Cricket's Historians

Ashley-Cooper, Pentelow and their Contemporaries a pioneering cricketing work. Lord Harris, to whom the book is dedicated, is thanked for helping with the publication of the volume. In his biography of Waghorn, Irving Rosenwater suggests that Waghorn had made the acquaintance of Lord Harris because Harris’s half-uncle had been Waghorn’s Company Officer in 1868 and had therefore provided the standard testimonial onWaghorn’s leaving the service. This possible link seems rather far-fetched. There can be no doubt however about the interest Lord Harris took in cricket’s history – he effectively sponsored several important historical cricketing books, apart from Waghorn’s. These books will be commented upon in due course. In the 1890s, as Waghorn continued his checking of old newspapers for references to cricket, a much younger enthusiast began a more thorough exploration of the archives. Frederick Samuel (Ashley-) Cooper was born in Bermondsey in March 1877. Little is known of his early schooling and life, despite some very detailed digging into the obvious possible sources by, among other researchers, Irving Rosenwater, until his name appears in the magazine Cricket in 1896, when he reveals a specific interest in the statistical career of W.G.Grace. Several biographical essays on Ashley- Cooper have been published, so a short resumé of his life is all that should be required here. In 1897 he joined the Surrey C.C.C. as a member and through both this membership and his writing for Cricket became a friend and colleague of C.W.Alcock. Inevitably his visits to the British Museum Library resulted in his making the acquaintance of Waghorn. In his book Cricket Highways and Byways published in 1927, Waghorn’s photograph is printed and Ashley-Cooper describes him as ‘this friend of long standing’, though Waghorn’s two books of early cricket references are not mentioned in the reference. Ashley-Cooper’s researches into old newspapers were much more systematic than those of Waghorn. A prime example of this occurred in November 1898, when the magazine Cricket published Ashley-Cooper’s discovery that the famous England v Kent match was played in 1744, not as given in Haygarth’s Scores & Biographies (and elsewhere) in 1746. In his explanation, Ashley-Cooper states that he 74