Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

80 Cricket and Class up to 1914 proved to be a significant aspect of progressive local government and, in that they were made readily available for sport, they became the major contribution of municipal beneficence to the growth of cricket. This was the more especially so in that it allowed for the onset of less wealthy, by that token, more working-class orientated clubs. For example, many church-based clubs would have found it impossible to find the cost of a cricket ground at urban land values, plus the cash for the laying out and upkeep of the ground. The feasibility of renting a park pitch, ready mown and rolled, for a few hours’ cricket opened the way for dozens more cricket clubs to flourish. Park cricket would continue to compose a marked segment of the recreational game for many years. As the nation evolved into a more rational society withmore bureaucratised practices, planned structures and well-defined mechanics in all parts of the community, the two salient and rapidly expanding classes appeared to find a similar definiteness in their own separate characterisation. It was more complex than the ancient lord of the manor and serf kind of relationship wherein master and servant were identified as high and low opposites. As the 19 th century wore on, and although the superior/inferior mirroring did not vanish, these two classes adopted a much more knowing self-awareness. There was a growing consciousness of what it intrinsically meant to be a class member irrespective of relativity to other classes. Anthony Trollope delineated the Victorian ‘gentleman’ with masterful craft and precision. ‘The one great line of demarcation in the world’, he wrote, ‘was that which separated gentlemen from non-gentlemen.’ There were codes that were instinctively de-cyphered. They touched on dress, gesture, patterns of speech, social and other tastes and a whole series of reference points by which one gentleman recognised another. In Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) the impoverished Josiah Crawley, Vicar of St Ewold’s is embarrassed by his lack of money when discussing the marriage of his daughter to the son of the wealthy Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly. The Archdeacon sought to put him at his ease. ‘’We stand’, said he, ‘on the one level ground on which such men can meet each other. We are both gentlemen.’’ As the 20 th century dawned, about 9.5m fell into the category of gentlemen and their families living in their, increasingly, suburban homes. Some earned no more than £150 per annum but the majority had yearly salaries of between £300 and £500 and were able to afford the £30 or £40 rentals for a small house in the environs of London. Having domestic servants was one much sought after criterion of gentlemanliness and ladylikeness. According to the wise Mrs Isabella Beeton’s Household Management , first published in 1861 but with lots of editions long after her early death, those on an income of £1000 might hope to hire five servants and those on £200 one servant and maybe a part-timer. Even Josiah Crawley had one servant as did the insolvent Mr Micawber, namely, ‘a’ Orfling’ from St Luke’s Workhouse. Some 300,000 of these gentlemanly breadwinners were in the church, medical, legal and administrative professions, 150,000 in banking and 200,000 in education but with a huge number, no less than