“Upon them, a great deal depended”: Samuel Cadman, Arthur Morton, and the Struggles of Derbyshire

Derbyshire in 1914: Back row: A. J. Atfield (umpire), S. Cadman, A. Morton, J. Horsley, H. Wild, G. Beet, A. G. Slater, J. Bowden, A. A. White (umpire). Middle row: J. Chapman, T. Forester, R. R. C. Baggallay (captain), G. Curgeneven, L. Oliver. In front: H. G. Blacklidge (coach) (Image: The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft)

Looking at Derbyshire’s playing record in the 1920 County Championship can be traumatic. The team played eighteen matches, one of which was rained off without a ball bowled, and lost seventeen. Although many counties struggled to rebuild in the aftermath of the First World War, none had as shattering a season as Derbyshire, and no other county has ever lost such a proportion of games. The batting was appallingly bad — the captain Leonard Oliver topped the averages with 546 runs at 22.75, but the next best was Samuel Cadman’s 527 runs at 15.96. The latter also chipped in with 58 wickets at 20.87; the leading wicket-taker (and the only other bowler to take more than 14 wickets) was Arthur Morton, who took 89 at 20.31. As Morton was one of only two Derbyshire players (along with Oliver) to hit a century in the entire season (although he only managed a total of 481 runs at 15.51), he and Cadman were very much the last stuttering heartbeat of an ailing team.

It would not really be accurate to say that the two professionals Cadman and Morton were all that stood between Derbyshire and humiliation, given that the county lost every match in which they took the field. But they were perhaps the only two who were capable of fighting. In the course of those seventeen matches, 38 players (of whom 15 had never played for the county before) made at least one appearance; only six of these featured in more than ten games, and only Cadman and Morton played in them all. This instability was partly caused by the absence, for various reasons, of the county’s leading cricketers from previous years. The gravest loss was that of Bill Bestwick, who had chosen to play league cricket for the 1920 season. Another leading bowler — James Horsley — was also lost to league cricket. Wisden said: “In the circumstances, the county’s bowling was naturally weak”. But the batting, which had never been Derbyshire’s stronger suit, was even weaker.

The result was that Cadman and Morton had a huge workload, and had to carry the team almost alone. They frequently opened the bowling together and against Leicestershire in August, they opened both the batting (Morton carried his bat for 105) and the bowling. It was somehow appropriate; the two cricketers had been regulars in the Derbyshire team for almost twenty years; both had played for Glossop before that and had been “discovered” by the same man. They were quintessential county professionals. Little that they did ever stood out; they never came near representative cricket nor had any pretensions to greatness. But they shored up the Derbyshire batting, bowled more than their share of overs and took home their meagre pay.

Derbyshire in 1906: Back row: C. A. Ollivierre, A. Morton, A. R. Warren, W. B. Delacombe (secretary), W. Bestwick, S. W. A. Cadman. Front row: G. M. Buckston, E. M. Ashcroft, L. G. Wright, F. C. Hunter, E. Needham, J. Humphries (Image: The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft)

Samuel William Anthony Cadman was born in 1877 at Werneth, an area of Oldham (although he sometimes claimed to have been born in the nearby village of Gibraltar), but grew up in Tintwistle, a village on the edge of the Peak District, close to Glossop and not far from Ashton-under-Lyne, where his family moved when he was one year old. He was the youngest of three children, and only son, of Samuel Cadman, an overlooker in a cotton mill, and Elizabeth Killet. By the time of the 1891 census, Samuel and his sisters were working as weavers. Even on the 1901 census, he was listed as a weaver, but by then he had begun to make an impact as a cricketer.

By the age of 13, he was good enough to play for the Tintwistle men’s team. In 1899, he began to play for Glossop, which was part of the Central Lancashire League, and was engaged as a private professional by Samuel Hill-Wood, the Derbyshire captain from 1899 to 1901, who had a long association with Glossop. Hill-Wood had managed to find several cricketers for the county, and was instrumental in securing the services of Charles Ollivierre, the West Indies cricketer. In later years, Hill-Wood was the chairman of Arsenal Football Club, as were his son and grandson.

By 1900, Cadman was playing for the Derbyshire Colts, for whom he did well. He graduated to the Derbyshire team that season, making his first-class debut against Lancashire, but doing little during his three appearances. It was a similar tale in 1901, although he played five times, and he was dropped from the team. He was not tried again until 1903, when he did just enough — one fifty, and one five-wicket return — for Derbyshire to persevere.

From that point, he steadily improved. As a batter, he could score quite quickly once he was settled, and a feature in Cricket in 1911 said: “Once he fairly gets going, Cadman is as good a bat to watch as anyone on the Derbyshire side. He is never stodgy, and at times he is really brilliant.” He scored his maiden first-class century in 1904, and in the seasons leading up to the First World War, his batting reached its peak. He averaged almost 27 in 1908, passed one thousand runs for the first time in 1909, and had his best batting season in 1911 with 1,036 runs, including two centuries, at an average of 29.60. He continued to average in the mid-20s, which was more than respectable in that period, until the war.

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Samuel Cadman in 1910

He was less effective with the ball but was a useful back-up in a strong Derbyshire attack. He was a medium-paced inswing bowler, but as swing bowling was still in its infancy, he could not move the ball consistently. On his day, he could be quite dangerous but Cricket said in 1911 that his “best bowling years have been remarkable rather for steadily successful work than for purple patches.” He passed fifty first-class wickets in 1905, 1907, 1908 and 1910, but never took more than 67 in a season; his bowling average also fluctuated wildly, from 17.97 in 1912 to 39.14 in 1911, but was generally on the expensive side by the standards of the time.

But he was one of Derbyshire’s mainstays, not least when he was second in the batting averages and first in the bowling for the 1908 season. And he had some very good matches, such as when he took five for 94 and scored 66 against the 1905 Australians, or against Essex in 1913 when he took seven for 39 with the ball and scored 66 and 76. The closest he came to representative cricket was when he appeared in a Gentlemen v Players match at the Scarborough Festival in 1908.

Away from the cricket field, Cadman’s life seems to have been uncomplicated, apart from a slightly rushed wedding. In September 1904, he married Mary Radcliffe, a weaver who lived in Glossop. Just over five months later, their first child Archie was born. A daughter, Evelyn, was born in late 1906. The 1911 census records the family living in Glossop, and Cadman now called himself a professional cricketer.

Arthur Morton had a similar route into the Derbyshire team. He was born in Mellor, a village then considered part of Derbyshire but today located within Greater Manchester, in 1883. He was the youngest child of Thomas Morton, a coal-miner, and Mary Downs. His father died in 1889. In 1891, Morton lived in the house of Robert Downs, his 80-year-old grandfather, a grocer in Mellor, with his widowed mother and three siblings.

At the time of the 1901 census, he lived with his mother Mary and his two older sisters, but was listed as unemployed. He began playing cricket for the village of Compstall in the North Derbyshire League. It was in local cricket that he was first noticed; the Derbyshire player Walter Sugg occasionally took teams of cricketers to play village sides in this period. When Sugg’s team faced “XIV of Marple and District”, a visiting player pulled out at the last minute. Morton, who was not even considered good enough to be part of the Marple team, was asked to fill the vacancy and scored 43 (out of a total of 120) and took ten wickets for 13 runs in six overs for Sugg’s side (coming on to bowl when Marple had reached 60 for no wicket).

This unexpected success led to him being asked to play for Glossop as an amateur in 1903, when the club won the Central Lancashire League. He finished fourth in Glossop’s batting list, averaging just over 19, and second in bowling behind Bill Bestwick, a man with whom he would be long associated. Morton’s form brought him to the attention of Samuel Hill-Wood, who recommended him to Derbyshire.

When Morton first played for the county, he was primarily a batter. He made his first-class debut in 1903, playing six matches without accomplishing much, but was a first-team regular from 1904 until 1926. His batting average gradually crept up each season until the war (apart from a blip in 1913) from around 16 to generally just over 20, which was respectable enough without indicating that he was a good batter. His best season was 1914, when he passed 1,000 runs for the only time in his career, at an average of 25.32. His only century before the war was 101 against Hampshire in 1911, an innings which almost took Derbyshire to an unlikely win chasing 365 in the fourth innings. With the ball, he began bowling regularly from 1905 and took respectable numbers of wickets at an average just the wrong side of good. His best season with the ball was in 1910 when, in the absence of Derbyshire’s leading bowler Bestwick, he took 116 wickets at 22.67; he headed the county bowling averages that season, and was also third in batting.

As a cricketer, he was solid rather than spectacular; he generally batted carefully, not least as Derbyshire could not afford him to get out with such a fragile line-up. He was generally dependable in a crisis with the bat. His Wisden obituary said: “Of stocky build, he bowled right-arm medium pace, with length as his chief asset. A steady bat, he could hit hard.” In short, he was a fairly typical journeyman professional — as Wisden put it in his obituary: “A very useful all-round player in the Derbyshire eleven” — but little more. From around 1912, presumably in a bid for greater job security, he joined the MCC groundstaff, and played several matches for the MCC between 1912 and 1920. This was presumably how he ended up as a scorer in a wartime match at Lord’s between the “Clergy” and the Australians in 1918. He also fulfilled this role in a County Championship match in 1923.

Away from the game, Morton’s life seems to have been unremarkable. In 1911, he lived in a Derby boarding house and was still single. Later, he returned to live in Mellor. But we do not know what Morton nor Cadman did during the First World War.

By the time cricket resumed in 1919, Cadman was 42 years old and Morton was 37. But given the weak state of Derbyshire cricket, both men remained in the team for several seasons. As we have seen, they were the mainstay of the team in 1920, despite the battering they took on the field. However, the season was an eyeopener for the Derbyshire Committee, who realised that something had to be done. Changes were made on the field with the appointment to the captaincy of Guy Jackson, so that results gradually began to improve. But it was changes to off-field practices that paid dividends; by the mid-1930s Derbyshire were one of the best teams in the country, winning the County Championship in 1936. By then, Cadman had retired as a player and Morton was dead, but both men had a role — in Cadman’s case, largely off the field — in Derbyshire’s rise and eventual triumph.

Cadman recorded the best figures of his career, taking eight for 70 in 1920, and soldiered on afterwards. He scored one more century in 1924, but he was not quite as effective as he had been before the war, averaging in the low 20s with the bat apart from in that terrible season of 1920 and in his last full season of 1925 (when he averaged 14.65). Apart from in 1920 (when he took 58 wickets), he also bowled less frequently than he had done before. He was awarded a benefit match in 1922. Many other counties, which were on a more sound financial basis, gave benefits to their professionals after around ten years; Cadman and Morton were unlucky to play for a team which often struggled to stay afloat in this period. We do not know how much money was raised for Cadman, but it is unlikely to have been much. By then, he was already supplementing his income by coaching in South Africa during the English winter — overseas coaching in South Africa or India was a route taken by many English professionals as a form of winter employment — and as his playing career was clearly coming to a close, he performed a similar role with Derbyshire as the Committee began to invest in its cricketing nursery. This was run by Cadman, between his playing commitments, in 1920 and 1921 before Fred Tate was employed as the full-time coach in 1922.

By 1925, Cadman’s career was effectively over. He played one final match in 1926 before moving into coaching. He took over the running of the nursery from Tate, and it was here that he achieved results that he never managed on the field. The official History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club, written by John Shawcroft, described Cadman as one of the best bowling coaches in the world in the 1920s. Shawcroft said: “His skill had a great deal to do with the advent of a marvellous attack.” Because by the 1930s, Derbyshire had a world-class bowling attack, all of whom had been coached by Cadman. He even benefitted from the use of an indoor school, an empty warehouse belonging to the father of A. W. Richardson, Derbyshire’s captain between 1931 and 1936.

Derbyshire in 1924: Back row: H. Storer, W. Bestwick, W. Carter, J. Horsley, H. Elliott, J. Hutchinson. Front row: A. Morton, A. H. M. Jackson, G. R. Jackson (captain), S. Cadman, J. Bowden (Image: The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft)

Meanwhile, Morton continued much as he had done before, chipping in useful runs and wickets without ever standing out. However, in such a weak side, his contributions were invaluable and Derbyshire relied on him hugely in a period of rebuilding. Apart from his century in 1920, he scored another four hundreds after the resumption of county cricket; all of them were scored at Leyton against Essex in consecutive seasons between 1922 and 1925. He also took 100 wickets, only the second time in his career he reached that number, in 1922.

Perhaps of more value was his solidity off the field. He was not a player around whom stories or anecdotes accumulated. This was quite the contrast to some of his team-mates, including Arnold Warren or Bill Bestwick; in fact Morton was given the task of trying to keep the troubled Beswick away from alcohol and on the straight-and-narrow after the war. Away from cricket, his interests were as safe as his batting: he was an above-average golfer and a good billiards player.

There was only one hint of anything more risky. In 1921, he accepted the offer of a ride on the new motorbike of Yorkshire’s Abe Waddington during the match between Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Waddington was in many ways Morton’s opposite: flamboyant, rebellious, talented but lacking caution; over the years, he had many motoring scrapes, not least through his love of fast driving. Unfortunately for Morton, they were involved in an accident, described in a report in the Derbyshire Courier:

“After playing in Wednesday’s county match, at Hull, [Morton] was riding in the side-car of the motorcycle of Waddington, the Yorkshire cricketer, and when turning a corner they had pull up suddenly to avoid an approaching motor-car. The machine was upset and the men were thrown out.”

If this sounds to have been largely Waddington’s fault, he was not badly hurt. Morton was less lucky, breaking a rib which left him unable to play for eight weeks. To compound his misery, Derbyshire were bowled out for 23 the following morning in his absence (another player was also missing, suffering from rheumatism). It may have been some consolation that Morton’s medical bills were paid by the county, which also gave him a grant of £50 during his recovery.

In 1924, Morton was awarded a benefit by Derbyshire. In fact, given the county’s dire finances (the club had a debt of £2,000 at the end of the season), Morton offered to postpone his benefit, but the offer was declined. Derbyshire rarely awarded benefits; Morton’s was the last until 1957 (although testimonials were more common). He chose the match against Leicestershire (which Derbyshire lost after another ignominious collapse). There had been suggestions that he would retire at the end of that season, but the amount was less than hoped; it had to be augmented by a subscription fund and other games staged on his behalf. It is not clear how much was raised, but it appears to have been somewhere between £200 and £300, which was a fraction of what a cricketer at a county such as Nottinghamshire or Lancashire might have expected.

Morton played on for another two seasons but retired as a player after the 1926 season. Perhaps because he was not as financially secure as he hoped, or perhaps because he did not want to leave the game just yet, he was appointed as a first-class umpire for the 1927 season (alongside Bill Bestwick, who like Morton went on to umpire at Test level). Although as usual with umpires, we know little about what happened next, he was evidently extremely well respected. In just his second season on the umpire’s list, he was chosen to stand in the second Test between England and the West Indies, played in Manchester. And he stood in every Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s between 1929 and 1934 apart from the 1931 match. He also umpired nine matches at the Scarborough Festival. This was an indication that the authorities had great confidence in him; his Wisden obituary said that he was “a very good official”.

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The Players team from the 1930 Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s. Back row: Arthur Morton (umpire), Percy Freeman, Maurice Tate, Wally Hammond, George Geary, Maurice Leyland, George Duckworth, Harold Larwood and H. I. Young (umpire). Front row: Patsy Hendren, Frank Woolley, Jack Hobbs, Herbert Sutcliffe and William Whysall.

But that one Test is odd; Bestwick, who became an umpire at the same time as Morton and was a far more volatile character, officiated in three Tests in 1929 and 1930. Why did Morton not perform the role again? The only hint of a problem was mentioned, in passing, by the Weekly Dispatch at the end of July 1928: an article discussing the problems that the 1928 West Indies team were experiencing suggested there was a minor “incident” between Morton and one of the (unnamed) bowlers, whom Morton had no-balled for over-stepping several times. Whether or not this was the reason why he was overlooked for future Tests, the authorities must have had confidence in his abilities if he was asked to take charge of the Gentlemen v Players games.

There was a rumour partway through the 1927 season that Morton was going to attempt a playing comeback with Derbyshire (an idea which seems to have arisen from his conversation with a correspondent of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph in which he indicated in passing that he felt he could still take wickets easily in helpful conditions), but he never did. However, he was intermittently involved in coaching the team alongside Cadman.

Only a handful of stories involve Morton as an umpire; for example, during a Warwickshire collapse in 1927, the Birmingham crowd barracked the umpires before Morton went over the address them directly. In 1932, Morton was unimpressed when Harold Gibbons took the field for Worcestershire in a bowler hat; when he attempted to catch the ball using the hat, Morton warned him it would be four to the batter if he did so. And when Gibbons asked him to hold the hat when he went on to bowl, Morton told him to put it on the ground behind the stumps, to general amusement.

At the age of 51, Morton married a 33-year-old woman called Jane Victoria (Jean) Coe. The wedding took place in the Hayfield district of Derbyshire in early 1934, but the marriage was to be a short one. Morton umpired as usual in 1934, and was appointed to the umpire’s list for 1935, but he was unable to appear in any matches owing to illness. He was nevertheless selected as an umpire for the 1936 season but did not live to see it. In December 1935, after being unwell for a long time, he died after an operation at the age of 52. Morton’s gravestone is inscribed: “In loving memory of Arthur, the beloved husband of Jean Morton”. After his death, Jean moved to the Manchester area; she lived until 1977.

Cadman, meanwhile, carried on as before. The 1939 Register records him living with his wife in Glossop, and still a professional cricket coach. He continued to play cricket for Glossop for many years; his Wisden obituary stated: “For some years after he gave up first-class cricket, Cadman assisted Glossop in the Lancashire and Cheshire League, and at the age of 70 [probably 73 as Wisden took three years off his age] he scored 17 not out in the second eleven match.” He died in Glossop at the age of 75 in 1952.

Perhaps the best way to conclude is in the words of that Wisden obituary: “During [Cadman’s] long term of service, Derbyshire were generally a struggling club, both from the playing and financial viewpoints, and upon Cadman and two or three other players of all-round ability a great deal depended.” There is no better way to summarise the impact of Cadman and Morton.

“The rascalities of Samuel Richardson”: When Derbyshire’s Assistant Secretary fled to Spain

Samuel Richardson in 1874 (Image: CricketDerbyshire)

Samuel Richardson was an early hero of Derbyshire cricket. As a gentlemen’s outfitter, he was a prominent figure in Derby; when Derbyshire County Cricket Club was formed, he captained the team’s first first-class match in May 1871 and led the side until 1875. As a batsman and occasional wicket-keeper, he played 15 first-class matches for the county between 1871 and 1878. After this, he served as honorary assistant secretary until 1889; from the mid-1880s, he combined this position with a similar role at Derby County Football Club. His cricketing statistics are unremarkable and after his death in 1938, at the age of 93, he merited only a brief and bland Wisden obituary. But there is one curiosity: he died in Madrid, which at the time was literally the front line in the Spanish Civil War. Although Wisden is silent on this unusual location, the explanation lies in a scandal from almost fifty years earlier: in 1890, Richardson fled England with his family to avoid being arrested for embezzlement. For at least ten years, he had been taking money from Derbyshire, from Derby County and from the men who employed him as a tailor.

Subsequent investigations by the county uncovered instances of Richardson’s fraud dating back at least ten years; his good reputation and a lack of scrutiny from an overly trusting committee allowed him to escape notice. His disappearance was a big story at the time, and it is one of those tales where facts can be difficult to establish. Although any lingering notoriety attached to Richardson arises from the money he stole from Derbyshire, the cricket club were not his only victims. Some of his other actions can be traced through court cases by his former employers, who attempted — generally in vain, but often ruthlessly — to recover some of their money.

Richardson was born in 1845 in Derby, the third son of Thomas Richardson, a tailor. In 1866, he married Mary Ann Archer and by 1881 the couple had six children, all of whom were girls. Other than this, little information is available about him; the 1881 census lists him as a “master tailor employing sixteen men and three boys” and the family employed a servant at 40 Babington Lane in Derby.

South Derbyshire v the “Australian Aborigines” in 1868: Samuel Richardson is the wicketkeeper
(Image: The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft)

As a cricketer, there is little to relate. In the 1860s, he played mainly for South Derbyshire whose home ground later became — and remains — that of the Derbyshire County Cricket Club. While playing for South Derbyshire in 1868, Richardson faced the team of indigenous Australian cricketers, generally known as the “Aboriginal cricket team”, that toured England that summer. Although he accomplished little in that match, he achieved something during an interval in play that no-one else did that summer: he was the only English cricketer who successfully met the challenge of Jungunjinanuke (better known to cricket history as “Dick-a-Dick”) of landing a blow on his body with a thrown cricket ball.

The prolonged success of South Derbyshire in the 1860s inspired the formation of Derbyshire County Cricket Club at a meeting in 1870 at which Richardson was present (although some newspaper accounts of the meeting call him “F. Richardson”). He was appointed as the team’s first captain and between 1871 and 1878, he played in fifteen first-class matches for the county, with a high score of 25 and an average of 7.48. Until 1884, he occasionally captained the Derbyshire Colts, a team comprising young cricketers being given a trial. Off the field, he remained at the forefront of cricket in the county; in 1880, by which time his playing career was largely over, he was appointed as Derbyshire’s assistant honorary secretary.

Although details are scarce, Richardson also seems to have been directly involved in the formation of Derby County Football Club in 1884; it was created as an offshoot of the cricket club and he was its first secretary. The only other concrete fact from this period is that in 1884, Richardson sold his tailor’s shop to a company called Thompson and Sons. There was little practical change as the Thompsons employed Richardson to manage the business, which continued to operate under his name — “Messrs Richardson and Co” — at the same address of 1 Babington Lane.

Other than this, we must make some educated guesses about what happened. Based on what emerged when Richardson fled the country, he appears to have stolen money from Derbyshire and Derby County throughout the 1880s, although the only contemporary mention of problems at the football club came at a tense meeting of the cricket club in 1890. The Derbyshire Committee discovered that over the course of several years, Richardson had been offering tickets for football and cricket matches and then keeping the money for himself; he was also under-reporting the attendances at matches (in the days before turnstiles) and pocketing the excess gate money.

Derbyshire XVI which played the United South of England XI in 1874: Samuel Richardson is seated in the middle row, third from the left
(Image: The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft)

Furthermore, the end of the 1880s was a fraught time for Derbyshire off the field; the county lost its first-class status after 1888 and even before Richardson’s disappearance had been heavily in debt on more than one occasion. Although no link was ever made — and it was hardly unusual then or later for a county club to find itself in dire financial straits without any fraud involved — there may be some connection with Richardson’s activities. Additionally, by the the late 1880s, there were calls for Derbyshire to employ a secretary instead of leaving the position as an honorary one — something that many counties did in this period. Therefore in October 1889, Richardson resigned his position and William Barclay Delacombe was appointed as Derbyshire’s first paid secretary. Again, there was no suggestion that any suspicion was attached to Richardson but it seems quite a coincidence that three months later he fled the country.

There may have been a hint of trouble unconnected to cricket in 1887 when “Messrs Richardson and Co” took John Lacey, the former manager of a local hotel, to court to recover around £20. The problem had arisen over Richardson’s approach to Lacey asking for donations to a money-raising bazaar; Lacey seems to have viewed this as a transaction rather than a donation and not paid a bill for some clothes, but the court ordered him to repay the amount. The case was slightly convoluted, and there was no suggestion of wrongdoing by Richardson, but with hindsight it is tempting to wonder if he frequently asked local businesses for donations which he pocketed for himself.

On 18 January 1890, Richardson disappeared. He was seen boarding the 2:05pm train from Derby to Nottingham, then nothing more was heard of him. The story was initially reported as a curiosity but by 12 February, the Derby police had issued a warrant for his arrest on a charge of embezzlement from his employers, the Thompsons. By then, the police believed that he was in Spain, but were “pretty confident of his ultimate capture”.

Thompson and Sons made no public comment until later in the year, but the annual meeting of Derbyshire County Cricket club on 25 February, and its associated report, was covered widely in local newspapers. This revealed the sorry state of affairs. The club was in a dire financial situation which the committee blamed almost entirely on “the frauds of their late honorary assistant secretary”. The meeting heard that Richardson had “according to his own admission” been stealing from the club for nine or ten years, but the committee thought it had been happening even longer.

“Not only has he secretly issued and received payment for a large number of tickets (both for cricket and football) for which he has not accounted, but he has also from time to time appropriated considerable portions of the receipts from matches. The great, but as now appears misplaced, confidence reposed in him, owing to his lifelong exertions on its behalf, of course enabled him to continue these frauds long after they would otherwise have been detected. The consequence it that the club is now in debt to the amount of nearly £1,000.”

This debt was most likely the culmination of Richardson’s actions rather than a sum that he pocketed before departing for Spain; he probably cost them considerably more than that over the ten years of his secretaryship.

Several people had come forward to offer the financial help without which the future of the county club would have been in serious doubt. The committee accepted that they had been at fault in not monitoring Richardson more closely but noted that his leading role in the initial formation of the club and his apparent enthusiasm and support meant that they could hardly be blamed for having confidence in him. There had also been problems with paying the professionals on the team, and several had not been paid immediately after matches, as had been the common practice; although this was not linked directly to Richardson, it is possible that he had been taking some of their wages.

Frederick Spofforth photographed around 1897 (Image: Wikipedia)

The full extent of the damage was uncovered by the unlikely figure of Frederick Spofforth. The Australian Test bowler, who toured England five times and took fourteen wickets in the infamous “Ashes” Test of 1882, had by that time settled in Derbyshire after marrying a woman from the county in 1886; one of his wedding guests was Samuel Richardson. Spofforth gradually became associated with the cricket club and qualified to play for the team, which he briefly captained in 1890. According to The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989) by John Shawcroft, Spofforth examined the club accounts in his spare time and found exactly how much Richardson had taken, and by what means.

The suggestion at the meeting that Richardson had admitted stealing for nine or ten years might indicate some form of confession. Assuming that if he had admitted this in person — for example when he resigned the secretaryship — he would have been arrested long before he vanished, perhaps Richardson left a letter when he fled the country.

However most later accounts of Richardson’s fraud overlook that it was Thompson and Sons who involved the police and had a warrant issued for his arrest. Over the next year, the company went to court several times in an effort to recover money he had taken, although their targeting of people who had been tricked by Richardson makes it hard to feel much sympathy for them. For example, on 24 June 1890 they took a widow, Mrs Stevenson, a linen draper, to the County Court to recover £9 14s. In 1886, she had bought some clothing from the company and paid the money to Richardson, who kept it for himself. But as she was unable to produce the receipt, the judge ruled against her, although he was sympathetic and said that it “made his blood boil to think of the rascalities of Richardson, and that he had not been caught.” One revealing insight was that around Christmas 1889, one of Richardson’s daughters had gone to Mrs Stevenson and pleaded with her to tell Mr Thompson, if he asked, that the account would be settled in a month; the widow agreed in order to protect the Richardsons. This may have been either a last desperate attempt to hide Richardson’s deceit, or a delaying tactic as he planned their escape to Spain.

In a similar case on 5 April 1892, the Thompsons unsuccessfully tried to recover money for several items of clothing from a surgeon called G. N. Edis who was able to produce a receipt signed by Richardson, which proved that the latter had kept £8 9s 6d of the money that Edis paid.

There was one other cricket link. In November 1890, the Thompsons took the former Derbyshire player William Mycroft to court to recover £1 they claimed he owed for two suits of boys’ clothes that he bought from Richardson in 1887. Mycroft produced a witness to say that Richardson sold him the clothing at a discount. There was laughter in the court when the judge said that he wished to see Richardson, and even greater amusement at a reply given by one of the Thompsons: “So do I, your honour”. After the judge found in Mycroft’s favour, Thompson said that he didn’t think it was fair that he had to pay costs as “I have suffered enough through this man Richardson already”, to which Mycroft replied: “But you have no right to make me suffer too.”

The Thompsons were frequent plaintiffs in court, in cases unrelated to Richardson, and it is likely that they pursued their claims vigorously. But there is no record of what happened to the company in later years, although it changed its name in early 1890, unsurprisingly dropping the “Richardson and Co” and trading as “Thompson and Sons”.

What happened to Richardson and his family afterwards is not entirely clear. The contemporary reports agreed that he had gone to Spain. Richardson’s Wisden obituary confirmed his death in Spain — although it offered no explanation for why he was there, nor mentioned the fraud which ended his association with Derbyshire. His death appears otherwise to have been unrecorded in the English press. However, the very fact that Richardson’s death was reported in Wisden suggests that someone was in contact with him or his family; someone clearly knew the story. The only apparent inaccuracy was that Wisden said he had died in March, whereas modern records give the date as 18 January. Wisden continued to list his death as March 1938 in its “Births and Deaths” section until the 1950s, after which it stopped being listed for reasons of space. Shawcroft wrote in his History of Derbyshire: “[Richardson] went to Spain, where he lived under an assumed name. Here he became court tailor to King Alfonso and lived to be 93 before his death in Madrid in 1938.” He also lists Richardson’s death on 18 January 1938, which might be the origin of that date; it would be interesting to know from where all his information came.

From here, we enter the realms of speculation and uncertainty. Two articles online indicate what happened to him in Spain, although neither gives any sources and therefore must be treated with a lot of caution.

The first is to be found on a website called “Great British Life” which hosts a 2009 article originally published on a site called “This is Derbyshire”. The anonymous author recounts the generally available tale, albeit omitting any mention of Thompson and Sons, and clearly makes use of reports about the Derbyshire meeting of 1890 for his information. The article relates how Richardson fled to Spain, but then adds to the picture: he was joined in Spain by his wife and “several of” his six daughters. According to this version, the family called themselves Roberts to throw off any attempts to trace them. The author continues:

“Nor was the former cricketer without a profession to fall back on — by trade a tailor, Richardson had established a successful gentlemen’s outfitters at 40 Babington Lane in Derby. This was to have a great bearing on his new life in Spain, for he opened an English-style outfitters in the centre of Madrid and made a great success of the business. Indeed he received the official patronage of the Spanish monarch Alfonso XIII (1886-1941), and as such Richardson grandly styled himself ‘Court Tailor to the King of Spain’.”

The author then makes a big leap. There is a well-known department store in Spain called “El Corte Inglés” which translates as the “English Cut”. The company website states that in 1935: “Ramón Areces Rodríguez bought a tailor shop founded in 1890 which is called El Corte Inglés”. According to the “Great British Life” article, this might indicate that the shop belonged to Richardson as 1890 was the date he fled to Spain. The author argues that by 1935, Richardson might have been struggling as King Alfonso was by then in exile. The article concludes:

Nor did the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 help Sam Richardson’s cause, and he lived out his final years in relative hardship. The last few months of his life were spent in Madrid’s Anglo-American hospital, where he died on 18th January 1938 at the age of 93 years and 239 days … He was also declared by the Spanish press ‘Madrid’s oldest British inhabitant’. There ends the colourful story of a cricketer who yielded to temptation and was ‘caught out’. So Derbyshire’s first captain lies at peace in a Madrid cemetery far from the place of his birth. The death certificate names him John Roberts, but in the annals of Derbyshire cricket Samuel Richardson will always be ‘Spanish Sam’, who ran off with the takings and never came home.

A few years later, the online magazine The Diplomat in Spain carried a slightly different version of the story. This 2014 article by Alberto Rubio, which reuses parts of the 2009 article, makes the link with El Corte Inglés. It added the extra detail: “John Roberts — or ‘Spanish Sam’, as he was known since then in his hometown, Derby — could live comfortably in Madrid during the first third of the 20^th century thanks to this distinguished ‘English cut’ that the well-off of that time liked so much”. Rubio adds: “The Spanish firm explains in its history that when its founder, Ramón Areces, came back from Cuba, he acquired ‘a small shop in the year 1935 in Preciados street, corner with Carmen and Rompelanzas, dedicated to tailoring and children’s dressmaking, whose name was El Corte Inglés’.”

Rubio’s article also includes a little more detail on the death of Richardson, suggesting that when he died, he “could not be buried at the British Cemetery of Saint Isidro, which at that time, during the Civil War, was in the middle of the defence line of the city.” But, according to Rubio, Richardson’s wife — under the name Mary Ann Roberts — and his daughters were buried there.

I have been unable to verify any of this information from Spain, nor is there any indication from where the authors of the two articles sourced their stories. The only corroboration for the link with King Alfonso appears in Shawcroft’s History of Derbyshire, which also stated that Richardson styled himself as the court tailor of the Spanish king. Whether this was ever true or simply an urban myth that added a little flavour to the story of Richardson’s escape is unclear. As for the Roberts family buried in Saint Isidro, we have nothing to prove that they were really the Richardsons, unless the death certificate of John Roberts (which I have not seen) makes an explicit connection.

Nevertheless, there is no indication from English census records or registrations of marriages and deaths that any of the family ever returned to England. Additionally, the use of one of Richardson’s daughters in the fraud of Mrs Stevenson might suggest that the entire family was involved in the scam.

A photograph of the interior of El Corte Inglés in Madrid, taken in April 1904. The original caption for the photograph stated (in Spanish): “View of the interior of the great tailor shop “El Corto Inglés”, the largest establishment in Madrid for children’s suits, and men’s coats and clothing. This building has been recently renovated and has a large number of doors and windows on three different streets.” (Image: Wikipedia, original photograph from Nuevo Mundo)

As for the link with El Corte Inglés, this appears based on little more than coincidence. From what is available online, it appears that the Spanish department store was founded in 1935 by Ramón Areces Rodriguez who, with the financial assistance of his uncle Cesar Rodriguez Gonzalez, bought a tailor’s shop in Madrid from a man called Julián Gordo. Another man, Pepín Fernández, may also have been involved (various permutations of who owned what are described online), but it is clear that no-one bought anything in 1935 from an elderly refugee from Derby. Other than the fact that the original shop was founded in 1890 (when it is unlikely that Richardson would have had enough money immediately to start another business), there is nothing to connect it to Richardson, nor any suggestion other than its name (which refers to a style of clothing) that it had any links with England. Nor was Richardson the only Englishman in Spain in these years. While it may make a nice story, there is no evidence to support it and the theory is not widespread (there are few Spanish references to it, and most draw on the 2009 article or the one in The Diplomat).

Even without this addition to the tale, Richardson’s story is a remarkable one. What drove him to do what he did, other than greed? There may be one little clue. One of the press reports which detailed the Thompsons’ attempts to recover their money gave a little of the history of their association with Richardson. Thompson senior “purchased the business from Samuel Richardson 1884, and also the book debts”. While “book debts” are simply the accounts of money owed to the business rather than a debt owed by the business itself, could it be the case that Richardson was struggling financially and sold up to the Thompsons? Based on the 1881 census, he had sixteen men working for him which would have been a big drain on his income. If several people owed money to Richardson, was he perhaps also in debt himself while he waited for them to pay? Was it financial desperation that led him to defraud the Thompsons as well as his cricket and football clubs?

Since Richardson disappeared, the story has been told as if he pocketed over a thousand pounds and escaped to Spain to live a life of luxury, like a nineteenth-century Ronnie Biggs. But given the length of time over which these frauds took place, the fact that he had to sell his business, and the generally small amounts that were involved in individual cases, it seems far more likely that Richardson was attempting to stave off bankruptcy, found himself far too deep in his deceptions and was left with no option but to run. The involvement of his daughter in a desperate attempt to delay his employers from discovering the truth over a matter of less than £10 might support the idea that panic rather than enrichment was Richardson’s main motivation.

However, if we can be fairly certain of the English end of the story, there is much about Richardson’s later life that is a mystery. Perhaps some answers may be found in Spanish sources, but there is almost certainly more to be uncovered about the assistant secretary who ran away.

The Many Lives of Arnold Warren

Arnold Warren photographed by George Beldam around 1906

Fast bowlers have always created excitement in the cricket world, and the modern game is no exception. For example, the Test debut of Jofra Archer in 2019 involved an electrifying passage of play during which he unsettled Steve Smith, one of the best batsmen in the world. There have been many other instances of extreme pace producing dramatic cricket. Therefore, the arrival of a new fast bowler is always a cause of anticipation and exhilaration. But even Archer’s England debut did not match that of a long-forgotten fast bowler from Derbyshire called Arnold Warren in the 1905 Ashes. He took five for 57 in Australia’s first innings including the wickets of the legendary Victor Trumper — the undisputed best batsman in the world — and three other top-six players. In the second innings he removed Trumper for a duck. And yet that was Warren’s only Test match. Who was Arnold Warren, and why was he dropped after such a spectacularly successful debut? The reasons are more complicated than they might first appear. Because Warren was many things: a builder, a cricketer, a footballer, a miner, an umpire. But most importantly for his sporting career, he was also involved in an assault that resulted in a two-month prison sentence.

Arnold Warren was born on 2 April 1875 in a Derbyshire village called Codnor which was closely associated with mining. He was the youngest of eight children. His father, John Warren, was a builder whose work still stands in the local area. Life cannot have been easy and the family faced challenges; for example, Warren’s sister died of tuberculosis in 1881. In the same year, his eldest brother John emigrated to Australia. By the time of the 1891 census, the 16-year-old Arnold was working as an assistant to his father but had already begun to have an impact as a cricketer. That year, he played his first game for the Codnor cricket team against Heanor and took six wickets. It may be from this time that one unusual detail of his career arose; Warren was always recorded on scorecards as “A. R. Warren”, although he had no middle name. Apparently the extra initial was to distinguish him from another “A. Warren” — a family member according to his obituary in the Cricketer, a local player according to CricketArchive.

Codnor Cricket Club in 1894: Warren is standing at the back, third from the left
(Image: Codnor and District website)

As a cricketer, Warren was fairly straightforward. At his peak, he was one of the fastest bowlers in England — arguably the fastest. His run-up was between twelve and fourteen paces, and his action was judged to be excellent. He had batting talent, but rarely succeeded in that sphere; possibly he lacked the discipline but it is equally likely that his team wished him to concentrate purely on bowling as there was a feeling at the time that allowing bowlers to improve with the bat impaired their primary function.

In 1897, Warren made his debut for Derbyshire and played a total of ten first-class games that season. However, he achieved nothing; he took just five wickets at an average of over 70 and scored 66 runs at an average a touch over five. After a heavy bowling workload in his first few matches, he was barely used with the ball and batted low down in the order. He might have played even more but for an injury, so Derbyshire apparently saw more than his figures suggested; equally possibly, a weak team had few other options. After this failure, Warren did not play in 1898 and was picked for just one game — in which he batted at number ten and barely bowled — in 1899. The census records that he returned to work for his father as a bricklayer in Codnor, but in the 1901 season he was recalled to the Derbyshire team, playing nine times, batting a little further up the order and bowling more regularly. His record remained poor; he took just nine wickets at an average of 67.55, and averaged around twenty with the bat.

Given that Warren was now approaching his mid-twenties, and even allowing for the fact that cricketers in this period generally emerged at first-class level at a later age than in today’s game, it may have appeared that his chance had passed. But he had another avenue to sporting success. He was also a good footballer, and this gradually became the dominant part of his life. In the late 1890s, he played for Heanor Town, a local non-league team. But his performances attracted interest at a higher level, and in November 1901 he was signed for Derby County which was playing in the First Division, the top level of English football at the time. Between November 1901 and January 1902, he played eight matches in the position of outside right and scored four goals. However, a loss of form dropped him to the reserve team in January and he never regained his place.

Later that year, Warren achieved a breakthrough of sorts as a cricketer. In the 1902 season, he took 49 wickets at 24.16 with best figures of seven for 70. His batting average was only thirteen, but he scored his first fifty at first-class level. Although it had taken five years, he had begun to repay some of the time that Derbyshire had invested into him. His upward trajectory continued throughout the year: in June, he married Ann Ellen Cater, the daughter of a local farmer, at Ironville Parish Church; in August, he signed to play football for Brentford in the first division of the Southern League.

The Athletic News in August 1902 covered this latter development in some depth, suggesting that Warren was a promising footballer, although it perhaps overplayed his case: “Quite the sensation was caused in football circles when it became known that Arnold Warren, the outside right of Derby County, had been induced to sign for Brentford. It no exaggeration to say that he would have been an acquisition to any team in the country as he is quite the most dangerous man in his position now playing. His dashes down the wing and lightning shots will be greatly appreciated”. With his place in the Derbyshire team secure, an opportunity to play more professional football, and his recent marriage, it appeared that everything was coming together for Warren.

Warren in the Brentford strip in 1902 (Image: Wikipedia)

Almost immediately, however, Warren the footballer threw it away. He played regularly for Brentford in the 1902–03 season, and scored several times. But by March 1903, he had once again lost form and a transfer had been arranged with Ripley Athletic. A few days before this went through, Warren was involved in an incident which brought him before the Police Court — which would today be known as a magistrates’ court — in April.

On the evening of 28 March, Warren had gone to the Castle Hotel in Brentford and, in the words of the prosecutor, appeared to “run amok”. He had arrived at the Castle Hotel, according to witnesses, with another Brentford footballer called Pickering and a man called Newsome; presumably these were George Pickering and Arthur Newsome, two other Brentford players. He had been drinking heavily and was heard arguing with Pickering about “getting drunk and being dismissed” from the club, and about the reasons he was leaving. While Newsome asked for some drinks, Warren began to use “filthy language”; it was so bad, one man “had to take his wife out”. Another man called Pearce asked him to stop using bad language, at which point Warren struck him. Pearce and the barmaids then complained to William Bird, the son of the landlord. Bird spent several minutes asking Warren to leave. After he continually refused, Bird “took hold of [Warren’s] shoulder and put him through a little door”. At this point, in the passageway outside the bar area, Newsome pinned Bird’s arms while Warren struck him and called him a “filthy name”. All those present rushed out into the passageway to see what had happened.

Bird’s nose was broken in several places; it was painfully reset that evening by a local doctor. A constable was summoned and wanted Bird to charge Warren, but he did not do so — claiming to be “dazed” and too busy bathing his nose, which was turned “completely round”.

On 3 April, Warren’s transfer to Ripley Athletic went through and he returned to Derbyshire immediately. Therefore he did not respond to a first summons to appear in court. While the prosecutor claimed that this demonstrated his contempt for the summons, even obliquely hinting that he had left Brentford to avoid it, Warren claimed that the date was smudged, causing him to mistake the day. He eventually was tried at Brentford Police Court on 17 April. Warren’s defence was that he had simply been trying to break free from Bird’s grip and had accidentally struck him with his elbow. He also claimed that he had been “insulted all night because he was leaving the football club.” The chairman of the court was unconvinced and found him guilty. For refusing to leave the premises, he was fined 40 shillings and for the assault, he was sentenced to two months’ hard labour. After hearing this, Warren somewhat sorrowfully said that Bird had told him that, had he only apologised, he would have taken it no further. The unsympathetic chairman merely observed: “You should have done so.”

Warren, however, decided to appeal. Having paid his fines and bail money, he was released just over a week later and was therefore available to Derbyshire for the 1903 cricket season. The prospect of going to prison did not appear to affect his cricket; he scored two half-centuries and increased his batting average to 15 while he took 72 wickets at 22.76. He also held 22 catches and established himself firmly in the team.

On 31 October, the Middlesex Quarter Sessions heard Warren’s appeal. More evidence emerged about what led to the incident. Warren denied the suggestion that he had been dismissed by Brentford because of heavy drinking; instead he claimed that an injury had reduced his effectiveness and therefore “his arrangement was amicably terminated”. As he had been due to return to Derby shortly, he had gone for a drink at the Castle Hotel, during which he and Pickering “had a little chaff as friends” which Pearce misinterpreted as a falling out. Under cross-examination, he reiterated that he had not been suspended for being drunk, but for “inattention to training” and denied being angry at the suspension (although earlier in the hearing he seemingly denied that he was suspended at all); in fact he had asked to be released previously. He also claimed that the injury to Bird had happened accidentally in a general skirmish in the passageway in which he himself had been hurt — a somewhat vaguer defence than at the original hearing.

Warren had three influential character witnesses: the vice-president of Derby County, who was also a Justice of the Peace and a Town Councillor; a Derbyshire Justice; and the secretary of Derbyshire Cricket Club. But despite several witnesses backing up his story, and even the police constable who had been summoned admitting that Warren looked like he had been “badly treated”, the appeal was dismissed with costs; the chairman of the appeal panel, who more than once hinted at his disapproval of footballers in general, said that “it was outrageous that people should go to a public house and make such disturbances”.

Whichever way the incident is examined, Warren does not come out of it looking good, particularly as he never disputed that he had hit Pearce before the scuffle with Bird. It also seems clear that, despite his protestations to the contrary, Brentford had suspended him, quite likely for heavy drinking. Perhaps Bird could have handled the situation a little better, but Warren was clearly drunk beyond the capacity for reasoning, and was largely responsible for whatever actually happened in the passageway. The result, although there is no record of when or where the sentence was served, is that Warren spent two months in prison doing “hard labour”. It is not clear whether he resumed his career with Ripley Athletic, but having been released by two high-profile clubs within a year, his chance of a career in top-level football was over.

It was after this that Warren the cricketer fully emerged. By the beginning of the 1904 cricket season, he was free to resume playing for Derbyshire. Whether he was inspired by the shock of spending time in prison, the end of his football career, or even the physical benefits of two months’ hard labour, he improved enormously. He took 124 first-class wickets — of which 101 were taken in the County Championship — at an average of 20.94, becoming in the process the first man to take a hundred wickets in a season for Derbyshire. His best performance came at Welbeck when he took fifteen for 112 on a wet pitch. He was certainly noticed — an article in the Athletic News called him the best fast bowler in England. His success did not simply arise from pace, although he was undoubtedly quick, but from an immaculate length and a “sharp breakback”. But the lack of recognition through selection for the Gentlemen v Players match may have betrayed a reluctance among cricket authorities to honour a man who had so recently been in prison.

Another problem for Warren was that he played for an unfashionable county. Derbyshire were only admitted into the official County Championship from 1895 and regularly appeared in the bottom third of the table. At this time, only two Derbyshire players — William Chatterton and Bill Storer — had played for England and the only home Test appearance by a Derbyshire cricketer had been by Storer in 1899.

But Warren’s form at the beginning of the 1905 season made him hard to ignore, even playing for lowly Derbyshire; ten wickets against Sussex — including C. B. Fry in both innings — and twelve against Yorkshire propelled him into the minds of the selectors. After the first two Tests of that summer’s Ashes series, England led Australia 1–0 having won the first Test and drawn the second when rain washed out the last day. For the third Test, played at Headingley, Warren was given his opportunity.

An illustration by Frank Gillet of Warren bowling in the Headingley Test match of 1905

On the first day of the three-day match, England scored 301 on a tricky pitch, thanks mainly to an unbeaten 144 from the captain F. S. Jackson. Warren made seven before being run out. On the second day, the pitch had dried out a little, giving it more pace, but it remained difficult for batsmen. Wisden remarked: “Thanks chiefly to Warren’s great pace Trumper, Hill and Noble, were all out in little more than half an hour for 36.” Trumper, the world’s best batsman, was bowled for eight but the Australians recovered to some extent. Warren later removed the Australian captain Joe Darling and then returned to finish off the innings for 195, taking the wicket of the top-scorer Warwick Armstrong and the last man Frank Laver. He finished with five for 57 from 19.2 overs, an excellent effort on his Test debut. The Wisden report said: “Warren carried off all the honours in bowling, maintaining a rare pace and making the ball get up very awkwardly.” Later, the ball used in the innings was mounted and presented to him by “his Derbyshire Friends and admirers as a souvenir” according to the inscription.

Building on their first innings lead of 106, England scored 169 for two before the end of the day, and extended this to 295 for five before Jackson declared on the final morning. Australia needed 402 to win in four-and-a-half hours (in which time England bowled 91 overs). Although Warren had Trumper caught in the slips during his first over for a duck, Australia batted out time for the loss of seven wickets. Warren took just the one wicket in 20 overs (although another chance was dropped from his bowling early in the innings) and Wisden records that “Warren had not the same pace as in the first innings”. Possibly his efforts on the previous day had left him tired, or maybe the Australians were just a little more careful. However, according to John Shawcroft’s The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club (1989), William Taylor — a cricketer who played for Derbyshire in 1905 and 1906 and who served as the county’s Secretary from 1908 to 1959 — recalled that Warren was joined on the second evening by several friends and relations; their “epic celebrations” left him the worse for wear on the final day, to the dissatisfaction of Jackson.

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The England team for the Headingley Test of 1905: Back row: George Hirst, David Denton, Arnold Warren, Colin Blythe, Arthur Lilley, Wilfred Rhodes and Schofield Haigh. Front row: Johnny Tyldesley, C. B. Fry, F. S. Jackson (captain), Bernard Bosanquet and Tom Hayward.

During the game, Warren also suffered an injury which kept him out of a few matches. He was absent when Derbyshire played the Australians, and had to drop out of the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s. However he was fit to play in the equivalent fixture at the Oval and took eight wickets but his form declined quite badly after this. Whether through his poor performance in the second innings at Headingley, his injury or the reports of his drinking, Warren was dropped from the England team for the fourth Test. Instead, his place went to another fast bowler, Walter Brearley of Lancashire who held the twin advantages of being an amateur and playing for a high-profile county. Although not as good a batsman as Warren, he was more consistent with the ball.

By the end of the season, Warren had taken 94 wickets at 24.54, an average almost four runs higher than the previous season. Nevertheless, he had made his debut for England, and in the Gentlemen v Players match. To set the seal on his year, in December Warren’s wife gave birth to their only son, Martin Warren.

The 1906 season proved disappointing — apart from one game for a weak “England XI” against the West Indian team that toured England in 1906, he was not selected in any representative cricket. In fact, apart from that one game, the remainder of his first-class cricket was played exclusively for Derbyshire. He took over a hundred wickets in 1906 albeit at a relatively high average, but it may have been that other things were on his mind. In late 1906, shortly after the conclusion of the cricket season, Ellen Warren died at the age of 29.

Warren, left with a young son to care for, moved back in with his father. His family presumably took care of Martin while Warren was away playing cricket. He took just 55 wickets in 1907 during a very wet summer dominated by spin bowlers but improved again, taking 105 wickets in 1908 and 99 wickets in 1909, averaging around 22 in both seasons.

After this, Warren gradually faded, but two performances stood out in these later seasons. His Wisden obituary many years later recorded: “In Warren’s own opinion his best performance was against Leicestershire at Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1912. On turf which did not help bowlers, Leicestershire, needing 180 to win, were put out for 97, Warren dismissing seven batsmen for 52.” Later stories suggested that he drank several whiskies before his devastating spell. However, his most lasting achievement came with the bat in 1910. Against Warwickshire, he scored his only first-class century at Blackwell. Warwickshire had scored 504 for seven in their first innings and forced Derbyshire to follow on by bowling them out for 262. In the second innings, the home team had slumped to 131 for eight, still 111 behind Warwickshire, when Warren — who was battling an injury that restricted his batting — was joined by his captain John Chapman. The pair put on 283 for the ninth wicket which remains a first-class record at the time of writing, 110 years later. Warren eventually was out for 123, scored in 185 minutes with 14 fours.

One other incident made the news involving Warren; in 1911, he was injured in bizarre fashion when, opening a bottle of liquid ammonia, he was almost blinded by the fumes and spent several days in an infirmary to recover.

Arnold Warren in a posed photograph from around 1908 (Image: Wikipedia)

By 1912, apart from his whisky-inspired revival, his bowling had declined and he was into his late thirties. A combination of his loss of effectiveness, reputation for heavy drinking and a new captain at Derbyshire meant that he was dropped after a few matches in the 1913 season. This was the end of his regular career as a first-class cricketer, although he had a brief return after the First World War.

Shawcroft’s History of Derbyshire records that Warren had “a spell of destitution”, although no details or dates are given. If this did happen, it is unclear when: there were no gaps in his cricket career, and no press reports; potentially it happened when his playing career ended, but there is no indication of this.

Once his cricket career was over, Warren became a miner at Langwith Colliery. During the First World War, he joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in October 1915. Although he was technically too old, he reduced his age by two years when he applied; recruiters were not too worried about either upper or lower age limits by this stage. He served in France but was wounded by a shell in 1917 and sent back to England to recuperate from multiple injuries — including fractures in his spine and shoulder. He was discharged, having attained the rank of Lance Bombardier, in February 1919 and received a disability pension owing to problems with his shoulder.

Nevertheless, he was able to play cricket for the Langwith Colliery team in 1919. His form in 1920 was good enough for Derbyshire to recall him; he did well in two games, taking nine wickets for 143 runs, but Derbyshire’s problem that season was batting. Of their 18 County Championship games, they lost 17 and the other was completely rained off. That was the end of Warren’s first-class career: he finished with 5,507 runs at an average of 13.73 and 939 wickets at 24.55. Even many years later, he was remembered as one of the fastest bowlers to play for Derbyshire. It is tempting, although futile, to speculate what he may have achieved as a cricketer — and footballer — had it not been for his fondness for late-night drinking escapades.

Warren was not quite done with cricket, however, and in the 1920s began yet another career. For the 1923 season, he was appointed as a first-class umpire and spent four seasons on the County Championship list. He seems to have done the job efficiently enough and attracted no attention — which is always a good sign in an umpire. Later, he moved to Ormonde Colliery and worked occasionally as a bricklayer until his retirement in 1945, after which he continued to umpire local cricket and was the Honorary Secretary of Codnor Miners Welfare Cricket Club. He died in 1951 at the age of 76. He never remarried, and by the time of the Second World War, his son had moved to Australia, perhaps to join his uncle’s family there.

“I’m not at all happy about this trip”: Guy Jackson’s nervous breakdown

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Guy Jackson

One of the most unusual — and to modern eyes, inexplicable — Test selections was the appointment of R. T. Stanyforth as the captain of England in 1927. When he was invited to lead an MCC tour of South Africa, Stanyforth had never played a Test. Even more remarkably, he had not appeared in the County Championship and had played just 21 first-matches cricket in a career stretching back to 1914. There is, however, an explanation for this extraordinary appointment: Stanyforth was a late replacement. The man originally chosen to lead the tour, Derbyshire’s captain Guy Jackson, pulled out at the last minute. The reason? The prospect of leading England led him to have a breakdown.

The appointments of both Stanyforth and Jackson arose only because until the late 1930s a tour to South Africa was not taken too seriously. Consequently, many English cricketers opted not to take part and the selectors often gave opportunities to those not quite good enough to play in a full-strength England team or to promising younger players. More often than not, the MCC — under whose name and colours England teams played when overseas, apart from in Test matches where they remained known as “England” — were left scrambling around to find enough players willing to take part. Therefore, neither the team nor the captain would necessarily have been first-choice; it was not until 1938–39 that an MCC team in South Africa was led by a man who was effectively the “official” England captain.

The “captain in residence” for the 1927–28 tour was Percy Chapman. Appointed following the sacking of Arthur Carr after the fourth Test of the 1926 Ashes series, Chapman led England to their first series win over Australia since 1912. Even though he had only been in the role for one Test, this almost guaranteed that he would captain the next MCC team to Australia in 1928–29. However, Chapman was unavailable to tour South Africa, which forced the selectors to find a stop-gap. Their solution was to approach Guy Jackson, the captain of Derbyshire.

Like many amateurs, Guy Rolfe Jackson had a privileged upbringing and followed a somewhat traditional path. The son of a brigadier, he was born in Tupton, a village close to Chesterfield, in 1896. He attended Harrow School and played for the cricket team. When he appeared in the annual match against Eton at Lord’s, he made a good impression with a half-century under pressure and was set to go to Oxford University until the First World War put a stop to his education. Aged only 18, he joined the army in 1914; he attained the rank of captain and served in Egypt and Salonica. His Wisden obituary many years later recorded: “He was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the [Military Cross] and the Legion d’Honneur.” When the war ended, Jackson did not attend Oxford, but returned to cricket and began to play for Derbyshire.

At the time, all first-class counties were led by amateurs but throughout the interwar period, it became increasingly difficult for amateurs to commit to cricket. Not many could afford to play full-time, which meant that the pool from which captains could be drawn began to shrink. Jackson was one of the few whose outside career allowed him to play regularly. He worked at — and was latterly a manager and director of — the Clay Cross Company, which specialised in coal mining and brick manufacture, and which had been owned by the Jackson family for many years.

Guy Jackson in 1922 (Image: The Cricketer, 2 September 1922)

Jackson first played for Derbyshire in the 1919 season when he played five matches and passed fifty once. Derbyshire finished ninth that season, in an experimental two-day County Championship but this was the start of a catastrophic few seasons for the team. In 1920, they finished bottom of the county table with a humiliating record; they played 18 matches, of which 17 were lost and the other was abandoned without a ball bowled. The best batting average was 22.75 and amid the chaos, 39 players were tried. Questions were raised whether Derbyshire deserved to retain their first-class status. In response, the county began to improve their coaching set-up and invest in young players. The captain, George Buckston agreed to remain in the position for one more season to assist in making the necessary changes and the team had a much better season in 1921, rising to 12th and winning five games.

Jackson played but a small part in that improvement, appearing just nine times, but he was the unanimous choice of the county committee to take over when Bucktson resigned at the end of the season. The appointment of a 25-year-old man with so little experience, and few qualifications other than his amateur status, was not unusual in the early 1920s. Some new captains in a similar position at other counties quickly proved out of their depth, but others such as Arthur Carr or Percy Fender rose to the challenge and went on to long and successful careers.

Although still plagued by poor batting, and helpless against the best counties, Derbyshire reached 11th in the Championship in 1922, their first season under Jackson. The new captain averaged just under 20 with two fifties but made a reasonable impression with both his batting and leadership. The upward trajectory continued in 1923 when the county reached 10th place and critics began to notice improvements in the play of the whole team, particularly in batting. In this regard, Jackson was at the forefront and such was his early-season form that he was selected in a Test trial match — for the North against the South. If he faded later in the season, he still finished with 920 runs at an average 25.55 and two centuries, his first at first-class level.

Guy Jackson (in the centre foreground in a cap) and Arthur Carr (right) lead out the South team in the Test trial match of 1923 (Image: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 30 June 1923)

After a wobble in 1924 when the county finished last, Jackson’s team gradually made its way back up the table again, reaching 14th in 1925 and 11th the following season. The captain retained his batting form well enough to be selected for the Gentlemen against the Players — albeit in the less prestigious matches at the Oval — in 1924 and 1925; in the latter season he also passed 1,000 runs for the first time. More importantly, his leadership began to attract as much attention as his stylish left-handed batting; no blame was attached to him for the county’s failure in 1924 and most critics thought he did as much as could be expected. Wisden noted that Jackson led “with marked ability” in 1926 and he was invited to join an all-amateur MCC team captained by Pelham Warner that toured South America over the winter.

Both Jackson and Derbyshire continued to rise in 1927, when the county reached the unprecedented heights of fifth place. The team’s fielding stood out as exceptional, Jackson himself leading by example. With the bat, he averaged just 22 — similar to the previous season — but impressed with his driving. Wisden’s correspondent purred about the effectiveness of the team, and how organised it was. If Derbyshire’s improvement owed much to the discovery of new players, it seems clear that Jackson’s efficient leadership played a key role. It was this that prompted the MCC to ask him to lead their team in South Africa that winter, by which stage he had already made a good impression captaining the North against the South in a Test trial. Following his selection, he led the Rest in another Test trial against the full England team. Had any Test matches been scheduled that season, he might have played.

Embed from Getty Images

A combined team photograph of the Derbyshire and Australian teams from their match in 1926. Guy Jackson is seated on the front row, fifth from the right

Over the remaining weeks of the season, the MCC assembled the rest of the team. The English press acknowledged that it was far from a full-strength side but judged it would be strong enough to beat South Africa; the South African press took the opposite view and expected their team to win. The only available player already established at Test level was Herbert Sutcliffe; five others had previously appeared in Tests but none more than five times. The remaining nine were new to international cricket, although several had been on previous MCC tours to the West Indies or India. Overall, the team was a good mixture of experience and promise. Wally Hammond and Bob Wyatt, who made the Test debuts during the tour, went on to long and distinguished England careers, and six members of the team went on to tour Australia with Percy Chapman in 1928–29.

The biggest weakness was in bowling; the team initially contained only one specialist bowler — A. P. Freeman — and a succession of all-rounders. It was this weakness which prompted the addition of Nottinghamshire’s Sam Staples to the team, but there was another late, and somewhat strange, selection.

Ian Peebles was the son of a Church of Scotland minister who worked as a secretary and coach at Aubrey Faulkner’s indoor school. Able to bowl fast leg-breaks in the manner of the legendary Sydney Barnes at the indoor nets, Peebles never reproduced this form in outdoor cricket but had established a reputation as a useful bowler thanks to the patronage of Faulkner and Pelham Warner. His selection for the Gentlemen v Players match at the Oval in 1927 had been a failure, and by the end of the season he had taken just three wickets for 323 runs in four first-class games. But enough influential backers thought he would be an asset in South Africa, and therefore it was announced in early September that he would be joining the MCC team as Jackson’s secretary — despite demonstrating little ability in performing this role for Faulkner. Such an appointment was unusual; subterfuge to include an undeserving amateur was not usually required, as demonstrated by another bizarre late inclusion in the MCC team.

Ronald Stanyforth in 1927 (Image: Wikipedia)

In late August, a second wicket-keeper was added to the team to share the role with Derbyshire’s Harry Elliott. Ronald Thomas Stanyforth was a 35-year-old captain in the Army who had little time to spare for first-class cricket, although he had been a member of Warner’s MCC team in South America alongside Jackson in 1926–27. He had never played county cricket, although there had been rumours that he was to captain Yorkshire in 1928. Perhaps with this in mind, he had been asked to play for the county in 1927 but was unavailable. Unusually for a prospective Yorkshire captain, he had been born in London, although his father came from a land-owing North Yorkshire family.

Stanyforth went to Eton and played briefly for the school first eleven in 1911, but not in the most important games. He attended Oxford University, but other than one match in 1914, did not play for the cricket team. After serving in the First World War — in which he received the Military Cross, was wounded and was mentioned in Dispatches — he remained in the Army, becoming a captain in the 10th Hussars, a cavalry regiment. Between 1922 and 1926, he had played twenty first-class matches, mainly for the MCC and the Army. Most critics said that he was a capable wicket-keeper and a decent batsman, but he was plainly not Test quality and barely reached first-class standard. But for a man with so little experience — and who had not been good enough to play for Harrow or Oxford — to be selected for a representative tour was not unusual. Many MCC teams, particularly during less important tours, had included at least one amateur who, although not close to England standard, was chosen either for his social standing or because he had sufficient wealth to pay his own way. Stanyforth met both criteria; his father was hugely influential both in the Army, where he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Yorkshire Hussars, and in agriculture as a breeder of cattle at his home of Hammerton Hall.

However, such selections had become increasingly uncommon — no parallels can be found in any other MCC team to visit South Africa between the wars. The press did not comment, but newspapers were usually silent on issues concerning amateur cricket; everyone knew how it worked, but did not discuss it openly. For two such amateurs, Peebles and Stanyforth, to be taken in 1927–28 was unusual, even if the former showed promise. The combination of these two late call-ups may have been connected to what followed.

Ten days before the team set sail, Jackson was taken into a nursing home with an unspecified illness that forced him to pull out of the tour. His mother simply told the press that he had “broken down in health” and had been “ordered a long rest”. He was said to be “keenly disappointed” to miss the tour. The nature of his illness was never officially explained, although a 1989 history of Derbyshire suggested that the reason was “ill-health caused by malaria contracted during the war and which still affected him from time to time.” But an illness like that would almost certainly have been mentioned by the press as it was hardly secret or shameful. The real explanation was to be found elsewhere.

The first hint as to what was going on appeared in the Derby Daily Telegraph. In an article melodramatically titled “A Cricket Tragedy”, the writer alluded to a possible cause, and in doing so demonstrated how highly regarded Jackson was in his county:

“Mr. Jackson’s illness is sufficient in itself to illustrate the strain of County Cricket as played in these days. To see the man and to have some acquaintance with the distinguishing qualities of his family, would be to satisfy oneself that he would be impervious to the anxieties that beset the captain of a County Cricket team … Yet there were times during the season when it struck us that Mr. Jackson was overwrought. We shall not readily forget the keen disappointment — which he was powerless conceal — with which returned to the Pavilion on each occasion after his dismissal in the Warwickshire match at Derby. It looked very much to close observers as though he were bitterly reproaching himself on having let the side down at critical junctures in the game — reproaches which assuredly found no echo whatever the hearts and minds of those who were looking on. But no matter to what cause his illness may attributed, or what date it commenced its insidious work, every Derbyshire sportsman will join in the hope that the cloud may speedily dissipated, and that long before another cricket season dawns, a charming personality and a cricket captain of almost ideal endowments may be restored to his accustomed health, and to active participation in a game of which he had proved such a distinguished ornament.”

For a man who had captained since 1922, and who had a heroic war record, suddenly to feel the strain may have been a result of Derbyshire’s rise in the County Championship and the subsequent increase in scrutiny. However, the particular match mentioned in the report in which Jackson was struggling took place after he had been announced as the England captain. In reality, it was this appointment which was causing Jackson distress, as revealed in Bob Wyatt’s autobiography Three Straight Sticks in 1951.

Discussing his own selection for the tour, Wyatt wrote that “It was on that [1927–28] tour that, without being captain myself, I fully realised for the first time what a strain captaincy of a touring team is.” Wyatt mentioned that apart from on-field and managerial duties, captains had a huge number of commitments such as speech-making which “does become a terrific burden”. He concluded: “So heavy is the task of a captain that I know of at least one case where a captain who was due to take the side on tour had a nervous breakdown at the prospect before the tour began and couldn’t go.” While Jackson is not named, it is not hard to deduce to whom he is referring.

Discussing the tour many years later with his biographer Gerald Pawle, Wyatt went further and actually confirmed the identity of the struggling captain. In R. E. S. Wyatt: Fighting Cricketer (1985), Wyatt recalled meeting Jackson during the Folkestone Festival at the end of the 1927 season. Pawle relates that Wyatt knew Jackson fairly well as his county Warwickshire were Derbyshire’s usual Bank Holiday opponents. Pawle writes that Jackson was “a competent left hand bat [who] had instilled a remarkable team spirit into a side of modest talents”. Pawle also states that Wyatt always thought him “a composed and confident figure, at his best in a crisis”.

At Folkestone, Jackson asked Wyatt to walk with him along the sea front:

“Jackson seemed ill at ease, and as soon as the forthcoming tour cropped up he said to Wyatt in some distress: ‘I’m not at all happy about this trip. I’m worried about all the speech making and I’m wondering if I can possibly face it.'”

Wyatt thought he was putting too much importance onto the speech-making side of the role, and discussed his experiences on the MCC tour of India the previous winter under the relaxed captaincy of Arthur Gilligan. Wyatt believed that Jackson felt better for their conversation by the time they returned to the hotel, and was therefore surprised when he withdrew from the tour some weeks later.

It seems fairly clear, between Wyatt’s recollections and the report in the Derby Daily Telegraph that Jackson had some kind of stress-related illness caused by the prospect of leading England, which his contemporaries would have called a nervous breakdown. Several high-profile cases in recent years have made cricket far more understanding of such illnesses, and the players’ mental health has assumed a deservedly high priority. But there were no such considerations in 1927, and so Jackson was taken into a nursing home — perhaps at the prompting of his mother given that she spoke to the press. A week after the MCC had departed, he was well enough to be discharged and took a three-week break in South Wales to assist his recovery. By mid-November, reassuring stories appeared in the Derbyshire press that he would be fine to resume the county captaincy for the 1928 season.

The question arises though if the late call-up of Stanyforth, and the employment of Peebles as the captain’s secretary were designed to provide Jackson with support after he expressed concerns, or gave some indication that he was struggling. Certainly the unusual appointment of Peebles as secretary suggests a desire to lighten Jackson’s workload. Similarly, Stanyforth may have been sounded out as to the possibility of being a back-up option. Although lacking playing experience, at the age of 35 Stanyforth was a full member of the MCC and the oldest amateur in the team. None of the other amateurs, Jackson excepted, were older than 26 and although several had captained at first-class level, none had sufficient experience to lead an England team abroad. Perhaps Stanyforth was chosen to lend some support and to take over if necessary.

Some of the MCC team at Waterloo Station: (Left to right) Eddie Dawson, Stanyforth (holding the “team mascot”), Herbert Sutcliffe, Ian Peebles, Percy Holmes and Geoffrey Legge (Image: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 29 October 1927)

Therefore, after Jackson withdrew, there was an obvious solution. On 12 October, it was announced that Stanyforth would lead the team, while Jackson’s place was given to the Yorkshire batsman Percy Holmes. Perhaps indicative of the period, and of the low priority given to tours of South Africa, there was no adverse comment in the press. Captains had to be amateurs, and Stanyforth was the best option available, no matter how strange this might appear to modern eyes.

The tour itself was quickly forgotten. Stanyforth played in four of the five Tests, the only ones of his career, and became one of the few men to lead his country on Test debut. Most accounts agreed that he captained well, particularly from an off-field point-of-view. Wisden simply commented: “If no special success attended his individual efforts on the cricket field, he showed himself a capable captain and a strong and popular personality.” His speech-making in particular was praised. In Stanyforth’s obituary in the Cricketer, Ian Peebles recalled:

“With his humour, warmth and fibre he was the most entertaining and convivial team-mate yet as captain, though unobtrusively, very much in command of the situation. In the affairs of cricket the same qualities made him a splendid administrator, dauntless in what he regarded as being right, whether popular or not. Wherever he went he had a most unusual quality of commanding respect as well as deep affection.”

But Stanyforth would certainly never have been included in any England team except in these particularly unusual circumstances. In four Tests, he scored 13 runs at an average of 2.60, and as wicketkeeper had seven catches and two stumpings. There was little more to his cricket career after the South African tour. He made his County Championship debut for Yorkshire in 1928 and came close to playing for England again when he was chosen to tour the West Indies with the MCC in 1929–30 but an injury early on forced him home. He played occasional first-class matches until 1933. He married late, at the age of 49 in 1941, and never had any children. When he died in 1964, his estate was worth nearly £114,000 (the equivalent of over £2 million today).

Peebles, who was still officially the captain’s secretary, also made his Test debut during that tour. Although he did little in those games, he had more success in the first-class matches and played with some distinction for England until a shoulder injury and poor form ended his Test career in 1931.

As for the Test series, England won the first two Tests, but after the third was drawn, South Africa won the final two to level the series 2–2. Stanyforth missed the final match with an injury and Greville Stevens — who some London newspapers had suggested should take over when Jackson withdrew — captained England for the only time. England also suffered from the loss of George Geary partway through the second Test with an injury which ruled him out of remainder of the series after he had taken twelve wickets in the first Test. Given all that had accompanied England off the field, it was a creditable result with a weak team.

Guy Jackson, the captain left behind, remained the captain of Derbyshire until 1930, passing 1,000 first-class runs in 1928, 1929 and 1930. Derbyshire finished 10th, 7th and 9th in Jackson’s last three seasons. Unsurprisingly, he never again came close to being selected for a representative team. He played intermittently after resigning the captaincy, and was able to see Derbyshire become one of the best teams in England in the early 1930s. After finishing 6th in 1933, 3rd in 1934 and 2nd in 1935, Derbyshire won the County Championship for the first time in 1936. That was Jackson’s final season in first-class cricket, although he did not appear in the County Championship. Perhaps his most lasting achievement had come in 1926 when, during the General Strike, he spotted Tommy Mitchell bowling in a match for a colliery team; Mitchell went on to take 1,417 wickets for Derbyshire and was a key figure in the 1930s team.

After his cricketing retirement, Jackson concentrated on his role as a joint Managing Director of the Clay Cross Company. He married Shelagh Tolhurst in 1937 and the couple had three children. He died in February 1966, two years and a day after Stanyforth, leaving just under £42,000 in his will, worth around £800,000 today. Wisden made no mention in his obituary that he came so very close to being the captain of England.