“How good would he have been?”: The Revisionist Legacy of Fuller Pilch

Fuller Pilch in 1852 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Anyone who ventures into a forum for cricket fans, or browses the cricket sections of Reddit will be familiar with the sometimes bitter and rancorous arguments over who were the greatest players of all, and the related debate regarding whether cricketers of today are better or worse than those of earlier times. Is Virat Kohli is better than Sachin Tendulkar? Is Jimmy Anderson the greatest English bowler of all time? Was cricket better twenty years ago? Or thirty years ago? Or forty years ago? The answers to these fraught questions often depend on who is asking, but discussion can — and often does — become heated very quickly. As ever, this apparently modern phenomenon is nothing new; tension between past and present has been a feature of cricket since its very earliest days. It is perfectly illustrated by changing opinions on Fuller Pilch, the best batter in the world from the 1820s until the mid-1850s. When he emerged, he was merely viewed as a successor to William Fennex. By the time he retired, he was regarded as the greatest player of all time and the originator of the whole style of “forward play”, especially the forward defensive shot. And within fifty years, he had become a lightning rod in the debate between those who thought cricket (personified by W. G. Grace and his scoring feats) had improved since Pilch’s time and those who thought it was not the sport it used to be.

Perhaps the only difference between modern debate and the case of Pilch is that when he was at his peak, no-one seriously questioned his greatness and most writers believed he was the best batter to play the game. While his first-class batting average of 18.61 might appear underwhelming, it was one of the best of the period in which he played, when wickets were uniformly difficult. Earlier players might have boasted better statistical returns —William Beldham, who played from 1787 to 1821, averaged 21.47 in matches that modern historians have adjudged first-class; Frederick Beauclerk averaged 24.96 between 1791 and 1825 ; William Lambert averaged 27.65 between 1801 and 1817 — but these players faced lob bowling in a period when run scoring became much easier as batting equipment and technique improved. The introduction of round-arm bowling, often delivered at a pace which had never been previously encountered, meant that scores and averages plummeted from the 1820s, just as Pilch began to establish himself. Therefore, there was little doubt in the mind of his contemporaries that Pilch raised batting to a point which had never been reached before.

An illustration of a cricket match at Lewes in 1816, from a book by William Lambert (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In many ways, the game that Pilch played was completely different to that played by Beauclerk or Beldham or Lambert. And it was just as dissimilar to the modern sport, making direct comparisons impossible. He played an astonishingly long time ago in cricket terms; his “first-class debut” (which to his contemporaries would merely have been his first appearance in a major match) was over 200 years ago, and he was at his peak before Victoria became queen of England. In fact, he made his debut (at the age of sixteen) only seven months after the death of George III. For a little further context, the Napoleonic Wars only ended five years before he made his debut. And by the time he was signed to play for Kent in 1836, cricket had transformed through the legalisation of round-arm bowling (which had been the dominant form of bowling for some time, despite its official illegality). But overarm bowling was still thirty years from legalisation; pads and gloves were a rarity; there were no fours or sixes because all hits had to be run on grounds without boundaries; and there was no county competition or even a recognised structure to the games played.

Fortunately for us, in this time cricket had also become the subject for books and newspapers and therefore we can begin to capture the high regard in which Pilch was held, and discern something about the technique which allowed him to succeed. Ironically, even this first cricket writing was often nostalgic, looking back to an idyllic past, such as John Nyren’s The Cricketers of My Time (first published in 1832 but republished various times afterwards), which was about players from the turn of the nineteenth century. The elegiac tone suggested that cricket was even then “not what it used to be”, but according to John Bruce Payne in the 1896 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, Nyren (who died in 1837) “used to say that Pilch’s play almost reconciled him to round-arm bowling”.

Yet writers continued to hark back, and to help their audience comprehend the appeal of the old players, used Pilch as a comparison point. When James Pycroft published The Cricket Field in 1851, just as Pilch’s career was drawing to a close, referred to famous old players as being “as often mentioned as Pilch and [George] Parr by our boys now” and discussed men “who, at the end of the last century, represented the Pilch, the Parr, the [Ned] Wenman [a famous wicket-keeper contemporary to Pilch], and the [John] Wisden of the present day.” And there is just the slightest hint of the attitude that survives among old players to this day, that the modern cricketer was not as good, because Pycroft related how the old Hambledon player William Fennex used to claim that he taught Pilch to bat. Pycroft was not convinced though, and observed that “all great performers appear to have brought the secret of their excellence into the world along with them, and are not the mere puppets of which others pull the strings — Fuller Pilch may think he rather coincided with, than learnt from, William Fennex.”

Therefore, even Pilch was compared (and perhaps in the case of Fennex’s claim, not always favourably) with players who had come before. But his excellence also commanded examination. And, in that time long before video replays and the use of analysts, we can see that Pilch and his contemporaries were technically very astute and could adapt their games as required. For example Pilch — who later worked as a groundsman himself — was very aware of the need to tame the pitches on which he batted. His entry in the modern Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, written by Gerald Howat, states that when Pilch was playing for William Clarke’s All England Eleven, he “[took] his own scythe to cut some of the rough pitches encountered in matches against ‘odds’ up and down the land.” Although he often batted (in the style of the time) wearing a top-hat, when he was dismissed when a ball knocked the hat onto his wicket, he stopped wearing one. And he used a bat specially adapted with a short handle to favour his own batting technique.

But more interesting for the growing number of cricket writers was the way in which he batted. And in the latter half of his career, before his retirement in 1855, there was no doubt about his greatness. In 1844, the journalist William Dennison wrote in Sketches of Players that Pilch “as a bat, has been one of the brightest luminaries of the cricket world, during the last 20 years … There has been no man, having played as many matches, who has approached him in effectiveness and safety of style, or in the number of runs he has obtained. His vast length of reach and powers of smothering a ball by his ‘forward’ play, the brilliancy of his ‘cuts’ on either side of the ‘point’ and into the ‘slips,’ and the severity of the punishment he administers to the ‘leg,’ have all and each, over and over again, caused a spontaneous ebullition of applause to burst forth from the spectators in every part of the field whereon his feats have been displayed.”

Charles Box, in The Cricketer’s Manual (1848), said quite a lot about Pilch. He noted how in one game, a journalist wrote of his sympathy for the Nottinghamshire fielders on a hot day as Pilch scored 61 not out for Kent: “Pilch took his place at the stumps, as usual, as the third man, and at the third ball wrote down three with a leg hit. But what of this — threes, fours, and fives appear as easy for him to get, as ’tis for us to write about them.” During the innings, “he was despatching the ball to the extreme limits of the ground, at all points of the compass, just when, where, and how he pleased”. The author jocularly observed: “All attempts to get him out were as futile as the endeavour to catch a leviathan with a lady’s reticule, or to pull the sun out of heaven with a silken halter.” He added, none-too-seriously: “We denounce Pilch as a ‘merciless tyrant,’ when at the wicket.” Box himself wrote admiringly: “As a batsman Pilch has ever been regarded as a model; few, if any, approach him in brilliancy, finish, safety and effect; his mode of cutting the ball into the slips, on either side of the point, and above all his ‘forward play,’ is so peculiar that ‘None but himself can be his parallel.’ At ‘cover point,’ the spot usually occupied by him in the field, he is equalled by few, excelled by none.”

Later writers, looking back in reminiscence, added more to the discussion of Pilch’s excellent technique. Frederick Gale, who wrote The Game of Cricket in 1887, recalled Pilch giving him batting tips in 1845, when he recommended keeping the bat straight, discussed technique, stance and what guard to take on the stumps. He suggested waiting until being set in an innings before driving balls wide on the off-side, and noted that he preferred not to go hard at the ball. Instead, he played for gaps in the field (“it is safer, though less showy”). In 1899, William Caffyn (who played against Pilch in the 1840s and 1850s) stated in Seventy-One Not Out: “His attitude at the wicket was perfect, keeping both legs very straight … He played forward a great deal, and his bat went down the wicket like the pendulum of a clock … His best hit was one in front of cover-point. I do not think anyone ever excelled him in this stroke. He was a powerful driver when the ball came to him, but did not leave his ground much.”

But if he was famous for any particular shot, it was for his ability to reach forward to the ball and “smother” it; in other words for his forward defensive shot, something that no-one else had quite perfected before. Scores and Biographies in 1862 called Pilch “the best batsman that has ever yet appeared”, and explained that his batting was “commanding, extremely forward” and able to stop the best bowling before it could “shoot, rise or do mischief”. In other words, he got to the pitch of the ball better than anyone had managed. The 1896 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography said: “Pilch stood six feet in height, and possessed a great reach, which he further increased by designing a bat of the regulation length but with a very short handle, allowing a corresponding gain in the blade. His style of play was entirely forward, its feature being the smothering of the ball at the pitch before the twist or rise could take effect.” Pilch told Gale that this shot became known as “Pilch’s poke” and it proved extremely effective for Kent because his teammate Ned Wenman used to play back and cut. The necessity to pitch different lengths to the two batters caused the opposition bowlers problems. But Pilch also told Gale that some bowlers used to counter his methods: Alfred Mynn, for example, used to drop the ball short and fast, making it hard for Pilch to play forward.

By the 1880s Pilch was regarded as the father of the forward defensive shot. Whether or not this was true is less important than the fact that over forty years after Pilch retired, this was the popular perception. Gale, for example, said in 1887: “Fennex, be it remembered that he inaugurated the free forward play, and taught it to Fuller Pilch, and Fuller Pilch taught the world; for I feel confident, in my own mind, that all the fine forward play which one sees now sometimes, is simply , the reflex of what Fuller Pilch developed in a manner which has never been surpassed by any living man (except W. G. [Grace]), and that, too, in days when grounds were less true, and pads and gloves were unknown.” R. H. Lyttelton wrote in his book Cricket (1898): “There is strong evidence to support the conclusion that [Pilch] was the originator of what we understand as forward play.”

Like leading players of any generation, Pilch was worshipped by many admirers. Charlie Lawrence, an English-born influential figure in early Australian cricket, told the Australasian in 1898 how during his childhood, Pilch was his idol and he once “truanted” from school in order to see him in person playing at Lord’s (a twelve to fourteen mile walk). When he finally arrived, he heard that Thomas Box, Alfred Mynn, Nicholas Felix and William Lillywhite were also playing, “but the only attraction for me was Fuller Pilch.” He never forgot seeing him practise, and modelled his own style on Pilch, even though he was dismissed first ball in the match itself. In 1902 Arthur Haygarth, who played for Sussex before achieving greater fame as a cricket historian, recalled being presented fifty years earlier with a bat by Pilch for one performance at Lord’s; he said that “to have a bat offered by Fuller Pilch at headquarters was a high honour indeed in the cricketing world generally.”

William Lillywhite (Image: Wikipedia)

Therefore it is safe to say that until the 1890s, Pilch was taken as the exemplar of batting. He had a reputation for style and elegance, and his record of ten centuries (not all of which are today recognised as first-class) was seen as exceptional at the time. In 1899, William Caffyn stated: “There have been few, in my opinion, to surpass Pilch as a batsman with style and effect combined … He not only utilised his forward play for defensive purposes, but scored from it very frequently as well.” As the Dictionary of National Biography put it: “Throughout his career he was opposed to some of the greatest bowlers that have appeared, and ranked among the finest batsmen and run-getters. There was no player to contest his supremacy until George Parr reached his prime, about 1850.” One story that appeared quite frequently was that one of the greatest achievements of William Lillywhite, a famous bowler from Pilch’s time, was to bowl sixty balls to Pilch without conceding a run, and to dismiss him from the sixty-first. And the duels between Lillywhite and Pilch acquired legendary status in later years, being used to emphasise the greatness of both players. But there is just a hint of tension. Haygarth told a story in 1902 about one match at Lord’s when he played in a team with Lillywhite against opposition that included Pilch. When Pilch came into bat, someone shouted: “Hullo Lilly, here comes your master!” Irritated, Lillywhite spun round and replied: “I wish I had as many pounds as I have got out Pilch.”

Of course, as Pilch was a professional, it was just as important to his middle and upper-class audience that he was utterly respectable, and writing (especially in later years) emphasised this. Box wrote in 1848: “Pilch possesses in a remarkable degree the inestimable property of self control; no temptation will induce him to protract the festivities of the night by which the duties of the coming day would be in jeopardy; his temper is never ruffled by trifling breezes on the one hand, nor provoked by the tornado of unruly passion on the other … He is hailed with pleasure in all circles where the game of cricket is cultivated, and in his own he is the very idol.” A tribute to Pilch in the Licensed Victuallers Gazette during the 1880s recalled “his frank, open, pleasing face and civil manners.” The Dictionary of National Biography proclaimed: “Of a kindly disposition and quaint humour, Pilch was universally respected.” William Caffyn said: “He was exceedingly good tempered, and very kind to all young players with whom he came in contact. He was a remarkably quiet man, with no conversation, and seemed never happier than when behind a churchwarden pipe, all by himself.” In 1902, the former Kent cricketer W. S. Norton (who had played alongside Pilch) told Cricket that Pilch was “a very quiet old chap [who] delighted in a sly joke, over which he would look as sober as a judge.” If it all seems too good to be true, Pilch himself backed up the idea that he lived a respectable life. He told Gale that he limited himself to “two glasses of gin-and-water” in evenings before matches, even when he was being offered drinks by friends and acquaintances: he used to tell the landlords that if someone bought him a drink, to leave out the gin so that he was secretly only drinking water.

But there was another side to Pilch that seems surprisingly modern, even if it does not perhaps reflect quite as well on him. Like many retired players, he railed against the modern game and was firmly of the school that believed cricket wasn’t what it used to be. He told Gale that “modern” (i.e. during the 1860s, before his death in 1870) cricket was played far too frequently and had become predictable. He had little positive to say about how cricket had changed. Although he thought that fielding at long stop (a position that was increasingly obsolete) had improved, he believed that modern bowling and amateur cricket was inferior to his own day. He told Gale: “There is so much swagger and dress in the cricket field now sometimes, and so much writing and squabbling with committees and secretaries and players about cricket, that I often feel that the heart of the game is going, and that very many are playing for their own glory more than for their county now. I know this, that we played for the honour of the county and the love of the game first, and, of course, the gentlemen took care of us in the second place.” Given that in his playing days, Pilch had switched counties for money, this was slightly hypocritical. He also became annoyed if alternative views were expressed, particularly when people said that cricket in his day could not have been as good: “Well, according to your own showing, if nothing was so good thirty years ago, when you came into the world, you admit that your father and mother were not so good as the fathers and mothers now.” And he was less than keen on the increasing importance of counties, suggesting that the game had “drifted into committee cricket”. In short, it would not be difficult to imagine him, had he lived in the twentieth or twenty-first century, sitting in a broadcasting studio disparaging modern cricket like certain ex-players have done: perhaps the nineteenth-century version of Fred Trueman on Test Match Special?

Also, at a time when professionals continued to fight the amateur establishment for control of English cricket (a battle that would be ultimately lost), and more and more cricket was crowded into the calendar, Pilch looked back nostalgically to his own day. He believed that, in the time before railways made travel easier, cricket matches were more of an attraction owing to their rarity, and were something of a holiday event. He recalled how professionals such as him played at the houses of “noblemen”, or sitting with the butler drinking and smoking cigars, while gamekeepers, housekeepers and ladies’ maids came in briefly. Sometimes the “young gentlemen” “came down” to “talk cricket”. He viewed this as the ideal, a time when “gentlemen were gentlemen, and players much in the same position as a nobleman and his head keeper maybe”. Such an attitude would have been viewed unfavourably by professionals such as William Clarke, and even more so by the professionals playing in the years after Pilch’s death who might have read his views when Gale published them in 1887.

But by then, Pilch’s position as the supreme batter was no longer secure. If George Parr was regarded as something of Pilch’s equal, he never quite had the same reputation and it took something exceptional to dislodge Pilch. The first shake of the tree came in the rapids improvement in the standards of pitches at the end of the nineteenth century; far more runs were scored, batting aggregates ballooned so that scoring 1,000 runs in a season became a regular occurrence, and centuries became commonplace. Suddenly, at a time when W. G. Grace was able to score a hundred hundreds, Pilch’s feats seemed puny by comparison to those who subscribed to the view that cricket was far better than it once was. For example, an 1891 article in Cricket noted that “we may feel inclined to laugh at the feat of that truly great cricketer Fuller Pilch, in scoring ten centuries, and ten only, in the course of a life-time”, even if his feats still deserved respect.

W. G. Grace in 1872 (Image: Wikipedia)

But it was the emergence of W. G. Grace in the 1870s that finally eclipsed Pilch in the minds of most cricket followers. As he accumulated scores that would have been beyond the imagination of previous generations, Pilch provided the obvious point of comparison. Most people agreed that Grace was better or had taken batting to a new level. For example, the Kent captain Lord Harris wrote in 1883: “I know there are some, who have seen both players [Grace and Pilch], and are thoroughly competent judges of the game, who assert that if Fuller Pilch had had the advantage of playing on the same perfect wickets as Mr. Grace, he would have got as many runs; and, furthermore, they maintain that some of the bowlers Pilch had to contend against were more difficult to score off than the best of the present day. That the wickets were not as good in Fuller Pilch’s day is an undoubted fact, and their unevenness undoubtedly would tend to make balls shoot, rise, and break unexpectedly; but that the bowlers of those times were more accurate I cannot believe.” A few years later, Gale wrote: “I say of my friend W. G., that he has simply perfected the art which Pilch taught, though Pilch was never such an all-round man as our present champion, to whose wonderful cricket powers have been added the activity of a cat, and the constitution of a rhinoceros, and the light-heartedness of a schoolboy.”

And yet not everyone approved of the direction that cricket had taken. Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game frequently featured interviews with old players, particularly around the turn of the century as the last survivors of Pilch’s generation were tracked down and their stories told. In 1902, Haygarth said in its pages that back in the days when Lillywhite and Pilch opposed each other, “the game was not all one-sided as it now is, for neither batting nor bowling had the upper hand. Equality prevailed always, and the science of the game was delightful to behold in consequence.” Interviewed in 1901, the former Kent player H. B. Biron said that while he was not sure what Pilch would have done in cricket of that time, “he certainly would not have left off balls alone; nor would he have paddled about with his legs when a leg-break bowler was on.”

And the historian and proto-statistician F. S. Ashley-Cooper, a regular contributor to Cricket, compiled a list of Pilch’s ten centuries in 1900. Feeling the need to defend Pilch’s record, he wrote: “To modern cricketers the above list of century-scores may seem but a small one for a man who for several years was the acknowledged champion batsman of England. But in Pilch’s day, and even more recently, run-getting was a vastly different matter to what it is to-day, and there can be no doubt that had Fuller Pilch had the opportunity of playing on billiard-table wickets he would have made scores which would have been considered large even in these days of huge scoring.” Ashley-Cooper wrote many times about the cricketers of Pilch’s time, and how they would doubtless have succeeded in conditions prevailing at the time. In fact he argued in 1900 (along with other leading cricketers) that batting had actually declined since the mid-1880s (Ashley-Cooper even resorted to the tired assertion that “the majority of those who have closely followed the game during the past few decades will probably agree”) and that “it is impossible for the present generation to realise to how great an extent the batsmen of years gone by were handicapped.” And interviewed in 1902, W. S. Norton judged that “if [Pilch] had been born later he would have rivalled W. G. himself. But cricket was quite a different game then, and it has now lost a good deal of the variety which made it so charming.”

Perhaps the most extreme reaction against modern cricket in defence of Pilch came from an anonymous correspondent to Cricket in 1896, who in response to an article on Grace wrote: “Pilch’s ten centuries were made on bad grounds, and without boundaries. Pilch played cricket, Grace plays boundary. Moreover Grace has played very many more played innings than Pilch. But comparison is impossible. There is not more difference between whist and bumblepuppy than between cricket and boundary. Put Grace on a bad ground to face [William] Clarke, [Alfred] Mynn, [John] Wisden and [Samuel] Redgate at their best, then you might talk about his wonderful comparative facts, but I don’t think you would.”

This obsession with the past, and the insistence that cricket was not what it used to be has continued to the present day, but just as it does today, the horizon shifted, leaving behind players from the more distant past. By the time of Grace’s death in 1916, there were few — if any — people alive who could remember seeing Pilch bat or discuss him with authority. And the emphasis had shifted once again. The editor of Wisden, Sydney Pardon, wrote a tribute to Grace for the 1916 almanack: “A story is told of a cricketer who had regarded Fuller Pilch as the last word in batting, being taken in his old age to see Mr Grace bat for the first time. He watched the great man for a quarter of an hour or so and then broke out into expressions of boundless delight. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘this man scores continually from balls that old Fuller would have been thankful to stop.’ The words conveyed everything. Mr Grace when he went out at the ball did so for the purpose of getting runs. Pilch and his imitators, on the other hand, constantly used forward play for defence alone.” This was not true, but by then it did not matter. Grace had replaced Pilch as the standard-bearer for “cricket is not as good as it used to be”, and he continued to be the point of comparison (and lightning rod) for all batters until the emergence of Bradman (and perhaps Hobbs).

We can never be sure how good Pilch was, or how the players of different eras would compare against each other. No-one mentions Pilch now when the names of great batters are discussed, not even those who love cricket history enough to recall Grace or Ranjitsinhji. But perhaps the way in which his reputation and legacy were continually revised — from disciple of Fennex, to the greatest in the world, to a sign that cricket was in decline, to proof that Grace was the ultimate batter — set the pattern that is still followed to this day of cricket followers seeking to either prove that their current hero is the best of all time or to argue that cricket simply isn’t as good as it used to be. Even so, perhaps whenever a forward defensive shot is played, it is worth remembering Pilch, the man who — possibly — first perfected it.

“A better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed”: How Fuller Pilch became the best batter in the world

Fuller Pilch (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In discussions of who might have been the greatest or most influential cricketers of all time, there is a tendency to favour more recent players. Most critics understandably nominate those who they have seen in person, although an exception is usually made for the inevitable Don Bradman, whose statistical dominance makes him a special case. Perhaps one or two players from earlier periods, for whom there is plenty of film available (preferably on Youtube), might warrant a mention but once discussion moves further back than living memory, former stars are usually neglected, usually accompanied by assertions that cricketers from so long ago cannot possibly have been as good as their modern counterparts. This phenomenon is intensified by the lack of statistical detail available for comparison, and a suspicion that — depending on the viewpoint of whoever is judging — it must have been easier to score runs or take wickets back in the dim and distant past. One or two aficionados might buck the trend and name older players such as Walter Hammond, Jack Hobbs or Victor Trumper, but for most cricket followers these are at best just names that they have heard. And then there is the case of someone like Ranjitsinhji, recorded by the history books as the inventor of the leg-glance (but who is perhaps even more interesting for his adventures off the field). Or what about W. G. Grace? To those familiar with cricket history, he might stand comparison with Bradman: the man who invented modern batting, combining forward play, back play, attack and defence. But if we go back even further, cricket was a very different game on (and off) the field, so that any hope of statistical comparison breaks down hopelessly. Which is unfortunate because if we continue backwards, we come across names that were legends for a century after their playing days were over.

Standing at the head of this semi-legendary list was Fuller Pilch, perhaps the most famous batter before the emergence of W. G. Grace. During his playing days, there was a general consensus that Pilch was the best batter in England — and therefore the world. While never achieving the statistical dominance of those who followed — for example Grace, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Hammond — any impartial assessment has to place Pilch among those names because of what he achieved at a time when batting was often little more than a lottery. When Grace emerged, it was with Pilch that he was most often compared in trying to decide who was the greatest; and not everyone agreed that Grace was better than Pilch. And across the vast span of time between the end of Pilch’s career in 1854 and the modern day, one of his batting innovations has survived and continues to be one of the foundations of the game.

Before delving too deeply into Pilch’s story, it is worth establishing how very different cricket was when he was at his peak in the 1830s and 1840s. Cricket was played irregularly and few county teams even existed; there were no competitions or cups or championships and fixtures were arranged on an ad hoc basis with no real central authority to coordinate them. Test cricket was years away. Many games were played, especially at the major venues such as Lord’s, between what were little more than scratch teams. Part of the problem was that, at a time before the railway network had become fully established, transporting teams across the country was simply uneconomical. Single-wicket matches were still extremely popular, and followed closely by the press and public. While there were amateur and professional cricketers (Pilch was a professional), the distinction was less pronounced than it became; later generations of amateurs were more eager to keep professionals in their place, but in Pilch’s time the relationship was more benevolent. He described it: “Gentlemen were gentlemen, and players much in the same position as a nobleman and his head keeper maybe.” And the concept of what today would be called first-class cricket was largely unknown, although there was a sense that some matches were more important than others.

On the field, it was a similarly different game. When Pilch first played at Lord’s in 1820, the only legal form of bowling was underarm. Although “round-arm” bowling — in which the ball could be released from shoulder height — was widely used and became very effective, it was not officially permitted until 1835. Few, if any, batters used pads or gloves and on the field, long-stop was an essential position. The science of tending to pitches was almost unknown, and therefore the wickets were rough and untamed: the ball bounced unevenly (shooters were common) and could rise sharply if it struck the stones which were found in many playing surfaces. For bowlers who spun the ball, there was a huge amount of help from the pitch. Furthermore, games were generally played without a boundary — all hits were run out, with no fours or sixes. There might have been exceptions; during Pilch’s benefit match in 1839, wagons were used to enclose the ground, but we do not know if hits beyond this point counted as extra runs. But one contemporary critic said that “Pilch played cricket, W. G. plays boundary”. In these circumstances, run-scoring was incredibly challenging; reaching double figures was an achievement and scores of 20 were perhaps as valuable as a century in modern cricket. And the development of round-arm (which gradually metamorphosed into over-arm) bowling was even more of a challenge; the big scores that had begun to accumulate before 1820 against simply lob-bowling disappeared and did not reappear until the time of Grace. Cricket had become a low-scoring game, and the surviving statistics reflect this. Those who later championed the claims of Pilch as one of the best ever were quick to remind audiences how difficult it was to score back in the 1830s and 1840s.

This, therefore, was the cricket world into which Pilch emerged and established himself as the best; alongside Nicholas Felix and Alfred Mynn, he became one of the few household names who played the sport. How did he reach that peak?

Fuller Pilch was born on 17th March 1804, at Horningtoft in Norfolk. He was the seventh (not the youngest as has often been claimed) child of Nathaniel Pilch (a tailor) and Frances Fuller (who was the widowed Nathaniel’s second wife). Records are scarce from so long ago — individuals were not recorded on the census until Pilch was 37 — and so there is much that we do not know. But Pilch’s later fame meant that some details were recorded; he and his two older brothers (the only three out of Nathaniel and Frances’ five sons to survive until adulthood) William and Nathanial followed their father’s trade, becoming tailors. However all three proved to be good cricketers as well. There are suggestions — based on one questionable newspaper report — that Pilch spent time working in Sheffield as a young man, and learned cricket there, but it is perhaps more likely that he played village cricket in Norfolk.

There are more plausible claims that Pilch was coached by William Fennex, one of the Hambledon stars from the period in the late eighteenth century when cricket’s popularity first exploded, and one of the first men to use what would today be known as forward play; Fennex himself claimed to have taught Pilch how to bat. The author Frederick Gale wrote in 1883: “Fennex, be it remembered that he inaugurated the free forward play, and taught it to Fuller Pilch, and Fuller Pilch taught the world; for I feel confident, in my own mind, that all the fine forward play which one sees now sometimes, is simply the reflex of what Fuller Pilch developed in a manner which has never been surpassed by any living man (except W. G. [Grace]), and that, too, in days when grounds were less true, and pads and gloves were unknown. And I say of my friend W. G., that he has simply perfected the art which Pilch taught, though Pilch was never such an all-round man as our present champion.” We shall return to Pilch’s pioneering forward play later.

As Pilch improved as a cricketer, he was selected to play for Norfolk — in reality at that time little more than the Holt Cricket Club — and he made his debut in “big cricket” when he played for Norfolk against the MCC at Lord’s in 1820. Pilch was just seventeen at the time, and played alongside his brothers Nathaniel and Francis. But the three fielded while William Ward scored 278 runs, the highest innings in what would today be called first-class cricket until W. G. Grace scored 344 in 1876. Pilch, at that time picked as much for his under-arm bowling as his batting, scored 0 and 2 as the MCC won by 417 runs. But for modern statisticians, this was his first-class debut, even though no-one would have had any notion of what that meant at the time.

Fuller Pilch in 1852 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The irregular and disorganised nature of cricket at this time mean that it is hard to track Pilch’s career in terms of statistical achievements. But he gradually became a more accomplished batter even though he did not play anything else recognised today as “first-class” until 1827. In 1823, he moved to Bury St Edmonds, and from 1825 to 1828, he played as a professional for Bury Cricket Club — his first century was scored for the club against Woodbridge in 1830 — and represented Suffolk. In this period he made some substantial scores and was selected for the Gentlemen v Players match for the first time in 1827. That year, he also played for a team styled “England” against Sussex in a series of three matches intended as a trial of the fairness of the new style of “round-arm” bowling (used by Sussex in those matches) and top-scored in the first game with 38. He did not stand out in the other games and, with several other “England” players threatened to pull out of the final game unless the Sussex bowlers reverted to underarm, before ultimately agreeing to play. But Pilch quickly learned to face the new style of bowling, adopted it himself, and when asked in later years about what it was like facing the old underarm style, replied: “Gentlemen, I think you might put me in on Monday morning and get me out by Saturday night”.

Pilch moved to Norwich in 1829, becoming the landlord of the Anchor of Hope Inn, and began to play for Norfolk, which was established on a more formal basis in 1827. Within a few years, it was one of the strongest teams in England, not least owing to Pilch’s batting. And in 1833, he became famous through two single-wicket matches against Tom Marsden, the “Champion” of England. Single-wicket was a highly popular form of the game at the time and was played under various rule. The main versions involved two players opposing each other without assistance in the field. Hits behind the wicket did not count, and batters had to run to the other end of the pitch and back to score a single run. Pilch comfortably won the two matches: in the first, played at Norwich, he won after dismissing Marsden for seven, hitting 73 runs himself and then bowling Marsden seventh ball for a duck, winning by an innings. In the return match at Sheffield, before 12,000 spectators, Pilch scored 78, to which Marsden could only reply with 25. Pilch hit 102 and facing an impossible task, Marsden was dismissed for 31. Just over ten years later, William Denison said of this game: “Pilch’s batting was of the finest description, and a better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed in any former match.” The contest was a huge attraction and received a great deal of press coverage. But for all his success, Pilch disliked single wicket matches and rarely took part: he turned down several opportunities (he and Alfred Mynn seem to have actively avoided facing each other in that format) and only seems to have played one other game (in 1845).

In other cricket, Pilch’s fame grew and there were hardly any big matches in which he did not feature. He played for Cambridge Town, “England”, the MCC, Norfolk, the Players, Suffolk and Surrey, and as a given man for the Gentlemen. He also featured in several of the “novelty” teams which were popular at the time, such as for the Single against the Married or the Right-handed against Left-handed. Perhaps his greatest year came in 1834. In two games for Norfolk against Yorkshire, he scored 87 not out, and 73 and 153 not out; he also scored 105 not out for England against Sussex and 60 for the Players against the Gentlemen. According to Gerald Howat (in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), “his aggregate of 811 runs in major matches was not surpassed for twenty-seven years.” Such considerations were meaningless in 1834 — batting averages were not widely published, if at all — but his average of 43 in those games dwarfed the next best, which was only 18. And in matches retrospectively reckoned first-class, he scored 551 runs at 61.22. But perhaps more importantly he had reached three figures in “major matches” for the first time, in a period when such feats were a rarity.

By then probably the best batter in the world, Pilch was in considerable demand and Norfolk could not hold on to him. A Kent county team — the second such attempt — was founded in Town Malling by a pair of lawyers called Thomas Selby and Silas Norton. After the 1835 season, they persuaded Pilch to move to Town Malling in return for £100 per year, for which he would play for Kent and manage the cricket ground. He made his Kent debut in 1836 and remained with the county until 1854, during which period he was a key figure in making it the strongest team in England. Perhaps its most powerful opposition came from another of Pilch’s teams: William Clarke’s professional touring side, the All-England Eleven. Clarke’s team made a huge impact on English cricket, and Pilch was a founding member, playing for the Eleven from 1846 until 1852. He played at least 65 matches for the Clarke’s Eleven, usually in games played “against the odds” (i.e. against teams featuring more than eleven players, to make the game competitive), and scored four half-centuries. But Pilch was not limited to playing for these teams. At a time when county cricket was an unregulated free-for-all, Pilch also made appearances for Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. He was also a dominant figure in club cricket; he named his innings of 160 for Town Malling against Reigate in 1837 as one of his best.

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A scorecard showing Pilch’s innings of 60 for All-England against Nottingham in 1842

While Pilch was an undoubted success on the pitch — for example, he was the Kent’s leading scorer in twelve out of nineteen seasons — he did not play regularly because Kent, like all county teams in this period, only rarely took the field. And his statistical achievements have been utterly dwarfed by the inflation in scores that took place in the later part of the nineteenth century; to a modern audience, his average looks poor but at the time, given the challenges of batting, it was a different story. His record surpassed that of any of his contemporaries. He scored eleven fifties for Kent in 84 matches today reckoned first-class, with a highest score of 98, and his average of 19.61 was very good for the time. Of these matches, 36 were played against a team styled as England, which contained many of the best players: in these games, he scored four fifties and averaged 18.15. And in the Gentlemen v Players match, which was the highest form of representative cricket in England in the days before Test matches, he played 23 matches — 21 for the Players (the professional team) and two as a “given man” for the Gentlemen (the amateur team) to make the match more competitive — and averaged 14.90. As a point of contrast, he was easily the dominant batter for Kent in this period. Of his contemporaries to score 1,000 runs for the county, none approached his average: Tom Adams had 2,291 runs at 12.58; Nicholas Felix scored 1,528 runs at 16.79; and Ned Wenman had 1,063 runs at 10.42.

Hidden among the fragmented and hard-to-process figures, Pilch was remarkably consistent. It was a matter of some note that in 1836, he reached double figures in 13 innings (five of which surpassed 20); and in 1841 he reached double figures 16 times (not all of which are today judged as first-class) within which were two scores in the 20s, two in the 30s, three in the 40s and one in the 60s. In his Sketches of the Players (1844), William Denison listed many of these achievements, and wrote of Pilch: “But there are other seasons wherein Pilch has outshone all his competitors, and were they to be enumerated, it would be be to extend this publication to a size far beyond that of a ‘sketch’.” He also stated: “As a bat, [Pilch] has been one of the brightest luminaries of the cricket world, during the last 20 years.” In short, there was little doubt of Pilch’s class and superiority; he was quite simply the best batter who had played until then.

This was a precarious time for county clubs and several teams flitted in and out of existence. Kent was no exception: the Town Malling incarnation of the club struggled financially and collapsed in 1841. But Pilch maintained his Kent contention. When the brothers John and William Baker, the founders of the Beverley Club at Canterbury, took over the organisation of Kent teams in 1842 (when their club effectively assumed the role of the county team), they appointed Pilch as the manager of the Beverley Ground. When the proto-Kent team moved to the St Lawrence Ground in 1847, Pilch again moved with them, taking charge of that ground too. There are a few other traces of his life around this time. Despite claims by Denison, there is little evidence that Pilch ran a public house in Town Malling. Instead, he seems to have worked as a tailor in cricket’s off-season; this was the occupation recorded on the 1841 census (which was taken when he and the Kent team were staying at The Bear in Lewes, during a match against Sussex).

For all of Pilch’s later claims — such as the Kent team being a “eleven brothers’, or that “as soon as a man had been 12 months among the cherry orchards, hop gardens and pretty girls, he could not help becoming Kentish to the backbone” — his loyalty to Kent perhaps owed more to finance than emotion. After being awarded a benefit match — the lucrative Kent v England game in 1839 — he accepted an offer (“too good to refuse”) from Sussex to move county; it required the intervention of some of Kent’s wealthier patrons to persuade Pilch to remain where he was.

Pilch played on until 1855, when he was 52 — he later admitted that he and several of his team-mates kept going too long, meaning that Kent declined in the 1850s — having spent 35 years playing at what then was the top level. In terms of what is today judged as first-class games, Pilch scored 7,147 runs at 18.61, including three centuries and 24 fifties. He also took 142 wickets (although analyses do not survive for most of these). But it was noted at the time that he had scored ten centuries in total, a remarkable number for the time; he was also reckoned to have appeared 103 times at Lord’s.

The Saracen’s Head in Canterbury, photographed around 1945; the building was demolished in 1969 (Image: Dover Kent Archives)

Pilch continued to play minor cricket for one more season, appearing for the Beverley Club in Canterbury, and then from 1856 until 1866 concentrated on umpiring: in this period, he stood in 28 matches today reckoned first-class, almost all of which were played in Canterbury (although he had no great reputation as an umpire). He also had other cricketing interests. He began to work as a bat manufacturer — his occupation as given on the 1851 census — and continued as what would today be termed the head groundsman of the St Lawrence Ground until 1867. This was not the only ground with which he was associated. In 1849–50, he went into partnership with Edward Martin, another Kent cricketer, and developed the Prince of Wales Ground in Oxford, where he undertook winter coaching. This business partnership ended in 1855, at which point Pilch began another partnership with his nephew William Pilch, in whose house he was living in 1851. The pair became joint licensees of a Canterbury public house called the Saracen’s Head. It is not quite clear how the responsibility was split: the proprietors were often given as “F. and W. Pilch”, but William was sometimes named alone, and was listed as the head of the household on the 1861 census. From the little evidence that survives, William looks to have been the primary licensee. For example, on the 1861 census when Pilch was living at the Saracen’s Head with his nephew, William was listed as an innkeeper employing three male and three female servants; Pilch by contrast gave his occupation as a cricketer.

This particular business scheme was destined to end badly. William continued to run the Saracen’s Head for most of the 1860s but drifted into growing financial strife. Part of the problem was the new railway station that had been built in Canterbury; whereas the Pilches had previously enjoyed the custom of people (such as farmers) who would stay overnight in their establishment, the growth of the railways made this unnecessary as journeys could be made more quickly with no need for overnight accommodation. As a result, the Saracen’s Head lost valuable business. But there was also something of a financial crisis at the time that affected many small businesses after a leading bank in London collapsed. It was probably a combination of these factors that led to William’s ruin: in 1868 he was imprisoned for debt and declared bankrupt the following year, owing his creditors almost £700. By then, Pilch’s health was bad and he had been forced to give up his work as groundsman. His friends seemed to think that the problems over money with the Saracen’s Head had a negative effect on him; more than one report stated that it had been Pilch himself who had been declared bankrupt. Frederick Gale for example wrote in The Game of Cricket (1888): “The last time I saw Fuller Pilch was a few months before his bankruptcy, which, I believe, killed him. The world did not prosper with him as it ought, and he was out of spirits, and got so excited about the old times that I had to drop the subject.”

Pilch’s failing health — he was suffering from rheumatism — forced him to give up work and money became a struggle, especially with the problems faced by his nephew. Some Kent supporters arranged a subscription which it was hoped would provide him with a pension, but it fell short of expectations; some wealthy patrons had to top up the fund to provide him with an income of one pound per week. In April 1870, Pilch’s health took a turn for the worse. On 1 May 1870, he died at William’s home on Lower Bridge Street in Canterbury from what was then known as dropsy but would today be called fluid retention (or oedema); the actual cause was perhaps most likely to be heart failure. As a mark of the respect in which Pilch was held, a collection was taken among the public, the proceeds of which were used for a memorial. An obelisk was placed over his grave at St Gregory’s Church, which was moved to the St Lawrence ground in 1978 after the church had fallen into disuse. In 2008, Pilch returned to the news when plans by Christ Church University to redevelop the site of St Gregory’s were paused after it became clear that no-one was sure where Pilch was buried. An old photograph of the memorial eventually cleared up the mystery, and work went ahead; a new headstone was placed to mark the approximate location of Pilch’s grave.

The original memorial to Pilch in St Gregory’s churchyard, Canterbury, in the 1950s (Image: Kent Online)

So much for the facts. It is perhaps not as complete a story as we would like, nor could it ever be as detailed as a biography of Grace or Ranjitsinhji or Hobbs because it was plainly a very different world for cricketers of Pilch’s time. It is not possible to simply go through each season and note his scores in the biggest games or reel off impressive aggregates and averages. And yet there was no doubt among Pilch’s contemporaries that he was the best of all. As it happens, it is possible to get a glimpse of what might have made Pilch so good. But that is not the only way in which his legend continued. His reputation endured so that when W. G. Grace came along, Pilch was still for many the point of comparison. For some who remembered him, Pilch’s success must have been more meretricious simply because batting was more difficult back then. And so, more than 30 years after his death and over half a century since he last took to a cricket field, Pilch’s name became embroiled in a debate that has never been settled: was cricket a sport that continually improved, or one that was in a permanent state of decline? Were those who played in the past better than those seen in contemporary cricket? Or were the current players the best of all time?

The Three Hodsons of Sussex

The Cricket Match between Sussex and Kent, at Brighton by Charles Jones Basebe. This engraving from 1849 includes James Hodson (1808–79), pictured fielding at fine leg immediately before the church (Image: Government Art Collection)

Sussex is the oldest of the English first-class county teams, having been formed in 1839. Several famous cricketing “dynasties” have been associated with it over the years, including the Lillywhites, Tates and Gilligans. But one interesting family is hardly remembered at all today, despite being involved with Sussex for almost thirty years, including from the first years of the club. One of the early stalwarts in the team was a man called James Hodson; he was followed into the team by his cousin William Hodson. Almost thirty years later, his cousin’s son, also known as William Hodson, followed his relatives into the Sussex side.

The three Hodsons were part of a wealthy family from East Sussex. James Hodson was born in Streat, a village near Lewes, on 30 October 1808. He was the son of Thomas Hodson, who owned “Hodson’s Black Mill” in Brighton. Following in the family tradition, James worked as a miller most of his life and always gave this as his occupation on census returns. Others in the family were farmers: three of his uncles owned substantial farms, including William Hodson (1778–1857), who was responsible for the construction of the West Blatchington Windmill around 1820.

Two of the family windmills. Left: Hodson’s Black Mill in Brighton, shortly before its demolition in 1866 (Image: Wikipedia). Right: West Blatchington Windmill in 2002 (Image: geograph.org.uk)

James Hodson emerged as a cricketer in the late 1830s, initially playing for the “Players of Sussex” and then for a team representing Sussex in 1838, the year before the official formation of the county club. Despite coming from a wealthy family, he played as a professional. Normally, and particularly in later years, someone from a background like his would not have been paid to play cricket. But the distinctions were not as rigid in the 1830s as they were to become, and perhaps his branch of the family was struggling financially.

By the end of the 1830s, Hodson was judged by the press to be the best bowler in Sussex. He was regarded as less accurate but more dangerous than F. W. Lillywhite (known as “the nonpareil”). Like most leading bowlers, Hodson utilised the round-arm style which had been belatedly legalised in 1835 and which replaced underarm bowling. But even though the updated Laws of Cricket forbade delivery of the ball from above shoulder height, some bowlers had already begun to stretch the rules and were releasing the ball from a higher point. Although many umpires turned a blind eye, this was illegal and there were numerous attempts by the authorities to crack down.

Detail showing James Hodson, from The Cricket Match between Sussex and Kent, at Brighton by Charles Jones Basebe (Image: Government Art Collection)

One of those who pushed the limits was Hodson. On 10 and 11 June 1839, Sussex played the MCC at Lord’s. Hodson took eight wickets (no bowling analyses survive from the match), but this is not what drew attention. When the MCC batted a second time, needing 81 to win, Hodson bowled from the end where W. H. Caldecourt was umpiring (all his other bowling had been in front of the other umpire, Bartholomew Good). Caldecourt almost immediately no-balled him for raising his arm above the shoulder. The resulting furore — from the widespread observation that Good had seen no problems with Hodson’s delivery to the crowd’s anger towards Caldecourt — was a portent of arguments to come regarding fair and unfair bowling many years later. After Hodson had conceded 26 runs to no-balls in around ten minutes, he was withdrawn from the attack.

This match made little difference to Hodson’s career; he played for Sussex until 1854 and took part in 54 matches now recognised as first-class. In 1844 he played for “England” against Kent; in 1845 he appeared for the Players against the Gentlemen at Brighton; and in 1849 he played for the “All England Eleven” against Kent. It is unclear if he modified his bowling style or continued to raise his arm above his shoulder (nor can we be certain if he was ever no-balled again as he is entirely missing from the most widely recognised list of bowlers who were “called”), but his regular selection for games at Lord’s and his inclusion in “England” teams might indicate that he was not considered an unfair bowler. In fact, Hodson was clearly a good cricketer, but was quickly forgotten when his first-class career ended. We know little else about him except he married in 1850, had four children, and died in 1879 leaving an estate worth around £3,000 (the equivalent of over £300,000 today). His death was unreported in the press (and fell in that awkward period before Wisden began publishing obituaries and before the creation of Cricket in 1882).

William Hodson (1808–96) photographed in 1890 by William Hall and Son of Brighton (Image: Courtesy of Geoffrey Boys)

Another branch of the Hodson family was also associated with Sussex cricket through James’ cousin William (the son of his uncle William — there were a lot of men with that name in the family!), who was born in 1808 at West Blatchington. William was the same age as his cousin James, but played for Sussex first. However, he only appeared in one match today recognised as first-class. This was at Lord’s in 1833 when Sussex played an “England” team of leading cricketers. At the time, there was a regular series between “England” and Sussex, involving matches at Lord’s (the home of “England”) and the Royal New Ground in Brighton. “England” were usually stronger, but Sussex were reckoned a powerful team in 1833 (although a report in Bell’s Life hinted that Sussex were not quite at full strength). William Hodson batted at number ten and made a pair; no bowling analyses survive so we cannot be sure if he bowled, nor if he took any wickets (only catchers were credited — a bowler only made the scorecard if the batter was out bowled). And so ended his very brief first-class career.

Similarly to James, William appears to have played as a professional: advertisements for the game identified only one “gentleman” playing for Sussex; the other ten, including Hodson, had no initial listed — an indication that they were all professionals. Otherwise, we know even less about him than we do about James. There is sketchy evidence that he played cricket regularly in Brighton in the 1830s, but it is often unclear whether the “Mr Hodson” recorded in the Brighton Gazette as playing for the Clarence Club was William or James. Further muddying the waters, James’ younger brother Charles (1810–1896) also played for the Clarence Club. But it is likely that the Hodson who played against Worthing a couple of weeks before the England v Sussex game of 1833 was William; he scored 0 and 11 and took at least three wickets. And a player called Hodson — again, probably William — scored 42 and took at least four wickets in another game against Worthing that August. In 1834, both W. Hodson and C. Hodson played for the Clarence Club (including at least one game together), but it is likely that the Hodson playing in the Brighton area towards the end of the decade was James rather than his brother or cousin.

After his brief cricket career ended, William was a farmer for the rest of his life. He married Mary Gould in 1837 and when their first child was born in 1838, they lived in Patcham in Sussex but had moved to Crypt Farm in Cocking by 1841. The couple had eight children in total; after Mary died in 1862, William remarried in 1868. As with James, we know little about his life away from cricket, but we know a little more about his second child — also inevitably called William — who continued the family association with Sussex.

William Hodson (junior) was born in Cocking on 24 January 1841. The census from that year lists him, aged four months (the census was taken in June), living at Crypt Farm, where his father was as a farmer. Ten years later, we find him on the 1851 census as a pupil at Oaklands School in Woolavington, which catered for the under-10s. He subsequently attended Brighton College, appearing in the school cricket team in the mid-1850s. By the time of the 1861 census, William lived with his maternal aunt and her husband, Thomas Coppard, a solicitor and farmer in Albourne. William is listed as an apprentice solicitor, and presumably worked for Coppard.

Having made several appearances for the Gentlemen of Sussex from 1858, Hodson made his first-class debut for Sussex in June 1860, aged just 19, and played three matches that season. Although he achieved little with bat or ball, he must have impressed enough people to make several appearances over the following seasons. He played just once for Sussex in 1861, but appeared in every one of their games in 1862 and 1863; in the latter season, he also played for the “Gentlemen of the South” against the “Players of Surrey” at the Oval.

William Hodson (1841–96) photographed for the Supplement to Fashion and Sport, date unknown (Image: Courtesy of Geoffrey Boys)

Hodson played no first-class cricket after 1863, but was a regular for the Gentlemen of Sussex until 1881 (including an appearance against the touring Australian team in 1878). He must have been a good batter; his overall first-class record was 496 runs at 21.56, with a highest score of 50, but in this period of low scores and impossible pitches, that was a very respectable record. For example, in 1863 (counting only players who made five or more appearances) he was ninth in the first-class averages with 298 runs at 24.83. We know little else about his cricket, but a tribute written upon his death in 1896 in Cricket stated: “Standing well over six feet, he had great hitting powers, which he used to advantage. Besides, he was a splendid field, especially at long-leg and cover.”

The reason for the end of his Sussex career was almost certainly because he had qualified as a solicitor. In 1868, and for the following few years, the Post Office Directory named him as a solicitor in Hurstpierpoint until he moved to Shoreham around 1878. It appears that he continued to work with his aunt’s husband: he was a partner in Coppard and Hodson, which later became Coppard, Hodson and Wade when Charles Aubrey Wade joined the firm in the 1870s.

Away from the world of cricket and law, Hodson junior seems to have had an unusual life and there are many unanswered questions. In 1866, he married Annie Edith Staplehurst, the daughter of William Staplehurst who is listed on her marriage certificate as a “Gentleman”. But Annie’s identity is the first of the many mysteries surrounding Hodson. Census entries after her marriage state that she was born around 1844 somewhere near Chailey (according to the 1881 census) or Piltdown (according to the 1871 census); the villages are fairly close to each other, around 12 miles north-east of Brighton. She gave her address on her marriage certificate as 60 London Road, Brighton, but this does not help much. In 1861, Charles Sprake lived at that address with his wife, his sister and a servant; ten years later, the house was occupied by John Clegg, his wife, his daughter and a servant. No-one on either census return seems to have had any connection with a family called Staplehurst.

But there might be a hint there at what was really going on, because also on the 1861 census is a woman called Annie Staplehurst who was working as a servant in the Kemptown area of Brighton, employed by Lucy Burdett, a lodging house keeper at 160 Marine Parade (not far from London Road). Could Annie have been a servant who was working at 60 London Road at the time of her marriage? Which begs the question: why would Hodson — a member of a wealthy family and a qualified solicitor — marry a servant? The most obvious solution — a pregnancy — does not work as the couple had their first child around 12 months after their marriage.

Finding Annie on a census before 1861 is difficult. The most likely candidate is an Annie Staplehurst, the daughter of William and Hannah, on the 1851 census; she was ten years old and had been born in Fletching, Sussex (between Piltdown and Chailey). Her father was a farm labourer. There is another possibility. According to a descendant who has seen it, Annie’s gravestone states that her maiden name was Leeves. And a man called William Staplehurst married someone called Lucy Louisa Leeves in 1843. By 1851, they had four children, the eldest of whom was Sally Ann; she was born in Fletching around seven months after her parents’ wedding. Her father was a “Master Carman”. This would not, however, explain why “Sally Ann” became “Annie Edith”.

If either of these women are our Annie (and she might have been someone else entirely, or someone who changed her name), the identification of her father as a “gentleman” on her marriage certificate is clearly a polite fiction aimed at disguising her background and humble status. Some of her descendants who have researched the family history believe that Annie was the illegitimate daughter of a “gentleman”, which would explain her marriage to Hodson. While this is possible, there is no evidence to support it. Whichever way we examine the marriage, it is hard to explain; Annie Staplehurst remains a mystery.

Returning to more certain ground, Hodson and Annie had eight children in total. By 1881, Hodson had joined the Freemasons and was settled in Shoreham. The census records him living with his family and two servants on the High Street of New Shoreham. But the marriage may already have been in trouble, and by the time of the next census, the couple had separated.

On 6 June 1888, Annie and six of their seven children arrived in Nova Scotia, Canada, on board the Nova Scotian. William was not with them, nor was their eldest daughter who had just married (according to descendants of the family, Annie was a witness at the wedding, which took place shortly before her departure to Canada). The family appear on the 1891 Canadian census, living in Annapolis Royal, although one of the children seems to have returned to England. Annie died in Canada, aged fifty, in 1893. The fate and movements of the rest of the family are complicated. However, there is evidence that they were financially supported, possibly by their father and probably by various family trusts.

Walter Gilbert (Image: Cricket, 20 May 1886)

What is not clear is why they went to Nova Scotia at all (there was no family connection with Canada) and why William did not accompany them. We might find a hint of an explanation for the destination, but it is a very tenuous link. In 1882, a case came before Chichester County Court, reported in the Weekly Dispatch, concerning Walter Gilbert, a cousin of W. G. Grace who was often in severe financial difficulty. He was the manager of the United South of England cricket team and one of his players had taken him to court over non-payment of wages. The solicitor for the plaintiff was William Hodson. During the case, when the court was arguing over the fees the plaintiff should have been paid, Hodson recalled that when he played for Sussex, he received £5 for a home game and £6 for an away one (although as an amateur, he should not have been paid at all).

In 1886, Gilbert and his family moved to Canada, effectively exiled by the Grace family, following his disgrace after serving a prison sentence for theft. The Gilberts settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Walter opened a school. There is no obvious connection between Hodson and Gilbert other than that one court appearance (when Gilbert was not even present), but it is quite a coincidence, especially given the timing. Another possible link is that Gilbert was married to the daughter of James Lillywhite, who played for Sussex between 1850 and 1860 (although he never played with William Hodson) and was the son of F. W. Lillywhite who had played alongside James Hodson in the 1830s. Did the Hodsons go to join the Gilberts? Was there some unknown connection? Was this a similar “exile” for reasons lost to history? Unfortunately, there seems no way to know.

The reason that William and Annie separated is much clearer. William was in a relationship — over a long period — with a married woman. This emerged publicly, and somewhat embarrassingly, in an 1890 divorce case when John Ince, a retired surgeon who had served with the British Army in India, petitioned to divorce his wife Kate Montgomerie Ince on the grounds of adultery.

Kate Montgomerie Davidson had been born in Huntingdonshire in 1851, the daughter of a doctor. She had married George Kelly at Brixton in February 1870. Shortly after the marriage, the couple moved to Ludhiana in British India where Kelly worked as the district’s police superintendent, but he died on 4 December 1870 (the cause of death is unclear). Ince was a doctor who attended Kelly when he was ill, but eyebrows may have been raised when Ince married his widow on 12 January 1871. According to Ince’s evidence at the divorce hearing, as reported by The Times: “On the death of her first husband [Kate] was in such straitened circumstances as to be almost destitute … [Ince] married her out of sympathy with her in her unfortunate position.” She was also heavily pregnant, and gave birth to her first child, Isobel Kelly, on 4 March 1871. Over the following five years, she had another three children with her new husband, although only two of them survived.

It was not a happy marriage, and both parties had an extensive list of complaints about the other. Unsurprisingly for this period, only Ince’s side came out in court, and he told the divorce hearing — clearly playing to the gallery and drawing several laughs — that “almost immediately after marriage [Kate] commenced to exhibit great violence of temper, that she threw ink bottles and gum bottles at him, that on various occasions he bore marks of her violence, and that only on one occasion did he strike her, that being during one of her assaults upon him.” They spent periods apart but returned to live together in various parts of India before they returned to England in 1876. Later that year, they were granted a judicial separation. Ince claimed to have been in a state of melancholia between 1876 and 1884, leading “a very retired life”.

The Royal Court of Justice, where all divorce cases were heard at this time
(Image: sjiong (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikipedia)

In 1889, Ince discovered that Kate had been living with William Hodson “as man and wife” since October 1886. Until then, Ince had believed that “his wife was leading a virtuous life”. When Ince filed for divorce in 1890, he claimed damages against Hodson (named as a co-respondent in the case). If we can believe Ince, Hodson must have separated from his own wife by that date (which fits with the birth of his youngest child Gladys in mid-1885). But it may not be quite so straightforward; in the documents she submitted to establish that she was not guilty of adultery, Kate stated that her husband had been aware of the relationship between her and Hodson in either late 1884 or early 1885 — she was attempting to prove that he had delayed proceedings unreasonably after becoming aware of the alleged adultery.

Ince’s wife responded with several counter-allegations: that no adultery had occurred, but if it had her husband had “connived” in it; that her husband had neglected her and “treated her with unkindness”; that he had turned her and their three-year-old child out of their house in Rawalpindi in 1874; that he had not fed her or treated her when she was ill; that he had variously beaten and assaulted her; that he too had committed adultery with one of his servants in 1888; that he had called her, on various occasions, a whore and a street-walker and denied being the father of her children. It seems to have been a bitter and unpleasant affair. One of her most gruesome accusations (mentioned only once by Kate and then dropped) was that in the early 1870s, when she was in a delicate mental state, he had forced her to sketch the private parts of decomposing female corpses. None of this emerged in court, and he strenuously denied her accusations in private.

Kate called two witnesses to support her allegation of adultery: the servant concerned, and another servant who had seen evidence of intimacy. But the first servant had written a letter to Ince before the case which contradicted her testimony and so the judge told the jury to disregard her evidence.

But the most sensational witness was their only surviving child, the fourteen-year-old John Ince, who began his evidence by saying he had seen the servant come out of his father’s bedroom and had seen him kiss her. But as he alleged this had happened in 1885, when he would have only been ten, his reliability was called into question. Under cross-examination, it further emerged that John had taken the name Hodson and had been living with his mother and William Hodson. And he was largely discredited when a letter was read out which he had sent to his father. He had written it after learning that his father had stood outside his mother’s house earlier that month (on 5 November 1890) shouting and swearing. Although he wrote to Ince that he “made every allowance for your being mad”, he threatened to “break every bone in your miserable old carcass” if he ever annoyed his mother again.

John made a few other allegations about his father’s eccentric behaviour, but wrote something which made the press very excited: “I hear you were in London yesterday. I hope you enjoyed yourself. One thing I should like to know. Where were you when the Whitechapel murders were committed, as I have read the papers and it is my opinion you have done them all, as they all agree that he was a doctor, that he carried a black bag, and was mad, and was a most repulsive-looking party; isn’t it wonderful how exactly you answer to that description?”

He had not initially sent the letter, at the request of his mother, but upon seeing his father a few days later, sent it with a follow-up, which included this passage: “I will never own that you are my father. The man I call father [i.e. William Hodson], and whom I respect and love, can trace his pedigree 500 years back, and never any but brave and true gentleman in the count.”

For what it is worth — without entering into any debates about the identity of “Jack the Ripper” — the accusation against Ince seems to have been born out of teenage anger and a few unremarkable coincidences rather than any compelling evidence. Ince has never been a suspect for the killings, not even in the more esoteric realms of Ripper theorising. And in later years, his son resumed using the name Ince, suggesting that the pair reconciled.

The report in The Times drily stated: “The contents of the letter appeared to create amazement in court, but the reading of it did not at all disconcert the witness.” Nevertheless, the barrister representing Mrs Ince announced that he would not be taking her case any further. The jury found Mrs Ince and Hodson guilty of adultery and the judge pronounced a decree nisi; although Ince withdrew his claim for £1,000 in damages, the judge granted costs against Hodson, despite the plea of Hodson’s barrister that he did not know that Mrs Ince was married. This was somewhat undermined when one of Ince’s representatives pointed out that Hodson’s name was on the deed of separation (which had been made in 1876), and he therefore must have known that she was married when they began their relationship. If this was true, Hodson could have been in a relationship with Kate for fourteen years, but as he had five children with Annie in this time, and as Ince did not make use of the deed to strengthen his case, it is far from certain. As only The Times reported this, perhaps it was a mistake.

Hodson made little contribution in court, and his responses in the official documents are somewhat lacking; it is quite likely that embarrassment was the main emotion he felt at being drawn into such a sensational story where his private life was displayed — albeit incidentally — across many newspapers. Nor can the gleeful reporting of the claims made by Ince’s son have made it any easier.

Again, what happened next is mysterious. There is no trace of Hodson, Kate Ince or her son on the 1891 census. The next public mention of Hodson came in 1896 when the Mid-Sussex Times printed a death notice on 28 April for “William Hodson, late of Hurstpierpoint” on 19 April in Barbados. A brief article in the same edition said:

“Mr. Wm. Hodson, well known in 1861–2 as a member of the Sussex county cricket team, died on Sunday week at Barbadoes [sic], from yellow fever. Deceased was a native of Cocking, near Midhurst. Retiring from the county eleven 1862 in consequence of an accident, Mr. Hodson settled in Hurstpierpoint as a solicitor, and frequently played in the local club matches.”

Cricket also reported his death on May 7, saying it had occurred “within the last few days”. All very mysterious; what was he doing in Barbados? Some of his descendants researching the family history have written that he died on a ship in the “waters off Barbados”, but it is not clear from where this information comes. Was he visiting Barbados, or had business taken him there? Even more interesting is the record of Ince’s will in the Probate Index; it states that “Hodson William of Damaraland South West Africa died 8 April 1896 at Barbados West Indies.” Damaraland is part of what is now Namibia; again, we have no indication of what took him there, but it appears that Kate was with him. The Probate Index records that the executor of his estate (worth just over £816, a substantial but not huge amount) was “Kate Montgomerie Ince single woman”.

Kate was not too upset as by early 1897 she had married again — her new husband was Andrew Christopher Palles — in London, but she died on 13 November 1897 in hospital; the cause of death was an ischiorectal abscess and septicaemia. Her death was announced in the Sussex Agricultural Express under her former name of Ince, after “a long and painful illness from rheumatic fever”; she was listed as the “only daughter of Dr. F. M. D. Davidson, of South Norwood” and the wife of John Ince. Did this announcement originate from her father (who was still alive at the time)? Her husband Andrew Palles died in South Africa in 1903; her son also lived there from, at the latest, 1901 until his death in 1941. Is there a connection with Hodson’s residence in Damaraland?

As with the rest of William Hodson’s life, the answers seem to be beyond our reach.

Note: William Hodson junior’s death has been muddled up with that of his father in cricket databases. CricketArchive states that William junior died on 15th May 1896 at Preston Park, Brighton, but this was actually his father. William senior was around 87 years old, and his death came just over a month after that of his son; he is listed on the same page of the probate index, leaving an estate worth just over £3,335 (worth around £400,000 today). William senior’s death is unrecorded on CricketArchive, which also does not mention that he was related to William junior or to James Hodson.