What
Became
of Them
RMS Ophir returned 10 of the English team home, Ford, Gay and MacLaren leaving Australia separately. And when the ship reached Plymouth, the three Surrey players, Richardson, Brockwell and Lockwood, took the train home, straight into a match against Leicestershire at The Oval. Three Northerners, Peel, Briggs and Ward, also left the ship to hurry home by train, leaving only four, Stoddart, Humphreys, Philipson and Brown, together with Jim Phillips, the Victoria/Middlesex umpire/player, to stay aboard as Ophir made up the English Channel to Tilbury.
There, the suntanned skipper stepped ashore into the spring sunshine, a banjo peeping out from his luggage as the jostling crowd let out its cries of welcome. Having talked freely to reporters on the train into London, Stoddart headed off straightaway to his club ground at Hampstead, where a match was in progress against Stoics, victims of his world record 485 nearly nine years earlier.
He was given a grand dinner by the club a few nights later, at the Cafe Monico, attended by Peter Pan creator JM Barrie and many other celebrities, the greatest of all WG Grace, who dashed across from Bristol, having just scored his 100th century, 288 against Somerset. It was a glittering evening, leaving ‘Stoddy’s’ hand more numb than ever from all the handshaking. How could he have been happier? Top of the tour averages with 51, his backers delighted with a profit of £7000, a smooth voyage home, and a new season unfolding. His pleasure showed in his speech. And towards the end he was called upon to propose a toast to ‘the Press’, a duty he performed with greater willingness than many of his successors down the years.
Up in Yorkshire, Jack Brown (who had somehow managed to leave his tour fee of £300 untouched to date) was given a gold watch, solid-silver tea service and a purse of gold after a brass-band reception in Halifax, where crowds lined the streets, while Bobby Peel was given a splash dinner in his hometown, Morley. Peel probably remains the most likely candidate as the subject of a comment in one of the papers in its tour summary: ‘The champion grogster’ during the tour ‘had so many fines for “unfitness to play” entered against his name that he finished up, it is said, with a debit balance.’
But as the 1895 English cricket season engulfed them, they were heroes all, the men who had beaten a full-strength Australia to hold the Ashes on foreign fields.
Life, like an innings, is fragile: safe only as far as the next breath, the next ball. Eight of England’s 13 on the 1894–95 tour made it to the age of 65 and beyond, the last dying as late as 1949. Of the 22 Australians who played in the series, 11 reached 65, the last fading away in 1946.
JOHNNY BRIGGS died in Cheadle Asylum on January 11, 1902, his last years dogged by mental instability allied to his epileptic condition. He had returned to Australia with Stoddart’s second team, in 1897–98, but was one of the many who enjoyed little success, and in 1899, during the Headingley Test, he suffered a violent seizure while at the theatre, and was taken into shelter. He did re-emerge, and took over 100 wickets in 1900, including 10 for 55 for Lancashire against Worcestershire; but this was to be his last season.
Institutionalised again, he went into a world of his own, and was sometimes seen in the corridors, bowling an imaginary ball. With the real ball he had taken 2221 wickets at only 15.95 apiece, and his 118 Test wickets had cost little more. He made over 14,000 runs too, at 18.28, with 10 centuries, one of them in an Australian Test. His death at 39 was deeply mourned by his wife and twin boys, as well as the cricket world at large.
JACK BROWN, a heavy-smoking asthmatic, remained a prodigious rungetter from this tour, when he was 25, until 1903, establishing the finest of opening partnerships with John Tunnicliffe for Yorkshire, crowned by their record first-wicket stand of 554 against Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 1898, which came after a recuperative winter in South Africa. But he played for England only three times after the 1894–95 tour, making a highest score of 36. He suddenly became teetotal, pouring his remaining beer down the kitchen sink; but he could not give up smoking. When he had a heart attack, a friend, who was a valet to King Edward VII, told His Majesty, who sent his own doctor to look at Brown. He had a highly profitable benefit in 1901, but his captain, Lord Hawke, while acknowledging JT Brown’s skill and previously admirable qualities, felt that his sensational century at Melbourne made him a little boastful, and that he was too figure-conscious and too keen to monopolise the strike. Leaving a wife, Jennie, and a family, Brown died in a London nursing-home on November 4, 1904, aged 35, from ‘congestion of the brain and heart failure’.
HARRY GRAHAM, the dashing ‘natural’ batsman with the unique double of a century in his first Test innings in both England and Australia, toured England a second time in 1896 but failed to make a century, was troubled by poor health, and managed no better than a duck and 10 at Lord’s in his only Test appearance. A few years later he moved to New Zealand, and played for Otago, now bowling legspin in support of his electrifying batting. But when he lost his place in the side, he drifted into melancholia. He had thought about studying dentistry and had coached cricket at a school in Dunedin, but always he seemed to lack the ability to apply himself. A ‘hopeless case’, he was admitted to an asylum in Dunedin and died there on February 7, 1911, aged 40. As JN Pentelow put it in Cricket, ‘To the man who has been slowly dying for years, “going at the top first”, like the great Dean Swift and Robert Southey, death comes as a happy release. But one cannot help but sorrow when one thinks of “the little dasher”, as Tom Horan named him, as he was in 1893, good-looking, bright-faced, clean-limbed, grand bat, and splendid field, seeming then embarked on a fair course, with flags flying and all sails set, and then reflect on the shipwreck that he, or circumstances too strong for him, made of his life.’
TOM RICHARDSON, Titan among fast bowlers, showed no ill-effects after his strenuous Australian tour, taking an astonishing 290 wickets at 14.37 in the 1895 English season which followed. He remained the world’s premier fast bowler for several summers to come, and toured Australia again with Stoddart’s side in 1897–98. Now, though, he was that much older, and his exertions began to tell. He also put on too much weight, and his Surrey career ended abruptly, though he took 119 wickets at 22.95 in 1903, his last full season. He went to the West Country and ran a pub. Loved for his great heart and the simplicity and honesty of his approach to cricket and life, on July 2, 1912, he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and fell to his death while walking near St Jean d’Arvey on a holiday in France. He was 41.
ALBERT TROTT was also only 41 at the time of his death. Following the great disappointment of being omitted from the 1896 Australian tour of England, when his brother was skipper, ‘Albatrott’ qualified for Middlesex, and from 1898 to 1907 he belted runs and gathered wickets with his unique repertoire at such a rate that it is doubtful if any county ever made a better overseas signing, particularly as his popularity was sky-high, not least because he loved to join the crowd in a drink at the fall of a wicket. At the time, his figures defied belief when he passed 1000 runs and 200 wickets in 1899 and 1900, sealing his immortality with one enormous hit in 1899 which sent the ball over the Lord’s pavilion. It was all the sweeter to him in that the Australian, MA Noble, was the bowler. Trott actually played for England, during the 1898–99 tour of South Africa, taking 17 wickets in the two Tests but seeing his astronomical batting average of 102.50 from the 1894–95 series come crashing down to reality. If he is remembered for one other match it was his own benefit match, in 1907, when he took four wickets in four balls and then another hat-trick in Somerset’s second innings. He became an umpire, living alone in Willesden and continuing to drink far too much. His dropsy became almost impossible to endure, especially when coupled with his great memories, now fading fast. He shot himself on July 30, 1914, five days before the outbreak of the First World War. He left his wardrobe to his landlady, some photographs to a friend in Australia, and the rest of his ‘estate’ amounted to £4. MCC met the cost of burial, but it was 79 years before a memorial was placed on the grave, courtesy of Middlesex CCC. A great cricketer somehow wasted: was his county wicket-keeper MacGregor trying to be kind when he told him: ‘What a pity you haven’t got a head instead of a turnip. You’d be the best bowler in the world’?
AE STODDART committed suicide eight months after Albert Trott. That such a beautiful batsman and universally popular man should be dragged down to that condition makes him one of cricket’s outstandingly tragic figures. He had returned to Australia for his fourth tour in 1897–98, but the results were hard for England to swallow. MacLaren led in three of the five Tests, ‘Stoddy’ being ill and disconsolate following the death of his mother. Australia won the last four Tests, and when he played he batted in the lower order. And there was bitterness at the end when he gave an interview in which he condemned the vicious barracking. Many cricketers and decent spectators knew his words were justified, but his words of mild protest tarnished his image in a country where he had been as highly regarded as any of Australia’s own. His appetite for the game was receding, and 1898 was his last full season with Middlesex, though he did come back for JT Hearne’s benefit match at Lord’s and stroked 221, his highest first-class score, to show that class, even at 37, will seldom be denied. In 1906 he married at last. Ethel Luckham, a vivacious Australian girl who had met him on his first Australian tour, 18 years previously, became his bride, but could not keep his spirits high enough when illness brought him down and personal isolation and financial anxiety as war raged destroyed his psyche. On Easter Saturday, April 3, 1915, at his home in 115 Clifton Hill, a short walk from the Lord’s ground he had graced so often, ‘Stoddy’ shot himself through the temple. Already, after a 10-year span, his effigy at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks exhibition had been put into storage, and, partly because of the stigma attached to his death, his name sank towards obscurity, until a full-length biography of ‘my dear victorious Stod’ appeared over half-a-century later.
HARRY TROTT, too, did not have an easy middle age. Mental instability saw him in and out of Kew and other asylums several times. He too was genuinely liked by all his team-mates and all his opponents, and when he became captain of Australia on the 1896 tour of England he displayed great tactical acumen. His 143 in the Lord’s Test, against an attack which included Richardson, Lohmann and Hearne, was an exceptional innings, and his stand with Gregory of 221 (in under three hours) was a new Test record. Calm and always keen to offer encouragement, Harry Trott, in Wisden’s subtle words, by sheer force of character ‘Overcame the disadvantages involved in lack of education’. His four victories over Stoddart’s team in the 1897–98 series gave him one of the proudest campaign badges in Australian cricket history. He died on November 10, 1917, aged 51.
CHARLIE MCLEOD had more of an impact when England next toured, in 1897–98, opening the innings and making 112 in the second Test, at Melbourne, and taking 5 for 65 in the next Test, at Adelaide. Always the adjective most readily found for him was ‘steady’, and he proved that again on the 1899 tour of England, though having to wait until the final Test before breaking back into the team. He then scored 31 not out and 77 to help ensure the draw which tied up the series. Missing the 1902 tour, he went to England again in 1905, bowing out quietly. His brother, Bob, a year older, had played for Australia before him, and four other brothers played for Melbourne CC and another, Dan, for Victoria. Charlie died in Toorak on November 26, aged 49.
JACK HARRY, although multi-talented, had to make do with his one Test appearance. At least Australia won that one at Adelaide, arresting England’s surge in the series. Richardson twice dispatched him cheaply. He came close to further honours when chosen for the 1896 tour of England, but a knee injury caused his invitation to be cancelled, and he saw out his days with Victoria. In the year of his death he had been awarded a benefit match in Bendigo which returned him £200. At the age of 38 he had tried his luck in England, on the MCC groundstaff, but he was not destined to rock county cricket as his fellow Victorian Albert Trott did. Harry died in Canterbury, Victoria on October 27, 1919, aged 62.
SYD CALLAWAY also never played for Australia again after the Adelaide Test of January 1895, despite his 5 for 37 and runs from the No. 11 berth. Having toured New Zealand with NSW sides, he emigrated, played for Canterbury, and for New Zealand representative teams against visiting English and Australian sides. It may safely be assumed that Archie MacLaren was in one of his liverish moods when he declaimed that ‘Callaway can’t bowl a bit!’ He bowled ‘Archie Mac’ at Adelaide. Callaway, after two years of illness, died in Christchurch, NZ on November 25, 1923, aged 55.
WALTERHUMPHREYS, the grey-haired old buffer who had bemused so many country batsmen on his Australian tour, never did get a Test call-up. He plied his underhand cunning for another couple of seasons, became an umpire for the 1896 summer, and helped Hampshire out in two matches in 1900, when he was 50. His son, also a lob bowler, played a few matches for his father’s county, Sussex, between 1898 and 1900. Walter senior died in Brighton on March 23, 1924, aged 74.
‘DINNY’ REEDMAN died two days later, in Adelaide, at the age of 55. He was another who played in only one Test, but it could hardly have been a more memorable game, Australia making 586, bowling England out for 325 and making them follow on, and then losing. Reedman’s allround cricket, not least his wonderful fielding, continued to serve South Australia proud for years, his last appearance being in 1908–09. He could never have been more than an aspiring understudy for Giffen, but there was honour in that.
BILLY BRUCE played no more Tests after the 1894–95 series, but was left with a respectable batting average of just on 30 from his 14 Tests, which was higher than his average for Victoria, for whom he played his last match in 1903–04, when he was in his 40th year. At the age of 61, he had begun to drink fairly heavily and his legal practice had known better days. The slim youngster had become a plump man. On August 3, 1925 he kissed his wife goodbye, walked from his home in St Kilda and drowned himself in the sea off Point Ormond.
FRANK IREDALE continued to serve Australia through two tours of England (scoring 108 in the Old Trafford Test of 1896) and in the crushing victories of 1897–98, and played for NSW until the 1901–02 season, finishing with the respectable first-class average of 33.63, with a highest score of 196 against Tasmania. He wrote on the game, and produced a book, Thirty-Three Years of Cricket, in 1920, two years before becoming NSWCA secretary. In 1922 he had become a rare beneficiary of an Australian testimonial cricket match, the event returning him the hefty present of £1740. This fine, patient batsman, so often a poor starter, and peerless outfielder, later to become slip catcher for Ernie Jones’s thunderbolts, died in North Sydney on April 15, 1926, aged 58.
JACK LYONS played in only one further Test, the first of the 1897–98 series, but his reputation as a violent hitter of the ball was to last some years before the natural process of obscurity took care of it. Some of his explosive innings were standard reference points whenever the subject came up. He batted on for South Australia almost into the 20th Century, pounding eight centuries in all and averaging 34.65, a good figure even allowing for the short side boundaries at Adelaide Oval. In 1925–26, Lyons, a stockbroker, received a benefit, part of the proceeds from South Australia’s match against NSW. He died on July 21, 1927, aged 64.
GEORGE GIFFEN, if not among the greatest Australian captains, was decidedly an allrounder of immense value, his stamina being as awesome as his skills and his determination. He was addicted to cricket, playing for South Australia until his 45th year, and taking 15 for 185 and scoring 81 and 97 not out against Victoria when in his 44th year. In all, he scored 11,758 runs at 29.54 in 251 first-class matches, with 18 centuries, and took 1023 wickets at 21.29,95 times taking five or more wickets in an innings. No cricketer could have found retirement such a repugnant experience, but he retained his interest, coached boys freely, and was gratified to find £2020 raised for him by a testimonial match at Adelaide Oval in 1922–23, when he was just on 64. Joe Darling was the instigator, and Giffen wrote him a warm letter of thanks. ‘Your timely and energetic appeal on my behalf,’ he wrote, ‘has resulted in the rest of my life being at least comfortable.’ There was little enough of it left. Giffen died in Parkside, Adelaide on November 29, 1927, aged 68, four months after the passing of that other South Australian cricket giant, JJ Lyons. His mighty contribution to the 1894–95 Test series was rewarded with a presentation of £400, and the Giffen Stand at the Adelaide Oval is a lasting memorial.
SYD GREGORY, who went on playing for his country further into the 20th Century than any of the other combatants in the 1894–95 Test series, became captain of Australia, really by default, during the Triangular Test series in England in 1912, when he was 42. If he was no great leader and tactician, his dapper batsmanship and rapacious fielding kept him in the forefront of Australian cricket well beyond an age when contemporaries had hung up their boots. His long service was saluted with a silver cup and a purse containing £200 in the Lord’s Test of 1912 to mark his awesome feat of 50 Test appearances. Modern players can clock up that many Tests in a third of the time. Gregory had already received £630 from a benefit match at Sydney (literally his native ground) in 1906–07. So his long devotion did pay off in the end. He made four Test centuries in all against England, the others coming at Lord’s in 1896 (when he and Harry Trott put on 221), The Oval (1899) and Adelaide (1903–04). A shining star of a cricketer in Australia’s formative years, he made 15,190 first-class runs at 28.55, with 25 centuries. Leaving his shop business in the hands of partners, he suffered financial ruin in 1903. It was two years before he was discharged from bankruptcy. Having firstly worked in the Post Office, he later joined the Water Board. His tour fees and profits were more vital than ever. Syd Gregory, an Australian record 58 Tests to his name for years to come, died at home not far from the Sydney Cricket Ground on August 1, 1929, aged 59.
BILL LOCKWOOD eventually put the disappointments of the 1894–95 tour behind him, accidental injuries and all, and became, by the end of the decade, one of the finest players around. The 1898 season marked his second coming. He had got himself fit, and now his allround play came into its own. Came 1902, and he played a key role in several of the Tests of that exciting series, taking 11 for 76 in the Old Trafford thriller, won by Australia by three runs, having just scored 100 and taken nine wickets for the Players against a glittering Gentlemen side at Lord’s. Since he never returned to Australia, those who had watched him on the Stoddart tour must have wondered how Ranjitsinhji could regard Lockwood as the most difficult fast bowler he ever faced. The slump in his career can be attributed to the death of his wife and one of their children. Four times subsequently did he take nine wickets in an innings. He coached after retirement, and played a bit here and there. Then arthritis gripped him, and towards the end he was wheelchair-bound, sometimes sighted at Trent Bridge, back near his birthplace. He rejoiced in the discovery of Harold Larwood in the mid-1920s, and said he was as fast as anything in Victorian times—apart from his old comrade Tom Richardson. Lockwood died in Radford on April 26, 1932, aged 64.
JACK BLACKHAM, ‘Prince of Stumpers’, had played his last first-class match, and was also the last of the players in the first Test match of all, 18 years earlier, to play Test cricket, another link broken. Now, at last, he could give his nerves a rest, though living off investments was sometimes precarious. Eventually income dropped below expenditure, and this lifelong bachelor fell on hard times. In 1911 the VCA raised £1359 for him through a testimonial, and he lived on into his 79th year, watching matches at the MCG from a high point of the pavilion and passing opinions on the wicketkeepers in action below, usually sympathetically. He was able to see Tests up in Sydney (the setting for his dramatic final appearance in December 1894), thanks to the generosity of friends. Two days before the second Test of the Bodyline series, at the MCG, ‘Old Jack’ died, on December 28, 1932, aged 78.
‘AFFIE’ JARVIS, who was in Blackham’s shadow for so long, had also played his final Test with the conclusion of the 1894–95 series, though he served South Australia until just into the next century. Jim Kelly took over the keeper’s position for Australia. Jarvis, though, performed well for his State, having to take the express bowling of Ernie Jones in addition to Giffen’s spin. Had an accident befallen the tough-as-iron Kelly, Australia would have been glad of Jarvis’s return. He had the pleasure of seeing his son play in a couple of matches for South Australia in 1905–06. ‘Affie’ Jarvis, coachbuilder by trade, died on November 15, 193 3, aged 73.
BILLY BROCKWELL played in only one further Test for England, at Old Trafford in 1899. But he continued to be of great value to Surrey, following a moderate 1895 after his return from Australia, which nonetheless embraced his lifetime-best bowling figures, 8 for 22 against Warwickshire. Twelfth man for England at The Oval in 1896, he held a brilliant catch at extra cover to dismiss Harry Trott. And the Brockwell-Abel opening partnership for Surrey was probably the best in the land as the last summers of the 19th Century played themselves out. In 1897, ‘Brocky’ made his highest score, 225 against Hampshire, at The Oval, his first-wicket stand with the odd little Bobby Abel amounting to 379, then a world record. Tall and enduringly handsome, Brockwell usually made his runs fast—and spent some of his evenings dressed like a duke and off to the theatre. Having coached in South Africa, he now took up winter engagements in India, financed by the Maharajah of Patiala, and in 1900 he had a benefit which returned him £490. The runs and wickets suddenly began to slow down, and Tom Hayward took his place as Abel’s opening partner. Brockwell’s final first-class match was in 1903, malaria contributing to his eclipse. Over the next 30-odd years he went slowly downhill. He once owned some cottages by Ham Common, near Richmond Park, but in time they had to be disposed of. He never married, and was inconsolable when his old team-mate Tom Richardson died in 1912. Coaching, umpiring and occasional journalism enabled him to eke out a living, but it was a poor one. He was seen walking across the Common in a dressing-gown sometimes, and gathering firewood in the park. Managing to desist from seeking charity from Surrey CCC or other sources, Brockwell lived on until the summer of 1935, when, at the age of 70, he was found in a bad way in a barn at the back of the New Inn, and died in an institution on June 30. He was buried nearby in Richmond Cemetery, only a few yards from Richardson.
‘PUNCH’ PHILIPSON played hardly any further first-class cricket, and spent most of the rest of his life on his estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, entertaining friends to weekend shooting parties and suchlike. Shortly after the 1894–95 tour, which Philipson greatly enjoyed, it was said that Stoddart was warmly disposed towards his sister; but nothing came of it. ‘Stoddy’s’ close friend, who outlived him by 20 years, died in London on December 4, 1935, after several years of ill-health. He was 69.
JACK WORRALL came good only once in a while, and this was reflected in the selectors’ wavering interest. His two tours of England were 11 years apart—1888 and 1899—and his 11 Test appearances were spread over 14 years, with a highest score of 76 (out of 95 while he was in) at Headingley in 1899, when Noble and Gregory made ‘pairs’. In 1896 he had hit 417 not out in a Melbourne district match, his side, Carlton, totalling 922. For Victoria, he scored over 2400 runs and took 74 wickets in an 18-year career which ended abruptly when it was revealed that he had written to an English umpire at the start of Australia’s 1902 tour advising him to no-ball Saunders and Noble for throwing. Worrall wrote as ‘JW’ for The Australian, and to him is attributed the coining of the term ‘Bodyline’ during the acrimonious 1932–33 Ashes series. He died in Fairfield Park, Melbourne on November 17, 1937, aged 76.
HUGH TRUMBLE, who played such an insignificant role in the 1894–95 series, went on to become the leading wicket-taker in Anglo-Australian Tests, his tally of 141 in 31 Tests remaining supreme until Lillee and Botham overtook it. He seemed to improve with each of his five tours of England, the last being made in 1902, and having done the hat-trick against the Old Enemy at Melbourne in 1901–02, he did another to add a sting to his final Test two years later, at the same ground. He took 929 first-class wickets at 18.44, with best figures of 9 for 39 for the 1902 Australians against South of England at Bournemouth. Had there been Man of the Match awards in his time, he would have taken many as his clever and relentless bowling swayed Tests Australia’s way. As it was, Trumble, by his great height, was always the most conspicuous of the Australians. For a time he was probably the world’s best bowler, and he twice captained Australia, winning the last two Tests in 1901–02. He had met his future bride on the ship going to England in 1899, and in time they had eight children. He gave up his bank job in 1911 and became secretary of Melbourne Cricket Club. In his large grey hat he was the most conspicuous figure on the ground and in the streets of Melbourne, and none was more companionable. He held office for 27 years, dying on August 14, 1938, aged 71.
HARRY MOSES was limited to six Tests, the last being at Sydney in 1895, when Australia drew level at 2-2. Nor did he play for NSW after that season, leaving an exceptional record of 2593 runs for the State at 41.16. Giffen, close to envy at Moses’ patient approach, wrote that his leg-glance was outstanding, and, as at 1898, he could still lay claim to having been Australia’s second-best batsman; only his never having been tested by English conditions prevented him from standing level with Murdoch. It might have been just as well for England that Richardson bowled him for only 1 in that final appearance at Sydney. Moses, who became chairman of trustees of the SCG, and was a wine merchant, died in Strathfield, Sydney on December 7, 1938, aged 80.
ALBERT WARD, the upright, composed batsman to whom England owed so very much during the 1894–95 series, played no more Tests, despite having his best-ever season upon his return from Australia. Unluckily for him, no country toured England in 1895. He remained one of the most prolific scorers in county cricket, reaching the then-rare seasonal aggregate of 1000 nine times, and carrying his bat through an innings on five occasions. His 219 against South Australia remained the highest of his 29 centuries by his retirement after the 1904 season, and in later life, memories of his success in Australia, when he made most runs (916 to Stoddart’s 870) on the tour, warmed him. He died near Bolton on January 6, 1939, aged 73.
ARTHUR CONINGHAM became another one-Test wonder, but at least it permitted a keen monumental mason to inscribe ‘International Cricketer’ on ‘Conny’s’ gravestone. He played a few more matches for Queensland and NSW, the last in 1898–99, and just when his name seemed to have slipped quietly into the annals, he became the most talked-about man in Sydney when he brought a charge of adultery against a leading Roman Catholic priest, Mrs Coningham being the alleged ‘victim’. The case aroused fearful sectarian passions, and was more than usually interesting in that fair-haired, blue-eyed Coningham, swaggering with confidence though ignorant of court procedure, conducted his own case when his counsel walked out. The jury could not agree. Conspiracy was all around as a second trial began, and this time Coningham, who announced that he had received 47 threats by mail, wore a loaded revolver on his belt. It was confiscated. He lost the case. The priest returned to St Mary’s in triumph. Coningham sobbed loudly, but later told a rally of Protestants: ‘I was friendless and penniless. For four days I fought the Church of Rome with a halfpenny!’ He and his wife went to New Zealand, where Coningham was later jailed for fraud. She divorced him in 1912 for alleged adultery in a beach-shed, admitting she had pointed a gun at him but denying breaking a bottle on his head. He in turn said he could not fathom the Law: ‘In Sydney, my wife said she did and a jury said she didn’t. In Wellington, I said I didn’t and a jury said I did.’ This was the man who got MacLaren out with his first ball in Test cricket. He died in Gladesville, Sydney on June 13, 1939, aged 75.
TOM MCKlBBIN earned selection for the 1896 tour of England and headed the bowling with 101 wickets at 14.26, playing in two of the three Tests, taking six wickets to help Australia to victory at Old Trafford and five more at The Oval, where his innings of 16 from the No. 11 position dragged Australia up to 44, to lose by 66 runs. All through the tour, however, there were murmurs about his action and natural resentment among opposing sides and onlookers who were convinced that he threw. He played in two Tests in the 1897–98 series before losing his place, the strength of Australian bowling then being quite formidable. His last first-class season was 1898–99, and he went out in style, taking 10 wickets in NSW’s match against Tasmania and 7 for 30 in the second innings of a New Zealand XI, also at the SCG, whipping the ball back from outside off stump. His weight increased, though he was still in his twenties, and after missing out on the 1899 tour of England, he spent some time in Western Australia before returning to Bathurst. He became a bit of a swagman, moving from place to place and repairing shearing-machines, but in 1934 he took off to England to see some of the Test matches played by Woodfull’s Australians, armed with a letter of introduction from the NSWCA. It had been a meteoric career. McKibbin had gone from Country Week cricket into a Test match in his introductory season, and was finished as a Test bowler at 27. He died at a homestead near Bathurst on December 15, 1939, aged 69.
FRANCISFORD continued to delight spectators at Middlesex matches for a further five seasons before ill-health persuaded him to retire. The five Tests of 1894–95 were to remain his only England appearances, but his form in 1897, when he topped the national averages, might have earned him another cap had there been a touring team in England other than the Philadelphians. That summer he made 805 runs at 53.67, hitting with great ferocity, fast bowling or slow. He was greatly feared by bowlers in his many club matches. He contributed much to the lbw debate in the 1930s which led to a major amendment. He had never been one to use his pads while he had a bat in his hand. FGJ Ford died in Burwash, Sussex on February 7, 1940, aged 73.
BOBBY PEEL, who administered the coup de grace in all three England victories in the 1894–95 Tests, had a longer life than any of the other participants in that epic series, though his career as a Yorkshire cricketer extended no further than 1897. Drink was the almost inevitable cause. He may have been 40, but he was still a valuable bowler. But even George Hirst’s protective actions could not save him when he turned up late and hungover (again), tried to prove he was fit by twirling down a ball—except it crashed into the sightscreen—and was sent from the field by his captain Lord Hawke, his cap still askew, his face now permanently reddened. He found employment in the leagues and played on, and though he was not a considerate husband, there were signs of mellowing later in life. He may even have come to regret some of his actions—such as disgracing himself on a shoot with Prince Ranjitsinhji, when Peel blasted eight barrels at a hare, removing its legs, an ear and much else before chasing the remnants of the animal into a neighbouring property, still firing away, until all life was extinguished. The perversity in his character was illustrated by Lord Hawke when he wrote that ‘when at his deadliest and congratulated afterwards one could detect no gleam of pleasure on his countenance’. Perhaps the verbal out-take which should signal Peel’s spirit best of all was his remark to Stoddart on that day in Sydney in December 1894. Through his alcoholic haze he stared at the wet pitch, and said to his captain, ‘Gi’ me t’ball, Mr Stoddart. Ah’ll get t’boogers out.’ Peel died in Morley, near Leeds, on August 12, 1941, aged 84.
ERNIE JONES went on to earn the reputation of Australia’s greatest fast bowler, with the possible exception of Gregory or McDonald in the 1920s, until after the Second World War. There was but one reservation. The suspicions about his action climaxed when Jim Phillips no-balled him for throwing both during the South Australia match against Stoddart’s 1897–98 team and in the second Test. Harry Trott guided him through this troubled time, and with a slightly modified action he never again transgressed. His terror bowling claimed stacks of wickets, not least during his three tours of England. On the first, in 1896, he bounced one through WG Grace’s beard, earning a rebuke from The Champion. ‘Sorry, Doc, she slipped,’ was ‘Jonah’s’ immortal reply. In the 1897–98 series he took most wickets (22), sharing with Richardson, who paid 10 runs more per wicket. In 1899, in five Tests, Jones took 26, 11 more than any other bowler in either side, seven of them coming at Lord’s—five of them great England batsmen—for 88 as Australia moved to the only decision in the series. Batsmen everywhere were relieved to see his powers finally wane. ‘Did you go to Prince Alfred College?’ once asked a dignitary. ‘Yeah,’ said Ernie, ‘I used to collect the garbage there.’ Later, as a customs officer, he was a familiar sight at the wharf when English teams arrived, yelling a friendly greeting: ‘We’re gonna tan the hide off ya!’ Even at 60 he looked fit and strong enough to do it personally. Jones died in Adelaide on November 23, 1943, aged 74.
CHARLES TURNER had the longest life of all the 1894–95 Australians. The fourth Test, controversially, had been his final Test, with McKibbin, another son of Bathurst, being seen as the new Turner. Having left the Australian Joint Stock Bank, Turner entered business, and after retiring from cricket in 1897 he went to Queensland for a time, living in Gympie. He enjoyed coaching, but only if it meant encouraging natural talent. He sidled up to the young Bill O’Reilly at the nets and congratulated him after hearing him resist Arthur Mailey’s suggestion that he should alter his grip. ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly was to join the elite list of those who have taken 100 wickets in Tests against England, but none has got even close to ‘Terror’ Turner’s average of 16.53. In January 1910a benefit match was staged for Turner at the SCG, and he played. Now 47, he opened the bowling with Charlie Kelleway, and reduced The Rest to 8 for four wickets, himself bowling Edgar Mayne for 0. It was like old times. He received £331 from the match. In 1926 Turner wrote The Quest for Bowlers, a small, rare book which is packed with wisdom. All a student would need, having digested the contents, was Turner’s physique and co-ordination, and he too might then take 993 wickets at 14.26. Married for a third time, CTB Turner left £202 when he died on New Year’s Day 1944, aged 81. For almost 30 years his ashes remained, unclaimed, in a blue cardboard box in a Sydney funeral parlour. The author was responsible for having them received by Bathurst City Council and interred in the cemetery in Turner’s home town.
ARCHIE MACLAREN, as at 1895, had the greatest future of all Stoddart’s touring cricketers. Returning to England via Japan, he rocked the cricket world a few weeks later by scoring 424 in 470 minutes for Lancashire against Somerset at Taunton, a new first-class world record. He toured with Stoddart a second time, in 1897–98, and four years later found himself leading the next English team to Australia. By 1909 he had taken his Test appearances to 35, and had made so many runs at Sydney that he was to claim that he only had to poke his tongue out at the ball there and it went for four. Runs rolled from his imperious bat in all parts of the world, even when he was 51, when he made 200 not out against a New Zealand representative XI at Wellington. In 1921 he had been as good as his word by selecting a team, several of them anything but famous, which beat the apparently invincible Australians in a celebrated match at Eastbourne. He had theories, and often he was right, though his England captaincy record was dim: four victories and 11 losses in 22 Tests. Married to a Melbourne girl during the 1897–98 tour, MacLaren earned a living from an assortment of enterprises. Only towards the end did he and Maud feel comfortable, after she had inherited a large sum of money. The dashing batsman who had hammered and charmed 22,236 runs, with 47 centuries, five of them in Tests against Australia, died in Warfield Park, Berkshire on November 17, 1944, aged 72. It was only a month before the 50th anniversary of England’s astonishing 10-run win at Sydney.
JOE DARLING had a most distinguished career, on and off the cricket field. He went to England in 1896 and hit a newcomer’s record 1555 runs (in 53 innings)—and was also barracked at Lord’s in musical fashion, when spectators protested at his dour batting by whistling Poor Old Joe and then the Dead March in Saul. For perhaps the only time, he displayed irritation. Home again, he became the first batsman to make 500 runs in a Test series when he helped Australia to their 4–1 triumph in 1897–98. He scored three centuries. By 1899 he was the logical choice as Australia’s captain, and had the rare distinction of leading his country on three successive England tours, playing in every match and scoring a mighty 1941 runs in 1899, and retaining the Ashes again in 1902, his team that year a frontrunner still for the title Greatest Australian Team. His last tour, in 1905, brought adversity at last, FS Jackson leading England, by personal example, to a 2–0 win. Darling this time piled up 1696 runs, though, like the similarly chunky Allan Border, another left-hander, he now went in at No. 6. Darling led Australia in 21 of his 34 Tests, earning respect for his batsmanship, his tactical sense, and his sheer toughness. His 91-minute century in the last Test of the 1897–98 series, at Sydney, remains a record for Australia against England, shading other sub-100-minute performances by Trumper and Bradman. Had Darling’s wealthy father not insisted on setting his son up with a 10,000-acre sheep station in Tasmania, he would have played in several more Tests. But those he did play were among the most famous in history. Retiring at 36, he later entered politics and was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament at 50. He had 12 children. No Australian captain has been more highly regarded, none was tougher, or fairer. Joe Darling died on January 2, 1946, aged 75.
LESLIE GAY was the last of the 1894–95 Test cricketers to die. Keeping wicket for England in the first-up classic at Sydney, where he had such a wretched time of it, he did at least complete four dismissals and contribute a useful 33 to England’s first innings. After the tour he played no more first-class cricket until 1900, when he turned out in nine matches for Hampshire, renewing acquaintance with MacLaren and some of the professionals from that Australian tour: Richardson, Lockwood, Brockwell, Brown, Ward. Already that enjoyable expedition of ‘94–95 under dear old Stoddy was taking on the feel of the good old days. Gay, a tall, proud double international, had been the youngest member of that team. Now he had outlived them all. He died, with the rank of major, in Salcombe, Devon on November 1, 1949. He was 78. He took with him the last authentic first-hand memories of life on that tour, in the hotels and clubs, on board ship, in the dressing-room, out in the heat of the middle, in the First Great Test Series.