Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

59 the ranks of the other professional cadres. Contemporary scholars noted a distinction as between the lower and upper middle classes. The lower sector class segment was formally recognised in the 1850s; having identified that nether section, then, perforce, there had to be a corresponding higher group. This division was made necessary because of a surprisingly wide spectrum of income. What was even more amazing was the numerical differential. The middle classes had grown enormously because of the prodigious call in a dominantly urban and mercantile economy for what would later be called white collar workers such as clerks. 2m of the roughly 4.8m in the middle classes were actually earners, the rest being mainly wives, children and other dependents. Of these 2m only 200,000 could be described as ‘upper’, leaving the huge majority of 1.8m in the ‘lower’ bracket. In brief, the former earned £300 annually or more rising to an affluent 7500 men with over £5000. The latter, who came on the continent to be described as the petit bourgeoisie were composed almost equally between those whose income was £100 to £300 and those who earned less than £100. The flood of members into the bottom columns of the middle classes goes some way to explaining the comparative easiness of class relationships in Victorian Britain. The novels of Charles Dickens are awash with a stream of such underpaid minions, legal and accounting clerks scratching away at ledgers on high stools in musty offices: Newman Noggs, Tim Linkinwater, Mr Wemmick, Mr Flintwich, Mr Guppy...the roster is endless – and we even know that Bob Crachitt’s pre-redemption income was 15s a week. On what the Americans would call the other side of the tracks, there were in 1867 close on 8 million manual workers. Their range of wages was from 12s (60p) a week (£30 a year) for the unskilled to 35s (£1.75p) a week (£88 a year) for the million strong band of skilled workers. During the preceding twenty years wages in the United Kingdom had jumped in real terms by 32%. For purposes of real-life comparison, the weekly wage for sample trades was soldiers, 12s; farm workers, 14s; railwaymen, postmen, miners and textile workers, 21/23s; blacksmiths and, perhaps surprisingly, seamen, 25s, and the aristocrats of the working classes, engine drivers and skilled building artisans, 35s. As regularised county cricket became established in the last decades of the 19 th century, the basic cricketer’s weekly wage was comprised of a guaranteed ground staff payment of £2 or £3 plus a winter retainer of 10s or £1. This was fleshed out with appearance money of usually £5 for a home and £6 for an away fixture, with the possibility a win bonus, normally £1. Talent money, occasional collections and, with ten years obedient service the common criterion, a possible benefit match were additional to this. This complex scale produced a wide differential, ranging from 30s to £8 a week, as averaged over a year. An aspect of the differential was, of course, the gap between the richer and poorer counties. As a rare extra, there was £10 for representative games, such as Test or Gentlemen and Players matches. 4 The Working Class Cricketer