Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

institution that nevertheless had a dubious reputation. Often speculation was no better than gambling, so members and outsiders frequently tried to recoup their losses with increasingly desperate risks and eventually went bankrupt. Despite the Commission’s trenchant criticisms, it eventually reached a classic Victorian laissez-faire conclusion: The Stock Exchange is a voluntary institution that … can hardly be interfered with by Parliament without losing that freedom of self-government which is the very life and soul of the institution. … So long as the Stock Exchange has the power of expelling one of its members without appeal or redress, it can be bound by no law which it does not choose to obey. A century and more later, little had changed. One of the Commission’s members complained about ‘the very easy admission of a great many young men from the West end of the town … who go and play lawn tennis and tell their friends “I can put you on to a good thing … ”.’ Recruitment was mostly from a narrow band of public school and university men, whose socially acceptable backgrounds were as important as any financial skills they may have had. They were just as likely to strike a deal at a country-house weekend or in a Mayfair drawing-room as in their offices. Many were also keen and celebrated sportsmen whose abilities were business assets, so Lucas’s reputation as a cricketer will have done him no harm, and may partly explain why in August he preferred to play for the Uppingham Rovers rather than Surrey. A public school and university sportsman with a socially acceptable background, he was in every way a typical Stock Exchange agent. In 1880 there were just over 2,000 members, but by 1908 there were 5,000, of whom 2,000 were jobbers. Since 1847 the London Stock Exchange had enforced a strict distinction between brokers and jobbers. The rule was designed to ensure fair and competitive pricing, by forcing the broker to deal through a jobber rather than quote his own price to the client. Brokers were approached by institutions or individuals wanting to buy stocks and shares, but could not buy and sell on their own account and made their money on commission. Jobbers could not deal directly with the public, but quoted a buying and selling price for securities, and made their income from the difference between the two. A crucial change came after 1880, when the invention of the telephone meant that overseas and provincial brokers were able to go straight to the jobber or broker of their choice, and the strict demarcation between the two began to break down. Lucas may have served a brief apprenticeship with another firm, but by 1881 he was working on his own account at 3 Copthall Buildings, five minutes walk from the Stock Exchange and, unsurprisingly, home to several similar businesses. At No.2 was S.S.Schultz, Lucas’s team-mate at Uppingham and Cambridge and on the Australian tour, who was the son of a Liverpool stockbroker. Even now the area of narrow, twisting alleyways has a slightly Dickensian feel, although the stock agents have gone. 70 Stock Exchange agent, 1880-1923