Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

million in 2010 values. 15 He specified that the widowed Mary should continue to occupy Loseberry, and the 1891 census showed her ‘living on her own means’ there, with Eliza, two nieces and four housemaids. In 1893 Mary agreed that Eliza and Bunny should sell the property, for which they got £6,950 (£420,000 today). 16 In September 1890 the Venerable Albert Seymour, Archdeacon of Barnstaple, employed Percy to obtain £1,639 (£100,000 today) that was payable to him from a life insurance policy. 17 The following February, Percy admitted to receiving the money and claimed that he would invest it, but made a series of excuses and failed to do so. When the census was taken on 5 April 1891, he had decamped with his family to the Devonshire Hotel in Bournemouth. On 9 June he was adjudged bankrupt because he had absconded with the intention of defrauding his client. On 14 November the Law Society declared him guilty of gross professional misconduct and struck him off; another solicitor struck off on the same day for embezzling £1,000 was sentenced to seven years hard labour, so Percy had almost certainly fled the country or somehow managed to adopt a new identity. To squander his father’s professional and financial legacy in a mere six years, he must have been remarkably incompetent and extravagant, unless he was exceptionally unfortunate. Nothing more is known of him. Bunny played no cricket until late June, so it may well be that much of his time was taken up with trying to sort out the repercussions of his brother’s crime. As a devout Anglican, he would surely have been appalled by it, particularly as the victim of the fraud was a senior clergyman, to whom he may well have felt an obligation to make restitution. Percy’s wife Frances moved to Bedford, where her youngest daughter, Dorothy, was born early in 1892, so the unfortunate woman must have been pregnant while all this was going on. The 1901 census shows that she was still in Bedford, said to be a widow and ‘living on own means’. Most of the children were at private boarding schools, so it seems likely that Bunny and his mother and sister provided for them and Frances, and spent much of their considerable inheritance from Orton Lucas in doing so. His mother died in 1902, aged 86, and left only £1,518, which may be a reflection of the scandal over Percy. Bunny himself had no children so his will, made out in 1904, directed that, after his widow had died, his nine nieces and nephews should inherit the trust fund he set up for her. The Lucas family 15 15 All price comparisons from the currency converter at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency 16 National Archive CRES 38/2009. 17 The Times , 16 November 1891.