Claude Makaula-White photographed in 1915 (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)
As the 1928 tour of England by the West Indies cricket team drew to a close, some of the visiting team played a one-day match that wasn’t part of the official programme. On 28 September, a team styled the “West Indies” played a Bolton Cricket League team at Piggott Park in Farnworth, a town near Bolton. The game was organised to raise money for the Social Circle Club by a man called Dr Lucas. The match was not taken too seriously by anyone — Learie Constantine scored 65 in 18 minutes (with eight fours and five sixes) in the West Indies’ brief second innings, when they scored 102 for four in eight overs — but the crowd of fewer than 2,000 was a disappointment. Nevertheless, although the game received hardly any coverage in the English press, it represented something unusual because only the non-white members of the West Indies team played, and the side was captained by Constantine. To fill the vacancies in the eleven, local players were recruited, but it is possible that they were not white either, implying some form of conscious decision by either the team-members or the organisers. For example, one of the reinforcements was a man called K. Narayansingh, about whom no information is available except that he took part in a tour of Scotland organised by Constantine the following year, when the press referred to him as a West Indian cricketer. Another recruit was a man listed as C. A. V. Makaula; he scored a duck batting at number eight and took three for 21 with the ball. More is known about Makaula than Narayansingh. He was actually South African and although he never quite made it as a cricketer, he played professionally for a time. And his story — and that of his family — is a remarkable one.
To understand the story of Claude Makaula, it is necessary to begin with his father, the man who came to be known as Albert Makaula-White. He had been born in what is today part of South Africa in 1865. His father — Claude’s grandfather — was Chief Makaula, Inkosi (ruler or king) of the Bhaca people who lived in Mount Frere, today part of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. When Albert was a baby, he grew seriously ill; his mother, one of Chief Makaula’s wives, suggested taking him to a nearby Methodist mission to see if he could be cured. The minister of the mission was a British man called the Reverend Charles White, who lived there with his wife; they had no children. Chief Makaula said that if his son recovered, the Whites could keep him; otherwise they could bury him. In something that sounds like it belongs to the realms of fiction, the baby recovered, was adopted by the White family and renamed Albert Makaula-White. As a result of this unusual background, Albert spent part of his youth in South Africa among the Methodist community but also spent time in England. Certainly he was there around the time his adoptive father died in 1888 but returned to South Africa in 1890 when his adoptive mother was dying.
With both of his parents dead, Albert relocated to England where he began to study theology and followed in the footsteps of Charles White by becoming a Methodist minister. From October 1890 to October 1891, he attended the Richmond Theological College in Surrey. During that time, he appears to have travelled extensively around Britain, speaking to various Wesleyan groups, and lived at several addresses. His studies ended, according to the records of the Theological College, when he was “recalled” by the South African Methodist Conference. The historian Marika Sherwood, who has written about Albert Makaula-White, suggests that the conference was reluctant to continue funding the studies of an African, certainly after the death of Charles White. Therefore, Albert had to begin making arrangements to return home. In December 1891, he married Eleanor Botting, a dressmaker and the daughter of a carpenter, in Strood, Kent. The marriage certificate describes Albert as a Wesleyan Minister and described his father as a “native African chief”. Curiously, Albert’s address was in Pudsey, Yorkshire. Sherwood has tentatively identified a possible connection with that location through the Reverend Faraday, based at Pudsey’s Wesleyan Chapel, who was a former missionary in Africa and had lived in Kent for a time; perhaps he knew Albert from one or both of those locations and had invited him to stay with him after leaving the College.
Quite how a mixed marriage would have been received in 1891 is hard to say, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that reactions would have been positive. Racism was widespread in Britain and other marriages between white English women and black Africans generated hostile reactions in newspapers. This might have been the explanation for a very strange and apparently false story printed in a local newspaper at the time of Albert’s marriage, which suggested that he had failed to arrive for the wedding. But the event certainly took place; there is just a hint that Eleanor Botting’s family either approved of the relationship or had at least accepted it, because two of their number were listed as witnesses on the marriage certificate. Perhaps there was social cachet in having the son of an “African chief” in the family.
Not long after the wedding, Albert returned to South Africa; he was followed a few months later by his wife. They found a country changing rapidly and perhaps already becoming unrecognisable from the one in which Albert was raised by the White family. An influx of speculators and investors from Britain, chasing the newly discovered gold and diamonds of South Africa had changed the demographics and accelerated a hardening of racist attitudes, such as the denial of votes to non-white residents the passing of laws that restricted the rights of the native population. Mount Frere, renamed KwaBhaca, had grown, filled with white settlers such as lawyers, traders, government officials and a detachment of soldiers. It would have been a very different life for Eleanor Botting; according to Sherwood: “On arrival, the couple were housed in one of the ‘rondavels’ (a round one-room ‘hut’ with thatch roofing) in the Chief’s ‘Great Place’, with fresh water in the nearby stream and certainly no electricity.” Nor would Eleanor have been too popular with the white population owing to her marriage to Albert.
Soon after, Albert and Eleanor moved around fifty miles, to a town called Idutwya, where he worked an Assistant Clerk and interpreter, receiving a salary of £120. When Cecil Rhodes visited Chief Makaula in 1894, Albert was the interpreter. And it was during this period that he and Eleanor had their three children: Irene Dorothy Frances (1893), Charles Frederick Clifton (1897) and Claude Albert Vivian (1898 or 1899). All three were born in Idutwya, but in 1899 Albert was promoted to “chief constable” and the family moved to Libode. Albert’s new role meant that he was the interpreter for a local magistrate and a kind of pseudo-valet who was also responsible for collecting “hut tax” for the government. In August 1901 he again acted as an interpreter for his father when the Duke of York visited Cape Town. But that December, Albert was charged with seizing goods from a hut-tax payer who had been unable to pay cash; he pleaded “guilty under provocation” and lost his job. An appeal was unsuccessful and he turned down an offer of work around 60 miles away that would have separated him from his family. Sherwood suggests that racism was at play in both his dismissal and the refusal of the appeal. But the loss of his job was the likely motivation for his decision in 1904 to take his family back to England.
Therefore Claude moved to England around the age of five; although we do not know if he ever returned to South Africa, he certainly remained in England for the rest of his life. It is unclear what the family’s intentions were, but Albert soon began working as a farmer, despite a lack of previous experience. Nor is it clear whether Albert immediately worked on his own account or was employed by someone else, but by the time of the 1911 census — when the family lived at Stubble Hill in Harrietsham, Kent — he was listed as an “employer” (i.e. other people worked for him) and worked as a “small farmer”. Soon after, the family moved to Rose Lawn in Margate. Albert lived a quiet life as a farmer until early 1928, when the RSPCA took him to court for neglecting the pigs on his farm; there appears to have been a misunderstanding over who would feed the pigs in snowy weather, and he was fined £10. However, the story ignited interest in him and he was interviewed about his life in the local newspaper; the resulting article appeared in abbreviated form around the world, telling of how the “Zulu [sic] chief’s son” was working as a farmer in Kent. In later years, he suffered financial difficulty and noted rising prejudice on account of his race. He died in 1937.
Charles Makaula-White in an undated photograph (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)
It is possible to trace Claude and his brother Charles after they settled in England. They are listed as being at (an unnamed) school on the 1911 census under the surname Makaula-White (Irene was visiting the family of William and Harriet Day, and was listed as Irene White). But from around 1913, possibly a little sooner, the two brothers attended Kent College, a Methodist school in Canterbury. We do not know if they attended as boarders (although this is quite likely), nor if they joined the school at the same time, nor precisely when they left. Whether through their choice or that of the school, the “Makaula” part of their name was dropped on school records and they were simply known as “White”.
Where the two boys finally become more than simply names on a page is on the sports field. By 1914, both featured in the first eleven of the school cricket team; both were bowlers, although Charles was more of an all-rounder, possessing a solid defence. Yet Claude, according to the school magazine, was at times devastating: “His bowling figures hardly do him justice, and at times he has bowled with wretched luck”. It described him as having “the makings of a good fast bowler”, “a very sound field, sometimes brilliant” and being “responsible for much of our success in boys’ matches” (i.e. games against other schools). If Charles improved with bad and ball in 1915, Claude suffered something of a falling off with the ball, losing some of his accuracy, but improving as a batter. It was at this point that both Charles and Claude seem to have left school, so we hear no more about their progress. But both seem to have excelled in at least one other sport; there is a photograph of Charles in what appears to be the school football team, and of Claude in the school hockey team.
The Kent College cricket team in 1915. Back row: Mr Hargreaves, F. Amos, F. W. H. Bunting, Mr Brownscombe, R. Robertson, L Poulter, H. Juniper, Middle row: C. A. [Claude] White [sic], B. A. Castle, C. F. C. [Charles] White [sic], A. C. Horrell. On floor: E. A. Coleman, W. E. Watson, A. R. Skinner. (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)
It is worth dwelling a little longer on Charles. In later years, he played local cricket for Eythorne as a batter, but also played football for Dover United in 1928. Also that year he played one match for Kent Club and Ground; this might imply a trial for the county groundstaff rather than any suggestion that he was on Kent’s books. Did he want to play sport professionally? It is likely that he was talented enough; did reservations about his colour hold him back? Or perhaps his ambitions never lay in that direction because in later years he worked as a shepherd, according to a local obituary, and won prizes at county shows. He wanted to be a farmer but was never able to own a farm; he eventually became a miner until retiring in his sixties. One who worked with him recalled how he was “very popular with his workmates and in more lighthearted moments would tease them about his chieftain father”. He continued to play cricket for his local village. His son John was killed in an accident, aged just 25, in May 1950 while taking part in practices for the Isle of Man TT, and Charles was never quite the same afterwards. He died in 1976.
As for Claude, it is not entirely certain, assuming that he left Kent College in 1915, what he did for the next few years because the next certain trace of him comes in 1919, when he began to work for an auctioneers, Honeyball and Finn, in Deal, Kent, while continuing to live with his father. He was an articled clerk and responsible for handling large amounts of money but after failing to pass his examinations, he remained with the firm as an “improver” at a nominal salary of 25 shillings per week in order to study for another attempt. In July 1920, he chose to join another firm in Canterbury. But an audit of the Honeyball and Finn finances revealed that Makaula-White had been taking money from the firm. When confronted by a police officer, Claude not only admitted the charge but confessed to stealing a total of around £375 between August 1919 and May 1920. He used some of the money to buy a motorbike, but lost other amounts through stock investments and the purchase of pigs. His arrest and adjourned initial hearing in January 1921 was reported in the local press; the Thanet Advertiser used the headline “Sportsman Arrested” and called him “a well-known Thanet sportsman”. He was bailed until a hearing before the Recorder (which received no press coverage) in March 1921. He pleaded guilty to five counts of larceny (charges of “making false entries” were dropped) and was sentenced to five months imprisonment. He served his sentence at HMP Canterbury, and was listed as an inmate there on the 1921 census. This revealed that he had lost his job as a managing clerk after his imprisonment, and was a British resident but did not have British nationality.
Bowling Old Lane Cricket Ground in an undated photograph (Image: Bradford Sports History)
It was after his release that Claude seems to have decided to attempt a career in cricket. He spent the 1922 season in Bradford, playing for Bowling Old Lane, a club in the Bradford cricket League. At the time, the Bradford League was one of the most prestigious in England. Through being the only cricket league to continue employing professionals during the First World War, it had attracted some of the biggest names in English cricket. For a time in the early 1920s, alongside the Lancashire League, it was a serious counter-attraction to county cricket until the counties increased their wages beyond a point with which the Bradford League — a declining attraction by then — could compete. Nevertheless, some of the professionals in 1922 included the England Test cricketer Sydney Barnes and several players on the fringes of the Yorkshire cricket team. Claude — having dropped “White” from his name and listed as C. A. V. Makaula — seems to have only been with the club for one season. An article in The Athletic mistakenly called him “the Old Laner’s West Indian recruit” but he was successful, playing regularly and although his overall figures are not known, he took at least five wickets in an innings on three occasions. He was almost certainly playing as a professional — his family continued to live in Kent and there was no obvious other reason for him to be in Bradford. And if there is no indication of how he came to join Bowling Old Lane, perhaps there was some connection with his father’s acquaintances in Pudsey (a town with two clubs in the Bradford League); or maybe he had simply offered his services to a range of clubs because his school record would have been appealing to prospective employers, particularly if he was still a fast bowler.
We can be fairly sure that Claude was the only non-white player in the Bradford League at the time; there had been black and Asian players in club and county cricket before the war, but they were a rarity in the professional leagues. Only Charlie Llewellyn, who had appeared for Undercliffe during the war and who might have been mixed race (although he always denied it, and despite the suggestion in later years that there were rumours about his ethnicity, he generally seems to have “passed” as white), had appeared in the Bradford League or its main rival the Lancashire League. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the growth of West Indian cricket inspired several clubs to sign black players, but when Claude was playing for Bowling Old Lane, there had not been a West Indian visit to England for sixteen years.
Charlie Llewellyn (Image: Wikipedia)
Despite Claude’s apparent success, he was not retained at Bowling Old Lane, nor does he seem to have ever played for any other Bradford League clubs. Although he had not given up on his ambitions to be a professional cricketer, he returned to the family home in Kent, where he was tangentially involved in another criminal case in 1923 when his father prosecuted a man called William Samuel Barnard for stealing a bicycle and eleven silver spoons that belonged to Claude. The man had come to know Albert Makaula-White during the war, when Barnard was based at Manston Aerodrome, and he had visited the family home several times. In court, Barnard claimed to know nothing of the spoons, to have only borrowed the bicycle and to have left a note explaining such. He also claimed that Claude’s sister, Irene Makaula-White, had ordered him to leave the house and threatened to kill him (he unsuccessfully requested a protection order). Even though Barnard was found with pawn tickets for spoons, and had left the bicycle in at a garage for repair, and despite his apparently openly mocking and jocular tone in court, the case was dismissed. Barnard also claimed that he had been heading to Harrow School to work as a cricket coach, and that he had been in hospital until recently “with a serious breakdown”. This latter suggestion might explain why no further action was taken as he might not have been a well man.
Around this time, Irene had begun an unusual career of her own. During the war, she had performed songs at Manston Aerodrome (where she might have met Barnard) and by 1920 she was advertising as a dance instructor, listing herself as a pupil of Mrs Leslie, the President of the London Teachers’ Dancing Association, By 1928, according to a report in a South African newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, she was performing in the London Pavilion as part of the chorus in Ol’ Man River. The report said that she had entered the theatre after “a recent heavy financial loss in the family.” But she had something of a talent for publicity. She — or someone on her behalf — also advertised as “Princess Irene”, the daughter of a “Zulu king” who supposedly sent her to Europe for her education. In the 1930s, she also spent time in France working as a “theatrical artist”. By the mid-1930s, she was claiming in the People newspaper that she could cure rheumatism with the touch of her hands. Although we do not know how successful any of her ventures were, she seems to have achieved a minor celebrity status. In later years, her path would cross once more with that of Claude.
As for Claude, after leaving Bowling Old Lane he seems to have returned to farming. He is listed on the Electoral Register at Godhead Farm in 1924, and in 1925 Poverest Farm in St Mary Cray, is listed as ‘Makaula-White & Son’. But this might only have been a stop-gap because he seems to have moved into cricket coaching; the same 1928 report that described his sister as appearing on stage in the Daily Dispatch said that Claude was a “well-known cricket coach in Dublin”. His daughter believed that this was a role at a school, and certainly becoming a school coach was an attractive option for professional cricketers who could not make it at the top level, or who could not find a well-paying club. Around the same time, he made a serious attempt to break into the Lancashire League, by that stage the premier club completion in England. In May 1927, still playing under the name C. A. V. Makaula, he was given a trial by East Lancashire Cricket Club during their match against Bacup after their usual professional, Ralph Whitehead, was absent with a torn muscle. According to the Athletic News (which mistakenly called Claude an Anglo-Indian), “the crowd was interested in his league appearance, and in his short stay he did well.” He scored 11 not out, batting at number four, before rain washed the match out. In 1928, he played twice in July for Rishon (one of many professionals the team tried that season) and did fairly well: he took four for 60 (and scored a duck) against Church and scored 26 and took three for 70 against Rawtenstall.
These appearances attracted some notice in the press. For example after the first match, the Accrington Observer and Times said: “Makaula, a West African, who has recently held a coaching engagement in Ireland, was engaged as professional, [which] invested the game at Rishton. on Saturday, with no little interest … In the professional for the day, however, one was not disapointed. A powerfully built man, he was obviously the most conspicuous man on the field, but his whole demeanour was pleasing.” The writer continued:
“A right arm medium to fast bowler, he is the posessor of a very easy action, and he swerved the ball beautifully into the wickets. Though he only took four wickets at a cost of 60 runs he ought to have had six, for two catches were dropped. Unfortunately he did not shine as a batsman, being out to his fifth ball without scoring, but one got the idea from his stance at the wickets that he would indeed be a powerful hitter if he got going. I understand that the idea of bringing Makaula over from Ireland was that he should be given a trial with a view to being signed on as professional for the rest of the season. Although one would not like to commit oneself after seeing his one performance, one might easily say that the Rishton officials could go much further and fare worse.”
A follow-up feature written before his second match noted that he was engaged at Sallins, a town in County Kildare, Ireland, but that the Rishton committee had not yet made an offer (although a suggestion a few sentences later that “no agreement was arrived at” could be interpreted to say that Makaula-White had not accepted the terms offered). This is the only indication of where he had been based in Ireland, and there is no explanation of what drew him there.
After the second match, the same newspaper noted: “Chief interest in the match [against Rawtenstall] from Rishton’s point of view, lay in the appearance and performance of Makaula, a West African, who has recently held a coaching engagement in Ireland, and although his debut was not of the most favourable kind he gave ample indication that granted the opportunity to accustom himself more to Lancashire League Cricket he will certainly improve the Rishton side. What the committee think, however, regarding the appointment of a new professional remains yet to be seen.” He had another two catches dropped but played “some lovely strokes” in his 26. Ten days after the Rawtenstall match, the Todmorden and District News noted that Rishton were still seeking a professional but that their financial worries restricted what they were able to do, even though they were at the bottom of the league. It appeared that the club were still attempting to sign Claude, but nothing further was done.
Although this was the limit of Claude Makaula’s Lancashire League experience, like he had been in the Bradford League, he was one of the first non-white players in the competition; Llewellyn had preceded him there, as he had in Bradford, and even while Claude was playing for Rishton, the Nelson Committee were in pursuit of the signature of Learie Constantine. Perhaps Claude’s novelty was what brought him to the attention of those who organised the match between the touring West Indies team and the Bolton Cricket League. The game was the idea of Dr Vincent St Claire Lucas, a Trinidadian doctor who lived in Bolton. Whether it was Lucas or Constantine who invited Makaula-White is uncertain. Nor do we know if Makaula-White played professionally for any other teams; there were several lower profile leagues, such as the Central Lancashire League and the Bolton League, but it is likely that the novelty of a “West African” playing would have attracted local press attention and there is no evidence of that.
After this, Claude disappears from the records until his entry on the 1939 Register, taken on the outbreak of the Second World War. It listed him as living at Tenterden, Kent, with his mother and sister (“studying for professional singer”; she gave her birthday as 6 August 1903, taking around nine years off her age). The record gave his date of birth as 7 April 1897 and he was listed as a “feeding stuffs salesman”. All three family members had dropped the “White” part of their surname and were listed purely as “Makaula”.
At Maidstone in 1942, Claude married Iris Hadlow, a 33 year old woman who lived with her parents and worked in the local post office. The following year, their only child Joan was born (registered as Joan Makaula). They lived on St Luke’s Road in Maidstone from 1945 until 1967, and Irene lived with them until 1949, perhaps after their mother died in 1944. During the war, Claude worked as an ambulance driver and served in the ARP service. After the war, Joan recalled that he had “various jobs”, usually involving driving lorries, until he began working as a mechanic in a garage. She also recalled that he had an “abiding interest” in cricket and played until not long before his death. An obituary in the Kent Messenger said that he had worked “for 20 years as a servicing operator for Miles of Maidstone”, which was a distributor for Leyland Light Commercials. And, after Irene had become a naturalised British citizen in July 1962, Claude followed suite, receiving his certificate of naturalisation in June 1963.
Claude died in Maidstone, aged 68, in October 1965. Three years later, his sister Irene died. His wife lived until 1988. The extraordinary story of him and his family was largely forgotten until Marika Sherwood (assisted by Gillian Rickard) began to research Albert Makaula-White around 2000, resulting in a book published in 2012, The Life and Times of Albert Makaula-White, an African Farmer in Kent 1904–1937. But the story of Claude’s connection with cricket, briefly mentioned by Sherwood, was never followed up. Which is unfortunate because it is a story that touches on many issues, including that of the restrictions placed on non-white cricketers in South Africa in this period and the country’s all-white Test team. His sadly unrecorded experiences growing up in England and attending a Methodist school in the mid-1910s would be a fascinating topic even had he never picked up a cricket bat. His family experienced racism, and his father was one of the few people to speak out about it. And Claude became one of the first non-white cricketers to appear in league cricket, just before the explosion of interest in black cricketers inspired by the success of Learie Constantine (whom Claude must have known). Ironically, had he tried again a few years later, the desire to emulate Nelson Cricket Club’s initiative with Constantine might have allowed him to pursue the professional career in the sport that he so clearly wished for.
Note: Thanks to Marika Sherwood who kindly provided a copy of her work on Albert Makaula-White, without provided invaluable background for this article.
Old Ebor 
