“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.

Embed from Getty Images

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.”

Disagreement, Divorce and Disaster: Why did William Scotton become a Stonewaller?

William Scotton (Image: Cricket, 17 July 1884)

William Scotton, a professional who played for Nottinghamshire between 1875 and 1891, had a reputation during his lifetime as a blocker — a dull batter who concentrated entirely on defence and scored very slowly. But he was not always that way. When he first played for Nottingamshire, he was known as a hitter, and he gradually improved until he was a regular in the county team. But his career was slightly derailed in 1881; first by a players’ strike in which he was involved which restricted the amount of cricket he played, and then by allegations that members of the all-professional English team (of which Scotton was a part) which toured Australia over the 1881–82 season under the captaincy of Alfred Shaw had accepted bribes to throw a match. Scotton’s name was associated with events in Australia which remain mysterious to this day: he was alleged to have been offered money to underperform, and/or been involved in at least one fight. Against this in the background, his marital difficulties were suddenly exposed during a very public divorce case in late 1882. These events seemed to change Scotton, and it was after this that he became the blocker, possessed of infinite patience, who became famous and notorious.

Having returned from Australia, Scotton had a poor season in 1882. The issue may have been simple exhaustion. Having suffered the stress of the players’ strike in 1881, then taking part in an arduous tour of Australia — which brought more controversy — he arrived back in England on 11 May and was playing cricket for Nottinghamshire seven days later. In first-class cricket, he scored 532 runs at 17.73, passing fifty just once in 20 matches. His highest score for Nottinghamshire was 49 and he scored a pair in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s. He was not selected for the one-off Test match against Australia at the Oval (the famous “Ashes” Test), although he made an unbeaten 49 for Alfred Shaw’s XI against the touring Australian team. In minor cricket, he scored centuries for the MCC against Hertfordshire and for Sheffield Park against another Shaw’s XI.

The following season was not much better. He played just 11 first-class games, scoring 179 runs at 11.93 with a highest score of 25. An 1884 profile of Scotton in Cricket said that “an accident interfered considerably with [his] cricket” in 1883, but the injury came late in the season and does not explain his earlier poor form. Playing for Nottinghamshire against Gloucestershire in early August, he badly hurt his hand catching W. G. Grace. Although he was able to bat in that game, he did not play any cricket for two weeks, and when he returned, it was only to play for the MCC — for whom he had appeared regularly that season. He returned to first-class cricket in September when he played against Nottinghamshire for the MCC. In total, he played in just seven of Nottinghamshire’s fourteen first-class games in 1883, missing five while he was injured.

But the explanation for his decline does not lie with the injury. Apart from any cricket-related worries which occupied him in those two poor seasons, he was in considerably more difficulty in his private life. In mid-June 1877, Scotton had married Ann Bates, the daughter of a publican. The couple had a son, Harold William, in 1878 and lived in the Boat Inn, Beeston, Nottinghamshire. But from early in the marriage, Scotton had been violent towards Ann — more often than she was able to list — and threatened her on numerous occasions. The first time appears to have been when they had been married but a few months, and again when she was due to give birth in 1878. In documents submitted when she filed for divorce, Ann said that he had treated her “with great unkindness and cruelty” and “he frequently in violent and offensive language abused me”. This had an adverse effect on her health. She explained that his treatment of her led her to leave him on numerous occasions to stay with friends, but he had always persuaded her to return, promising that he would change his behaviour. But by 1880, it had become too much and in August, she left him for the final time. According to her later account, he had assaulted her before leaving to play cricket in Cheltenham (Nottinghamshire played Gloucestershire there from 16–18 August 1880) and said that if she was still there when he returned, he would “kick her out”.

The effect on Scotton is hard to judge. In December 1880, he became involved with a woman called Mary Bennett, which Ann later became aware of. It was in the following season that he was caught up in the players’ strike; whether this was influenced by what was happening at home is impossible to say. The 1881 census lists Scotton living at the Boat Inn with several of his family; his brother Sam was named as the head of the family (but with an occupation of “lace maker”) and his sister Annie was listed as the manager. Meanwhile, Scotton’s son Harold was living with his widowed maternal grandmother, but there is no obvious trace of Ann. Perhaps Scotton still hoped for a reconciliation at this stage, but on his return from Australia in 1882 something had clearly changed. In July 1882, he placed a notice in the Nottingham Journal, stating that he would no longer be responsible for any debts run up by his wife; perhaps she had been using his name to spend money, or perhaps he had simply decided that their marriage was irreconcilably over.

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

In October 1882, Ann filed for divorce. To the modern eye, this might seem a mundane fact, but in 1882 it was highly unusual. Divorce remained a novelty in Victorian England. Until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, divorce was expensive, difficult and under the control of ecclesiastical courts. The change in law which took place in 1857 made divorce a civil matter and opened it up to ordinary people. Importantly, it allowed women to divorce their husbands, but did not make it easy. The process was very expensive, reducing the opportunities for poorer couples to end unpleasant marriages, and for a woman (rather than her husband) to be granted a divorce in this period required proof of adultery and another criminal offence such as cruelty or desertion (for a husband to be granted a divorce merely required evidence of his wife’s adultery). This was a considerable burden of proof, which is part of the reason why few women pursued divorces rather than the much easier but more restrictive separation order. There were just 334 divorces in 1883 (the year Scotton’s divorce was finalised); in general in this period, approximately 60 per cent came from cases brought by men. Given the difficulty of obtaining a divorce, it was not unheard of for couples to collude to obtain one when both agreed the marriage was over. Conveniently, Scotton admitted to the solicitor’s clerk who handed him the divorce papers that he had been guilty of adultery; additionally, he did not contest the case. But given the amount of evidence brought by his wife, and the very public nature of the court case — all divorces were adjudicated at the High Court of Justice in London — it is unlikely that this divorce involved any collusion.

At the hearing on 20 December 1882, Ann outlined what had taken place, expanding on the detail she gave in the court documents, and she found witnesses to corroborate her story. A woman called Mary Price said that she had seen Ann with “a black eye” on several occasions, and in 1879 when Scotton returned from Cheltenham, she had seen him “knocking her from one end of the bar to the other”. The solicitor’s clerk who served the divorce papers was able to confirm that Scotton had admitted adultery, and a third witness, Mrs Mary Kerry, had seen Scotton and Bennett together; it was the latter’s husband who later told Ann (who was unaware at the time), providing the crucial second offence needed for divorce. The judge was convinced, and granted her a decree nisi. He also awarded custody of Harold to Ann, and granted her costs too, meaning that Scotton had to pay; the cost of an undefended divorce was somewhere between £30 and £50 (between £3,000 and £5,000 today), which was equivalent to the wage Scotton would have received by playing between five and ten matches for Nottinghamshire.

Scotton’s lack of a defence is slightly puzzling, but it may be connected to embarrassment; the divorce was covered in many newspapers, all of which made clear that they were referring to the famous cricketer. Everyone would have known what he had been doing and that his wife had divorced him. The divorce was finalised in July 1883; to compound a miserable few years for Scotton, his father died that September. As for Ann, she remarried in 1897 but died four years later. Their son only lived until 1906.

It is inarguable that Scotton had treated Ann terribly. When set against some of his stranger behaviour in later years, it paints a picture of a none-too-pleasant individual. It is hard to feel much sympathy. But the effect of the divorce on Scotton is hard to quantify. Given that the end of his cricket career induced some form of breakdown in 1890, it is likely that he found the end of his marriage traumatic. It probably largely explains poor form in 1882 and 1883. It might hint at a reason for his escapades — probably with his fists and possibly financial — in Australia. And it is undeniable that it was during the period surrounding his divorce that he dramatically altered his cricket technique.

Previously, he had generally batted quite defensively but was capable of switching his approach and hitting hard. For example, Australian newspapers in 1881 described him as “a hard hitting left hander”. A profile printed in Cricket during the 1884 season said that he had changed his approach “in late years”, which is a little too vague to be useful. Of his style, it said: “Of late years he has given up hitting, which used to be his forte, and taken up an almost strictly defensive style of play. Unlike the majority of left-handed batsmen he comes down very straight on the ball, and his batting is far more correct than is usually the case with them. Though he can hit freely he bats now with great care and steadiness, and he is a very useful man to go in first.” David Frith, in Silence of the Heart (2001) suggests that his injury in 1883, when he hurt his hand catching Grace, was the cause, but the divorce seems just as likely as a reason.

With his divorce finalised by the beginning of the 1884 season, Scotton overcame the poor form that stretched back to 1882 and — perhaps owing to his new approach — had his best season to date. He scored 897 runs at 34.50. In May, he scored his first century for Nottinghamshire, an unbeaten and match-winning 104 against Middlesex at Lord’s. His runs came out of 186 for four as Nottinghamshire won by six wickets; he batted throughout the 135.1 (four ball) overs of the innings (equivalent to 90.1 six-ball overs). His second century was an innings of 134 in six hours against the touring Australians for an “England XI” at Huddersfield. The profile of Scotton, printed in Cricket in mid-July, called the innings “a marvel of defensive cricket”. It described him as occupying “a prominent position among the professional cricketers of the year” and outlined his career to date. It also revealed: “Scotton is, in addition, a good pigeon shot, and as a football player is not without merit. Although not in the Cup team of the Notts Club, he played in several first-class matches last season.” As this predated the formation of the football league, it is hard to discover how often, or in how many seasons, Scotton played for Notts County.

The Australian team of 1884. Back row: J. M. Blackham, H. J. H. Scott, L. Greenwood (umpire), W. E. Midwinter, P. S. McDonnell, G. Alexander. Middle row: G. Giffen, H. F. Boyle, W. L. Murdoch, G. J. Bonner, G. E. Palmer. Seated on floor: A. C. Bannerman, F. R. Spofforth. (Image: National Library of Australia)

More meaningful recognition came when his overall form, after a succession of solid innings, meant that he was called up to the England team by the Surrey Committee (the hosting ground chose the England team in Test matches in this period) for the third Test against Australia. Playing for England at home was vastly more prestigious than appearing in a professional touring team. There had been suggestions that Scotton should have been picked at Lord’s, but he was overlooked for the first two Tests. At the Oval, he was extremely successful, although perhaps his batting was not to everyone’s taste. Facing an enormous Australian total of 551, which occupied most of the first two days of the three-day match, England lost the crucial figure of W. G. Grace to a controversial run-out on the second evening; the umpire, the widely-respected Charles Pullin, was roundly abused by the crowd and criticised in the press for his decision. On the third morning, England collapsed to 181 for eight, but Scotton was still there, having blocked his way to an unbeaten 53 (his half-century took 214 deliveries). He was joined by Walter Read, batting extremely low down the order at number ten given that he was a specialist batter. Read and Scotton put on 151 for the ninth wicket. Read blazed his way to a century in 113 minutes (from 136 balls); according to a later story, he played aggressively largely through anger that the England captain Lord Harris had him batting at number ten. Scotton, meanwhile, kept blocking. When he was finally dismissed, he had scored 90 from 375 balls in 340 minutes. But if dreary, his batting was invaluable; Wisden stated: “He never gave the slightest chance, and it is not too much to say that his splendid display of defensive cricket was the cause of England saving the match. The figures of his innings were nine 4s, five 3s, nine 2s, and 21 singles.” When Read was out soon after, England were all out for 346, but although they had to follow on, there only an hour left in the game — no time for Australia to win — and England had won the series 1–0. There was, however, a feeling that the result flattered England, who had the worst of the two drawn games, in both of which they were saved by the three-day duration of matches.

Scotton ended the season fourth in the first-class average (among those who batted at least ten times; if the cut-off is twenty innings, he was second to A. G. Steele, who averaged 38.68), just ahead of W. G. Grace, who averaged 34.02. Second to Arthur Shrewsbury in the Nottinghamshire averages, Scotton failed to reach double figures only three times in 22 innings for the county. He was certainly among the leading professional batters for the year, at a time when it was amateur batting that usually attracted most attention and praise.

But Scotton was once again caught up in a bitter argument that, this time, had little to do with him directly. Before the first Test, Shrewsbury, William Barnes and Wilfrid Flowers (all of Nottinghamshire) turned down invitations to appear for the Players team at Sheffield against the Australians for the standard match fee of £10 as they were aware that the supposedly amateur Australian cricketers would make a great deal more from the game, sharing half of the gate receipts between them. It was part of an increasingly bitter row over the money the Australians, led by the uncompromising Billy Murdoch, were making from the tour, amid growing accusations of mercenary greed. Matters came to a head in the second Test, the first such game ever played at Lord’s, when the Australian manager negotiated a deal whereby his players took the entirety of the £1,334 gate receipts, while the four professionals in the England team took home £10 each.

As a result of the growing row, between the second and third Test the Nottinghamshire Committee refused to release their professionals for the match between the Players and Murdoch’s team at the Oval, despite being asked to do so by the Surrey Committee. The tourists had become very unpopular for their perceived money-grabbing attitude and their contravention of the supposed amateur spirit; each member of the team went home having made £900 from the tour. The repercussions would be felt for many years to come, and had still not been completely settled (although other issues were also in play) by the time of the 1896 “strike” of professionals before the Oval Test match.

The team managed by Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite in 1884–85. 1) J. M. Read 2) G. Ulyett 3) W. H. Scotton 4) R. Peel 5) J. Hunter 6) W. Attewell 7) A. Shrewsbury 8) A. Shaw 9) W. Barnes 10) J. Lillywhite 11) W. Flowers 12) J. Briggs 13) W. Bates (Image: Alfred Shaw, Cricketer: His Career and Reminiscences, 1902)

The controversy spilled over into the winter when Shaw, Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite managed another tour of Australia. Scotton was chosen once more, although his record in the previous season meant that this time he was genuinely one of the best batsmen in England. The English team was stronger than any previous combination to tour Australia but on-field events once again were secondary to off-field problems as they were caught in a dispute with the Australian team which had just completed its tour of England. As had been the case after previous tours of England, Murdoch’s team did not disband; the Australian sides usually played several matches at home to maximise their profits. On this occasion, the presence of Murdoch’s Australians posed a threat to the financial success of the English tour, offering an appealing counter-attraction. The same had happened in the 1882–83 season, but that English team was a mainly amateur affair that was not too concerned over making a profit; the 1884–85 team was very much run along commercial lines and any competition was potentially disastrous.

The first problem arose when members of Murdoch’s team made themselves unavailable to face the English team in their early tour games and instead attempted to organise a match of their own in direct competition. As Charles Pardon said in Wisden: “From the moment the members of Murdoch’s team landed … it became evident they were animated by a feeling of bitter hostility towards Shaw and his party.” Part of the reason was connected to the boycotting of the two Players’ matches by the Nottinghamshire professionals — many of whom were in Shaw’s team. There was also a bitter row growing in Australian cricket between Murdoch’s team and everyone else, once more over the issue of money and gate receipts. Disagreements between Murdoch on one side and Shaw and Shrewsbury on the other over what proportion of gate money should go to each team made for an unpleasant tour. The result was that for the second Test, the Australian team was effectively a second eleven as members of Murdoch’s team refused to play. That Murdoch faced opposition from the three main Australian cricket associations, from the press and public, and from former players did not seem to perturb him. A compromise resolution meant that some of Murdoch’s team returned for the last three Tests, but the atmosphere was fraught even if the controversy had largely transformed into an internal Australian dispute.

Amid all the arguments, the tour returned only a small profit for Shaw, Lillywhite and Shrewsbury but the series was an exciting one. England won the decisive final Test to take the series 3–2, but most people were relieved when the season was over. Playing in all five Tests, Scotton scored 159 runs at 19.87, some way down the averages. His record in the three games against state teams was hardly better, leaving him with 224 first-class runs on tour at 17.23. In all games, he managed 882 runs at 20.51. His only century — 123 scored in eight hours — came against Moss Vale XI, a team of 22 in New South Wales. His best innings in the Test series came in the first Test, when Australia were at full strength: he scored 82 in 345 minutes (out of 282 while he was batting) in the first innings (hitting just two fours). It took him 240 deliveries to reach fifty. Wisden praised his “wonderful defence and patience” in that innings. But in his other nine innings, he only reached double figures three times and never passed thirty. Nevertheless, Wisden stated: “The result of [Johnny] Briggs’ dashing play and Scotton’s steady defensive cricket fully warranted their inclusion in the team.” But Cricket noted that Scotton rarely scored heavily, and said that he found the left-handed bowling of William Bruce impossible to work out.

The journey home was a pleasant one; Scotton won several prizes in the games played on the ship. He also sang in a show put on by the players. But it was undeniable that touring teams were responsible for increasing friction in the cricket world. Both of Scotton’s visits to Australia had involved massive controversies. For a man whose later reputation rested on how boring he was, he seemed to attract problems wherever he went. His career so far had included more incidents than were usual for a professional, and his private life was far messier than that of many cricketers of a similar standing. However, when he returned to England he was clearly among the leading batsmen and was likely to have been an unarguable selection in any full-strength Test team. But from this point, critics began to tire of his slow, patient batting; he even became something of a joke. He first lost form, then his career, and then his life.

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.