The Inkosi’s Grandson: The Thwarted Career of C. A. V. Makaula

Claude Makaula-White photographed in 1915 (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)

As the 1928 tour of England by the West Indies cricket team drew to a close, some of the visiting team played a one-day match that wasn’t part of the official programme. On 28 September, a team styled the “West Indies” played a Bolton Cricket League team at Piggott Park in Farnworth, a town near Bolton. The game was organised to raise money for the Social Circle Club by a man called Dr Lucas. The match was not taken too seriously by anyone — Learie Constantine scored 65 in 18 minutes (with eight fours and five sixes) in the West Indies’ brief second innings, when they scored 102 for four in eight overs — but the crowd of fewer than 2,000 was a disappointment. Nevertheless, although the game received hardly any coverage in the English press, it represented something unusual because only the non-white members of the West Indies team played, and the side was captained by Constantine. To fill the vacancies in the eleven, local players were recruited, but it is possible that they were not white either, implying some form of conscious decision by either the team-members or the organisers. For example, one of the reinforcements was a man called K. Narayansingh, about whom no information is available except that he took part in a tour of Scotland organised by Constantine the following year, when the press referred to him as a West Indian cricketer. Another recruit was a man listed as C. A. V. Makaula; he scored a duck batting at number eight and took three for 21 with the ball. More is known about Makaula than Narayansingh. He was actually South African and although he never quite made it as a cricketer, he played professionally for a time. And his story — and that of his family — is a remarkable one.

To understand the story of Claude Makaula, it is necessary to begin with his father, the man who came to be known as Albert Makaula-White. He had been born in what is today part of South Africa in 1865. His father — Claude’s grandfather — was Chief Makaula, Inkosi (ruler or king) of the Bhaca people who lived in Mount Frere, today part of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. When Albert was a baby, he grew seriously ill; his mother, one of Chief Makaula’s wives, suggested taking him to a nearby Methodist mission to see if he could be cured. The minister of the mission was a British man called the Reverend Charles White, who lived there with his wife; they had no children. Chief Makaula said that if his son recovered, the Whites could keep him; otherwise they could bury him. In something that sounds like it belongs to the realms of fiction, the baby recovered, was adopted by the White family and renamed Albert Makaula-White. As a result of this unusual background, Albert spent part of his youth in South Africa among the Methodist community but also spent time in England. Certainly he was there around the time his adoptive father died in 1888 but returned to South Africa in 1890 when his adoptive mother was dying.

With both of his parents dead, Albert relocated to England where he began to study theology and followed in the footsteps of Charles White by becoming a Methodist minister. From October 1890 to October 1891, he attended the Richmond Theological College in Surrey. During that time, he appears to have travelled extensively around Britain, speaking to various Wesleyan groups, and lived at several addresses. His studies ended, according to the records of the Theological College, when he was “recalled” by the South African Methodist Conference. The historian Marika Sherwood, who has written about Albert Makaula-White, suggests that the conference was reluctant to continue funding the studies of an African, certainly after the death of Charles White. Therefore, Albert had to begin making arrangements to return home. In December 1891, he married Eleanor Botting, a dressmaker and the daughter of a carpenter, in Strood, Kent. The marriage certificate describes Albert as a Wesleyan Minister and described his father as a “native African chief”. Curiously, Albert’s address was in Pudsey, Yorkshire. Sherwood has tentatively identified a possible connection with that location through the Reverend Faraday, based at Pudsey’s Wesleyan Chapel, who was a former missionary in Africa and had lived in Kent for a time; perhaps he knew Albert from one or both of those locations and had invited him to stay with him after leaving the College.

Quite how a mixed marriage would have been received in 1891 is hard to say, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that reactions would have been positive. Racism was widespread in Britain and other marriages between white English women and black Africans generated hostile reactions in newspapers. This might have been the explanation for a very strange and apparently false story printed in a local newspaper at the time of Albert’s marriage, which suggested that he had failed to arrive for the wedding. But the event certainly took place; there is just a hint that Eleanor Botting’s family either approved of the relationship or had at least accepted it, because two of their number were listed as witnesses on the marriage certificate. Perhaps there was social cachet in having the son of an “African chief” in the family.

Not long after the wedding, Albert returned to South Africa; he was followed a few months later by his wife. They found a country changing rapidly and perhaps already becoming unrecognisable from the one in which Albert was raised by the White family. An influx of speculators and investors from Britain, chasing the newly discovered gold and diamonds of South Africa had changed the demographics and accelerated a hardening of racist attitudes, such as the denial of votes to non-white residents the passing of laws that restricted the rights of the native population. Mount Frere, renamed KwaBhaca, had grown, filled with white settlers such as lawyers, traders, government officials and a detachment of soldiers. It would have been a very different life for Eleanor Botting; according to Sherwood: “On arrival, the couple were housed in one of the ‘rondavels’ (a round one-room ‘hut’ with thatch roofing) in the Chief’s ‘Great Place’, with fresh water in the nearby stream and certainly no electricity.” Nor would Eleanor have been too popular with the white population owing to her marriage to Albert.

Soon after, Albert and Eleanor moved around fifty miles, to a town called Idutwya, where he worked an Assistant Clerk and interpreter, receiving a salary of £120. When Cecil Rhodes visited Chief Makaula in 1894, Albert was the interpreter. And it was during this period that he and Eleanor had their three children: Irene Dorothy Frances (1893), Charles Frederick Clifton (1897) and Claude Albert Vivian (1898 or 1899). All three were born in Idutwya, but in 1899 Albert was promoted to “chief constable” and the family moved to Libode. Albert’s new role meant that he was the interpreter for a local magistrate and a kind of pseudo-valet who was also responsible for collecting “hut tax” for the government. In August 1901 he again acted as an interpreter for his father when the Duke of York visited Cape Town. But that December, Albert was charged with seizing goods from a hut-tax payer who had been unable to pay cash; he pleaded “guilty under provocation” and lost his job. An appeal was unsuccessful and he turned down an offer of work around 60 miles away that would have separated him from his family. Sherwood suggests that racism was at play in both his dismissal and the refusal of the appeal. But the loss of his job was the likely motivation for his decision in 1904 to take his family back to England.

Therefore Claude moved to England around the age of five; although we do not know if he ever returned to South Africa, he certainly remained in England for the rest of his life. It is unclear what the family’s intentions were, but Albert soon began working as a farmer, despite a lack of previous experience. Nor is it clear whether Albert immediately worked on his own account or was employed by someone else, but by the time of the 1911 census — when the family lived at Stubble Hill in Harrietsham, Kent — he was listed as an “employer” (i.e. other people worked for him) and worked as a “small farmer”. Soon after, the family moved to Rose Lawn in Margate. Albert lived a quiet life as a farmer until early 1928, when the RSPCA took him to court for neglecting the pigs on his farm; there appears to have been a misunderstanding over who would feed the pigs in snowy weather, and he was fined £10. However, the story ignited interest in him and he was interviewed about his life in the local newspaper; the resulting article appeared in abbreviated form around the world, telling of how the “Zulu [sic] chief’s son” was working as a farmer in Kent. In later years, he suffered financial difficulty and noted rising prejudice on account of his race. He died in 1937.

Charles Makaula-White in an undated photograph (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)

It is possible to trace Claude and his brother Charles after they settled in England. They are listed as being at (an unnamed) school on the 1911 census under the surname Makaula-White (Irene was visiting the family of William and Harriet Day, and was listed as Irene White). But from around 1913, possibly a little sooner, the two brothers attended Kent College, a Methodist school in Canterbury. We do not know if they attended as boarders (although this is quite likely), nor if they joined the school at the same time, nor precisely when they left. Whether through their choice or that of the school, the “Makaula” part of their name was dropped on school records and they were simply known as “White”.

Where the two boys finally become more than simply names on a page is on the sports field. By 1914, both featured in the first eleven of the school cricket team; both were bowlers, although Charles was more of an all-rounder, possessing a solid defence. Yet Claude, according to the school magazine, was at times devastating: “His bowling figures hardly do him justice, and at times he has bowled with wretched luck”. It described him as having “the makings of a good fast bowler”, “a very sound field, sometimes brilliant” and being “responsible for much of our success in boys’ matches” (i.e. games against other schools). If Charles improved with bad and ball in 1915, Claude suffered something of a falling off with the ball, losing some of his accuracy, but improving as a batter. It was at this point that both Charles and Claude seem to have left school, so we hear no more about their progress. But both seem to have excelled in at least one other sport; there is a photograph of Charles in what appears to be the school football team, and of Claude in the school hockey team.

The Kent College cricket team in 1915. Back row: Mr Hargreaves, F. Amos, F. W. H. Bunting, Mr Brownscombe, R. Robertson, L Poulter, H. Juniper, Middle row: C. A. [Claude] White [sic], B. A. Castle, C. F. C. [Charles] White [sic], A. C. Horrell. On floor: E. A. Coleman, W. E. Watson, A. R. Skinner. (Image courtesy of John Charlesworth and Kent College)

It is worth dwelling a little longer on Charles. In later years, he played local cricket for Eythorne as a batter, but also played football for Dover United in 1928. Also that year he played one match for Kent Club and Ground; this might imply a trial for the county groundstaff rather than any suggestion that he was on Kent’s books. Did he want to play sport professionally? It is likely that he was talented enough; did reservations about his colour hold him back? Or perhaps his ambitions never lay in that direction because in later years he worked as a shepherd, according to a local obituary, and won prizes at county shows. He wanted to be a farmer but was never able to own a farm; he eventually became a miner until retiring in his sixties. One who worked with him recalled how he was “very popular with his workmates and in more lighthearted moments would tease them about his chieftain father”. He continued to play cricket for his local village. His son John was killed in an accident, aged just 25, in May 1950 while taking part in practices for the Isle of Man TT, and Charles was never quite the same afterwards. He died in 1976.

As for Claude, it is not entirely certain, assuming that he left Kent College in 1915, what he did for the next few years because the next certain trace of him comes in 1919, when he began to work for an auctioneers, Honeyball and Finn, in Deal, Kent, while continuing to live with his father. He was an articled clerk and responsible for handling large amounts of money but after failing to pass his examinations, he remained with the firm as an “improver” at a nominal salary of 25 shillings per week in order to study for another attempt. In July 1920, he chose to join another firm in Canterbury. But an audit of the Honeyball and Finn finances revealed that Makaula-White had been taking money from the firm. When confronted by a police officer, Claude not only admitted the charge but confessed to stealing a total of around £375 between August 1919 and May 1920. He used some of the money to buy a motorbike, but lost other amounts through stock investments and the purchase of pigs. His arrest and adjourned initial hearing in January 1921 was reported in the local press; the Thanet Advertiser used the headline “Sportsman Arrested” and called him “a well-known Thanet sportsman”. He was bailed until a hearing before the Recorder (which received no press coverage) in March 1921. He pleaded guilty to five counts of larceny (charges of “making false entries” were dropped) and was sentenced to five months imprisonment. He served his sentence at HMP Canterbury, and was listed as an inmate there on the 1921 census. This revealed that he had lost his job as a managing clerk after his imprisonment, and was a British resident but did not have British nationality.

Bowling Old Lane Cricket Ground in an undated photograph (Image: Bradford Sports History)

It was after his release that Claude seems to have decided to attempt a career in cricket. He spent the 1922 season in Bradford, playing for Bowling Old Lane, a club in the Bradford cricket League. At the time, the Bradford League was one of the most prestigious in England. Through being the only cricket league to continue employing professionals during the First World War, it had attracted some of the biggest names in English cricket. For a time in the early 1920s, alongside the Lancashire League, it was a serious counter-attraction to county cricket until the counties increased their wages beyond a point with which the Bradford League — a declining attraction by then — could compete. Nevertheless, some of the professionals in 1922 included the England Test cricketer Sydney Barnes and several players on the fringes of the Yorkshire cricket team. Claude — having dropped “White” from his name and listed as C. A. V. Makaula — seems to have only been with the club for one season. An article in The Athletic mistakenly called him “the Old Laner’s West Indian recruit” but he was successful, playing regularly and although his overall figures are not known, he took at least five wickets in an innings on three occasions. He was almost certainly playing as a professional — his family continued to live in Kent and there was no obvious other reason for him to be in Bradford. And if there is no indication of how he came to join Bowling Old Lane, perhaps there was some connection with his father’s acquaintances in Pudsey (a town with two clubs in the Bradford League); or maybe he had simply offered his services to a range of clubs because his school record would have been appealing to prospective employers, particularly if he was still a fast bowler.

We can be fairly sure that Claude was the only non-white player in the Bradford League at the time; there had been black and Asian players in club and county cricket before the war, but they were a rarity in the professional leagues. Only Charlie Llewellyn, who had appeared for Undercliffe during the war and who might have been mixed race (although he always denied it, and despite the suggestion in later years that there were rumours about his ethnicity, he generally seems to have “passed” as white), had appeared in the Bradford League or its main rival the Lancashire League. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the growth of West Indian cricket inspired several clubs to sign black players, but when Claude was playing for Bowling Old Lane, there had not been a West Indian visit to England for sixteen years.

Charlie Llewellyn (Image: Wikipedia)

Despite Claude’s apparent success, he was not retained at Bowling Old Lane, nor does he seem to have ever played for any other Bradford League clubs. Although he had not given up on his ambitions to be a professional cricketer, he returned to the family home in Kent, where he was tangentially involved in another criminal case in 1923 when his father prosecuted a man called William Samuel Barnard for stealing a bicycle and eleven silver spoons that belonged to Claude. The man had come to know Albert Makaula-White during the war, when Barnard was based at Manston Aerodrome, and he had visited the family home several times. In court, Barnard claimed to know nothing of the spoons, to have only borrowed the bicycle and to have left a note explaining such. He also claimed that Claude’s sister, Irene Makaula-White, had ordered him to leave the house and threatened to kill him (he unsuccessfully requested a protection order). Even though Barnard was found with pawn tickets for spoons, and had left the bicycle in at a garage for repair, and despite his apparently openly mocking and jocular tone in court, the case was dismissed. Barnard also claimed that he had been heading to Harrow School to work as a cricket coach, and that he had been in hospital until recently “with a serious breakdown”. This latter suggestion might explain why no further action was taken as he might not have been a well man.

Around this time, Irene had begun an unusual career of her own. During the war, she had performed songs at Manston Aerodrome (where she might have met Barnard) and by 1920 she was advertising as a dance instructor, listing herself as a pupil of Mrs Leslie, the President of the London Teachers’ Dancing Association, By 1928, according to a report in a South African newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, she was performing in the London Pavilion as part of the chorus in Ol’ Man River. The report said that she had entered the theatre after “a recent heavy financial loss in the family.” But she had something of a talent for publicity. She — or someone on her behalf — also advertised as “Princess Irene”, the daughter of a “Zulu king” who supposedly sent her to Europe for her education. In the 1930s, she also spent time in France working as a “theatrical artist”. By the mid-1930s, she was claiming in the People newspaper that she could cure rheumatism with the touch of her hands. Although we do not know how successful any of her ventures were, she seems to have achieved a minor celebrity status. In later years, her path would cross once more with that of Claude.

A photograph of Irene Makaula (or “Princess Irene”) from 1928, when she was in the chorus of Show Boat at the Drury Lane Theatre. Under a title of “A Royal Chorus-Girl”, the caption said that she was the daughter of a “Zulu king and an Englishwoman” and was “a princess in her own right of Bacaland in Northern Rhodesia”. (Image: The Graphic, 8 September 1928)

“Princess” Irene Makaula in London in 1932 (Image: The Sphere, 24 December 1932)

As for Claude, after leaving Bowling Old Lane he seems to have returned to farming. He is listed on the Electoral Register at Godhead Farm in 1924, and in 1925 Poverest Farm in St Mary Cray, is listed as ‘Makaula-White & Son’. But this might only have been a stop-gap because he seems to have moved into cricket coaching; the same 1928 report that described his sister as appearing on stage in the Daily Dispatch said that Claude was a “well-known cricket coach in Dublin”. His daughter believed that this was a role at a school, and certainly becoming a school coach was an attractive option for professional cricketers who could not make it at the top level, or who could not find a well-paying club. Around the same time, he made a serious attempt to break into the Lancashire League, by that stage the premier club completion in England. In May 1927, still playing under the name C. A. V. Makaula, he was given a trial by East Lancashire Cricket Club during their match against Bacup after their usual professional, Ralph Whitehead, was absent with a torn muscle. According to the Athletic News (which mistakenly called Claude an Anglo-Indian), “the crowd was interested in his league appearance, and in his short stay he did well.” He scored 11 not out, batting at number four, before rain washed the match out. In 1928, he played twice in July for Rishon (one of many professionals the team tried that season) and did fairly well: he took four for 60 (and scored a duck) against Church and scored 26 and took three for 70 against Rawtenstall.

These appearances attracted some notice in the press. For example after the first match, the Accrington Observer and Times said: “Makaula, a West African, who has recently held a coaching engagement in Ireland, was engaged as professional, [which] invested the game at Rishton. on Saturday, with no little interest … In the professional for the day, however, one was not disapointed. A powerfully built man, he was obviously the most conspicuous man on the field, but his whole demeanour was pleasing.” The writer continued:

“A right arm medium to fast bowler, he is the posessor of a very easy action, and he swerved the ball beautifully into the wickets. Though he only took four wickets at a cost of 60 runs he ought to have had six, for two catches were dropped. Unfortunately he did not shine as a batsman, being out to his fifth ball without scoring, but one got the idea from his stance at the wickets that he would indeed be a powerful hitter if he got going. I understand that the idea of bringing Makaula over from Ireland was that he should be given a trial with a view to being signed on as professional for the rest of the season. Although one would not like to commit oneself after seeing his one performance, one might easily say that the Rishton officials could go much further and fare worse.”

A follow-up feature written before his second match noted that he was engaged at Sallins, a town in County Kildare, Ireland, but that the Rishton committee had not yet made an offer (although a suggestion a few sentences later that “no agreement was arrived at” could be interpreted to say that Makaula-White had not accepted the terms offered). This is the only indication of where he had been based in Ireland, and there is no explanation of what drew him there.

After the second match, the same newspaper noted: “Chief interest in the match [against Rawtenstall] from Rishton’s point of view, lay in the appearance and performance of Makaula, a West African, who has recently held a coaching engagement in Ireland, and although his debut was not of the most favourable kind he gave ample indication that granted the opportunity to accustom himself more to Lancashire League Cricket he will certainly improve the Rishton side. What the committee think, however, regarding the appointment of a new professional remains yet to be seen.” He had another two catches dropped but played “some lovely strokes” in his 26. Ten days after the Rawtenstall match, the Todmorden and District News noted that Rishton were still seeking a professional but that their financial worries restricted what they were able to do, even though they were at the bottom of the league. It appeared that the club were still attempting to sign Claude, but nothing further was done.

Although this was the limit of Claude Makaula’s Lancashire League experience, like he had been in the Bradford League, he was one of the first non-white players in the competition; Llewellyn had preceded him there, as he had in Bradford, and even while Claude was playing for Rishton, the Nelson Committee were in pursuit of the signature of Learie Constantine. Perhaps Claude’s novelty was what brought him to the attention of those who organised the match between the touring West Indies team and the Bolton Cricket League. The game was the idea of Dr Vincent St Claire Lucas, a Trinidadian doctor who lived in Bolton. Whether it was Lucas or Constantine who invited Makaula-White is uncertain. Nor do we know if Makaula-White played professionally for any other teams; there were several lower profile leagues, such as the Central Lancashire League and the Bolton League, but it is likely that the novelty of a “West African” playing would have attracted local press attention and there is no evidence of that.

After this, Claude disappears from the records until his entry on the 1939 Register, taken on the outbreak of the Second World War. It listed him as living at Tenterden, Kent, with his mother and sister (“studying for professional singer”; she gave her birthday as 6 August 1903, taking around nine years off her age). The record gave his date of birth as 7 April 1897 and he was listed as a “feeding stuffs salesman”. All three family members had dropped the “White” part of their surname and were listed purely as “Makaula”.

At Maidstone in 1942, Claude married Iris Hadlow, a 33 year old woman who lived with her parents and worked in the local post office. The following year, their only child Joan was born (registered as Joan Makaula). They lived on St Luke’s Road in Maidstone from 1945 until 1967, and Irene lived with them until 1949, perhaps after their mother died in 1944. During the war, Claude worked as an ambulance driver and served in the ARP service. After the war, Joan recalled that he had “various jobs”, usually involving driving lorries, until he began working as a mechanic in a garage. She also recalled that he had an “abiding interest” in cricket and played until not long before his death. An obituary in the Kent Messenger said that he had worked “for 20 years as a servicing operator for Miles of Maidstone”, which was a distributor for Leyland Light Commercials. And, after Irene had become a naturalised British citizen in July 1962, Claude followed suite, receiving his certificate of naturalisation in June 1963.

Claude died in Maidstone, aged 68, in October 1965. Three years later, his sister Irene died. His wife lived until 1988. The extraordinary story of him and his family was largely forgotten until Marika Sherwood (assisted by Gillian Rickard) began to research Albert Makaula-White around 2000, resulting in a book published in 2012, The Life and Times of Albert Makaula-White, an African Farmer in Kent 1904–1937. But the story of Claude’s connection with cricket, briefly mentioned by Sherwood, was never followed up. Which is unfortunate because it is a story that touches on many issues, including that of the restrictions placed on non-white cricketers in South Africa in this period and the country’s all-white Test team. His sadly unrecorded experiences growing up in England and attending a Methodist school in the mid-1910s would be a fascinating topic even had he never picked up a cricket bat. His family experienced racism, and his father was one of the few people to speak out about it. And Claude became one of the first non-white cricketers to appear in league cricket, just before the explosion of interest in black cricketers inspired by the success of Learie Constantine (whom Claude must have known). Ironically, had he tried again a few years later, the desire to emulate Nelson Cricket Club’s initiative with Constantine might have allowed him to pursue the professional career in the sport that he so clearly wished for.

Note: Thanks to Marika Sherwood who kindly provided a copy of her work on Albert Makaula-White, without provided invaluable background for this article.

Whatever Happened to Jimmy Blanckenberg?

Blanckenberg photographed around 1936 (Image: Leeds Mercury, 13 February 1936)

One of the most mysterious of all Test cricketers was James Manuel Blanckenberg, who played for South Africa between 1913 and 1924. Easily South Africa’s best bowler for most of this time, he moved to England after 1924 to begin a career as a league professional. He played with great success as a prolific all-rounder for Nelson, East Lancashire and Rochdale before a leg injury caused his professional retirement after the 1933 season. We can trace Blanckenberg throughout the 1930s: having spent time in Keighley, he can be found on the electoral registers of London for 1938 and 1939. The 1939 Register taken on the outbreak of the Second World War, reveals that he worked for the Hospital Savings Association. The final definitive piece of evidence we have is the electoral register for 1947, which lists him living with his wife Laura at 45 Sherington Avenue in Harrow. The following year, Laura remarried, indicating that the couple divorced around this time. There is no further trace of Blanckenberg anywhere. Into the vacuum, all kinds of strange and contradictory rumours have rushed. The most persistent — and almost certainly incorrect — is that Blanckenberg was a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathiser, who fled to either Germany or South America after the Second World War. In reality, we know nothing about his fate. We are left with the question: whatever happened to Jimmy Blanckenberg?

The heart of Blanckenberg’s reputation, and the subsequent rumour surrounding him, rests largely on an incident which occurred in the Lancashire League in 1929. Between 1925 and 1928, Blanckenberg had played for Nelson Cricket Club but for reasons which are not entirely clear, he moved to the East Lancashire Club in 1929. His replacement at Nelson was Learie Constantine, who dominated league cricket in England for the next ten years and dwarfed all of Blanckenberg’s achievements. On 20 July 1929, Nelson’s new professional faced his predecessor when Nelson played East Lancashire at their home ground of Seedhill. Nelson won by four wickets, although Blanckenberg perhaps emerged narrowly on top in their personal duel: he scored 77 and took two for 44; Constantine had figures of four for 58 (including the wicket of Blanckenberg) and scored just 3. But it was not their cricket which has been remembered; it was an exchange between them on the field.

The encounter had its background in what was taking place in South Africa. Although apartheid as a formal policy still lay almost twenty years into the future, the country was rife with racism and discrimination. Society (and cricket) was dominated by white Europeans; non-white citizens were treated as second class or worse. Constantine was acutely aware of the situation in South Africa when he met Blanckenberg on the field. But Constantine was accustomed to facing white cricketers who were openly racist — a common occurrence in domestic West Indian cricket in the period. West Indian teams were mixed, and there was a long tradition of white and black cricketers playing alongside each other. Blanckenberg, on the other hand, would rarely, if ever, have played against a black cricketer: South African teams were rigidly segregated and exclusively white at first-class level; the national team did not face any non-white opposition until 1991.

Learie Constantine in 1930 (Image: Wikipedia)

There are three versions of the story, all of which are broadly similar and attributable to Constantine. He first mentioned the encounter in Cricket Crackers (1950). After observing that Blanckenberg “shares the common prejudice of white South Africans” against black people — which prevented the cricket team “from drawing on more than fifty per cent of her true cricket talent” — Constantine wrote how he approached Blanckenberg to say hello, when the South African “turned his back on me very obviously”. According to Constantine, “a good many people stared”. He speculated that Blanckenberg was angry that Constantine was being paid more than him, and admitted that he sought revenge by bowling fast on a “lively” wicket. Constantine made a pointed joke in his book that “after the match, there were two black men” given how bruised Blanckenberg was. A furious Blanckenberg came to the Nelson dressing room to complain after the match — “Look what your blinking professional has done to me” — which made some players laugh, but Constantine said: “I was very grave”.

Constantine told a second, lengthier version of the story which appeared in an article in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph of 11 July 1989, in the weekly column written by Noel Wild, a former editor of the Nelson Leader. The two men had known each other for many years, and in the 1989 article (although it is unclear what prompted him to write it), Wild recalled an interview which seems to have taken place just two weeks before Constantine’s death in 1971. Whether this interview had ever been printed before — and if not, why it took 18 years to be published — is unclear from the context. But when using this tale, it should be remembered that it was told forty years after the incident.

Constantine told Wild of some of the racism he had endured in his early days at Nelson, in the course of which conversation he described what happened in 1929: “I met Blankenberg just once previously when he stopped me in Carr Road, Nelson, and assured me that he held no animosity as regards my colour. I believed him, even though I had heard second-hand stories to the contrary.” When Blanckenberg came out to bat at the beginning of their first on-field encounter, Constantine offered his hand but “Blanckenberg turned his back on me and walked away!” Constantine recalled that he was “hurt, insulted, but above all furious. And that day I bowled ‘bodyline’ before the term had been invented … I gave him a terrible beating and at the end of it he walked into our dressing room naked except for a rain coat, and said to our skipper ‘Look what that bloody pro of yours has done to me.’ I am a black man, but that day I tell you Jimmy Blanckenberg was both black and blue. I will say this for him though — I have never seen a batsman stand up to the short ball and take blows to the body with so much courage. He never flinched as the ball thudded into him, never gave a sign of pain. He had tremendous guts, there was no doubt about that.”

Constantine’s final version appears in a 1974 biography of George Headley which arose from a series of conversations between Headley and the author Noel White. Headley related a conversation (to which he did not ascribe a date) he once had with Constantine when the pair discussed the run-in with Blanckenberg. According to Headley, Blanckenberg “had made rude comments about Learie’s colour when the news was published that the Trinidadian was given a contract with Nelson”. Constantine, having heard of the comments decided to “retaliate”. Headley related what Constantine told him:

“‘George, ah beat him, ah beat him, and when ah thought he had had enough ah tek mi slow ball and ah bowl he down’ Then shifting back from Trinidadian dialect, he continued, ‘Yes, George, his conduct … was most unfortunate. It’s the pattern and way of life of South Africans. They don’t want to acknowledge that we are human beings.'”

The way Constantine (or perhaps Headley) told this version suggests that no incident took place directly on the field, and that Constantine did not bowl aggressively. If this slightly differs from Constantine’s own two versions, it may reflect how Headley remembered the tale.

Even if the occasional detail varied, Constantine was clearly telling the same story for at least twenty years before his death, and he would have had no reason to make it up. The two later versions emphasise that he was aware of Blanckenberg’s reputation before the pair met. What might he have heard, and how could the stories have originated? There were virtually no non-white players in England in the 1920s who might have had similar problems with Blanckenberg. The most likely explanation is that Blanckenberg had discussed the issue of race with his Nelson team-mates, who passed the information on to Constantine. This might be what Headley meant when he told Noel White that Blanckenberg “had made rude comments about Learie’s colour” when hearing he had signed for Nelson. If Nelson opted not to re-sign Blanckenberg in order to pursue Constantine in 1928, that might have exacerbated the situation. Such jealousy might also explain why Blanckenberg would have stormed into the Nelson dressing room to complain after the game: he would still have known the team very well.

George Headley in 1930 (Image: Wikipedia)

This story is not the only evidence of Blanckenberg’s racism; Headley too had an uncomfortable encounter with him, a few years after the Constantine incident, which is also related in White’s George “Atlas” Headley. The details are slightly vague, and cannot be dated precisely. Headley told White how he took part in a “benefit match for Jack Iddon”, the Lancashire professional (Headley dated the match to his first season in league cricket, which was 1934, but Iddon’s benefit season was 1936). This cannot have been Iddon’s main benefit match, which would have been a County Championship game, but was probably a match between scratch teams played one evening to boost the benefit fund. Both Headley and Blanckenberg were involved. Before the game, Iddon presented the players to each other. When it was the turn of Headley and Blanckenberg to be introduced, the latter “bluntly refused to meet George or to shake hands with him. Jack [Iddon] apologised to George for the South African’s rudeness, adding that he had been a good all-rounder but was over the hill. During the course of the afternoon Blanckenberg who must have been reprimanded by one of the other players went to George and explained, ‘George, I am a great admirer of your cricket but where I come from we do not fraternise with you fellows.’ That comment was hardly an improvement on his previous behaviour and George did not answer.” It was when he told Constantine about this that Headley learned of the previous incident: “These experiences made George realise how much effort it would require to eradicate race prejudice in the world. It may be mentioned that he did on later occasions meet South Africans who did not display the hostility of Blanckenberg.”

These two encounters were a sore point for many years. For example, after South Africa’s re-admittance to world cricket in the early 1990s after years of sporting isolation, it was announced during the 1992 World Cup that they were to play a Test against the West Indies for the first time. Blanckenberg’s name arose. In an article in The Observer (29 March 1992), Donald Woods — known more as a journalist and anti-apartheid activist but covering the World Cup that year — wrote: “The players are aware of the significance of South Africans playing for the first time in the Caribbean. Ever since the white South African, Blanckenberg, refused to shake hands with Learie Constantine in a Lancashire League dressing room in the Thirties [sic], there has been a particular West Indian hostility to South African policies.”

There is one curiosity though. On 2 September 1937, a charity game took place at Old Trafford and was briefly covered by the Manchester Guardian. The match, between a “Northern XI” (mainly comprising Lancashire players, including Iddon) and “K. A. Quas-Cohen’s XI” (mainly professionals from the Lancashire League and Central Lancashire League), was won easily by Quas-Cohen’s XI. More interesting was the composition of the winning team: it included the West Indians Constantine, Headley and Manny Martindale. Playing alongside them was none other than Blanckenberg. Why would Blanckenberg agree to play alongside two West Indian cricketers whom he had previously insulted publicly (and why would they agree to play in the same team as him)? Could this have been the match remembered by Headley, rather than another (unidentifiable) match played for Iddon’s benefit? It is a possibility that Headley simply made a mistake in his recollections, and it would not make much difference to his story (and would explain why he and Constantine were discussing Blanckenberg). But in any case, we shall return to this charity match shortly.

The two incidents spoken of by Constantine and Headley are among the very few mentions of Blanckenberg after his retirement from professional cricket in 1934. After the Second World War, there were no mentions of him in English newspapers except for nostalgic pieces written in the Nelson area during the 1950s. Nor does Blanckenberg seem to have been written about in South Africa except in similar retrospective articles. A few players mentioned him in interviews which recalled old matches, but hardly anyone ever provided anecdotes about him and no-one spoke of him at length. And by the time Constantine revealed his racism in 1950, Blanckenberg had vanished. No-one knows where he went or what happened to him. He certainly left England after his appearance on the Electoral Register for 1947 (although there is no record of him doing so), but did not return to South Africa. The historian Brian Bassano searched for him without success; as he wrote in Mann’s Men (2001, published 2004), his book about the 1922–23 MCC tour of South Africa: “In spite of exhaustive investigations, the ultimate [fate] of Blanckenberg … [has] never been uncovered.”

For years Blanckenberg was listed in Wisden without any date of death, although by the 1970s he was listed as “presumed dead” (including the quotation marks). By the 2000s, the register of “Births and Deaths of Past Cricketers” more definitively listed him as “dead” and the compiler Robert Brooke, in an article about that section of the almanack in the 2003 edition, discussed the point: “The oldest player for whom no death date is known is J. R. Hodges, who represented Australia in the inaugural Test in 1876–77. More recently, South Africa’s J. M. Blanckenberg left no forwarding address after backing the wrong side in the Second World War.”

Arthur Gilligan in 1928 (Image: Wikipedia)

This curious reference to “backing the wrong side” was expanded upon by Brooke in an interview given to the Sunday Mercury, a Birmingham newspaper, in 2003. The article, written by Martin Leek and Paul Bolton, gets Brooke’s name wrong, calling him Ray, and the focus is not on Blanckenberg. As printed, Brooke claimed to have discovered information about the former England player Arthur Gilligan, who played against Blanckenberg several times and led England in the 1924 series. The newspaper put it sensationally — “England cricket hero was investigated by the secret service over his alleged Nazi links” — and Brooke “discovered that England captain Arthur Gilligan was reported to the Australian government by Special Branch during the 1924 Ashes tour.” Aside from the article identifying the wrong organisation — Gilligan was a member of the British Fascists, not the British Union of Fascists as the authors claim — neither Brooke nor the journalists mentioned that the information was actually uncovered in 1991 by the Australian historian Andrew Moore and printed in the journal Sporting Traditions. The piece takes information directly from Moore’s article without attribution.

The newspaper then moves on to Blanckenberg. It states (although again it does not make clear whether this is interpretation by the authors or information directly provided by Brooke): “During his research Mr Brooke also discovered that former South African Test player Jimmy Blanckenberg was a Nazi sympathiser during the Second World War. Blanckenberg revealed his political leanings by refusing to shake the hand of the former West Indies legend Learie Constantine — and later disappeared.” Brooke, quoted directly, then states: “All attempts to find out what happened to him after that have come to nothing. There has been no trace of him in South Africa despite extensive research out there. A theory that he died in Berlin in 1955 has been disproved, so I’m pretty certain that he went off to South America.”

It is difficult to know how seriously to take this article. It contains too many mistakes to be reliable and uses the term “Nazi” too readily. Gilligan was not a Nazi, but a member of the British Fascists; the writers appear to be using “Nazi” in a modern sense of someone with extreme right-wing views rather than its historical sense which referred solely to Hitler’s party from the 1920s and 1930s. It is possible that they meant something similar for Blanckenberg. Nevertheless, Brooke does seem to have implied that he thought Blanckenberg was a literal Nazi, although his only evidence seems to be the incident with Constantine. No previous discussion of Blanckenberg makes any such claim and, until Brooke’s piece in Wisden, there does not even seem to have been a hint along those lines.

The article does not expand on why Brooke had discounted the Berlin death, nor where that idea originated (online databases such as ESPNcricinfo and CricketArchive currently state that Blanckenberg died “circa 1955, West Berlin”). Nor does it indicated whether he had any actual evidence that Blanckenberg went to South America beyond an extrapolation from the idea that many Nazis escaped to South America after the war to avoid capture.

So we have to ask: was Blanckenberg a Nazi, a Nazi sympathiser, or any kind of fascist? There is one crucial piece of evidence which makes this almost impossible. And that is the 1937 charity game between K. A. Quas-Cohen’s XI and a Northern XI. It was played to raise money for the Manchester Victoria Memorial Jewish Hospital; Keith Quas-Cohen was a prominent member of Manchester’s Jewish community and an enthusiastic club cricketer who played for Manchester; it is likely that the fund-raising match was organised by him. In the 1930s, he was a student at Manchester University. He served in the army during the Second World War, and at some point was captured and held as a Prisoner of War; according to a letter he wrote, he was recognised as Jewish and severely beaten. In 1950, he stood as the Conservative candidate in the Manchester Cheetham seat, but lost heavily to Labour’s Harold Lever.

If he were a fascist, would Blanckenberg have played in a match to raise funds for a Jewish hospital, in a team raised by a prominent member of the Jewish community? The main British fascist parties were openly anti-semitic by this point, and no self-respecting fascist would play in such a match.

We can perhaps go further in denying Blanckenberg’s fascism. He lived in Britain throughout the war as he was still on the Electoral Register in 1947. His wife had a fairly public role as a fitness instructor in the early 1940s which she is unlikely to have maintained if her husband was suspected of being a Nazi sympathiser. Manx National Heritage have no record of Blanckenberg being interned, which would have been likely had he been a prominent fascist (although records are incomplete, especially for male internees, so the absence of a record is not conclusive). And the sad but undeniable fact is that, during this period, a huge number of men and women living in Britain held outrageously racist views. These were hardly a uniquely South African phenomenon in the 1930s, even among cricketers: the Lancashire county side were appalled at the idea of Constantine qualifying to play for them, and J. H. Cameron, the only black player in the County Championship in the 1930s, had to deal with blatant racism. No-one has accused the Lancashire team of being Nazi sympathisers, nor suggested that those who gave Cameron the nickname “Monkey” were fascists. In fact, even some of the most racist of British people would have bridled at the suggestion they were fascists. Perhaps the same could be said of Blanckenberg. Accuracy is an important part of any history. Yes, he was a racist with abhorrent views; but he was not a Nazi.

So where does the idea that Blanckenberg had “back[ed] the wrong side in the Second World War” — come from? It has not been possible to ask Brooke himself, but the stories of Blanckenberg’s treatment of Constantine and Headley were known from at least 1950. It is possible that someone — maybe Brooke — extrapolated from Blanckenberg’s racism that he would have supported the Nazis during the war. But no-one has ever given any evidence to support this view. Just because he embodied the attitudes prevalent in South Africa towards black people (and Headley made clear that not all white South Africans shared Blanckenberg’s attitude) does not mean that he would have been a Nazi supporter. Have cricket historians become a little confused by the combination of Blanckenberg’s recorded racism and the muddled South African position surrounding Nazism before the Second World War?

The idea of Blanckenberg being a Nazi reached a much more mainstream audience when a brief profile of the player was published on ESPNcricinfo some time between 2003 and 2009, ending with a sentence which has spread a long way: “There were rumours that he was a Nazi sympathiser in the years leading to the Second World War.” This has been quoted in several books, for example Cricket’s Wartime Sanctuary, a 2009 account of the Bradford League in the First and Second World Wars by Tony Barker (which refers directly to the ESPNcricinfo profile). Harry Pearson’s Connie: The Marvellous Life of Learie Constantine (2017) does not quote the profile but goes even further: “Blanckenberg retired from cricket after his time with Nelson [sic]. It has been suggested that he was a Nazi sympathiser and went to live in Hitler’s Germany: he is thought to have died in West Berlin although there is no formal record of his death. Wisden did not publish an obituary.” There are almost certainly other similar references. The argument is clearly edging in the erroneous direction that Blanckenberg snubbed Constantine and Headley because he was a Nazi sympathiser, rather than the snub being evidence for his fascism. And no-where is any proof ever offered, only those vague, sourceless rumours.

If we accept that Blanckenberg was almost certainly not a Nazi, he would have had no need to move to South America. So, if we can conclude that he did not spend the rest of his life fleeing from the authorities, what did happen to him? A letter from his daughter Doreen, written in 1990 and which made its way into the hands of a private collector, suggests that he died during the war. She believed that he was “missing in France, presumed killed”, but as he was still living in England in 1947, this cannot be true. Doreen does not seem to have had much contact with her father after he divorced her mother in 1923, so she is unlikely to have known too much.

Clive van Ryneveld in 1960 (Image: Wikipedia)

Another family member also wrote a little about Blanckenberg: his nephew through his sister Marie. Clive van Ryneveld was a leg-spinning all-rounder who captained the South African Test team eight times between 1956 and 1958 (he also played rugby for England). He later became a barrister, defending five black men who took part in the Paarl riots of 1962, and entered politics. His 2018 obituary in The Times said: “In 1957 … Van Reyneveld won a by-election in East London for the United Party, the main opposition to the ruling Nationalist Party, which had introduced apartheid. In 1959 he was one of 12 United Party MPs to form the Progressive Party, which rejected racial discrimination.” He remained a vocal opponent of apartheid; the contrast in the attitude towards racism displayed by uncle and nephew is striking. van Ryneveld wrote an autobiography in 2011, and briefly discussed Blanckenberg: “Jimmy married for a second time in England but the marriage came to an end and sadly he then disappeared and in spite of many inquiries none of us have been able to find out what happened to him. The last information we have is that he went to Germany after the war ended in 1945 with the Control Commission. His divorced [second?] wife remained a close friend of my mother into their nineties and came out to visit her in Cape Town more than once.”

The Control Commission was responsible for rebuilding post-war Germany, hunting down escaped war criminals and “de-Nazifying” the country. No records are currently available which would allow us to check if Blanckenberg was a member of this body, but if this was true, it would be the final nail in the coffin of his supposed Nazi sympathies; he would not have been allowed anywhere near such a project if there were any suspicions about him. It may also explain how the idea arose that he had died in West Berlin in 1955 (although this is clearly not what van Ryneveld thought had happened as he had found no trace). Yet it seems unlikely that a 52-year-old man, whose background was clerical work, cricket and being the Sports League Secretary for the Hospital Savings Association would be picked for such an important job. Is it not more likely that something else forced Blanckenberg to leave England, and this was the story told to cover up the truth? The reason was unlikely to be secret facism. Does the explanation lie in his divorce? Was he repeating the pattern from his first divorce in 1923, whereby he fled South Africa to avoid being held to account for his financial liabilities and to escape the threat of imprisonment for contempt of court? Did Blanckenberg leave England, in 1947 or 1948, for similar reasons?

In any case, Blanckenberg must have moved overseas. He had spent time in France and Switzerland in the 1920s so such a move would have been in character. Where did he go? It is a question that is probably answerable but would require a lot more footwork than is realistic. Without knowing to which country he moved, finding a record of his death is difficult; even if it was known, there would still be obstacles. Not all countries have easily accessible records of births and deaths. For example, there is no easy way to check whether he did actually die in West Berlin in 1955 without a contact in that country (although he does not seem to have been listed in any Berlin telephone directories from the period). Furthermore, while Blanckenberg is not a common name, it is not so rare that anyone called “J. Blanckenberg” must be the South African cricketer. Another possibility is that he changed his name, which would make him forever untraceable, although there is no obvious reason why he would do so.

Where does all this leave us? How should we sum up Blanckenberg? Was he an excellent cricketer? Yes. Have some historians been afflicted by overly fevered imaginations when discussing what might have happened to him? Yes. He was not some kind of Nazi war criminal. In reality, his prejudice was undeniable but not unusual; nothing marks him out as a special case. His disappearance means nothing except that, like many obscure figures from history, we don’t know what happened to him. So does Blanckenberg deserve some kind of rehabilitation? Not really. He was a racist who abandoned his first wife — whom he had been forced to marry after an unexpected pregnancy — and young daughter while living a life of extravagance and running up debts. He may not have been a Nazi, but that does not make him a pleasant individual.

Until more information can be found about James Manuel Blanckenberg (and I have an optimistic hope that these articles might prompt some further details coming to light), that is as far as we can go.

Note: Thanks to Michael Jones, who was able to provide information on the letter written by Doreen Blanckenberg and supplied the quote from Clive van Ryneveld’s autobiography.

“He goes about from place to place in a luxuriant and extravagant manner”: Why did J. M. Blanckenberg really play league cricket in England?

Blanckenberg pictured on a D. C. Thompson Cigarette Card from 1924

One of the most mysterious of all Test cricketers was James Manuel Blanckenberg, a leading South African bowler between 1913 and 1924. His medium-paced spin baffled Warwick Armstrong’s world-beating Australian team in 1921, but a leg injury hampered him for the following seasons, and he was surpassed by other bowlers. Furthermore, the South African Test team was very poor in this period, and lacked depth. When it toured England in 1924, the team was outclassed; the home team won the Test series 3–0 and Blanckenberg — and the other bowlers — were powerless on turf pitches which offered far less assistance than the matting on which they played in South Africa. This signalled a change in Blanckenberg’s career as he embarked on a new career as a professional cricketer in the leagues of northern England. It was a change that he made an undoubted success of, and it allows us to fill in some of the gaps in the biography of this elusive figure. But why did one of the leading bowlers in the world turn his back on South Africa? His reasons for going to England may have lain not in cricket, but in a desire to escape his financial responsibilities in South Africa: namely, his daughter and his former wife.

The cricket side of the equation which explains Blanckenberg’s move to England is straightforward. The Lancashire League club Nelson wanted a player to replace their professional E. A. McDonald, who had agreed to join Lancashire County Cricket Club in 1925. Blanckenberg’s reputation, and a recommendation from several leading cricketers (including McDonald), made him Nelson’s preferred choice. This was a big change for Blanckenberg. Until then, he had been an amateur cricketer; in South Africa he worked as an excise officer. Now, he was to become a full-time professional in another country. At the time, despite the success of McDonald between 1922 and 1924, there were few international Test players in English league cricket; although McDonald had shown that such a signing could be successful, few clubs or players dared take the plunge. In Blanckenberg’s first season, there were only two other overseas professionals in the Lancashire League, and both were South Africans: C. B. Llewellyn, who had settled in England some years before, and Blanckenberg’s Test team-mate C. P. Carter.

But there were other factors in Blanckenberg’s decision. On 23 October 1919, he had married Ethel Lilian Freeman. All indications are that the marriage was a rushed one — and perhaps Blanckenberg dragged his feet — because three months after the wedding, their first child, Doreen Mavis Blanckenberg, was born. Their second, Dennis James, died at the age of three months in September 1921. Two years later, the couple divorced acrimoniously, and Blanckenberg found himself before the courts several times. According to Ethel’s account, he left her in September 1920 (which must have almost exactly when she became pregnant with Dennis), but even before that he had lived separately and only visited occasionally; she continued to reside with her father throughout. Ethel began divorce proceedings around the beginning of 1923, at which time Blanckenberg was living in a hotel in Cape Town. He could not attend the first hearing, as he was involved in the 1922–23 Test series against England (the hearing took place between the second and third Tests), but he made clear that he did not intend to fight the divorce. The court ruled that if he did not return to Ethel, a divorce would be granted; he would have the costs to pay and to provide £10 each month for Doreen. He did not return, and the divorce was finalised on 24 April 1923.

By June 1923, Blanckenberg had paid just £5 in two months and Ethel took him to court for non-payment. She observed that he “lives at a first class Hotel in Cape Town, viz. the Regent Palace Hotel, and goes about from place to place apparently in a very luxuriant and extravagant manner and appears to be able to support his said minor child, but wilfully refuses or neglects to do so”. The result was a suspended prison sentence for contempt of court, which had to be served on Blanckenberg at the hotel as he had once more not attended the hearing. It made little difference. By the time he was due to leave for England with the South African team on 6 April 1924, he was still behind in his payments. Ethel’s solicitor attempted to have him arrested before he left the country; Blanckenberg — doubtless in some desperation — found enough money to make two large payments which covered most of what he owed, allowing him to leave with the team. While he was on tour, his maintenance payments were made by the South African Cricket Association, although these were only for £5 per month rather than the required £10.

A final note in the file from Ethel’s solicitor dated June 1925 states: “I think I have done all I reasonably could for Mrs Blanckenberg”. At this point, Ethel fell out with her solicitor and the records stop. But this places a different light on Blanckenberg’s decision to remain in England. It may also explain his decision to leave Western Province to play for Natal in 1923, and account for his offer to Nelson in 1922 to play for their team when it looked like McDonald was to pull out of his controversial agreement with the club. It appears that Blanckenberg was trying to escape Ethel and his financial commitments.

Certainly his movements after the 1924 tour ended were a little strange. Nelson had offered a contract, but he delayed signing — as the Burnley Express put it, “for reasons of his own” — until the end of October. Meanwhile, the bulk of the South African team left Southampton aboard the Armadale Castle on 26 September; Blanckenberg’s name was on the passenger list but was crossed out and he remained in England. According to press reports, he had contracted influenza and was quite ill for a time when it developed into pneumonia. He therefore delayed his departure to recover and spent a few days in Nelson to convalesce. He used the opportunity to sign the contract they were offering; he took up the option of an initial two year deal. The Athletic News reassured its readers — and any Nelson supporters — that Blanckenberg was “a much better cricketer than his record during the last summer revealed.”

SS Edinburgh Castle (Image: State Library of Queensland)

What happened next is something of a mystery. His intention seems to have been to return to South Africa on the same boat as an English side — organised by S. B. Joel and including several famous cricketers — which was to tour South Africa over the winter. And he is named, alongside the English cricketers, on the passenger list for the Edinburgh Castle, which departed from Southampton on 24 October. But according to the Burnley Express of 1 November, he was still in Nelson having chosen to delay his departure until he was fully recovered. Either the passenger list was inaccurate or the Burnley Express had made a mistake. But there is evidence that he never reached South Africa: he seems to have spent most of the winter in Switzerland to assist his recovery from illness. Even this was not straightforward; rumours seem to have begun circulating from February 1925 that Blanckenberg would not be joining Nelson after all. These were widespread enough for Blanckenberg feel obliged to write twice to Nelson in order to reassure the club that he would fulfil his contract.

The second letter (which followed on from an earlier telegram) suggested that his health was still uncertain. He revealed that while in Switzerland in February 1925, he developed tonsillitis which left him “terribly thin as a result”. After he recovered, he arranged to visit Nice and Monte Carlo “with some friends”, but he once again contracted influenza while he was there. The final part of his winter journey took him to Paris, where he revealed that his throat once more troubled him. He claimed that, eager to travel to Nelson, he ignored medical advice to stay in bed and had yet another relapse that was feared to be diphtheria. Therefore Blanckenberg regretfully informed Nelson that he would be forced to miss the beginning of the 1925 season, but he added: “Believe me, the minute I can safely do so I intend coming to Nelson.” Most of the letter was reproduced in the Lancashire Evening Post on 1 May.

Was Blanckenberg genuinely ill? Was he simply avoiding returning to South Africa, where he knew that trouble awaited him in the form of his former wife’s solicitor? Or was he just enjoying the high life? And how was he able to afford what sounds to have been an extravagant holiday in France? Monte Carlo was not the kind of destination which lent itself to frugality, and the most obvious attraction would have been the casinos. This would certainly reinforce the impression given by Ethel: that he enjoyed spending money. Was he also spinning a tale to Nelson to make excuses for his late arrival? Such a catalogue of misfortune as documented in the second letter strains at the bounds of credibility, particularly the claim that he suffered a relapse from trying to travel to Nelson too soon.

While it would be fascinating to know what was really in Blanckenberg’s mind, or what he was actually doing in Switzerland and France, all we can do is deal with the facts. These are that he missed Nelson’s first three matches of the 1925 season — temporary professionals stood in his place — but finally made his Nelson debut three weeks after the season began, in a Worsley Cup match against Church on 9 May, taking four for 20 and scoring 0 (hit wicket). After the delays, illnesses and uncertainty, his first season was an undoubted success with both bat and ball. He finished the season ninth in the league batting averages (among those who batted in at least ten times) with 565 runs at 25.68, and 15th in bowling (among those with twenty or more wickets) with 88 wickets at 11.26 and Nelson finished joint second in the league, equalling their placing from the previous season. At the end of the season, he returned to Switzerland in order to rest and recover.

Blanckenberg bowling in 1924 (Image: The Graphic, 17 May 1924)

For the next three seasons, Blanckenberg maintained these standards. Initially, he was viewed as one of the best bowlers in the competition, but his batting gradually improved until he was one of the best batsmen as well. With the ball, he took 83 wickets (at an average of 10.91, the 12th best in the league) in 1926, 65 (at 11.10, 16th) in 1927 and 80 (at 10.65, 7th) in 1928. However, on the tricky pitches which tended to predominate in the Lancashire League, his bowling was good but not enough to make an enormous difference. His batting, on the other hand, began to have a serious impact. In 1926, he scored 701 runs (at 35.05, 3rd in the league average) which broke the 34-year-old record for a professional at Nelson. After a dip in 1927, when his 510 runs at 25.50 still placed him fifth in the averages, he reached new heights in 1928. He scored 810 runs, setting a new record for any Nelson batsman in a season, and his average of 47.64 was the best in the league. Blanckenberg and the Australian Test player Arthur Richardson of Bacup — the only “overseas” players in the league that year — were involved in a well-publicised race to top the averages, and at one time it looked like both would reach 1,000 runs, something only achieved once in the history of the league until then. Richardson eventually finished third but had the highest aggregate: two runs more than Blanckenberg. The review of the season in The Cricketer suggested that Blanckenberg was a far better batsman than he had been when he toured in 1924, although his bowling was about the same.

More importantly for Nelson, he continued their run of success begun in the days of McDonald. The club fell to seventh in 1926 but won the Worsley Cup, improved to fifth in 1927 and won the league in 1928, their first such success since 1911. That season, the club also won the Worsley Cup, their first “double”, to set the seal on Blanckenberg’s time at the club. In 1926, the Nelson secretary, Mr.E. Ashton, wrote: “We have had many valuable professionals since the club was established, but it is doubtful if we have had one who has rendered us better all round service.”

But there was a sense of impermanence to Blanckenberg’s time at Nelson, and he never seems to have been entirely satisfied. In March 1927, he applied for the position of Secretary at Worcestershire County Cricket Club. The role would have involved playing for the team in the County Championship, which may have been an attraction for him. Was he dissatisfied with life in the leagues? He was 35 at the time, and maybe he wanted to play on a bigger stage once more. Although he was one of the final two candidates, he was not appointed; J. B. Payne was given the role (although he was secretary for just one season; C. F. Walters took over in 1928), with an annual salary of £300. It is possible that this salary may have been a sticking point for Blanckenberg, who would almost certainly have been paid more at Nelson. Given his continuing financial commitments in South Africa, and his own apparent recklessness with money, £300 might not have been enough.

The sense that he was unsettled continued during the 1927 season. Newspaper reports suggested that his future was uncertain; the expectation was that he would return to South Africa at the end of the season. One story, printed in the Leeds Mercury, suggested that “movements are afoot in South Africa” to bring him home in time for the Test series against England in 1927–28, but nothing came of this. In fact, there is no record that he ever returned to South Africa at all; his name does not seem to appear on any passenger list and it seems that he lived permanently in England until after the Second World War.

Blanckenberg left Nelson after the 1928 season, although it is not clear if he chose to move or was replaced. His departure was common knowledge before Nelson signed Learie Constantine during the West Indies’ tour of England in 1928, but negotiations had been ongoing for a while, and it may have been that the club had already told Blanckenberg of their intentions. Blanckenberg signed instead for the East Lancashire club, which some reports stated offered him more money than Nelson. This seems doubtful for several reasons; stories around the time that Constantine joined the club recalled that McDonald had been paid £400 per season, and according to the Sporting Chronicle in June 1928, Blanckenberg was “paid not very far short of that sum”. And for once, we can be sure of Blanckenberg’s wage at East Lancashire thanks to a court case when he received a summons to Burnley County Court in June 1930 for not paying income tax. He told the court that he was paid £340 for the season, plus collections and talent money. By contrast, Constantine was paid £500 per season for his initial deal with Nelson, plus travelling expenses and performance bonuses; it looks as if Blanckenberg may have taken a pay cut to move clubs.

Whatever the cause for him leaving, there was no acrimony. In April 1929 the club gave him a farewell dinner. An article in the Burnley Express at the end of his final season said: “The four seasons Blanckenberg spent at Nelson have had a great bearing on the present efficiency of the side. The South African is an enthusiast, and loves the game, and the young players owe debt of gratitude to him for the advice and coaching they have received at his hands.” Praise for his influence on young players continued in later years, not least when Clifford Hawkwood, a Nelson player who was the “‘shadow’ of ‘Jimmie’ Blanckenberg in his play” according to the Nelson Leader in 1931, was selected for the Lancashire team.

But Blanckenberg was not to know that his undoubted accomplishments at Nelson would be utterly overshadowed by his replacement: Learie Constantine not only had an incredible record on the field and led Nelson to a prolonged period of success (the club won the league seven times during his nine seasons there and runners up in the other two), but he was so popular and such a draw for spectators that he almost single-handedly brought about vastly increased attendances and gate receipts for Nelson and the whole league. His unprecedented attraction to spectators almost instantly solved Nelson’s financial worries and made them one of the richest clubs in the league.

Blanckenberg’s move to East Lancashire was a success on the field at first. In 1929, he scored 949 runs at 39.54 (3rd) and took 75 wickets at 12.58 (12th). Once more, he was engaged in a battle with Richardson, and although the latter came out on top, passing 1,000 runs, critics mainly viewed Blanckenberg as the more attractive, stylish and entertaining batsman. The clashes between Blanckenberg and Constantine, when East Lancashire faced Nelson, were keenly anticipated; more than ten thousand came to watch the first game, played at Nelson. Blanckenberg scored 77 out of 127 (Constantine took four for 58) but was on the losing side. We shall return to this match later, because something very important happened which has driven all subsequent understanding of Blanckenberg as a cricketer and as a man, but for now it is better to conclude the story of his league cricket career.

In 1930, Blanckenberg began to decline: he scored 435 runs at 19.77 (28th) and took 54 wickets at 15.75 (24th). It was at this time that he found himself in court for non-payment of income tax; once again, he found himself threatened with imprisonment if he did not pay what he owed. The case, which was reported in local newspapers, gave full details of his financial situation. His wage from East Lancashire was £340. Of this, he was sending £60 a year to his ex-wife (which would have been less than the £120 he was supposed to pay), and East Lancashire were deducting ten shillings weekly to repay an advance sent to him over the winter (which worked out at £10 for the season). It was also revealed that he had at least two county court judgements against him and he was paying a further ten shillings “in respect of another case”. Part of the issue may have been that he was not working in the winter, but it does seem that his financial problems were multiplying; the advance given to him by East Lancashire over the winter may have been urgently needed to meet his expenses. Perhaps he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle that he could not afford: certainly his financial problems in South Africa, the damning testimony of Ethel and his visit to Monte Carlo in 1925 all point towards a man who spent too much and was accustomed to financial strife.

That July, it was announced that Blanckenberg had signed for Rochdale, a club in the Central Lancashire League, for 1931; he was taking over as professional from Sydney Barnes. Had Blanckenberg’s loss of form resulted in the loss of his contract? Or did he decide to move? The latter seems unlikely as the Central Lancashire League was definitely seen as subordinate to the Lancashire League.

Laura Rofe (Image: Liverpool Echo, 2 April 1931)

There was also a development in his personal life. On 1 April 1931, Blanckenberg married Laura Herberta Freda Rofe, a gymnastics teacher (or as she put it on the marriage certificate, a “Physical Culture Mistress”) at the Blackburn High School for Girls. Both were living in Blackburn at the time and married at the Register Office. The local press reported the event, and given Blanckenberg’s relative fame, a crowd gathered outside, only to be disappointed when the newly-married couple slipped out of a back exit to avoid them. A newspaper reporter also related how Blanckenberg, on arriving at Laura’s house on the morning of the wedding, found a ladder against the wall, placed there for repairs. With the aid of a journalist, he moved it to avoid anyone having to walk underneath and bring bad luck. After the wedding, the couple departed on a “motoring honeymoon”. Among their gifts were presents from Laura’s school colleagues, pupils and former pupils; Blanckenberg received a cheque from members of East Lancashire. There was no mention of anything else, such as a gift from his former Nelson colleagues. He was also unusually precise on the marriage certificate; his “condition” was listed as: “The divorced husband of Ethel Lilian Blanckenberg, formerly Freeman (spinster).”

The newly-married Blanckenberg made a good start to his career with Rochdale in 1931. He scored 555 runs at 30.83 (second in the league averages) and took 59 wickets at 12.03. (fourteenth in the averages). His best performance came in early July, after he had made a poor start to the season with the bat, when he hit 115 not out and took nine for 28 in the match against Milnrow. During the season, he also made a brief return to the Lancashire League when he played two matches as a replacement professional: one for Colne and one for Burnley. He stayed at Rochdale until 1933 and continued to excel. In 1932, he broke the Central Lancashire League run-scoring record in a single season with 916 runs at 39.82 (3rd in the averages) and took 76 wickets at 12.26 (11th). In 1933, he scored 591 runs at 31.10 (5th) and took 54 wickets at 16.42 (20th). But that was the end of his Rochdale career. In February 1934, he announced his retirement from professional cricket, owing to a leg injury which he said, in a letter written to the Rand Daily Mail, prevented him bowling. This may have been the same leg which he injured in 1921 and which had hampered him for some time.

Blanckenberg’s league record in England is a formidable one. For Nelson, he scored 2,586 runs at 32.73 (his highest score was 143 not out) and took 316 wickets at 10.98 (his best figures were nine for 41) in 93 matches. For East Lancashire he made 1,384 runs at 30.08 (his highest score was 120) and took 129 wickets at 13.91 (best figures of nine for 45) in 52 matches. When taken with his two matches in 1931, he scored 4,000 runs at 31.49 and took 448 wickets at 11.91 in 147 matches in the Lancashire League between 1925 and 1931. In the Central Lancashire League, he scored 2,062 runs at 34.37 and took 189 wickets at 13.38 between 1931 and 1933. Whatever else can be said about him, Blanckenberg was one of the best league players of his time and but for his questionable reputation and his utter eclipse by Constantine he might have been remembered as one of the most effective of all.

Blanckenberg photographed around 1936 (Image: Leeds Mercury, 13 February 1936)

Although Blanckenberg no longer played professionally, he was not finished as a cricketer. He moved to the Bradford area and played as an amateur for Keighley in 1934 (alongside Sydney Barnes, who had lurked in the background of Blanckenberg’s career since before the war) and 1935. An article in the Shipley Times and Express in early 1934 suggested that he had played occasionally for Keighley in 1933 during some holiday games. There are few records of his time at the club, other than the occasional newspaper mention. He did not play enough to make the published averages in 1934, and in 1935 he scored 300 runs at 27.27 but did not make the leading bowling averages. It was reported in February 1936 that he was to captain the team in the coming season. From the fragmentary records, it appears that he appeared infrequently that year, although he continued to play (and captain) in 1937. An article in the Leeds Mercury in 1936, announcing his appointment as captain, suggested that his presence had attracted several promising young players to the club. The only performances of note which he seems to have had for Keighley were an unbeaten century in a cup match against Bradford in 1935 and figures of five for 27 against Bingley in 1936.

After 1937, Blanckenberg faded into obscurity. This disappearance is part of the reason that so much mystery and rumour surrounds him, but it is possible to put together a little bit more about him than is generally realised. His wife seems to have played a much more public role than him. By the late 1930s, Mrs Blanckenberg (as she was usually listed) was giving demonstrations of physical fitness in Sussex and was part of the Central Council of Recreative Physical Training, part of her role being to travel around the country giving talks, demonstrations and offering training sessions. She continued in this role during and after the Second World War, and at least once seems to have involved her husband: he was listed as attending cricket practices in Cambridge organised by the local National Fitness Committee and the Central Council of Recreative Physical Training in 1939.

By 1938, the couple were living in London, according to the Electoral Register. The 1939 Register taken at the beginning of the war lists them at 9 Gloucester Street in Westminster. Blanckenberg’s occupation was listed as the “H. S. A. Sports League Secretary” (The H. S. A. was the Hospital Savings Association, an organisation that helped members save for medical care and health insurance). Laura was listed as a “Physical Training Specialist”. We have no record of where they lived during the war, although Laura continued to work publicly for the Central Council of Recreative Physical Training. The last record we have for Blanckenberg is the 1947 Electoral Register, which lists him and Laura living in Harrow at 45 Sherrington Avenue. By 1948, Blanckenberg and Laura were divorced, and she married another divorcee called Samuel Medlicott. She died in 1991 in Birmingham.

Of Blanckenberg, there is no further trace in England or South Africa. He simply vanishes from the records, and no-one knows with any certainty what happened next. His first wife Ethel died in 1961; his daughter Doreen died in South Africa in 2005, but she seems to have had little contact with him. Into the vacuum, all kinds of strange and contradictory stories have rushed. There are some solidly attested events that have fed speculation about his possible fate, and these shed some unpleasant light on him. But can they help with the biggest question of all: what happened to J. M. Blanckenberg?

Note: Thanks to Michael Jones, who was able to provide information on Blanckenberg’s divorce.