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Stories from the Archive – Leisure Activities (Part 2 – cricket)

In February 2016 I gave a talk about the archives as part of the Thursday lunchtime Recital Room series (click here for the full programme). I’ll put the talk on the blog in a series of posts. The second installment is below. Click here for the first installment (about Arthur Rowntree’s views about leisure activities).

I’ll start with sport. Cricket seems to have been played from the very early days of the school. Here are some of the rules of the cricket club about 1834 when the school was still at the Lawrence Street site – the question of who paid for broken windows appears to have been particularly important.

  1. That the Club shall pay for no windows broken by non-subscribers.
  2. That all non-subscribers playing when a window is broken, shall pay 1d. for a 1s. window, and 3d. for a 3s. 6d. window.
  3. That the Club will pay for no windows broken at single wicket, or when less than four subscribers are playing.
  4. That if a subscriber breaks a window or bat, or loses a ball, he shall pay half, and the Club the other half, but if a non-subscriber he shall pay all.
  5. That the balls or bats shall not be lent to play at any other game but cricket, under penalty of one penny.
  6. That if any other subscriptions should be afterwards wanted, those subscribers who do not pay them shall be subscribers no longer.
  7. That no non-subscriber shall play when there are more than eight subscribers playing, unless he is particularly wanted to make sides.
  8. That whoever throws any of the bats shall be fined the sum of 1d.
  9. That none of the bats and balls shall be used, except there are two subscribers playing.
Sketch of Lawrence Street site (by Edwin Moore).
Lawrence Street site (by Edwin Moore)

Walter Sturge, who was at the school between 1844 and 1846, therefore was at both Lawrence Street and Bootham, didn’t play cricket until the school moved to the Bootham site, suggesting that at some point after the rules had been written, cricket was banned.

George Scarr Watson, at the school between 1853 and 1858 remembered that “Cricket was permitted; but we played no outside matches, and had to be content with the mild excitement of playing against ourselves. No flannel cricketing suits relieved the monotony of our black jackets, waistcoats and caps. No brilliant blazers, ribbons, ties or badges transgressed the Quaker rule.”

The earliest minute book we have for the cricket club starts in 1865 and runs till 1867, and the first outside match listed in that is against Ackworth in May 1865, although all the matches listed in that minute book are either internal matches, matches against Old Scholars or against Ackworth. The next record we have is a score book that runs from 1886, which contains a much wider range of opponents.

Photograph of the cricket team setting out to Ackworth, 1924.
The cricket team setting out to Ackworth, 1924
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1914 Register – temperance and building a camera

Thanks again to Claire for researching this post.

It has to be said that reading personal accounts from Old Scholars has been a pure delight. Some accounts of time spent here were heart-warming, some thought provoking, some showing the variety of skills and experiences learnt from and some truly hilarious. We have captured some of those for you here – as we work through the Register there will be many more stories to tell!

Charles Heber Dymond (Bootham 1903-06)

“I worked ‘til about 21 years old in N.E.R. Locomotive shops at Gateshead and Darlington in the drawing offices of my fathers firm Vaughn & Dymond. I went out to San Paulo, Brazil as Assistant Manager to Anglo-Brazilian Forging, Steel Structural & Imparting Co. In 1912 I returned to the office at Vaughn & Dymond. Hobbies: Locomotive model building, cycling, tennis and motoring.

Alfred Russell Ecroyd (Bootham 1856-60)

In 1909 introduced the idea of total abstinence for the individual and prohibition for the State into Spain by distribution of some 60,000 temperance pamphlets by post and by hand throughout all the 49 provinces of Spain. All the 15,000 Doctors of Spain received one or more of these tracts in 1909, resulting in a revolution of medical practice in Madrid, Barcelona and other places where previously it was the fashion to order wine for nearly every ailment, to a general custom of ordering their patients to abstain, at all events during medical treatment. In one town this change reduced the mortality in 1909 to one-half of any previous year from 28 per 1000 to 14.5. In 1910, founder and first Editor of “El Absetmio” a quarterly temperance newspaper 40,000 copies of which are annually distributed gratuitously throughout Spain by the Spanish Anti-alcohol League, which he founded in 1911: In 1904-1906 in conjunction with the Wisbech Peace Society – the translation and distribution of 10,000 Peace tracts throughout all the provinces of Spain: Hobbies – National History, especially entomology, genealogy, meteorology, drawing and painting.

Walter Henry Fox (Bootham 1868-69)

[I feel his wife should firstly be given special mention for – Children: Frederick Neidhart (1881), Marie (1882), Elsie Henrietta (1883), Gertrude Emma (1885), Walter Egbert (1886), Dorothy Isabel (1887), Howard Neidhart (1888), Margaret Newsom (1890), John Prideau (1893), Amy Gertrude (1895), Helen Sophie (1897).] Walter has recollections of games, pranks, etc., such as heating old coppers and throwing them from the bedroom window to the old watchman: sticking pins in Junior Master’s alarm clock so that he overslept himself: Grateful recollection of special trouble taken by Fielden Thorp in his writing and reading.

Alexander Grace (Bootham 1853-54)

Together with William S Clark built a camera which was the first introduction of photography as a hobby in school : He says “The only time we were allowed off the premises (unless we had special leave to go into town) was Wednesday morning once a month, when we had a half-holiday walk, under care of the teachers, which was mostly devoted to our hobbies: Wednesday afternoons were given for our own useful employment in the school room : Before going into York I was very fond of making models; one Wednesday afternoon I was building “Aspley House” in cardboard, one of the teachers asked me if I thought it was a good way of employing my time, which stopped me, and I never did any modelling afterwards. We were not allowed newspapers – the Russian War was going on at the time – our head teacher, Till Adam Smith, used to read us extracts, keeping is posted up in what was going on”. [The headmaster at this time was in fact John Ford.]