Cricket's Historians

164 More County Histories and The Cricket Society grows Cricket Records section of the Wisden Almanack . He continued in this post until 1963. His weekly, then bi-weekly compilation of English first-class averages continued to 1982, a quite formidable record. From a schoolboy he collected cricket books. The collection expanded as the years went by until, at its peak, he housed some 12,000 titles in his Hampstead house. He died in Hampstead, after a long illness, in May 1998. William Stanley Conder took over the editing of the Society’s Yearbook from Tony Weigall and was a major contributor to the Society’s Newsletter, as well as assisting with the compilation of the Wisden Almanack from 1950. He was employed in the City and died at his home in Kew in May 1979, aged 69. One of the quiet men behind the scenes for the Society was Leslie Edward Stephen Gutteridge, who helped to save the Society during the brouhaha of 1959. He ran the Epworth Press and its bookshop in City Road, London. The Press was the publishing arm of the Methodist Church. He joined the society in 1949 and soon afterwards housed the Society’s library at the Epworth Press, being appointed the Society’s Hon Librarian. The Epworth Press building also contained the best secondhand cricket book shop in the country and became a mecca for collectors. Gutteridge’s own cricket writings were confined to the occasional article in The Cricketer and some book reviews for the Playfair Cricket Monthly . He emigrated to Canada to take up an appointment at the University of Alberta, retiring in 1979. He died in Edmonton, Canada in July 2000, having curiously been born in Edmonton, Middlesex, in 1914. A founder member of the Society who contributed many articles to its publications was Harold ‘Tod’ Stratton Scales. He began writing letters to The Cricketer in 1935 and became a great friend of Gustard. Educated at The Leys School, Scales took up a business career in the City with Messrs McDonald, Scales & Co. His overwhelming cricket interest was researching biographical details of players from the mid 18 th century onwards. He was fortunate to inherit manuscript notebooks compiled by Ashley-Cooper. The notebooks listed every player of any consequence and where references to those players could be found amongst cricket’s