“Faults of private character”: The Decline of Edward Pooley

Ted Pooley in a photograph published in 1893 (Image: Wikipedia)

Professional cricketers around the turn of the twentieth century led a precarious existence. Their lack of job security meant that they were never more than a short step from ruin unless they reached the top of the game. For example, Luke Greenwood played for Yorkshire but only kept out of the workhouse through the help of friends; his team-mate Alfred Smith was declared bankrupt at least once; and Harry Pickett’s financial desperation led him to take his own life. Perhaps it could be argued that none of these men ever reached the top of the professional game, but even achieving those heights was no guarantee of future prosperity. William Scotton played regularly for England but financial worries after losing his place in the Nottinghamshire team might have played a role in his suicide in 1893; Bill Brockwell played for Surrey and England in the 1890s, yet died in homeless poverty in the 1930s. But the ultimate “cautionary tale” for late-Victorian professional cricketers was Edward Pooley, an earlier Surrey cricketer, who would have played for England in what is today recognised as the first ever Test match had he not been temporarily imprisoned at the time.

Pooley was one of the few first-class cricketers to have been forced into the workhouse; other professionals had a similar fate, such as John William Burnham, who played briefly for Derbyshire, and William Ralph Hunter who spent time on the groundstaff at Lord’s and the Oval. But Pooley was many rungs up the ladder because he was one of the leading players in England and among the best wicket-keepers of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately for him, he also seemed to attract controversy; his Wisden obituary concluded: “Of the faults of private character that marred Pooley’s career and were the cause of the poverty in which he spent the later years of his life there is no need now to speak. He was in many ways his own enemy, but even to the last he had a geniality and sense of humour that to a certain extent condoned his weaknesses.” Was this too harsh a view? Or was Pooley entirely responsible for his own fate? As usual, the answer lies somewhere between those two extremes.

Pooley’s full story has been told by Keith Booth in a biography published in 2000, but he has recently been the subject of a very unusual book by Rodney Ulyate called The Autobiography of Edward Pooley. Although it is not in any sense a conventional autobiography, most of it was written by Pooley in the sense that it is culled from various interviews and pieces of writing that he provided during his lifetime. While there are limitations with such a format, this approach offers something different from the usual biographies of old cricketers. Too often all that survives from this period are the pseudo-official verdicts of Wisden or the deliberations of Harry Altham’s Olympian Judgements from his History of Cricket: for example, the Lords Harris and Hawke were benevolent dictators; Pelham Warner and Gubby Allen were patriarchs acting for the good of cricket; and Pooley was a “bad boy”. In any kind of serious history, such views would long ago have been challenged, modified or re-examined, but until very recently the interpretation of cricket’s past appeared to be unchanging, set in stone.

Part of the problem has been a lack of accessible sources. Many older biographies of cricketers relied either on the recollections of those who were around at the time or reheating the same tired stories and anecdotes. Today, excellent primary sources are often available online and historians increasingly make use of them, and of various archives that contain fascinating material. Booth for example used Surrey’s own archives to write his biography of Pooley, but Ulyate’s Autobiography of Edward Pooley is a move towards a more serious historical approach; in effect, the book is a collection of primary sources allowing anyone to see what Pooley had to say for himself. Such books are familiar to anyone who has studied history at an academic level, and are essential tools in the subject. For cricket to have similar resources would be a big step forward, opening up great possibilities. Furthermore, there are many cricketers for whom a similar project would be possible as there were a surprising number of interviews given by old players, even in the nineteenth century. Pooley is, however, a particularly interesting subject because he had a lot to say and was happy to tell journalists all about himself on several occasions. If the cricket establishment had made its judgement on Pooley, their target was keen to get across his own viewpoint. Because whether or not Pooley was the ultimate cautionary tale, he endured several controversial episodes, which he tried (not entirely successfully) to explain away.

What often got lost (and still does to a large extent whenever a writer revisits Pooley’s career) is what a good cricketer he was. Although there is no need to say too much here about his playing career — Booth and Ulyate provide all the detail anyone could want, and his Wisden obituary noted: “Two or three pages of Wisden could easily be filled with details of his doings” — it is worth giving a brief summary. Pooley recorded more dismissals than any of his contemporary wicket-keepers. Three times he stumped four opposition batters in an innings and twice stumped five. His twelve dismissals in a match against Sussex in 1868 has only been surpassed twice in first-class cricket; it was not equalled for seventy years and not beaten until 1995–96. As Ulyate points out, contemporary praise for Pooley was widespread (albeit not universal, particularly regarding his ability standing up to fast bowling) and he was among the first wicket-keepers to dispense with a long-stop to fast bowling. But it is notoriously difficult to assess wicket-keepers as detailed statistics about chances have only been kept in recent years, and the number of dismissals completed depends on more than simply the skill of the individual. Trying to ascertain objectively how good Pooley was with the gloves is a hopeless task, but there is no doubt that he was one of the most respected wicket-keepers of his time.

Pooley was also a decent batter. Wisden said: “Apart from his wicket-keeping Pooley was a first-rate bat, free in style, with fine driving power and any amount of confidence. He made many good scores and would without a doubt have been a much greater run-getter if he had not been so constantly troubled by damaged hands. During the Canterbury Week of 1871 he played an innings of 93 when suffering from a broken finger.” To a modern audience, his first-class average of 15.86 is underwhelming but in the 1860s and 1870s, a time of almost impossible wickets, it would have been respectable enough. Moreover, in 1870 he scored over 1,000 first-class runs, the mark of a quality batter (he was only one of three men to reach four figures that season; one was W. G. Grace), and he fell just 74 runs short of the same mark in 1871. In his best seasons, he averaged in the early 20s with the bat which placed him high in the seasonal lists. More to the point, wicket-keepers were explicitly not expected to be good batters, so Pooley’s batting record was exceptional for the period.

In short, he was a formidable cricketer. But while Ulyate regrets that so much of what has been written about Pooley concerns his faults rather than his achievements, it is this personal side that makes him fascinating. There have been many brilliant cricketers, and there is little to be gained by simply listing their deeds. Pooley’s life off the field is more interesting than his career on it, and reading what he had to say for himself brings the man to life. Rather than give a succession of bland interviews, as so many cricketers have done over the years, his voice comes across strongly in the Autobiography. And you can almost hear the anger in his tone. Yet Pooley never quite succeeds in convincing the reader that he was blameless in the many misfortunes to befall him.

Luke Greenwood in 1884 (Image: National Library of Australia)

Nevertheless, his ultimate fall should be set into some kind of context. Pooley was far from alone in struggling during his final years. Alfred Pullin, writing in the late 1890s, noted how several former Yorkshire professionals (not just Smith and Greenwood) found themselves in deep financial strife and had been “cast aside like an old shoe”. For example Pullin found John Thewlis toothless and almost blind living in abject poverty in Manchester. John Jackson, a Derbyshire bowler of the 1850s and 1860s died in the workhouse. Nor were such circumstances only endured by northern professionals; the Surrey player Julius Caesar was found dead in a tavern in Godalming having spent his final years living in great hardship. There were countless similar examples, some of which were listed by Ric Sissons in The Players (1988); and cases like William Scotton or Arthur Shrewsbury betray the lack of care given to former players by the cricket authorities around the turn of the twentieth century.

There is little doubt that the cricketing establishment blamed such players for their own fate, even if this view was rarely aired in print. Professionals who played between the 1860s and 1890s were regarded as irresponsible, untrustworthy and lacking “moral character”. The amateurs who ran county cricket culled this generation of professionals from the game so that only those who were prepared obediently to follow instructions remained. Lord Hawke’s reformation of the ill-disciplined Yorkshire team in the 1880s — which ended the careers of several talented players — was perhaps the best-known example of professionals being “brought to heel”, but the amateur leadership of many counties followed a similar process. County teams became populated by the “respectable professional”. Yet the county committees rarely — if ever — took into account the circumstances of their players; their need to earn a living, their upbringings that often featured extreme poverty, and their independence which made them reluctant to obey unquestioningly. Nor did the professionals have any reason to accept the Victorian convention that their “social class” was inherently inferior and they should give way to their “betters”, the middle and upper classes.

So when Wisden briefly summarised the fate of another fallen professional, those who read the obituary would have sighed and concluded that a sad end was inevitable for someone of that nature. It was the way of the world. These working-class men were responsible for their own fate, but the poor chaps simply could not help themselves. All of this would have been implied and understood. But in Pooley’s case, it was made explicit. Wisden concluded that “faults of private character” made Pooley “his own enemy”. Others, while lamenting the fate of a talented cricketer, concurred with this view. Ironically, Pooley had quite a middle-class background — his father was a schoolmaster — but never fitted into that world when he was a cricketer. And his actions during his playing career stripped away any sympathy that the establishment might have felt, such as that expressed for Thewlis, Greenwood, Brockwell or Caesar. By contrast, Pooley invited only condemnation, albeit tinged with some regret and sympathy after his death in 1907.

So what made him such a cautionary tale? There were several elements in his cricketing and social downfall. The first was unsporting behaviour. In 1873, Pooley was suspected of having “thrown” a cricket match when Surrey played Yorkshire in order to win a bet. Pooley denied the charge, to the Surrey Committee at the time and when interviewed by Pullin in 1899, and both Booth and Ulyate believe him. He admitted having placed several half-crown bets (or in his later version, two bottles of champagne) that certain Surrey players would outscore named opposition batters, but not having “thrown” the game. Yet the case was not quite straightforward: Pooley was replaced behind the stumps during the final stages of the match, and he was charged by the Surrey Committee not with throwing the game, but with insubordination and misconduct. In a letter to the Committee, Pooley claimed that if he had seemed not to be trying, it was because he was unwell, and he admitted “using coarse language” towards the Surrey captain. Booth speculated that if he had won a bottle of champagne, he might have been drinking, which resulted in his removal from the team, his “coarse language”, and his underperformance. In any case, Pooley was suspended for the rest of the season and only eventually readmitted to the team after making an apology.

Nor was he above what would still be regarded as unsporting behaviour; for example, when Charles Absolom of Cambridge was dismissed for “obstructing the field” in 1868, it was Pooley who had appealed when the returning ball struck the batter on the back while he was attempting to complete his sixth run. And in 1870 he ran out Charles Nepean of Oxford University after the batter had left the crease mistakenly believing that he had been given out lbw. Of this incident, Pooley said: “I most firmly assert now what I asserted at the time: that I genuinely believed that [the umpire] had given him out, and that what I did afterwards I did entirely without premeditation.” Any cricitism should have been equally attached to Surrey’s captain, who could have withdrawn the appeal if he considered it unsporting, but Pooley received the blame and Surrey held an internal enquiry after the President of the MCC intervened. It was concluded that there was no intention of unfair play, but Oxford did not play Surrey for ten years after that game. Yet perhaps stigma surrounding Pooley attracted stories like that, such as when he was accused (with little justification) of time-wasting during the Gentlemen v Players match at the Oval in 1869.

A second problem for the authorities was Pooley’s temper, because it was not just his own captain who was the subject of his fury. On at least two occasions in the late 1860s, both admitted by Pooley himself, he accosted journalists whom he believed had written unfairly about him, swearing at one and threatening another to the extent that he was forced to appear before magistrates and apologise. On both occasions, he seems to have been at least partially driven by their disregard for professional cricketers. But his temper — as well as a love of gambling — got the better of him on one particular occasion that meant he would never be a Test cricketer.

The English team that toured Australia in 1876–77. Back row: Harry Jupp, Tom Emmett, Alfred Hogben (sponsor), Allen Hill, Tom Armitage. Seated: Ted Pooley, James Southerton, James Lillywhite, Alfred Shaw, George Ulyett, Andrew Greenwood. On floor: Harry Charlwood, John Selby. (Image: Wikipedia)

In 1876–77, Pooley was the wicket-keeper in the team organised by James Lillywhite to tour Australia. Two of the games, against a full Australian team, were later recognised as the first official Test matches. But when those games took place, Pooley was absent — necessitating the use of a stand-in wicket-keeper — because he had been imprisoned in New Zealand during a brief visit there by Lillywhite’s team. He had placed a slightly unethical but not illegal bet with a local man: he used a common ruse of betting on the number of ducks that would be scored by the opposition, but one that required only a few ducks for the bettor to return a profit. But Pooley’s own account (as given in the Autobiography) neglects one detail provided by Booth: that he was umpiring the match in question, having been unwell for several days and unable to play. Although Pooley won his bet, the man refused to pay up; a scuffle resulted, Pooley made threats and when someone apparently tried to break into the man’s hotel room overnight, he was the obvious suspect (although Ulyate suspects, as Pooley claimed, that this was his team-mates trying to get his money; two possible suspects, George Ulyett and John Selby, were later involved in other troubles during tours of Australia). Pooley was charged with “assault and malicious damage to property” but ultimately found not guilty. If Pooley had done nothing technically wrong, the incident in no way reflected well on him.

A third factor might have been the nature of his personal life; although no-one ever publicly commented on it, his circumstances might have been known by the Surrey Committee. He had married a woman called Ellen Hunt in 1863, and the couple had six children. But around the time their sixth child was born in 1873, he abandoned his wife; by 1881 Ellen and three of their children were in Hackney Workhouse. He apparently never reconciled with their children, two of whom recorded him as deceased on their marriage certificates long before his death. In 1874, Pooley had the first of eight children with his common-law wife (he never divorced Ellen), Jemima “Minnie” Sabine, a woman of around 20 who was around ten years younger than him, and who was estranged from her own husband (who had failed in a bid to divorce her for adultery with two men, neither of whom was Pooley). She was listed as Minnie Pooley on the 1881 and 1891 census, although they never married.

However, Pooley was by no means the only professional to have marital difficulties. At a time when divorce was difficult and expensive, such a course was commonly taken by working class couples who wished to separate. If they had simply drifted apart — as opposed to having committed a divorce-worthy act such as adultery — it was often easiest just to go their separate ways. As they had no official means to divorce and remarry, they simply co-habited with other people. In Pooley’s case, there is one curiosity. Although he would have been expected to support his estranged wife financially, there is no record that he did so, even when she was admitted to the workhouse. In similar cases, the guardians of the workhouse ruthlessly hunted down husbands and forced them to pay for the upkeep of their wives; we do not know if this happened in the case of Pooley, but it would be surprising if an attempt was not made.

Another potential issue, which comes across in the Autobiography, was that Pooley had a creative relationship with the truth. For example, he admitted (as detailed in the Autobiography) altering his birth year so that he appeared younger to the Surrey authorities (contemporary cricket records gave his birthdate as 1843; he later claimed to have actually been born in 1838 — possibly to generate more sympathy for his financial plight in the late 1890s — but his real birth year was 1842). More importantly, he claimed to have been born in Surrey; his actual birthplace was Chepstow in Wales, meaning that he was not qualified to play for Surrey. And his own accounts of his various escapades are full of omissions, distortions and excuses so that even in cases where he had almost certainly been unjustly accused, his own defence was unconvincing. It is very possible that he was regarded by the authorities as untruthful and therefore untrustworthy.

The cumulative effect meant that when Pooley’s career went into decline in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and he ceased to be a regular Surrey player, his reputation cannot have been a good one. This would have even gone beyond the condescending idea that professionals were morally weak and irresponsible because Pooley had repeatedly broken rules and disregarded unofficial conventions. In 1883, he was granted a benefit by Surrey which raised over £400, but that was his final season in first-class cricket. The next two decades were unsettled ones. He and his family lived in a succession of houses, generally trending downwards in quality, and he tried a bewildering number of ways to earn a living. He tried coaching and umpiring, which were fairly conventional routes for former first-class players to follow in their later years, but he never succeeded in making enough money to survive, so he branched out into other areas. He tried gardening, being a cashier in a theatre, being a timekeeper on a building yard, joining the groundstaff of a cricket club and even working in a billiard saloon. Yet his decline continued.

In 1885, he wrote to Surrey asking for work, but none could be found for him. By 1890, he had been forced to seek poor relief from his parish, and it was arranged for him to be treated for rheumatic fever at the Royal Mineral Water Hospital in Bath; while there, his financial problems became public knowledge when a chance encounter with Pooley prompted someone to write a letter to The Sportsman. None too happy at suggestions that the county had abandoned Pooley, Surrey’s secretary Charles Alcock told that newspaper that since 1888, the county had provided Pooley with a weekly grant — first of ten, then fifteen shillings — to support him over the winter months until he could find cricketing work in the summer. The MCC also made it known that Pooley had been receiving support from the Cricketers’ Fund, a charity organisation that supported former professional cricketers. Generally, the public were sympathetic to tale of former players fallen on hard times, and the result was often a subscription or collection to help them. The reaction by Surrey and the MCC in Pooley’s case suggests that they thought he was trying to deceive people or to exaggerate the nature of his plight. Perhaps he was, but it is an interesting contrast to the reaction in Yorkshire when Pullin publicised the difficulties of former Yorkshire players.

In fairness, Surrey had provided Pooley with support, making various grants and allowances to him for ten years, albeit sometimes contingent on his “good behaviour”. But for unknown reasons, they cut off all financial help at the end of 1894. Around the same time, he seems to have separated from Minnie Sabine, who by 1902 had married a man called John Stuckley. From that point, he was on his own and life became even harder.

The site of Lambeth Workhouse (Image: Essential History)

He endured prolonged spells in the workhouse, the miserable destination of many of the poor who could not support themselves. This is not the place to discuss workhouses, but while they provided grim shelter and the meagrest food, they were designed to humiliate their inmates, who had to undertake strenuous work. Men, for example, were expected to break up stones. It was the place of absolute last resort, when the only alternative was homelessness, but it says much for workhouse regimes that many people preferred living on the streets.

Although Pooley was not the only professional cricketer to end his days in the workhouse, he was the only one who ever discussed his time there. In the late 1890s, he explained how he came to be in the workhouse, blaming “bad health and bad luck”. He told Pullin that it was a case of “the workhouse, sir, or the river.” He first entered a workhouse in 1890 when suffering from rheumatism. After he recovered, he was able to work to support himself financially, but in his account, the abrupt cessation of Surrey’s allowance made a big difference, and when he lost his job during another bout of rheumatic fever, his health declined and he was soon “penniless”. He wrote how he did not want to ask his family for help — there is some evidence that they had effectively cut all contact with him, possibly owing to his relationship with Sabine — so he spent a night on the streets before entering Lambeth Workhouse. Although he was able to leave for a time, he was soon forced back. Workhouse records suggest that he was homeless by this stage of his life. He said in an interview in 1898: “It is a sad state of affairs, but I am as comfortable as rheums and workhouse regulations permit … I am out of the world here, you see, and can only smoke my pipe and dream of better days. I admit I have had my faults, and may, perhaps, have been a bit to blame, but …” And at that point, he tailed off and the interview ended. The interviewer, Frederick Gale, explained: “Then he muttered something, and it was hardly fair to ask him to speak clearly. Those who know Pooley know his story.” Yet “a bit to blame” hardly suggests that Pooley was plagued by regret for his own actions.

In later years, he again appealed unsuccessfully to Surrey, asking the county to find him employment. Surrey also refused a third-party request to provide him a pension. He continued to ask intermittently, but spent the final years of his life in and out of workhouses. He had various addresses in this period, including the Duchy of Cornwall Public House, but it is unclear if he lived at any of them permanently when out of the workhouse. He died in 1907 and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

The question of whether Pooley’s final years were a result of his own behaviour, his apparent abandonment by Surrey or the entire social system of Victorian England is perhaps unanswerable. He was not unusual in the sense that many professionals found life an intolerable struggle. Nor was he unique in the way that he was cut off by Surrey. If his behaviour over the years might suggest an explanation for Surrey’s loss of patience, it would not account for the county’s similar treatment of their former player Richard Humphrey, who was given £10 in relief by Surrey in 1890, and for a few years paid him six shillings a week to assist him. But this aid suddenly ended in 1894; having lived in poverty for several years, Humphrey killed himself in 1906. Surrey’s lack of sympathy was not a result of lack of funds; they paid their professionals very generously and managed to supply some amateurs, such as Walter Read, with an extremely generous allowance.

There were countless professionals with similar stories; some were as talented as Pooley and a very small number (largely thanks to A. W. Pullin) were able to have their stories heard in print before their deaths. Maybe none of Pooley’s individual problems were unique, but it might have been the combination — the gambling, the insubordination, the temper and the gamesmanship — which made him too unpalatable for the authorities. But even respectable professionals were similarly left to their fate when counties cut off their money; perhaps Pooley was simply a victim of the time, one of the generation of professionals culled to allow for the amateur domination of cricket.

Maybe Pooley was to blame for some of his problems, but maybe some were just a feature of cricket — and society — in the late-nineteenth century. If he was in some ways an unsympathetic character, was that simply because he refused to accept the place determined for him by those in authority? Because he insisted that he spoke for himself? At least that has value for the historian because there could have been countless other professionals like Pooley, but they never had a chance to tell their story. Which makes Pooley more than just a solitary “cautionary tale”; he becomes the voice of all the other lost tales.

The final word should perhaps go to Sir Home Gordon. After Pooley’s death in 1907, he wrote in Badminton Magazine that “to see him in shabby clothes, with grizzly-white hair, and a strained, sordid appearance, gazing at the Oval on the scene of his former triumphs, was pitiable. Yet no-one could help him because he would not help himself, and his careless, calamitous life ended in the Lambeth Infirmary.” But the most revealing point in the article was Gordon’s emphasis that professionals in 1907 were vastly morally superior to Pooley’s contemporaries. Because for men like Gordon, the problem was not particularly with Pooley the individual; it was with an entire class of cricketer.

“It was often impossible to take any pleasure in seeing him play”: The Final Years of William Scotton

William Scotton (Image: Wikipedia)

William Scotton of Nottinghamshire and England had a reputation during his lifetime as a blocker — a dull batter who concentrated entirely on defence and scored very slowly. After a slow start to his career, he gradually established himself in the Nottinghamshire side and was a member of two teams managed by Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite which toured Australia. But he was soon clouded in a series of controversies: a players’ strike by the Nottinghamshire professionals; rumours of English players accepting bribes in Australia to underperform in 1881–82; stories of being involved in a fight with a fellow player on the same tour; an acrimonious divorce case in which he was proven to have assaulted his wife; and an unpleasant tour in 1884–85 marred by disputes over money. In between these problems, Scotton established himself as one of the best professional batters in England, adopting his early style as a hitter to become a purely defensive player whose value was appreciated by but perhaps not enjoyed by spectators. His highest point was an excruciatingly slow innings of 90 for England in 1884 which saved a Test match against Australia, but after this, and the 1884–85 tour to Australia, he was less effective. In addition, his slow batting became a source of irritation and even amusement to spectators and critics. And so began a decline which culminated in Scotton’s suicide in 1893.

Scotton returned from Australia after the 1884–85 series with his reputation firmly established, and as a likely first-choice in any full-strength England team. But his form collapsed after the tour. Fatigue may have played a part: Scotton did not arrive back in England until 12 May, but was playing for Nottinghamshire by 14 May. In total, he managed only 650 first-class runs at 18.05 in 1885, passing fifty only once (in Nottinghamshire’s last match). Against Gloucestershire, he scored 46 in 290 minutes, and at one point batted an hour without scoring; tedious even by Scotton’s standards. Even with his poor record, he was picked to play for the Players against the Gentlemen at the Oval and for the North against the South at the Oval. His season ended with a remarkable and highly uncharacteristic innings in a minor match. Batting for the MCC against Ealing in the last game of the season at Lord’s, he scored 248 not out, including a six, three fives and seventeen fours, out of the MCC’s 395.

There are just the tiniest hints that Scotton may have had some new problems emerging at this time. The first came in 1886, when he agreed to coach the sons of H. W. Forster, alongside Alfred Shaw, before they went to Oxford. Unlike Shaw, Scotton rarely coached; his sudden interest in helping an influential family might suggest that he had a few financial worries. There is another suggestion that all was not well. During the same season, he was featured as one of the Nottingham Journal’s “Famous Notts Cricketers”, but the article ended: “In the case of Scotton we are under the obligation of making this notice somewhat briefer than our notes of other well-known cricketers, since we have not had the courtesy of a reply to requests made to himself for information which might have been of some interest to the public.” Both this public rebuke and Scotton’s somewhat rude refusal to reply might hint at some behind-the-scenes disagreement that is lost to history.

Embed from Getty Images

The Players team which faced the touring Australians in 1886. Back row: F. H. Farrands (umpire), W. Barnes, W. Gunn, J. M. Read and H. Coxon (scorer). Front row: F. Lee, W. Flowers, M. Sherwin, J. Briggs, A. Shrewsbury, W. H. Scotton, G. Ulyett and R. G. Barlow.

On the field, Scotton returned to form during the 1886 season. He scored 979 runs, his best return in a season, at an average of 26.45. His only century was an unbeaten 110 for Nottinghamshire against Surrey, in the course of which he carried his bat through the innings, saved Nottinghamshire from the follow-on with the last batter at the other end, and batted for 375 minutes; he scored 73 in 315 minutes in the return match. He played for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord’s and the Oval (although he failed in both, scoring 8, 6 and 2; this was his last appearance in the fixture). Also indicative of the regard in which he was held at this point is that he was chosen in all three Test matches; playing for England at home was the ultimate accolade and far more prestigious than playing on slightly disreputable overseas tours. An Australian team was once again visiting England — albeit one weakened by the continuing fall-out over the events of 1884–85; several key players were missing. But for once, it was events on the field that had more bearing on Scotton’s future. In the three Tests, he scored 94 runs at 23.50. He was a solid performer, passing 20 in four of his five innings (and scoring 19 in the other), but never reached 40. His highest, and most important innings, came in the third Test, at the Oval.

Opening the batting with W. G. Grace, Scotton scored 34 in 225 minutes. When he was first out, the score was 170 and Grace had already reached three figures: the latter was eventually dismissed for 170 (out of a total of 216), his second and final Test century. Wisden praised Scotton’s dour batting: “Scotton batted with extraordinary patience even for him, and contented himself by keeping up his wicket while Mr. Grace hit … Scotton’s 34 — an innings of immense value to his side — occupied no less a time than three hours and three quarters, and at one period the famous Notts left-hander was in an hour and seven minutes without making a single run.” It was the second time in two seasons in which he had batted an hour without scoring. Others were rather less taken by Scotton’s approach, and a parody verse appeared in Punch, based on Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Break, Break, Break”. The poem, printed under the title “The Wail of the Weary”, began:

Block, block, block
At the foot of thy wicket, O Scotton!
And I would that my tongue would utter
My boredom. You won’t put the pot on!

It concluded:

Block, block, block,
At the foot of thy wicket, ah do!
But one hour of Grace or Walter Read
Were worth a week of you!

What probably made Scotton’s batting less bearable than it had been two years previously was that the weakened Australian team were no match for England, and lost all three Tests. It also probably didn’t help that, in an easier year for batting, Scotton was only 20th in the first-class averages (or 14th if twenty innings is the cut off for inclusion in the list). Several more attractive batsmen were ahead of him, but he was overshadowed by Arthur Shrewsbury, a defensively-sound professional who managed to score runs much more quickly. Shrewsbury’s masterful innings of 164 on a rain-affected pitch in the Lord’s Test match was remarkable and his overall average of 42.54 was the best of the season. Perhaps stung by the criticism, Scotton put on more of a spectacle in an end-of-season match against the Australians: he scored 71 for Lord Londesborough’s XI, sharing another large opening partnership with Grace; this time they added 159. Scotton was second out at 178, having hit ten fours and batted more aggressively than usual.

English & Australian Cricketers Great Match, England v. Australia played at Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, 19th, 20th, 21st July, 1886 by I. F. Weedon (Image: National Library of Australia)

There were further developments in Scotton’s personal life. Immediately after the final Test, Scotton missed the Nottinghamshire match against Middlesex on account of what Cricket called “a domestic bereavement” — likely the death of his sister Sarah Ann. By this stage, he was running another public house, the Crown Inn in Nottingham; however, by the following year he had moved to West Bridgford.

Over the winter of 1886–87, Scotton once more took part in a tour of Australia organised by Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite. Amid the fall-out of the problems in Australian cricket over the previous seasons, the Melbourne Cricket Club had attempted to organise a team of English amateurs to tour, but had to negotiate with Shaw’s professional team instead. Melbourne organised three matches between the Australian team which toured England in 1886 and the English team; “Shaw’s XI” won two games and the third was drawn, but these games were not recognised as Test matches by the Australian statistician Clarence Moody — whose conclusions form the basis of the”official” list of early Tests — when he complied his list in 1894. Two other matches were given Test status by Moody because Australia’s selections were not restricted to players who had toured England in 1886. It is an arbitrary distinction, but England won both “official” Test matches. Scotton did little on the tour. In the two “Tests”, he scored only nine runs in four innings. In first-class games, he scored 163 runs at 10.86 and in all games, 434 runs at 12.05, only passing fifty once, scoring 71 against East Melbourne in one of the final games. This was his last tour of Australia, and he did not play for England again. He finished his Test career with 510 runs at 22.17 in 15 matches. Given the conditions in which he usually played, which were difficult for batting, this is a better record than it looks, but was hardly spectacular compared to someone like Shrewsbury (who averaged 35.47 at Test level). But hidden in a mediocre record is one interesting achievement: Scotton’s unbeaten 50 in 1881 was the first fifty scored in a Test match by a left-handed batter; in fact he scored the first three left-handed Test fifties. No other left-hander reached that score in a Test match until 1890, and only Bobby Peel of other left-handers scored a Test fifty for England before J. H. King in 1909.

Scotton’s tour ended in slightly strange circumstances. A match was organised on the East Melbourne Cricket Ground between the “Smokers” and “Non-Smokers”, both teams containing English and Australian cricketers. On a very flat pitch, the “Non-Smokers” scored 803, the highest total in first-class cricket until then. The Smokers — including Scotton — replied with 356 and followed on but saved the match on the fourth and final day. Scotton was batting at the end and faced the final delivery of the match. He hit it towards point and ran after it to collect the ball as a souvenir. The other team also wanted the ball after such a high-scoring game and therefore appealed to the umpire, Reginald Wood, who gave Scotton out “handled the ball” as it was not dead when he picked it up.

After this tour, Scotton was never the same force in first-class cricket. As happened after his two previous tours, his batting suffered when he returned to England. His record was poor in 1887: 349 runs at 19.38, which placed him a long way down the national averages. His only representative cricket was a match for the Players of the North against the Players of the South. Another Shrewsbury-Shaw-Lillywhite team toured Australia in 1887–88 but Scotton did not take part, presumably owing to his loss of form. But once more, there is a hint of financial problems. In Silence of the Heart (2001), David Frith wrote:

“Scotton fell foul of Shrewsbury’s rigid rules of friendship in 1888 when, having missed the 1887–88 tour of Australia himself, he had asked Arthur to chase up a debt of £40 while out there which he said was unsettled from the earlier tour of 1886–87. Shrewsbury went out of his way to recover the money for his friend, only to find that not only had the sum been remitted but Scotton must already have received it. Chastised, Scotton petulantly put his cricket trophies on display in Gunn & Moore’s shop window. They were sports goods rivals of Shrewsbury’s.”

Frith gives no source for this information, although it presumably comes from letters written by Shrewsbury. Put together with Scotton’s venture into coaching in 1886, it might indicate that money was becoming a worry.

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Nottinghamshire in 1889: Back row: H. Coxon (scorer), W. H. Scotton, W. Attewell, F. J. Shacklock, H. B. Daft. Middle row: W. Barnes, W. Flowers, M. Sherwin, W. Gunn, A. Shrewsbury. Front row: H. Richardson and R. J. Mee.

Scotton declined further in 1888, scoring 459 runs at 14.80. He was selected for an “England XI” which played the touring Australian team at Stoke-on-Trent, and carried his bat for 9 as his team was bowled out for 28; this remains the sixth lowest score of any opener who carried his bat in first-class cricket, but this is offset by the fact that it is also the smallest total in an innings through which anyone has done so. Scotton top-scored with 20 in the second innings (the Australians won by an innings) but his style of batting had already been condemned by one of his opponents in that game. C. T. B. Turner had given an interview to the Sydney Daily Telegraph earlier in 1888, during which he said that Scotton was the “chief of [the] blockers … and you know now how dreary it was whenever he was at the wickets”.

But there was not much more to come from Scotton, dreary or otherwise. In 1889, he scored 358 runs at 14.32. Both of his fifties came in the same match: 51 and 50 in a narrow win over Yorkshire. His only representative cricket was for the North against the South, a match played for James Lillywhite’s benefit. In 1890, he managed 273 runs at 16.05, and Nottinghamshire lost patience. By the end of that season, he had been dropped from the team and he was not used at all in 1891. The decision was slightly curious; over the previous four seasons, he had finished 5th, 6th, 6th and 6th in the Nottinghamshire averages. His record was poor but not disastrously so compared to his team-mates (for example, his Nottinghamshire average in 1888 was 15.13 but the leading batter, William Gunn, only averaged 21.21). Usually, a professional with Scotton’s record would have continued to play for longer; his contemporary Wilfrid Flowers had a similar record at the time but retained his place until 1896 (although he was a useful bowler as well). And aged just 35 at the beginning of the 1891 season, Scotton clearly had many years cricket left in him at a time when professionals played long past the age of forty. But something similar happened to John Selby, the man with whom Scotton probably had a fight in Australia during the 1881–82 tour, in 1887.

Another curiosity is that, despite playing for the county between 1875 and 1890, Scotton was never given a benefit match; at most counties, the usual “length of service” for this was ten years. This is slightly easier to explain, using figures from The Players (1988) by Ric Sissons. Nottinghamshire, not a wealthy club, were notoriously reluctant to grant benefits, even when they received repeated requests from their professionals: only one — that of Selby in 1887 — was held between 1883 and 1890 and the average number of seasons for a professional to play for the county before having a benefit in this period was nineteen years. Alfred Shaw, one of the most famous cricketers in England, played for 28 years before being awarded one. Scotton simply was not there long enough; after he left the club, there was an attempt to redress the balance and Shaw, Shrewsbury, Barnes and Flowers had their benefit matches in three successive seasons.

Apart from frugality, it may be relevant that these delayed benefits all belonged to those involved in the 1881 strike. It is not impossible that they were withheld vindictively. But apart from Fred Morley, who died in 1884, only Scotton of the strikers never had a benefit. It is hard to shake the impression that something else lay behind Scotton’s release by Nottinghamshire, but it is hard to say what that might have been. There were vague hints at the time of his death that he had begun drinking heavily, but this seems to have post-dated his Nottinghamshire career. Maybe he was just too slow and not scoring enough runs anymore. Perhaps his roles in the strike and the many other controversies were held against him by his county. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

Scotton’s final first-class match was played for the MCC in 1891, bringing his career at that level to an end. In 237 first-class games, he had scored 6,527 runs at 18.97, with four centuries and 23 fifties, figures which look unimpressive today but which were worth more in the 1880s. Of his Nottinghamshire contemporaries Attewell (average 18.03) Flowers (20.07), Selby (18.83) and Barnes (23.19) had similar averages, although the first two were also bowlers. Only Shrewsbury (36.65) and William Gunn (33.02) stood ahead of the others. Scotton also took eight first-class wickets, but bowled only rarely. He did, however, take wickets in minor cricket. Of his more spectacular returns, he took ten for 36 against Nottinghamshire Colts (who had 22 players) and nine for 24 for United XI against Kidderminster (22 players; Walter Gilbert took fourteen for 47 in the first innings).

When it became apparent in early 1891 that Nottinghamshire would not be picking Scotton again, the Sheffield Evening Telegraph included a brief feature on his career: “When he first joined the [Nottinghamshire] eleven a decade-and-a-half ago he was noted for his free hitting, but gradually he developed a preference for the defensive game, which made his innings a weariness of flesh to the average spectator.” The Illustrated London News even mentioned Scotton’s “retirement”, albeit in the context of lamenting the cautious negativity of professional batting, and suggested that Scotton had been the inspiration of the method.

Although dropped by Nottinghamshire, Scotton’s career as a professional cricketer was not over. He continued to play minor matches for the MCC, and remained a member of their ground staff at the time of his death in 1893. He also took up umpiring, something he had done briefly before. In 1880, he stood in the match between the Players of the North against the Australians (Luke Greenwood was the other umpire), and between 1882 and 1892 he umpired five first-class matches involving the MCC as part of his groundstaff duties. CricketArchive also records him as the umpire in two minor MCC games in 1882 and 1883, and an Oxford University trial match in 1879. He also stood in other games (unrecorded by CricketArchive) following his release by Nottinghamshire, particularly when he was unable to play after he suffered a knee injury some time after 1891.

But the end of his Nottinghamshire career had a disastrous effect on him. At the very least, he became very depressed and it may even have triggered some kind of breakdown.

The row of houses containing 91 St John’s Wood Terrace

Scotton spent part of 1891 in Dublin, where he fell ill (possibly the knee injury) and had to spend time in hospital. During the cricket season, he usually lodged in London (and had done so since the early 1880s), where he was still employed by the MCC. But all was clearly not well. In April 1893, he travelled to London from Nottingham as usual to take up his role with the MCC ground staff, and take up lodgings at 91 St John’s Wood Terrace. That June, he went to umpire a game in Mitcham, but ended up playing in the game instead when one of the teams was a man short. In the course of the match (it is unclear how), he injured the thumb of Tom Richardson; this troubled him, and he was heard to lament that he had prevented Richardson from playing for a time. He then umpired a two-day game at Sandhurst and, after the weekend, another game at Clifton. His landlady, Mrs Landsdowne, said that when he returned — on Thursday 6 July — he was “rather strange in his manner”. The reason was that he felt he had made a mistake when umpiring in Clifton. On Friday 7 July, he set out in the morning, saying he was heading to Lord’s, but Mrs Landsdowne later discovered that he had not gone there at all. That evening, he went into the room of a fellow lodger, James Chandler, a cricket bat handle maker. Going to the window, Scotton said ‘By God! There’s my brother John’s voice.'” In fact, John was not there, but living in Nottingham. Scotton then broke down crying and lay on the sofa for ten minutes before returning to his room. Chandler thought he might have been drunk.

On Saturday, he refused to get out of bed; according to Mrs Landsdowne: “He was very quiet and appeared to be disturbed in his mind about something. He talked at random times. He seemed to be troubled about Lord’s. He thought they were not just to him.” He improved a little through the day, and ate a little, but would not get up. He cheered up after eating some supper and said that he would have a good night’s sleep. Mrs Lansdowne and her husband heard nothing during the night, but when she knocked on his door, on the morning of 9 July, there was no reply. When she entered, she found Scotton lying by the bed dead. He had cut his throat with a razor, and there was blood all over the opposite wall and furniture, as well as in a bowl he had placed underneath himself in a forlorn hope of preventing a mess. His body was still warm.

At the inquest into his death, there were several witnesses, including his brother, who came to tie up Scotton’s affairs. Mrs Lansdowne thought that he had been drinking when he was not at home (where she never saw him drinking); he “believed that people were coming after him, and had other strange delusions.” He told her: “They are coming after me, how long will they be before they come?” James Chandler, revealed that Scotton, whom he had known for many years, “had appeared odd in his manner on several occasions”, apart from when he imagined seeing his brother.

There had been several letters in Scotton’s possession, none of which seemed especially relevant, and there was certainly no note. One of the letters did give some background detail; it had been written to him and mentioned some of his recent strange behaviour. The writer told him “in affectionate terms … not to be a fool but to pull himself together.” The coroner did not read it aloud but suggested the letter indicated that Scotton had not been performing him duties at Lord’s well enough, owing to drink, and had received a warning. But he had not, according to the final witness, been sacked.

This last witness, and the author of that letter, was the professional cricketer G. F. Hearne, another member of the MCC groundstaff (and well-known as the pavilion clerk at Lord’s) who had known Scotton for 18 years and played alongside him in Australia in 1884–85 (Hearne was not a member of the team but had travelled there himself for health reasons and joined the team for two minor games). He suspected that Scotton had been drinking recently “on the sly” but no-one had ever seen him drunk. Scotton wrote Hearne a “long rambling letter”, the reply to which was the letter the coroner had examined. According to Hearne, “Scotton had been greatly aggrieved at being left out of his county, and took it to heart a great deal. He was not a strong minded man, on the contrary he was very sensitive. [Hearne] had seen him cry if he had had bad luck in a match.”

The verdict was that he “died of his own act while of unsound mind.” The implication was that drink played a part, but there seems to havee been little evidence of him drinking heavily and no-one reported seeing him drunk. Instead, it seems that the end of his Nottinghamshire career had a severe effect upon his already uncertain mental health. Some reports suggested that he had been “recently” divorced, which had affected him. But his divorce had taken place ten years before which suggests that he very much kept himself to himself and may have used the divorce as an excuse for some of his more unusual behaviour.

John Selby in 1876 (Image: Wikipedia)

Scotton left an estate worth just over £242 (the equivalent of around £27,000 today); the executor of his will was “Ann Bates, widow” — his former wife. She did not attend his funeral. He was buried in the Nottingham General Cemetery on 12 July. His surviving siblings were in attendance, as was his son. But few cricketers came; most of his former team-mates were at Lord’s playing in third and final day of the Gentlemen v Players match (although most of the day was washed out). Only two were identified in newspaper reports. Edwin Browne, who was by then the Nottinghamshire Secretary; and John Selby. Selby’s presence is interesting; he had not played for Nottinghamshire since 1887. Was he there because, unlike the current players, he was free to attend and pay his respects to an old team-mate? Did his mind go back to their many matches together for Nottingamshire and England? Perhaps he reminisced over the time they were fellow strikers in 1881. Or did he instead recall the match-fixing allegations of 1881? As Scotton was buried, was Selby thinking of the fight which the two men had — which had been “a private family quarrel” involving “delicate issues” — during the 1881–82 tour? Was he brooding over what really passed between them? Nine months later, Selby too was dead from a stroke at the age of 45.

Scotton quickly faded from the memory; he was that sort of batter. For a time, his name was used to describe slow batsmen in Australia, sometimes as a verb (“Scottoned”). There remains the hint of something unsavoury about him: his involvement in so many controversies (which were not all directly related to him, but he would have been unlucky to be in the wrong place by accident so many times); the way he treated his wife; his clashes with several of his team-mates; his pettiness with the Nottingham Journal and Shrewsbury. But when he is remembered, it is as a cricketer. His career in the sport is best summed up with the words which concluded his Wisden obituary in 1894: “Few left-handed men have ever played with so straight a bat or possessed such a strong defence, but he carried caution to such extremes that it was often impossible to take any pleasure in seeing him play.”

Dragged into Controversy: The Emergence of William Scotton

William Scotton in the mid-1880s (Image: Wikipedia)

The “blocker” or “stonewaller” has always endured a mixed reputation in cricket. While appreciated for wearing down the bowling or holding an end up, they are more often reviled for boring play and barracked by crowds. From the recent case of Dominic Sibley, back through Chris Tavaré, Geoffrey Boycott, Trevor Bailey and beyond, England’s cricket team seems to have been blessed (if that is the correct word) with dour batsmen. But one-paced defensive batters are often valued but rarely loved; a deplored necessity. This is not a modern dichotomy. Even in the earliest days of Test cricket, praise for the stonewaller was often drowned out by jeers (or perhaps by snores). One of the most defensive was William Scotton, an English professional during the 1880s who was so dull that “to Scotton” briefly was used as a verb in Australia to describe someone blocking. Scotton was not the first stonewaller, nor was he the only one of his contemporaries to adopt this approach, but he seems to have attracted more than his share of criticism. Underneath his dour exterior, however, lurked a man who had more than a few skeletons in his cupboard. If his batting was dull, his life was anything but. From his earliest years as a cricketer, he often found himself involved in other people’s controversies. Yet he remained a frustrated man and his end was not a happy one. Less than ten years after his most famous innings — a match-saving 90 from 375 balls in a Test match against Australia — he was dead.

William Henry Scotton was born in Nottingham on 15 January 1856, the fifth of the nine children of Thomas Scotton, the publican of the Britannia Inn, and his wife Sarah Ann Harris. By the time of the 1871 census, Thomas, a keen and successful pigeon shooter in his spare time, had taken charge of the Crown Inn. Meanwhile — a little strangely — the fourteen-year-old Scotton was resident in the Nag’s Head public house, alongside his seventeen-year-old sister (who seems to have been running the establishment) and their two younger siblings. At the time, Scotton was still at school; he attended the People’s College, Nottingham, where one of his fellow pupils was Arthur Shrewsbury, four months his junior, who would be associated with him throughout his cricket career. In these early days, Scotton played for Meadow Willow Cricket Club (alongside Shrewsbury) and for the Beeston Cricket Club, for whom he scored his first century. One unusual feature of his cricket was that he batted left-handed — a rarity in this period. By 1873, aged just 17, Scotton was playing for the Nottinghamshire Colts (effectively a youth team) and the “Nottinghamshire Next XV”; later in that season, he played alongside some famous cricketers with the All-England XI, a professional touring side. By the beginning of the 1874 season, he was playing for the “Colts of England” against the MCC. A few weeks later, he played for the county first eleven in a non-first-class game against Derbyshire, but more importantly for his future, he joined the MCC groundstaff. He played a few minor games for the MCC, and appeared in another touring team, the United North of England XI.

Progress was slow for Scotton over the next few years. At the time, he was something of a “hitter” and did not bat in the dour way which later made him notorious. But he was not especially successful with this style. He was around the fringes of the Nottinghamshire team for several years without securing a place. Between his commitments with the MCC, he played some non-first-class games for Nottinghamshire and made his first-class debut (scoring 6 and 8 against Derbyshire) in 1875, but by the end of the 1877 season, he had played only three first-class games in three seasons, scoring 15 runs in five innings. In 1876, he appears to have given up any hopes he had with Nottinghamshire and instead moved to London where he joined the groundstaff at the Oval, with a view to qualifying for Surrey through residence. He also continued to play for various other teams, including touring elevens, but rarely had much success with the bat and was a palpable failure on the few occasions he was tried with the ball.

Meanwhile, Scotton’s life away from cricket was moving on. In mid-June 1877, he married Ann Bates, the daughter of a publican and the couple moved into the Boat Inn in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. The couple had a son, Harold William, in 1878, but the marriage was never a happy one. Over the following ten years, Scotton took over the management of several public houses without ever seeming to make a great success of it, although information is sketchy. Whether he was considering leaving cricket altogether is unclear, but he finally broke into the Nottinghamshire first team in 1878, playing five first-class games for the county (and one for an “All-England XI” almost entirely composed of Nottinghamshire players; Scotton scored a “pair”). Although he only scored 92 first-class runs at an average of 11.50, this included one innings of 40 and someone clearly began to see potential.

More success came in 1879, when he played thirteen first-class games, all but one of which — for London United against the United North of England XI — was for Nottinghamshire. He passed fifty three times, and a return of 409 runs at 25.56 was excellent in a period of extremely treacherous pitches. All three fifties came in August: 84 not out against Middlesex, 51 against Lancashire (and 45 in the second innings) and 77 against Kent (“scored at tremendous rate” according to Wisden). The first two were in consecutive innings. He finished second in the Nottinghamshire averages with 305 runs for the county at 32.08. Wisden also commented that he “surprised his friends by the freedom of his hitting”. While generally cautious, he was not afraid to play more aggressively in some situations — an ability he lost in later years.

By 1880, he was a regular in the Nottinghamshire team. He played a handful of matches for an “England XI”, two of which were first-class games against “Richard Daft’s American XI” (players who had taken part in Daft’s recently completed tour of North America). He was also chosen for the Gentlemen v Players matches at the Oval and Lord’s, although scores of 0, 4, 0 and 4 for the professional “Players” were hardly a success. But he passed fifty three times and by the end of the season had 460 first-class runs at 17.69. His best innings was probably his 53 against Gloucestershire, the strongest county side, at Trent Bridge; one hit travelled 97 yards to land on the pavilion balcony.

Although he had only just established himself as a first-class player, during the 1881 season Scotton became involved in a bitter dispute with the Nottinghamshire Committee. He was one of seven Nottinghamshire professionals — alongside Arthur Shrewsbury, Alfred Shaw, Fred Morley, John Selby, William Barnes and Wilfrid Flowers — involved in a “strike” over who held the power at Nottinghamshire. The county was dominated by professionals at a time when amateurs were attempting to assert their control over English cricket. One of the strongest and most important counties, Nottinghamshire was a bastion of professionalism, symbolised by the independent, entrepreneurial and prickly characters of Shrewsbury and Shaw. It was these two who were at the heart of the 1881 dispute; Scotton was a peripheral figure. However, the fall-out had a negative impact on him.

The strike evolved from a disagreement between the Nottinghamshire secretary, Captain Henry Holden, and Shrewsbury and Shaw over the right for the players to organise an official Nottinghamshire game. From there, it spiralled to encompass players’ pay, their right to a benefit, and a demand for guaranteed contracts for each season. It was the culmination of several years of argument but escalated into a serious situation when Holden wrote to the other Nottinghamshire professionals in 1881 to demand that they be available for all the county’s fixtures, at the standard rate of pay (£5 per match, with a £1 win bonus). Unhappiness with Holden’s attitude and demands prompted Scotton, Morley, Selby, Barnes and Flowers to side with Shaw and Shrewsbury against the secretary. The seven rebels played in Nottinghamshire’s first match of the season but then withdrew from the team for most of June and July after Holden would not agree to their terms. At one point, he offered to engage all the players for the season except Scotton and Flowers, who were perhaps the least established, but the others refused to accept any deals which omitted those two. Holden attempted to use his influence to prevent the rebels appearing in the Gentlemen v Players matches, but the MCC secretary had no objections even though several of them were on the MCC groundstaff. Nevertheless, whether at the request of Holden or not, none of the rebels played in the Oval match (Selby, Morley and Barnes subsequently appeared for the Players at Lord’s).

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Alfred Shaw’s XI that played against Lord Sheffield’s XI in late August 1881. Back row: G. F. Salter (scorer), James Foster, Walter Wright, William Gunn, Irwin Grimshaw, William Oscroft, C. Payne (umpire). Front row: Billy Bates, William Clarke, John Selby, Alfred Shaw, Mordecai Sherwin, William Scotton.

While absent from the Nottinghamshire team, Scotton rejoined the Lord’s groundstaff and played regularly for the MCC. In one such game, he scored his maiden first-class century; in a match against “England”, his innings of 100 was the main reason that the MCC won after following-on. Although his pay for the MCC was unlikely to match that he received from Nottinghamshire, he kept busy while the strike was ongoing, and even appeared a few times for the “United Eleven” and “United North of England XI” touring teams.

Playing throughout most of June and July without the strikers, Nottinghamshire’s results were mixed but far from disastrous. From the rebels’ viewpoint, part of the problem was that the county had the depth to field a strong team without them. Young players came in, while other professionals were either unwilling to rock the boat, or happy to take advantage of the absence of the rebels. As it happened, several men were uncovered who went on to long and productive careers, including William Gunn, William Attewell and Walter Wright. At the start of August, Flowers agreed to return to the team. Selby and Barnes returned for the next game and Scotton and Morley for the match after that. Shaw and Shrewsbury still held out before giving way at the start of the 1882 season; the Nottinghamshire committee accepted their grudging apology and they returned to the team. The seven signed an “agreement to play in any Notts county match”.

The strike therefore ended with the Holden and the Nottinghamshire Committee the undoubted victors, having made no concessions at all. Although the seven were accepted back, it is difficult to believe that there was no long-term effect, especially for Scotton who was never quite as crucial to Nottinghamshire as most of the other rebels, and had not then fully established himself in the team. It may not be a coincidence that, despite playing for Nottinghamshire for fifteen years, he was never awarded a benefit and — as we shall see — was unceremoniously dropped from the team in 1890. Did he simply get caught up in the battle between Shaw, Shrewsbury and the Committee? If so, he paid quite the price in the end and would have been better to have kept out because there was no realistic prospect that Nottinghamshire could have let the rebels win. If they had, other counties would have had to agree similar terms for their professionals. As Ric Sissons wrote in The Players (1988): “No doubt every county secretary was relieved to see the strike collapse.” Most of the cricketing establishment was also opposed to the rebels (in contrast to the sympathetic reaction to a similar occurrence in 1896); for example, James Lilywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual for 1882 said that the men had been guilty of “misconduct” in forming “a deliberate combination against a recognised administration.”

Given his various absences, Scotton played just seven first-class games that season, scoring 231 runs at 19.25. But being closely associated with Shaw and Shrewsbury brought immediate short-term benefit when he was included in a team they organised that winter, in association with James Lillywhite of Sussex, which undertook a tour that winter encompassing the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It was the sixth time a team of English cricketers had visited Australia but it was only the third to include matches played on equal terms (before that, games on tour were played against the odds, facing teams comprising between fifteen and twenty-two players). Shaw and Shrewsbury had been part of Richard Daft’s team that toured North America in late 1879, while Lillywhite had organised a tour of Australia in 1876–77 which included a match retrospectively identified as the first ever Test match. The relative success of those two ventures, and the enormous profits made by the Australian teams which visited England in 1878 and 1880, inspired Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite to organise the first of their many overseas tours.

The “All-England” team which toured Australia in 1881–82 as illustrated in the Australasian Sketcher on 3 December 1881. Scotton is on the bottom row, second from the right. (Image: The State Library of Victoria)

The Shaw-Shrewsbury-Lillywhite team of 1881–82 hardly represented the best English cricketers; it was largely a group who already had strong connections to Shaw and Shrewsbury through the northern professional touring circuit. No amateurs were included, and only a handful of the team would have been first-choice selections in a fully-representative English side. Most of the players had appeared in 1881 for the United North of England XI, and apart from Lillywhite and Billy Midwinter — who played for Gloucestershire but represented both England and his native Australia in Test cricket — the entire team was based in the north. There were four players from Nottinghamshire, all of whom were from the ranks of the rebels. The team was not assembled based on form or talent, but rather through availability and connections to the three managers. Although the tour included four games now recognised as Test matches, there was no sense at the time that these were formal international matches between representative teams. Test cricket was at that stage a nebulous concept that was only slowly crystallising.

The English press were dismissive of a team of professionals organising a tour for profit, and referred to them simply as “Shaw’s team” (Shaw was the captain). Australian newspapers played up the representative aspect, describing the team as “All-England” or “England”, and there was a lot of interest surrounding the tour in Australia. Some of the matches attracted a lot of attention from bookmakers, as had been the case — to Lord Harris’ distaste — in 1878–79. The heaviest betting surrounded the English team’s match against Victoria at Melbourne in mid-December 1881. The home team required 94 to win the match, not an easy task in difficult conditions, and eventually lost. But as the tour progressed, rumours emerged that some of the English players had been offered money — the implication being that it was offered by bookmakers — to underperform during the match against Victoria. What actually took place is somewhat murky. The fullest account was provided by Shaw in his 1902 reminiscences: he claimed to have been told by Billy Midwinter that two players had taken money and had invited him to become involved. Shaw was initially unconvinced but claimed that some events on the field on the last day made him change his mind; nevertheless, he said that his subsequent investigation could not uncover what happened or obtain any proof against the two men accused.

George Ulyett (Image: Wikipedia)

John Selby (Image: Wikipedia)

But this does not quite square with his actions at the time: the story reached England ahead of the players and was widely covered in English newspapers at the start of the 1882 season. Shaw, alongside John Selby and George Ulyett — the two players named in the press as the accused parties — issued statements denying any knowledge of money being offered and insisting that nothing untoward took place. Further muddying waters, a story emerged that a fight had taken place between some of the team; some versions suggested that this was over the attempted match-fixing. An apparently well-informed Yorkshire solicitor called William Wake claimed that Scotton was the man approached by Selby and Ulyett, and the man who reported the approach to Shaw. Wake also said that Scotton and Selby had come to blows, and that the former had written to his father about what happened; it is not impossible that this letter was the route — inadvertent or otherwise — by which the story reached England.

But Wake’s account is directly contradicted by Shaw; the only person singled out by name in his 1902 reminiscences was Midwinter, whom he identified as the “whistle-blower” and the victim of an assault by the match-fixers (whom Shaw refused to name). Was Scotton involved or not? Given the many competing versions of the tale in circulation, it is almost impossible to say, and there is no way to reconcile the various stories.

But there is one possible explanation. The match before the infamous Melbourne game took place in Cootamundra; according to an interview that Ulyett gave in May, there had been a scuffle at Cootamundra between two of the English players which he had broken up. A follow-up story in June indicated that the disagreement was “a private family quarrel” involving “delicate issues”. It is not impossible that this fight was unconnected to the bribery allegations but was an entirely separate incident; it may also have become garbled in the retelling to become connected to the rumours. As the only players who had been publicly identified when the story emerged were Ulyett, Selby and Scotton, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the combatants were Selby and Scotton, which would back up what William Wake wrote. The hints at the time suggest that the fight could have been over a woman; certainly Malcolm Knox in Never a Gentleman’s Game (2012) interprets it that way. David Frith suggests in Silence of the Heart (2001) that “the clouded cause [was] either a proposed match bribe or ‘marital jealousy'”. Both authors identify Scotton and Selby as the two men involved, but do not acknowledge the muddled and contradictory versions of the whole story which allow for this possibility. As we shall see, the events of Scotton’s life at this time might indicate that this was a realistic explanation and the confusion might explain how Scotton (rather than Midwinter) might have been mistakenly named by Wake as the whistle-blower. But no contemporary source explicitly linked Cootamundra, Scotton and any “delicate issues”.

On such a tour, results were almost academic, but for the record Australia won the four-Test series 2–0 (the series included the last draws in an Australian Test match until 1946–47; the intervening series all involved “timeless” matches played out to a finish). Scotton scored 50 not out (from 170 balls with three fours) in the second innings of the first Test, on what would be retrospectively recognised as his Test debut. This was actually the first fifty scored by a left-hander in Test cricket. But this was his only such score of the tour in any form of cricket; in seven first-class games, he scored 228 runs at 20.72, 158 of these in the Tests at 26.33. In the 30 games played in total across the three legs of the tour — most of which were played against teams comprising sixteen, eighteen or even twenty-two opponents — he scored 519 runs at 14.02. Even putting aside the questions over bribery, it was an unfortunate tour: one Australian journalist drew attention to how some of the English professionals — whom he did not name — had been keeping very late hours, drinking heavily and associating with people they would have been better to avoid. An 1884 profile of Scotton in Cricket made no mention of the tour at all.

Almost immediately after he returned to England — he was one of a small group, alongside Shaw and Shrewsbury, who arrived back last having remained on their ship all the way to Portsmouth rather than taking a faster overland route — Scotton was propelled straight back into the cricket season. It was perhaps too much to ask: having gone from being part of a strike to being surrounded by allegations of bribery without a respite, his form collapsed. A gathering storm in his personal life, and what he probably viewed as a public humiliation, compounded matters. When he emerged from several years of turmoil, he was never again quite the same player. Scotton, the blocker, was born.

“Whatever the scheme actually was, it failed”: Match-Fixing, Denials and Cover-Ups

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Shaw’s team that toured North America, Australia and New Zealand in 1881–82. Back row: George Ulyett, Richard Pilling, James Lillywhite, John Conway (Manager), Billy Midwinter, William Bates. Middle row: Arthur Shrewsbury, Alfred Shaw, Tom Emmett, Edward Peate. On floor: Richard Barlow, William Scotton, John Selby.

During the 1881–82 season, a team of professional English cricketers toured Australia under the management of Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite. In a financial sense, the tour was an undoubted success; from a cricketing viewpoint, results were respectable. The cricketing establishment in England took little notice as such an all-professional scheme was distasteful to them, but the tour was closely followed in Australia. One of the best results for the English team — which was captained throughout by Shaw — came in a first-class match against Victoria in mid-December. Shaw’s team won a close game after following on, a result which stung several gamblers, and the bookmakers who took a keen interest. The rest of the tour progressed smoothly, and after completing thirty games, Shaw’s men left Australia on the Orient Line steamship Chimborazo on 22 March; it sailed from Melbourne to Adelaide, from where it sailed towards England on 24 March. On the very next day, a story broke in Australia; while the team were still onboard the Chimborazo, something similar appeared in English newspapers — apparently based on letters sent by the players during the course of the tour. The outline of the story, which was not proven and was generally disbelieved by the press, was that two of the team took a bribe to underperform in that Victoria game. A third player supposedly reported them, and a fight broke out between the three. The “leak” seemed to grow within the Nottinghamshire team over the course of April before emerging in the press, and the two who were alleged to have accepted the money were Yorkshire’s George Ulyett and Nottinghamshire’s John Selby. The identity of the “whistleblower” remained unknown at that time.

While rumours swirled around the press, Shaw’s team were still on their way home and would have been unaware of the gathering storm for much of their journey. Exactly when they found out about the story is unknown, but is quite an important point. On 23 April the Chimborazo arrived at Suez. A blockage in the Suez Canal seems to have delayed their further progress. For reasons that are unclear, George Ulyett and John Selby separated from the others, travelled overland from Brindisi in Italy, and were the first to arrive in England on 2 May. A second group comprising Lillywhite, Richard Barlow, Billy Bates, Ted Peate and Billy Midwinter also travelled overland via Naples and arrived home on 5 May. Shaw, Shrewsbury, William Scotton, Richard Pilling and Tom Emmett remained on the Chimborazo, which eventually reached Plymouth on 11 May.

Why did the team split up? It was not unusual during tours for players to travel home separately, sometimes owing to individuals’ dislike of sea travel, or because some of the team wished to get home faster. But for Ulyett and Selby to depart together, given that these were the two men around whom the rumours centred could be viewed as strong circumstantial evidence of some unusual occurrences. But unless they knew that the story had broken — which they both later denied — they would have had no reason to hurry home. Could they have found out? There are a few possibilities. Although the story first appeared in the Sydney Herald the day after they left Australia, it seems unlikely that it could have overtaken them on the journey. More details were printed in The Scotsman on 17 April; it is not implausible that copies of that newspaper — or of the many others which reprinted the story — could have reached Suez by 23 April. Alternatively, someone could have sent a telegram to the team or to the players; later reports suggested that the rumours fully came to light (but were not printed) at game between Nottinghamshire and the Nottinghamshire Colts on 18 and 19 April, and that Ulyett and Selby’s names were privately associated with the story from an early date in England. Perhaps this is how they discovered what was happening, or perhaps it is just an enormous coincidence.

When they reached England on 2 May, Ulyett and Selby immediately stated that the rumours were false, and suggested that they had not heard anything about them before their arrival in England. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph stated that Ulyett and Selby “will take such measures as may be deemed requisite to wipe out the slander.” William Bates, part of the group who arrived back on 5 May, also spoke to reporters about the story upon his return home. He stated that none of those who travelled with him — he named Midwinter, Lillywhite and Barlow, but not Peate, who was part of the same group — saw the story until reading it in a newspaper they saw in Paris. A report in the Huddersfield Chronicle on 6 May stated: “While wishful to know where the rumour originated, [Bates] stated that there was not a word of truth in it.”

While none of these denials were especially convincing, there is no proof that the players were lying. Having had a few days to reflect — and perhaps talk to members of the second group to arrive home — Ulyett spoke further about the story. He gave an interview on 8 May, the fullest version of which appeared later that week in The Sportsman, in which he suggested that “it may have arisen out of a little pleasantry at Cootamundra, the place where [Billy] Murdoch lives. There two members of Shaw’s team certainly did have a bit of fun (as the Yorkshireman calls it) — that is, they had a set-to … ‘So far from me having anything to do with the matter, as has been reported, I was the very first to stop the affair when I saw they were losing their tempers.'” Selby appears to have been privately telling a similar story, although he gave no interviews. Cootamundra, incidentally, was where the English team played immediately before the Victoria match.

Here the matter rested for a time in the press, but rumour clearly continued to circulate in the cricket world. Before long, it had reached the ears of Lord Harris, one of the most influential men in English cricket, and he was clearly unhappy that there had been no word from the team organisers. He wrote a letter to The Times which was published on 24 May: “A rumour such as this is a public accusation, and as such ought to be, if possible, publicly contradicted. But has there been any public authoritative contradiction? I have seen none. I noticed that on their return Shaw and Shrewsbury emphatically denied that there was any foundation for the rumour. But this contradiction was not made by any means as public as the rumour.” Harris made clear that he did not believe the story: “I know George Ulyett as well as any professional in England, and I would willingly stake my honour on his.” He reserved judgement a little more on Selby, but added that he had “no reason whatever for supposing him other than an honourable cricketer.” He finished: “I demand … for the sake of the reputation of English professional cricketers, for the honour of cricket, but, more than all, for the sake of the accused, some public refutation of the ‘Cricket Scandal in Australia’; and I would suggest that it take the form of an affidavit, sworn to and signed by every member of Shaw’s team, to the effect that, to the best of each man’s knowledge and belief, no member of the team did entertain any proposal not to do his best in any match during the tour in Australia.” Harris’ proposal was endorsed a few days later by Edmond Wilder, the President of the Cricketers’ Fund Friendly Society, an organisation that helped professionals in financial difficulty.

James Lillywhite also wrote a letter which appeared in several publications that same week, in which he too denied any impropriety had taken place; he specified that Ulyett and Selby had been accused of accepting £100 but stated that nothing untoward took place during the tour, at the Victoria match or in any other. He added that he had been the team umpire, and he saw nothing. He hoped that this would reassure Lord Harris and everyone else. But not everyone was yet satisfied.

Up until then, the only names mentioned publicly were Ulyett and Selby. The identity of the “whistle-blower” remained unpublished. That changed with the intervention of William Robert Wake, a relatively well-known Sheffield cricketer who played three times for Yorkshire in 1881. Away from cricket, he played football and lacrosse, was a solicitor and later became the Registrar of the Sheffield County Court. In other words, he was influential and more of an establishment figure than a friend of professionals. But Lord Harris’ letter in the Times seems to have inspired him to get involved and throw back the curtain on what was being alleged behind the scenes.

On 29 May 1882, Wake had a letter published simultaneously in The Times, Leeds Mercury and the Sheffield Independent in which he claimed that Ulyett and Selby had been offered £500 to throw the match, and were “authorised to offer Scotton £250”. This was the first time that William Scotton — another Nottinghamshire cricketer — had his name publicly associated with the incident. According to Wake’s letter, which was structured as a series of accusatory questions, Scotton turned down the offer, told Shaw and came to blows with Selby and Ulyett — which was what the Scotsman had reported a month before. Wake claimed that a fight (it is unclear if he meant the same altercation or a different one) had taken place between Scotton and Selby “at Cootamundra (or elsewhere)” and that Scotton had written to his father revealing what had happened. He suggested that “the ‘scandal’ [was] one of the principal themes of conversation” on the Chimborazo, that Shaw had admitted that “something unpleasant” had taken place and that several of the team had indicated that “there was more ‘carrying on’ (I use their own expression) in Shaw’s team than anyone not present would believe”.

Incidentally, the text of his letter appears to have differed depending on where he sent it: The Times had the Assam as the location of the gossip, not the Chimborazo. This makes a difference as the Assam was the ship on which an Australian team travelled to play in England in 1882. There was another difference in the letters, either omitted by Wake when he wrote to The Times or removed by an editor. His final question in the other versions was: “Is it not a fact that (contrary to the statement made in the local papers) Ulyett and Selby were aware of the rumour before reaching their respective homes, and was not the subject mentioned to them in the Criterion [presumably the London restaurant] by a gentleman connected with the Sportsman and by another hailing from this district?”

The biggest problem is how Wake could have had such detailed information which never appeared elsewhere. The Athletic News identified him as “a member of the Yorkshire County Executive” and the man responsible for bringing Ulyett to prominence as a cricketer; the latter is a curious claim as Wake was a year younger than Ulyett, who first emerged in the 1870s. Yet he seemed remarkably well-informed. Nor, as a respected solicitor, was he the kind of person who would have written letters to newspapers which had no basis in reality. Had he seen the letter which he suggested had been written by Scotton? If it existed, this is the most likely source of his information. Or had he perhaps spoken to members of the Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire teams? And why did he decide to bring all this out into the open? His letter was framed as a follow-up to Lord Harris’ request for some kind of official clarification, but he went much further than Harris, and his tone indicates that the players had some kind of case to answer (which Harris did not suggest).

If nothing else, Wake’s suggestion that Ulyett and Selby had not told the truth about when they first heard of the accusations does seem possible, given their rapid arrival in England. But he seems to have been unaware that Ulyett had provided a partial explanation for the story of a fight.

William Scotton (Image: Wikipedia)

As a result of the growing clamour in the press, Ulyett asked to speak to the Committee of the MCC and on 29 May made the official statement which had been called for: “As far as I know, neither I nor any of the team know anything about it. It is not true that any offer of money, as far as I am aware, was made to me or anyone else.” Tom Emmett, one of the other members of the touring team, was also present when Ulyett spoke to the MCC. These are two strangely constructed and slightly contorted sentences, and the qualification of “as far as I know” covers a multitude of possibilities. A similarly carefully-worded statement was made by Shaw and Selby on 12 June: “We, the undersigned, wish to state, with regard to the so called cricket scandal in Australia, that we emphatically deny that there is any truth in the rumour that either we, or so far as we know, any other of the team were offered a bribe to lose any of the Australian matches; nor did we hear any such report until after our arrival in England.”

“En Passant” in the Athletic News was not convinced by what Shaw and Selby had to say: “This latter clause reads queer in the face of a previous statement, which has gone the round of the papers, that the scandal was published in a Sydney paper before the team sailed for England. I had it from one of the eleven that they read about it at Sydney before leaving. It has a singular look, to say the least of it.” This is possible, although the first Australian version seems to have been printed in Sydney the day after Shaw’s team departed from Adelaide. But the question of when the players first read the story remains very murky.

Few people in England seemed to believe that any of their cricketers would be guilty of such an offence, and, after the official denials, there the matter largely rested. In June, a newspaper (the story seems to have first appeared in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on 6 June but summaries appeared in several other places) stated: “There was something in the nature of a fight between two members of Shaw’s team in Australia. It is quite true also that Ulyett intervened, but it was in the character of a peacemaker. The origin of the quarrel was that prolific source of mischief — a domestic dispute … It is a delicate affair, but I am assured most strongly that there was no question of bribery in any shape or form.” This delicacy was supposedly the reason that the team had been reluctant to offer an earlier explanation. This account tallies with Ulyett’s interview from 8 May.

However, the main problem with this report is that the reader (and historian) can assume too much. Ulyett and Selby were the two men rumoured to have taken the bribe; The Scotsman reported that a fight had broken out between the two guilty parties (whom it never named) and the whistleblower, who had been invited to become involved; Ulyett admitted his own involvement as a “peacemaker” at Cootamundra. Therefore one of the other men must have been Selby, and as Scotton had been named by Wake as the aggrieved whistle-blower, the implication is that he must have been the other combatant.

This is certainly how it has been interpreted by some historians. According to Malcolm Knox in Never a Gentleman’s Game (2012), the Scotton-Selby dispute was over a woman. David Frith suggests in Silence of the Heart (2001) that “the clouded cause [was] either a proposed match bribe or ‘marital jealousy’.” There is possible independent — albeit circumstantial — evidence to support this interpretation. Scotton had separated from his wife in 1880, she filed for divorce in 1882 and it was granted in 1883. The reason was that Scotton had been frequently violent towards her; he had also begun a relationship with another woman in 1880, although details are scarce. With this turmoil going on in his private life, the notoriously sensitive Scotton may well have become angry enough to fight if Selby raised the issue; or he may have become involved with another woman and clashed in some way with Selby over the affair.

But no contemporary account explicitly linked the battle of the “delicate affair” with the bribery allegations. Even in Wake’s letter, there is the suggestion (made unclear by his clumsy phrasing) that the two incidents were separate. Taking this into account puts these assumptions about the fight in doubt. Just because Ulyett was involved does not mean he must also have been involved in the match-fixing. We should also be careful not to build too strong a case regarding who else was involved in Ulyett’s encounter (and why) on such poor evidence.

After June 1882, the matter was largely forgotten. Australian newspapers printed the developments such as Lord Harris’ letter when news reached them, but they too remained sceptical and could add no new information. Ulyett’s reputation was unscathed and he played in the famous “Ashes” Test match against the touring Australians at the end of August 1882 under the captaincy of Lord Harris, alongside Barlow, Barnes and Peate of Shaw’s team. He was a member of England’s first choice side at home throughout the 1880s and also toured Australia again with Shaw and Shrewsbury in 1884–85. Clearly no-one had any concerns about him. Scotton too was an England regular, playing at home in 1884 and 1886 and touring with Shaw and Shrewsbury in 1884–85 and 1886–87.

Selby was less fortunate. He never appeared in a home Test match and although his career lasted until 1887, he never toured Australia again. This does not mean that there was a “falling out”; he played for a team selected by Shaw against the Australians in 1882, and his absence from touring sides was quite likely connected to a collapse in his form. But there are some question marks surrounding him. Derek Carlaw, in an article on the story (unfortunately, I have only seen a copy of a copy, and do not know where it was originally printed), noted that a book in the Nottinghamshire cricket library at Trent Bridge contains what was presumably a list of cricketers; next to Selby’s name, someone had written “a brilliant cricketer but a blackguard”. Selby’s benefit money in 1887 was instantly swallowed up to pay off his debts and there were questions — including ones of possible criminality — over his finances up until his death in 1893.

The only other member of Shaw’s team to play no further Tests or take part in any more tours was Tom Emmett (Shaw never played another Test but was a manager alongside Shrewsbury for several more tours). Billy Midwinter returned to Australia after the 1882 season, and played all his future Test matches for the land of his birth. There is nothing definitely incriminating in any of this.

Alfred Shaw in the early 1890s (Image: Wikipedia)

Billy Midwinter in 1884 (Image: National Library of Australia)

Nearly twenty years later, the story was revived when Shaw published Alfred Shaw, Cricketer: His Career and Reminiscences, assisted by A. W. Pullin (“Old Ebor”), in 1902. After so much time, and with all those involved in the allegations dead, Shaw confirmed that there was indeed a basis to all the rumours, in complete contradiction of what he had said at the time. Yet he remained somewhat vague in his details. He said: “It came to our knowledge that there was a great deal of betting on the result of the [Victoria] match. Most extravagant odds were offered on the Victorian team, in spite of the fact that the weather was wet, and there was a possibility of the home batsmen having to play on a sticky wicket, to which they were unaccustomed.”

Shaw then related how Midwinter — whose name never arose in the contemporary rumours and reports — informed him that, after the third day’s play, bookmakers were offering 30 to one against the English team; Shaw and “other members of the team” made a £1 bet on their team to win. As Shaw made clear, this was on the third day, when his team were still batting. When the Victorians had to make 94 to win on the final day, he believed that, in the conditions, they had no chance against his bowlers.

He continued:

“There were certain influences at work beneath the surface which it is necessary to speak of in order to convey a true version of this remarkable match. It had been hinted to me that two members of our team, both now dead, had received a promise of a “bet” of £100 to nothing on the Victorians winnings. I gave no credence to it at the time I heard of it, but certain cases of misfielding compelled me to come to the conclusion that the rumours were not without foundation. Whatever the scheme actually was, it failed. A remarkable curious circumstance was that after one ridiculously easy catch had been dropped, a batsman was out by the ball going up inside a fieldsman’s arm and sticking there — not, I have reason to think, with the catcher’s intentional aid.”

After relating how the story travelled to England, and quoting the Scotsman article, Shaw stated that the Australians had not been aware of anything wrong “and were quite as much astonished at the rumour as we were.” He also identified the whistle-blower as Midwinter — not Scotton, as had been claimed in 1882.

“It was Midwinter who informed me of the offer made, and he it was who was afterwards maltreated, a quarrel taking place on ship-board. The players implicated in the unsavoury business are, as I have said, both dead, and it is but justice to their memory to say that both indignantly denied the allegation made, and that though my co-managers and myself made every effort to probe the facts and find out who it was that had offered the alleged bribes, we were unable to obtain any information to which credence could be given, and the whole matter was therefore allowed to drop.”

Shaw concluded that part of his tale by stating that “fair and sensible conclusions were drawn by the sportsmen of the Australian Press” and proceeded to quote the Australasian article of 29 April 1882 which condemned the professionals for keeping “late hours”. No-where in his account did he name Ulyett or Selby — both of whom were indeed dead by 1902, as were Midwinter and Scotton — but his audience likely remembered that they were the two against whom the accusations were made.

The biggest sticking point in matching Shaw’s story with earlier reports is the identity of the whistle-blower. W. R. Wake wrote in 1882 that it was Scotton and apparently had seen the letter(s) from one (or more) of the team; and the story arrived in England before the team — or any relevant Australian newspapers — did, which means that the source almost certainly had to be a player. And Wake’s letter implied that Scotton’s letter to his father was the source, matching earlier suggestion that the rumours were emanating from Nottinghamshire. But Shaw says Midwinter told him, and was man approached by the “match-fixers”.

We have two contradictory and largely irreconcilable versions of what happened, but there are a few possible routes through the confusion. Perhaps Midwinter was the whistle-blower to Shaw, but Scotton was the man who — accidentally or otherwise — leaked the story by writing home. Then there is the fight. Shaw indicates that Midwinter was “maltreated” during a ship-board “quarrel”. Was this the same fight which Ulyett discussed, or was it a different one? Because the simplest explanation for the confusion over who was involved would be that there were two separate incidents: one involving Scotton and someone else, possibly Selby, which Ulyett broke up; and another involving Midwinter and those he had accused of match-fixing. Could it be that these two events were mixed up when the rumours broke out? Or that Wake misinterpreted Scotton’s letter which talked about the bribes and his own fight? If this is the case, it is hard to be sure about which players were involved in which incident, casting doubt on the identities of the match-fixers (neither of whom was named by Shaw).

The only person who can be proven to have lied is Shaw; his statement in 1882 was that nothing had occurred but in 1902 he said that he was suspicious and had been told about a bribe. Both things cannot be true. Yet he was able to include accurate text from two newspaper articles covering the story from 1882, including one printed in Australia; which suggests that he, or someone close to him, collected the clippings, or had them sent to him. That he kept them for twenty years means that the story meant something to him. And he chose not to quote any of the articles which cast doubt on the rumour, or any of the official denials.

Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1878 (Image: Charles Nettleton (1826–1902) via National Library of Australia)

After all this time, it is impossible to work out what actually happened, but perhaps Shaw’s possession of newspaper clippings twenty years later might tip the balance towards there being substance to the rumours — even if we do not necessarily trust Shaw’s own version of events. Contemporary accounts do not quite support what he said. No newspaper mentions any ball being caught by “going up inside a fieldsman’s arm and sticking there”. There were a few dropped catches and misfields at a crucial time in the fourth innings, but nothing that attracted the attention of any journalists and nothing that could not be reasonably attributed to the effects of pressure. Chances were missed by Shrewsbury and Peate, both of whom played key roles in the win on that last day with three catches and six wickets respectively. Scotton also dropped a catch. More suspiciously, Ulyett was guilty of a couple of misfields and a missed catch. But Selby held two catches, including the key wicket of the top-scorer Harry Boyle when Victoria needed just 19 more runs; if he was being paid to underperform, he did not offer value for money in that match.

Did Shaw see these things, and with Midwinter’s warnings in his ears, jump too quickly to a conclusion? Or did a player and captain of his experience know that something was not right? Neither Midwinter nor Ulyett bowled, which could be taken to mean that Shaw did not trust them (as Malcolm Knox suggests in Never a Gentleman’s Game), but it is equally possible that he thought other bowlers could use the rain-affected pitch more effectively.

But if, as seems likely, Shaw did suspect some of his team of accepting money, why did he not take action? Why did he issue a statement of denial? The answer is probably prosaic. Along with his partners Shrewsbury and Lillywhite, he had ambitions to organise more tours; he would not want his team associated with such damaging allegations. Perhaps self-interest took precedence over morals. Nevertheless, future tours organised by Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite — of which there were several — featured an agreement with the players which included a penalty clause of £20 for anybody guilty of “impropriety or misconduct”.

What probably helped Shaw’s attempted whitewash in 1882 was that little credence was attached to the rumours. And the bribery tale received little attention in later years, even after his memoirs had been published. It was mentioned by Home Gordon in 1939, but Harry Altham deliberately omitted it from his History of Cricket (published at various times in the 1930s and 1940s): he uses Shaw’s memoir — including the odds of 30 to one — as his main source but does not include the bribery allegations. More recent accounts have covered the scandal but have rather confusingly mixed Shaw’s memoir and contemporary reports in their retellings, resulting in overly simplified summaries. This strange blind-spot was most likely a symptom of the exceptionalism which existed within English cricket for many years and which has occasionally stirred when modern match-fixing concerns have arisen. Maybe it would help if more people knew of the 1882 allegations against Ulyett and Selby. Or whoever it might have been who Shaw thought had taken the money. Because whatever happened during that match against Victoria in 1881, it does not really reflect favourably on anyone involved.

“An Extraordinary Scandal”: The Match-Fixing Controversy of 1881–82

The “All-England” team as illustrated in the Australasian Sketcher on 3 December 1881 (Image: The State Library of Victoria)

Match-fixing is seen as a uniquely late-twentieth and twenty-first-century blight, but as with most cricket phenomena, “there is nothing new under the sun”. Maybe the most notorious historical instance of match-fixing was the case of William Lambert, the leading cricketer of the time, whose career was ruined in 1818 when he was effectively banned from cricket for taking money to lose a match. The story was well-known but has never worried people unduly as it came before the elevation of cricketers to moral paragons. Less well-known — and perhaps studiously ignored — is a murky case from 63 years later. The story concerned some of the most prominent English cricketers of the late-nineteenth century. All of those who were alleged to have been involved in the episode denied any knowledge and the story was forgotten. The supposed incident occurred in Australia when a team of English cricketers played a first-class match against Victoria in 1881. Although there is some uncertainty about who was involved and what precisely happened, the accusations centred around Yorkshire’s George Ulyett and Nottinghamshire’s John Selby, who were both rumoured to have accepted money to underperform.

The context of the game is important. The group which toured Australia in 1881–82 was not an “England” side in any sense that would be recognised today. It was a group of professionals who were selected because they were willing and able to tour, not because they were England’s best cricketers. Only a handful would have been included in a fully-representative side. The team had no official backing, and the absence of any amateurs weakened it considerably. The tour had been privately organised by Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury of Nottinghamshire, and James Lillywhite of Sussex. It was the sixth team of English cricketers to visit Australia but it was only the third to include matches played on equal terms, rather than against teams comprising up to twenty-two members. The three managers were familiar with tours, having been on several before. Lillywhite had been the manager of the team that toured Australia in 1877–78, of which Shaw was a member, and played the game retrospectively identified as the first ever Test match; Shaw bowled what has come to be recognised as the first delivery in Test cricket, although no-one knew that at the time. The relative success of that venture, and the enormous profits made by the Australian teams which visited England in 1878 and 1880, inspired Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite to organise the first of their many overseas tours. It took in the United States of America, Australia and New Zealand. It is doubtful that they had much sense that this was a “Test tour”; it was simply a money-making enterprise.

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Shaw’s team that toured North America, Australia and New Zealand in 1881–82. Back row: George Ulyett, Richard Pilling, James Lillywhite, John Conway (Manager), Billy Midwinter, William Bates. Middle row: Arthur Shrewsbury, Alfred Shaw, Tom Emmett, Edward Peate. On floor: Richard Barlow, William Scotton, John Selby.

Most of the players had a prior connection to Shaw and Shrewsbury, having played for a professional team called the United North of England XI which toured England playing local sides. Apart from Lillywhite and Billy Midwinter — who played for Gloucestershire but represented both England and his native Australia in international cricket — the entire team was based in the north. Each man received a fee of £300 for taking part. There were four players from Nottinghamshire (all of whom had been involved in an acrimonious strike in 1881), four from Yorkshire and three from Lancashire. But there were concerns in Australia about one of the Yorkshire players: George Ulyett had been involved in a couple of earlier controversies. During the previous tour in 1878–79, a crowd at Sydney had rioted and Ulyett had grabbed a stump to protect the English captain Lord Harris. Subsequent rumours suggested that Ulyett had made insulting remarks to spectators; as a result, he had refused to play against the Australians during their 1880 tour of England. There were also rumours that he had underperformed deliberately in some games to get better odds when he placed bets on other matches. Australian promoters were worried that crowds might give him a hostile reception, or that the Australian players might refuse to play against him; the New South Wales Cricket Association actively wanted him excluded from the team, but the three managers rejected their demands, recognising that he was one of their most entertaining players.

From a sporting and financial viewpoint, the tour was an undoubted success. Captained by Shaw, the team played a total of thirty matches, winning fifteen and losing only three times. Most of these were played against the odds, but the seven eleven-a-side games — all in Australia — were later judged to be first-class, of which Shaw’s team won three and lost two. Unfortunately for posterity, those two losses came in what are now classed as Test matches; Australia won the four-“Test” series 2–0. Even after making a loss on the American leg, the tour made an overall profit of £700 for the organisers.

Neither the results nor the profits would have been of too much concern to the cricket fraternity in England; professional tours were of little interest to the upper-class, all-amateur “establishment”. Press coverage was limited, not least as it was hampered by the lack of immediate communication with Australia. Although it was possible to send telegrams between England and Australia, the expense and lack of an interested audience limited their use in providing detailed reports. Apart from brief summaries of scores which sometimes appeared in newspapers within days, it took any first-hand accounts at least six weeks to reach England. Therefore, with international cricket in its infancy, and interest limited in the exploits of Shaw’s team, events in Australia attracted little attention in England while the tour was ongoing.

It was a more serious matter in Australia, particularly as it was only the third time that an English side had visited when they could be assured of a serious challenge from the home teams. The difference in attitude between the two cricketing audiences can be seen in how the team was named in each country: in England, it was “Shaw’s XI”; in Australia, it was “England” or “All-England”. There was a lot of interest during the tour, and heavy betting surrounded some of the matches, as had been the case — to Lord Harris’ distaste — in 1878–79.

Against this background, the key events seem to have taken place around the thirteenth match of the tour, the eighth in Australia, when Shaw’s team played Victoria in Melbourne on 16, 17, 19 and 20 December 1881. Very little information about the game in question ever appeared in the British press. The Sportsman published scores on 24 December but it was not until the end of January 1882 that other newspapers reported the game. However, full accounts were printed in Australian newspapers in the immediate aftermath (none of which hinted at anything suspicious). What is not in any doubt is that the heaviest betting of the tour surrounded this match. And the bookmakers were heavily involved in events surrounding the game.

The Victorian team dominated the first three days, scoring 251 and making Shaw’s team follow-on (which at the time was automatically enforced if the team batting second was more than a hundred runs behind). The match was supposed to end after the third day, which ended with Shaw’s team just 62 ahead with three wickets in hand, in order for the visitors to catch an afternoon boat to Adelaide. Shaw said in his 1902 memoirs, Alfred Shaw, Cricketer: His Career and Reminiscences, ghostwritten by the journalist A. W. Pullin (better known as “Old Ebor”):

“The Victorians were very keen on having the game fought to an issue, and naturally they thought they stood an excellent chance of scoring an easy victory. I consulted Lillywhite, and we came to the conclusion that it would be wise to avoid any case for unpleasantness if we could do so. We therefore told the Victorians that if they could arrange to have the departure of our boat delayed, we were prepared to stay and play the match out. We did not think the steamer could be delayed, but … [the owners] consented to postpone the sailing of the boat … That it was possible to delay a steamship for the greater part of a day in order that a match might be finished may be accepted as an illustration of the remarkable keenness manifested in cricket in Melbourne even in those days.”

But one of Shaw’s players, Edmund Peate, had previously told a slightly different version to Pullin:

“There was a tremendous amount of betting on the [Victoria] match … We were due to sail to Adelaide, and in order that the match might be finished the bookmakers paid the steamship company to delay the boat three or four hours. Sam Grimwood, of Halifax, who was living out there, asked me before we started our second innings what chance we had, and I told him that if the wicket performed as it did in England, no team in the world could make a hundred runs against us. He then started taking all the 100 to 3s against England he could, and finished by rushing down the boat and presenting us with a £10 note each. The bookmakers were very badly hit by result of the match. Certain of their schemes failed, much to the satisfaction of most of us.”

The steamer was certainly delayed to allow the match to be concluded; Australian newspapers mentioned this at the time. While it is impossible to be sure how this came about — for example, Peate had no real way of knowing that the bookmakers were responsible for the delayed sailing — it is not impossible that betting played a part. And Peate was not discussing the match-fixing allegation when he told this story. His recollection is supported by an article which appeared in the Melbourne Herald immediately after the match, reporting that some people had lost huge sums after betting on the Victorians to win.

Because despite extravagant odds — according to Shaw, bookmakers were offering 30 to one against an England win at the start of the fourth day — the English team recorded a remarkable victory. Victoria, needing 94 to win, were bowled out for 75. Peate, with his left-arm spin, took six for 30 on a badly rain-damaged pitch, proving too much for batsmen unaccustomed to facing bowling like his in such conditions. Events on that final day were reported in detail, and given the suspicions that came to surround the match, it is worth looking a little more closely at what happened.

The Melbourne Argus indicated that the pitch was extremely difficult but the writer believed that a target under 100 should still have been within the capabilities of the batsmen. The article described the collapse of the home batting as being “one that has seldom been seen in a first-class match”. And the home batting crumbled spectacularly: Victoria at one point were seven runs for six wickets, and 20 for seven soon after. Harry Boyle’s 43 took Victoria to 75 for eight, but when he was out at that score, the last wicket fell without addition. Journalists agreed that the pitch was almost impossible, although it eased as the innings progressed, but believed that panic contributed to the Victorian defeat.

Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1878 (Image: Charles Nettleton (1826–1902) via National Library of Australia)

But was there anything that, with hindsight, might suggest foul play at work? The Argus report was the most detailed and it lists a few incidents. There could have been a run out with two wickets down, but it was missed owing to “the fieldsman’s bad return” (another newspaper identified the culprit as Midwinter). Shrewsbury dropped an easy catch but held three others; Peate, the match-winner, also missed a chance from George Palmer, when he was building a partnership with Boyle. There were a few overthrows, including some by Ulyett when seven wickets were down, just as Boyle was rebuilding the innings; the same fielder just failed to reach a ball skied by Boyle when the score was 56 or 57. Given the later accusations, it is worth noting that Selby held two catches, including the vital wicket of Boyle, taken at mid-on. Despite the shock of their win, the English team received a warm reception from the crowd.

The Argus also mentioned an incident when the wicket-keeper Richard Pilling was barracked for claiming a catch off Palmer, which the crowd viewed as “sharp practice”. This may be an incident recalled by Shaw in his memoirs; he was bowling when Lillywhite, who was one of the umpires, “failed to see that Boyle [sic] was caught at the wicket off my bowling. Had it been otherwise, the Victorians would not have made 40 runs. I remarked to Lillywhite when he had made the mistake and answered ‘not out’ to the appeal, ‘Good gracious, Jim, you’ve lost us the match!’ Jim was very thankful afterwards that this decision had not affected the result.”

Overall, there is nothing conclusive in the contemporary accounts. A suspiciously-minded reader — then or now — might raise an eyebrow at some of the mistakes, and particularly at some of the names involved, but it should be emphasised that in an incredibly tight finish such as this one, errors creep into the play of even the best players.

The tour continued smoothly enough afterwards, but although there was some interesting cricket, it does not concern us too much here and we can skip ahead to the team’s departure for England in March 1882.

Illustrations of Shaw’s team, probably during the return match against Victoria in late February, from the Australasian Sketcher on 11 March 1882 (Image: The State Library of Victoria)

Shaw’s men left Melbourne on the Orient Line steamship Chimborazo on 22 March; the ship travelled to Adelaide, from where it sailed towards England on 24 March. On the very next day, a story broke in Australia. The Sydney Herald of 25 March carried a very brief story: “It has been alleged by one of the English team that four of his companions accepted £1,000 to lose the last match in Sydney. We hope there is no truth in the statement.” No other source ever suggested that any incident took place at Sydney, nor that four players were involved. But that this appeared at all — and even more that it was only released after the departure of Shaw’s team — indicates that there were rumours while the tour was still taking place. Yet the story never came alive in Australia like it did in England, and it only entered general circulation after it emerged in England.

More surprising is that these rumours reached England before the team did. The only possible source can be letters written by one or more players and sent home during the tour. On 17 April, a story appeared in The Scotsman:

“Letters received by Notts and Yorkshire gentlemen describe an extraordinary scandal which has taken place in Australia, in connection with the visit of the English cricketers to that colony. Our correspondent has made inquiry into the facts, and the following statement may be relied upon. The English Eleven were about to play in Melbourne an important match against the Australians, when two members of the English team agreed, it is alleged, with some Australian betting men, to ‘sell’ the match. The two tried to prevail upon another member of the English team to join them, but he declined, and then exposed the affair to Shaw and Shrewsbury, the English managers … Shaw and Shrewsbury threatened to report the conduct of the two men to the Marylebone Club and to the committees of their respective counties (Notts and Yorkshire). One of the two thereupon assaulted the third man, and himself got beaten in the fight. Then the second man set upon the third and seriously maltreated him. Shaw and Shrewsbury will report to the cricket authorities on their arrival home.”

That such rumours were widespread becomes clear when a third separate reference to the incident appeared in a lengthy article published in The Australasian on 29 April, before the Scotsman article had time to reach Australia. It is notable that this version of the tale does not identify a match or a location, suggesting that the claims were vague:

“Some rumours derogatory to the integrity of some of the English professionals in their late matches in these colonies have been circulated, and probably have gained credence in many quarters. These rumours are to the effect that some of the Eleven did not try to do their best in the matches they were engaged in, and it is broadly hinted that betting influences were at work … As far as we are able to form an opinion on the subject, we must say that we attach little importance to the rumours that have been spread around.”

Even so, the author cast doubts on the English team, indicating that they had not been the most well-behaved group:

“We must confess that … we are not surprised that the bona fides of the English professional cricketers has been impeached, and that there are people who believe that, to use a turf expression, some of them have been ‘got at’. It is no secret that cricket now-a-days is not what it used to be, and that, like most other sports, it is becoming too much a medium for gambling. There is too much betting now on the game of cricket, and professional cricketers, like professional jockeys, are too frequently seen in the company of bookmakers for us to be surprised at anything we may hear respecting them. On the whole there is no doubt that on the cricket field Shaw’s eleven conducted themselves with much propriety. Messrs Shaw and Lillywhite … were themselves much respected, and gained the esteem of colonial cricketers. So far nothing can be urged against the team, and as regards their private life when amongst us we have no right to comment, beyond the fact we have alluded to, of some members of the team being seen too much in the company of the bookmakers.”

Having muddied the waters, the author then continued:

“Professional cricketers who keep late hours, make bets to some amount, and are seen drinking champagne to a late hour with members of the betting ring when they ought to be in bed, must not be surprised if people put a wrong construction on their conduct. They have only themselves to blame.”

He pompously argued that cricketers had to beware those who would buy them drinks and “sit up half the night playing billiards, smoking and drinking champagne”. His conclusion was that any poor performances by the English players were as likely to be connected with late nights and drinking as being an attempt to “throw” a match. None of this is particularly implausible; some strange things happened on these early all-professional tours, and stories of drunkenness were a recurring element. Even had the claims of bribery been proven to have no basis, such behaviour would have raised some respectable eyebrows in England and Australia.

The author of the article also warned that bookmakers would not be averse to “buying” a cricketer, and it was the responsibility of all professionals to ensure that they were above suspicion. Here he has a point. As we have seen, the Victoria match was a huge attraction to bookmakers, and they were not above trying to influence events for their own ends. In the circumstances, the postponement of the steamer does look questionable. Add to the mix a group of professionals who clearly enjoyed the hospitality provided (perhaps by bookmakers) and it becomes easy to understand how and why the rumours may have arisen.

George Ulyett (Image: Wikipedia)

John Selby (Image: Wikipedia)

Therefore, we can be fairly sure that at least three different versions of the story were doing the rounds in Australia before the players’ departure: the one which mentioned Sydney, the vague accusations from the Australasian and the story which reached the Scotsman, almost certainly via a letter from one of the English team. This last version was the most detailed — it contained far more information than anything printed until then in Australia — and proved the most persistent. As its source was likely one of the players, it was clearly the most authoritative version as well. It is surprisingly easy to trace how it spread. According to a story which appeared slightly later, in the first issue of Cricket (10 May), it had been circulating for some time, but fully emerged at game between Nottinghamshire and the Nottinghamshire Colts on 18 and 19 April (around a week before the Scotsman article). And all this time, Shaw’s team remained on board the Chimborazo.

None of the stories printed before May named any specific players. However, there were only a few possible candidates given that the Scotsman article said that the two men under suspicion played for Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. And the Sheffield Telegraph revealed on 3 May that Ulyett and Selby were the two supposedly involved. More details emerged over the following days. A report in the Bradford Observer on 8 May suggested that the claims “originated in Nottingham” and that “some of the authorities of the Notts and Yorkshire Committees were in possession of the report some days, if not two or three weeks, before it appeared in the newspapers.” The Sheffield Daily Telegraph suggested that the two committees had already been in contact but concluded that “there is no information to act upon.” These early stories very much took the side of the English cricketers, using terms such as “slander” or suggesting that the claims were doubtful. There was no concrete information and everything was just rumour. And the rumours were vague. Something happened in either Melbourne or Sydney; two men attempted to “sell” the match and to recruit others; and that one of those invited to join the scheme had reported the approach to the English “management”. It was not much to build a case on.

However, while the English players must have been aware of any events that actually took place, and may have heard a whisper of the rumours while they were in Australia, they could not have known, as they sailed on the Chimborazo, that the story was about to break and that they were to be faced with stories about a scandal when they returned to England. The question of when they became aware of the controversy is quite important, but not really answerable. The timing of the team’s return to England becomes quite interesting too, as they split into different groups and arrived on different dates. And, by an incredible coincidence — or not — the first two players to arrive home were Ulyett and Selby …

The Life and Mysterious Death of Valentine Adolphus Titchmarsh

Valentine Titchmarsh (Image: Cricket, 31 May 1906)

Other than the occasional “celebrity” — such as Dickie Bird and David Shepherd, or, further in the past, Frank Chester and Jim Phillips — few umpires make an impression in cricket’s history books. But the various circumstances which led men into umpiring can often be fascinating. And if cricket writers have always ignored the men in white, who have largely performed their roles discreetly and anonymously over the years, that does not mean that they do not have their own tales to tell. For example Jim Phillips, the infamous crusader against throwing, had an extraordinary life. But some of his contemporaries had equally remarkable backgrounds.

At this time, umpires occupied a strange position in cricket. In a sport that was dominated by amateurs, who ruled every aspect of it, the umpire was always a professional cricketer. Some were retired players; others were members of the MCC groundstaff who combined umpiring with their playing duties and ground maintenance at Lord’s. But all were paid cricketers who were, remarkably given social conventions of the time, passing judgement on amateurs. However, their authority was not limitless as they owed their position to the county captains, who met annually to appoint umpires to the first-class list: keeping the captain happy was a job requirement for any umpire in this period. The list of umpires appointed for the 1900 season includes several interesting men, apart from Jim Phillips.

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  James Lillywhite
  (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Alfred Shaw
  (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Richard Barlow
  (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Mordecai Sherwin
  (Image: Wikipedia)

Four former Test players who were first-class umpires in the 1900 season

There were two participants from the first ever Test match, played in Australia in 1877: James Lillywhite, England’s captain in that game, and Alfred Shaw, who bowled the first ball. There were other international players on the list. Perhaps most famous was Richard Barlow, the Lancashire and England opening batsman who was one half of the inspiration for the famous poem “At Lord’s” which includes the line “O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!” Another Test player was the remarkable Mordecai Sherwin, who played a total of 328 first-class games in a twenty-year career, mainly as Nottinghamshire’s wicketkeeper, but he also played in three Tests for England; he combined this role with a football career as Notts County’s goalkeeper between 1883 and 1888. Some other umpires had substantial first-class careers behind them, such as John Wheeler and Walter Wright who played for Nottinghamshire in the 1870s and 1880s, or William Hearn who had a long career on the MCC groundstaff. And there was one veteran on the list: the 74-year-old Bob Thoms, who played three first-class matches in the 1850s and had been umpiring since the 1860s.

Even from this brief glance, the number of former Nottinghamshire players is remarkable; in fact, 24 players who appeared for the county between 1835 and 1914 went into umpiring when their playing career ended, which is unsurprising as there were few opportunities at the time for former professional cricketers. But for now, it is worth looking at someone not linked with Nottinghamshire. Valentine Titchmarsh was a highly regarded umpire associated, like Phillips, with the “Throwing Question” in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Like Phillips, when he was appointed as an umpire he was a professional on the MCC groundstaff. Despite great success playing for Hertfordshire, Titchmarsh’s first-class career was unremarkable. His death, on the other hand, is mysterious and, potentially, somewhat scandalous.

Valentine Adolphus Titchmarsh was born on 14 February 1853 at Belvedere House, Royston in Cambridgeshire — his birthday providing his first name. His father John was a miller and corn merchant. The family were evidently successful; although having six children to support, of whom Valentine was the second, they were able to employ servants and to send Valentine away to school. The 1861 census records him as a boarder at Lord Weymouth’s Grammar School in Warminster, when he was the youngest of 21 pupils.

The site of Weymouth Grammar School (Image: Wikipedia)

After leaving school, Titchmarsh helped his father to run the family business, but his real interest lay in cricket, which many of his family played. He quickly established himself as a promising batsman and in 1876 he was given a trial for the Hertfordshire county team. By the following season, he was a regular in the side, playing as an amateur. He was part of the team that played at Lord’s when his county faced the MCC. Later in that 1877 season, he took all ten wickets in an innings against Essex. A few weeks later, figures of seven for 30 in one game and six for 15 in another set the seal on an impressive first full season.

From 1879, Titchmarsh changed direction. He became a professional on the groundstaff of Oxford University, and remained there for five years. He continued to play for Hertfordshire, but now as a professional (with “Mr” dropped from his name on contemporary scorecards). Not many cricketers in this period started as amateurs and became professionals as this was a considerable step down in a social sense. We do not know why Titchmarsh made the change, but it is not unreasonable to guess that finance was the main reason.

During this time, Titchmarsh made steady progress. He continued to be successful with the ball, for example taking nine for 34 against Essex. While he never scored a century for his county, he made several substantial scores, including an innings of 97 against the MCC in 1893. In 1880, he made several appearances for the United South Of England XI, an all-professional team which played matches around the country. Among his team-mates were the manager Fred Grace, brother of WG, and Walter Gilbert, Grace’s cousin who had an interesting relationship with amateur status. In one of these games in 1880, North v United South of England XI, he made his first-class debut; this was his only such game before 1885. Titchmarsh also played regularly for St Alban’s Cricket Club; in October 1880, he scored 137 not out against XVIII of the Star Cricket Club.

Therefore, if Titchmarsh was never a leading cricketer, he carved out a decent career for himself and had a good reputation, especially in Hertfordshire. Perhaps had he lived in a county with a first-class team, he would have been very successful.

At the time of the 1881 census, Titchmarsh was boarding at the Crystal Palace Inn in St Albans, the home of James and Caroline Gentle, and listed himself as a professional cricketer. Meanwhile, his father appears to have retired and left the family business to one of his sons; John Titchmarsh died in 1885 although his wife lived until 1898. Soon after his father’s death, Titchmarsh married Eliza Maria Pew at St Albans in 1886. The couple had two daughters, Annie Maud in August 1887 and Lilian Ellen in December 1888.

In 1884, Titchmarsh joined the professional groundstaff at Lord’s, which was a natural magnet for many professionals unable to establish themselves in regular first-class cricket. His obituary in the Herts Advertiser said that he joined after impressing while playing for the MCC against Nottinghamshire — a match not recorded on CricketArchive — but he did face the MCC twice in 1883 while playing for Hertfordshire. The same article also suggests that he only joined the MCC after breaking several fingers in a match for St Albans in late 1883 — perhaps the injury affected his batting and taking a role with the MCC was a way to secure a regular income.

Titchmarsh’s first game for the his new club, a non-first-class match, was in August 1884. The following May he made his first-class debut for the MCC, taking five for 69 and eight wickets in the match against Cambridge University. He played two other first-class games for the club that season, and appeared in a match at Lord’s for the “South” against the “North” alongside WG Grace. None of these subsequent first-class appearances were particularly successful, but he also played in numerous other MCC matches throughout the season. In the higher-status games, he generally batted low in the order.

Valentine Titchmarsh in 1899 (Image: Wikipedia)

After 1885, he played just three more first-class games, all for the MCC: two in 1886 against each University team, and once in 1891 against Somerset. He played in other games for the club, albeit with decreasing regularity, until 1898; CricketArchive lists a total of 36 matches for the MCC, but he also appeared in games not on that database, including one in which he again took all ten wickets in an innings — this time against Sherborne School; the next day, he scored 101 not out against Rossall School. After his final appearances as a player, Titchmarsh remained a member of the MCC Groundstaff until his death in 1907. For Hertfordshire, he was a regular member of the team until 1897: CricketArchive records that he played 145 matches for the county, scoring 3,845 runs at an average of 16.71 and taking 648 wickets at 15.78.

According to Titchmarsh’s Wisden obituary: “Score and Biographies (xiv., 82) described him as ‘An excellent batsman, and a successful fast round-armed bowler, while in the field he takes no particular place … He is a left-handed batsman, but bowls and fields right.'” A feature in Cricket in May 1906 described him as a fast-scoring left-hand batsman, and a right-handed bowler who “sent the ball along at a good pace while able to take full advantage of a wicket which gave any help.”

But it was as an umpire that Titchmarsh became famous. Like his contemporary Jim Phillips, he first umpired through his role as a professional on a club’s groundstaff. As part of his duties with Oxford University, he officiated the freshman’s trial match in early 1882. Two weeks later, he took charge of his first first-class game when Oxford University took on the touring Australian team. He evidently impressed the Australians: he umpired two of their next three matches. The following season, he once more officiated at an Oxford trial game and then two of the university’s first-class matches; similarly, he umpired three first-class matches in 1884, his last season on the Oxford University groundstaff.

When Titchmarsh moved to the MCC groundstaff, he was not used as an umpire until 1887, when he took charge of two first-class games. From 1890, he umpired one or two matches each season until 1893, but unlike Phillips, who took charge of the most important matches at Lord’s, Titchmarsh was only used in lesser fixtures. Something changed in 1894 when he umpired five games at Lord’s, including the Gentlemen v Players match. After umpiring just once in 1895, Titchmarsh was appointed to the list of umpires for the County Championship in 1896 — perhaps making the switch as his playing career began to wind down. From then, he was a regular County Championship umpire until 1906.

The England team which played Australia in the first Test of the 1899 Ashes series. This was Titchmarsh’s first Test as umpire; he is standing on the extreme right. (Image: Wikipedia)

His reputation as an umpire was evidently a good one: he stood in one Test match in each of the Australian tours of 1899, 1902 and 1905; he also umpired the Lord’s Gentlemen v Players match from 1902 to 1904. Very occasionally, he made the headlines. He no-balled FJ Hopkins of Warwickshire for throwing in 1898, one of the first actions by an umpire in the “Throwing Question”. Then in 1903, he appeared in newspapers reports for checking the width of several bats in the opening match of the season — which was interrupted by snow at one stage — between Surrey and WG Grace’s short-lived London County team. This was the result of an instruction from the MCC that umpires should check that bats were the legal size. On the first day, two London County players were found to have bats that were too wide; one needed to resort to a third bat before he passed the test. It did not escape notice, however, that Titchmarsh waited until professional batsmen were at the crease, rather than amateurs, before taking out his gauge to measure the bats (in contrast, the umpires inspected the bats of all the players on the following day). A few weeks later, a Worcestershire batsman had to change his bat after Titchmarsh inspected it in a game against Sussex.

On other occasions, he was sent to check the legitimacy of disputed bowling actions, including that of Arthur Mold in 1901. But Titchmarsh was not a controversial or publicity-seeking umpire. Unlike some of his colleagues, he never sought the headlines, nor made any public pronouncements on controversial issues such as throwing. His obituary in Cricket stated that his reputation as an umpire “stood deservedly high” and Wisden called him “one of the best umpires of recent years”. The 1906 feature in Cricket commented on his popularity owing to his honesty and decision-making ability. Reflecting the respect held for him, both Hertfordshire (in 1895) and the MCC (in 1906) gave him benefit matches, although the latter was a little disappointing.

Around November 1906, Titchmarsh began to suffer what was later reported as both a “serious illness” and “nerve trouble in both legs”. Quite what was diagnosed is unclear, but he was treated at University College Hospital for a time. As the year progressed, it became clear that he was seriously ill and that his case was “hopeless”. It was reported in July 1907 that an old cricketing colleague had visited him at home, where he was showing no signs of improvement, and Titchmarsh said that he did not expect ever to make it onto the cricket field again. The same report said that he was suffering from “locomotor ataxy” and had “lost the use of his lower limbs”. He died at his home of 25 Liverpool Road (where the family had lived since at least 1891 and continued to live afterwards), St Alban’s, on 11 October 1907. His death was registered by his daughter Annie and the cause was listed as “Locomotor Ataxy” and “Exhaustion”.

The cause of death is interesting. The illness, now known more as locomotor ataxia, was often associated with the effects of tertiary syphilis known as tabes dorsalis. The main symptoms are difficulty walking, and a lack of awareness of the position of arms and legs. Titchmarsh’s brief profile on ESPNcricinfo makes the link explicit, saying that he died of syphilis. And despite this association, Wisden had no hesitation in listing the cause of death as locomotor ataxy in his obituary in the 1908 edition; it is the only such mention of that illness in any Wisden obituary. However, while there was an undoubted link, there were (and are) other causes for locomotor ataxia; the NHS website lists many possible causes. If linked to tertiary syphilis, it is likely to arise long after the initial infection: generally between ten and thirty years, but possibly sooner. The person may not be contagious for most of this period.

There are no obvious signs of anything that affected his family. His wife and children went on to have long lives with no signs of illnesses such as congenital syphilis. This does not rule out something that he contracted long before he married, but does suggest that the cause of his locomotor ataxia may have been something else. We cannot be certain either way; to say that he died of syphilis is unproven. But even in photos showing him in his late forties reveal a striking, handsome figure: it is far from impossible that, in his younger days, he had some wild adventures; he would not have been the first young cricketer to do so, and he would not have been by any means the last.

Titchmarsh left £328 15s to his wife in his will (worth around £35,000 today). The 1911 census records that his widow and two daughters (both of whom were working as shop assistants at a draper’s) still lived at 25 London Road. Eliza, who completed the census return, made a mistake and filled in the section on her marriage, revealing that she had given birth to one child who had not survived. Eliza died in 1937, aged 76, at Westcliffe-on-Sea, leaving just under £1,200 (worth around £78,000 now) to her two daughters.

In March 1915, Titchmarsh’s older daughter Annie married a man called Frederick Farr who was a grocer at the time and later became a company director. The 1939 register, taken when Annie was 52, records them living at Southend-on-Sea; living with them was Annie’s sister, the 50-year-old Lilian, who was unmarried and has “no occupation” listed. Annie died at the age of 64 in December 1951, at Westcliffe-on-Sea, leaving just over £6,200 to her husband; the couple do not appear to have had any children. Lilian died, also at Westcliffe-on-Sea at the age of 94 in September 1983.

If we cannot be certain how Titchmarsh contracted his fatal illness, it is possible that there were whispers around the time of his death, not helped by the publicity in newspapers. But these whispers are unrecorded by history, and perhaps no-one was too concerned. In any case, more important should be what was recorded: that Titchmarsh was a respected man and an excellent umpire. To his contemporaries, that was all that mattered.