The Summer Field

169 Chapter Twenty Women ‘Nearly twenty years on a newspaper had imbued Tony Hinton with an alertness for the incongruities of life. A girl playing cricket against men would be rather fun; it would give the game a kick – and after all they were a man short.’ Charles Hatton, Maiden Over (1955) Cricket could be one way a woman could show an interest in a man, or men generally; yet all too often a man found cricket was no good for wooing a woman. Will Richards for example, on Saturday, August 21, 1909 – having scored 33 in an easy win for St Stephen’s – walked ‘Alice’ home in the evening from the Castle, where the young and single of Nottingham gathered. ‘But she is very irritable as when I tell her of our afternoon’s success; she simply retorts, “swank”’ Will wrote in his diary. ‘Her object for behaving in this manner being I suppose to discourage my suit. Moral – stay away.’ Women – once you married them — did have their uses. Torquay club secretary W.H.Kitson at a dinner in August 1864 appealed to ladies to hold a bazaar to clear the club’s debt, as the men had agreed a new pavilion for £470 and a bowling alley for another £100 – thousands of pounds in 21 st century money. In other words, women would raise money that men had already spent. For a Renishaw Ironworks club ‘social’ in October 1907, men booked the vocalists, and six door-keepers, and resolved ‘that the refreshment table be left in the hands of Mrs Bond’, whose ‘cleaning, washing up etc’ costing three shillings had evidently been good enough at the previous event. Women cooked and washed clothes. That traditional and comfortable view – that men and women each had their place – did not match life. Some men were happy at home. If you wanted women like Mrs Bond to do work, you paid. Troublingly for some men, women had a sense of pride in their public work, and the brains to be ironic. In July 1990, a Mrs Tattersall of Paddock Cricket, Bowling and Athletics Club wrote in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner after a Huddersfield league man, Hedley Dawson, claimed that tea ladies were making matches overrun. He suggested special teas for umpires and scorers so that they could start play again after 20 minutes. ‘We give our Saturday afternoons up to provide this service free, which we at Paddock do not begrudge as we do it for the good name of our club. But beware Mr Dawson, another letter like this and I for one (after ten years) will be telling you and your officials what to do with your teas.’ She put the Mr Dawsons of this life in their place; men were wise not to take tea ladies –