with an Englishwoman called Edith Borissow, the daughter of a clergyman. However, she may not have been the only object of Ranji’s affections. In the last 20 years information has emerged that two other women had close, long-term relationships of some form with him. But a revelation in 2014 may indicate that Ranji and Edith Borissow were far more involved than anyone other than Ranji’s closest friends ever realised.

In the early 2000s, a collection of letters was donated to Trinity College, Cambridge. Ranji had written these to a Cambridge woman called Mary Holmes over a period of fourteen years. These letters have led at least two writers, the journalist Boria Majumdar and the historian Satadru Sen, to conclude that Mary Holmes rather than Edith Borissow was the women with whom Ranji fell in love, and that the stories associated with Borissow in fact concerned Holmes.

A picture of Ranji published with the article in Outlook India by Boria Majumdar. The implication in that article is that this shows Ranji with the Holmes family; given the presence of four women/girls and one boy, it is possible as Mary Holmes had three sisters. She had six brothers, of whom four could potentially be the boy in the photograph, depending when it was taken (Image: via Outlook India).

Ranji’s letters document a relationship that at times became very close. Holmes’ granddaughter, Marieke Clarke, told the journalist Boria Majumdar in 2002 that the pair first met when an 18-year-old Ranji was passing the grocery shop owned by the Holmes family in Cambridge. Mary, then aged 17, and her younger sister Minnie found him “extremely attractive” according to Majumdar, and dropped their handkerchiefs for him to pick up and return to them. The aspiring prince became a regular visitor to the family store as he lived nearby. In his letters, he was soon affectionately calling Mary’s parents “Ma” and “Dad” which led Satadru Sen to conclude in Migrant Races: Empire, Identity and K.S. Ranjitsinhji (2005) that they functioned as a surrogate family for him. However, we can be fairly certain that at this time, Ranji was similarly close to the Borissow family.

In an article in Outlook India, Majumdar wrote that the first letter, sent in 1891, was formal (although he addresses Mary as “your darling self” and mentions her “beautiful sister”) but subsequent ones became increasingly affectionate towards both Mary and Minnie. The third letter stated: “Please do not think I like all girls because I seem to give them presents. I like you and Minnie best. I can do anything I can to please you and Minnie.” He later wrote Mary romantic poems, or copied them from elsewhere and claimed them to be his own compositions. On another occasion he attempted to make her jealous by telling her of an intimate encounter he had with another girl; by this stage, he was writing of his love for Mary.

Christopher Neve, the great nephew of Mary Holmes, said that Ranji often took both sisters out and bought them expensive gifts despite his financial difficulties at the time. One of Ranji’s letters, written to Mary in 1896, expressed his “great pain and jealousy” upon hearing that she had become engaged but promised that he would not become “girlish and cross”. The letters continued afterwards – the last letter in the collection is dated 1905 – and maintained their romantic and risqué tone even after her marriage in 1898. One letter, written around 1896, says to Mary that Minnie, recovering from illness, “is as fresh as a racehorse and wants to be whipped. I wish I could. I would love to make her gallop about.” Nevertheless, the letters betray an anxiety that their relationship might be discovered by others, and that her father might disapprove.

Neve believed that Mary married someone else when she realised that relationship with Ranji was doomed on account of their different race. Her husband later abandoned her and their six children, leaving them “on the verge of destitution” according to Majumdar. After Mary’s marriage, Ranji became closer to Minnie. The latter never married – according to Marieke Clarke this was because of her relationship with Ranji. Similarly, Mary never forgot him and kept a “large photo portrait” of him even in her final years. It is not clear if he maintained his connection with the family after he became Jam Sabih of Nawanagar in 1907, but the lack of letters would suggest otherwise.

Majumdar wonders if the statue of an English woman that Ranji ordered in the 1920s could have been Mary or Minnie. Satadru Sen also wonders if the story told by EHD Sewell could have referred to either of these sisters rather than Edith Borissow. However, the facts as related by Sewell can only refer to Edith Borissow; the details he gave do not match with the Holmes family at all. While there was certainly a relationship between Ranji and the Holmes sisters, it was not the one Sewell discussed.

Mary Holmes was still with her husband on the 1911 census when they were visitors, along with their five children, at the home of a 61-year-old widow, Blanche Carr. But in the 1939 Register, she is living with one of her daughters, who is a solicitor’s clerk, but not with her husband (although she is still listed as married rather than widowed). Minnie never married and moved in later years to Somerset. She died in March 1964 aged 88. Mary lived until 1974 when she was over 100.

But Mary and Minnie Holmes were not the only women other than Edith Borissow to whom Ranji became very close. There was another recipient of his affections. In the 1920s, he rented a castle in Ireland at Connemara where he used to indulge his love of fishing and escape the stresses of his life as Jam Sahib. Among his entourage when he first arrived in 1924 was his old friend, cricketing colleague and occasional secretary C. B. Fry. There was also Mrs Margaret Williams, his “companion”. She may have been his nurse, or she may have been something else.

She is discussed in Ranji: Maharajah of Connemara by Anne Chambers, of which I have to date been unable to find a copy. From what I can gather, Chambers says that Mrs Williams was with Ranji for 13 years (which would presumably mean from 1920 until his death in 1933), although she originally appeared to suggest that “Mrs Williams” was a pseudonym for Edith Borissow. Simon Wilde, summarising the story in a 2016 article in The Nightwatchman, says that Mrs Williams also travelled with Ranji to Geneva when he participated in the League of Nations in the early 1920s. Wilde suggests: “It is likely that their relationship was based more on companionship than anything more amorous.”

According to an anonymous reply to a blog review of Chambers’ book, Ranji may have met Mrs Williams while staying at her guest house Crossways in South Wales. Another reply indicates that she “ran off” with him. But there is a more verifiable connection as well. Ranji’s doctor while he was in India was a man known as Prosser Thomas, who wrote about Ranji’s death for English newspapers. An obituary for Thomas’ mother in 1934 revealed his sister to be “Mrs Owen Williams of Porthcawl, formerly of Crossways” (Wilde, summarising Ranji: Maharajah of Connemara, says that Mrs Williams was Prosser Thomas’ niece, but they were certainly siblings).

Ranji, sitting third from the left with his head turned away, photographed in 1929 following a shoot at Swaffham Priory; Prosser Thomas is standing second from the left at the back (Image: The Sketch, 23 October 1929)

Prosser Thomas (born as Ebenezer William Prosser Thomas in 1901) was the youngest child of David Prosser Thomas and Mary Ann Rees, the latter of whom went on to become a widely-travelled novelist. His sister Margaret was born in 1897 and married Owen Williams in 1917. It may be, as suggested by someone called David Reilly at the blog review, that this was an “arranged marriage” for the benefit of her family. It is likely Ranji met Margaret when travelling with her brother. She would have been in her early 20s when they met. Interestingly, Margaret’s mother wrote romantic novels under the pen name “Alice Eustace” for Mills and Boon. One of these, Flame of the Forest (1927), featured the theme of mixed-race marriages (and their impossibility) in an Indian setting; it even had a dedication to Ranji “in memory of a very happy visit”.

It may be that Mrs Williams was the housekeeper who caused Ranji to have a hidden corridor built into his home in India, rather than Edith Borissow. She may also be the most likely candidate for the marble bust identified by Simon Wilde. It is not entirely clear what happened to her – a Margaret Williams of approximately the correct age died in London in 1976, but from the information available there is no evidence this is the same woman.

Despite these recent theories that Edith Borissow was not Ranji’s main romantic attachment through his life, the story appears relatively straightforward. Ranji had some kind of relationship with three women in succession: Mary Holmes (and possibly her sister) in the 1890s; Edith Borissow from 1900 to 1920; and Margaret Williams from 1920 until his death in 1933. This would certainly fit the facts that we have. But maybe matters were not so simple.

In 2014, a story emerged that Ranji may have had an illegitimate son – immediately given up for adoption –with Edith Borissow. Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times told the story of Bernard Beardmore, who was born in 1897. He had told his grandson Sean – who was interviewed in the report – that he was Ranji’s son and had been given up for adoption through a “reverend”. He also said that “his mother tried to come and see him as a young boy but he didn’t want to see her. She was well dressed, perhaps middle to upper class.” Beardmore’s great granddaughter Catherine Richardson told Wilde: “Various bits of information have been passed down through the family about my great-grandad but the story with us was always that Ranji was his father – no doubt about it.”

Bernard Beardmore, date unknown, in a photograph accompanying the Times article of 2014 (Image: via The Times)

Wilde also records: “Lord Hawke, the Yorkshire and England cricket captain who lobbied for the inclusion of his Indian-born friend in the team, wrote Beardmore several letters and is understood to have informed him of Ranji’s death in April 1933, aged 60.” Sean Beardmore said: “What was striking was that Lord Hawke always seemed to know where my grandfather was. We don’t know the full story behind what happened. Pieces of the puzzle are missing but the circumstantial evidence points to Edith Borissow being the mother and I’m sure any DNA test would show a connection with Ranji.”

Wilde adds some more circumstantial evidence to support the claim: Bernard Beardmore’s birth certificate says that he was born at 2 Hanover Square in Bradford on 22 May 1897. His mother is listed as someone called Kirk and the father’s name is blank. Edith Borissow had an uncle living in Bradford at the time who was a merchant; the owner of 2 Hanover Square (which had no-one called Kirk living there) was also a merchant. Bernard was adopted by Paul Beardmore, a Bradford shoemaker, but his grandchildren claim that Edith Borissow “made several unsuccessful attempts to see her son.”

Some of this can be checked, using the only source which might help – the 1901 census. This reveals that Edith’s uncle, Albert Borissow was then a commercial salesman (he had been listed a merchant on the 1891 census) who lived in the Manningham area of Bradford at 2 Camden Terrace, a 10 minute walk down Manningham Lane from where Bernard Kirk/Beardmore was born. In the same census, 2 Hanover Square is the home of Michael Trueman, a retired Fellmonger; living with him were his wife – a dressmaker – and four adult children. There were also three female boarders (none of whom were called Kirk) – a 43-year-old piano and singing teacher from Reading, and two “fancy drapery saleswomen” in their twenties, one from Ramsgate and one from Hull. The Trueman family lived at the same address in 1891, although with no boarders on that date, which makes them the likely inhabitants of the house in 1897. It is not a stretch to conclude that Bernard Beardmore’s mother, whoever she was, lodged there at the time of his birth.

Meanwhile, Bernard Beardmore is listed as Bernard Kirk, the adopted son of a 38-year-old shoemaker called Paul Beardmore, living at 2 Weston Street, around a mile from Hanover Square in Mannigham. He and his wife Jane also had another adopted son, the 12-year-old Samuel Beecroft. On the 1911 census, the Beardmore family have moved house, but still live together; Samuel is married (although his wife is not there) and has a 6-month-old son. Interestingly, he and Bernard are now listed as Beardmore, but whoever filled in the census form (probably Paul) had listed their original surnames before crossing them out.

A follow-up article by Wilde in The Nightwatchman in 2016 fills in a little more detail: how Beardmore became an apprentice welder and boiler maker, and how his mother twice waited at the factory gates to see him, only for him to refuse. How Lord Hawke wrote several letters to him, even after he later moved south, away from Bradford and how Hawke helped to hide the fact that Ranji had an illegitimate son.

Ranji, seated with his parrot Popsy, photographed sometime between 1908 and 1915. The woman seated with him could be Edith Borissow (Image: From Ranji Prince of Cricketers (1983) by Alan Ross).

Wilde also reports that Bernard himself believed that Ranji was his father. Wilde suggests, from comparing photographs, that there was a resemblance between Bernard and Ranji. Certainly, other photographs of Bernard which are available on the Ancestry website do look rather like Ranji; and perhaps it is possible to read too much into a photograph, but there also seems to be a resemblance around Bernard’s eyes in these photographs to the woman pictured with Ranji in the 1910s who may well be Edith Borissow.

Therefore, the family rumour that Bernard Beardmore was the son of Ranji and Edith is supported by some otherwise strange coincidences. While family stories are not always reliable, there is quite a degree of certainty in this one; that, and the circumstantial support, make it – although it cannot be a proven – a strong possibility.

How does this fit into our timeline of Ranji? Beardmore was born in May 1897, which would place a relationship between Ranji and Edith Borissow – if they were indeed his parents – in August 1896. As it happens, Ranji played first-class cricket every possible day in July and August 1896, apart from Sundays, when there was never any play at the time. In the middle of July, he made his England debut in the second Test against Australia (when he scored a century), and at the beginning of August he was in Bristol and Taunton with the Sussex team. Near the end of August, he played at Nottingham. Otherwise, he was playing in London or Brighton throughout this period. His form throughout August was spectacularly good, following the euphoria of his England debut. Did he perhaps celebrate with the Borissow family at some point? Could there also be a connection with the fact that Mary Holmes became engaged in 1896?

The season ended for him at Hove on 2 September, although he played a non-first-class match in the middle of September at Reigate. At the time, he still lived at the boarding house of Tom Barnes on Sidney Street, Cambridge. However, it is not certain where he lived during the cricket season; Cambridge is 120 miles from Brighton. The indication in Wild’s book is that he spent his summers living in Brighton. A Sheffield Independent article in September 1896 says that Ranji was living at the Norfolk Hotel in Brighton during the cricket season.

In the 1990 biography, Simon Wilde gives some background to Ranji’s cricket in 1896: at the time, he was in considerable financial difficulty. Also, after the season, he spent much of the winter living with a landowner, Henry Wright, at Royston and recuperating from a serious illness. In the Nightwatchman, Wilde speculates that this – and his subsequent travels in Europe with C. B. Fry in 1897 – was connected to Ranji’s discovery that Edith was pregnant: “It is probably no coincidence that in the months that followed he made himself scarce.” However, the same Sheffield Independent article suggests that he was already shooting at Royston (which is where he was taken ill, presumably after this) on 22 September. Later, he and Fry returned in time for the 1897 season, which Ranji began in excellent form. On the day Bernard Beardmore was born, he scored 55 in a losing cause for Sussex against Surrey.

If the story of Bernard Beardmore is true, it would appear to reinforce the idea that Edith Borissow was main object of his affections for most of his life, and perhaps the cause of his unhappiness in later years. But unfortunately, as with so much of this story, we cannot know for certain.