Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

‘Country Vicar’ says that although one of the ‘key-men’, Lucas was ‘unable to make the journey’ in Bligh’s Cambridge- dominated side to Australia in 1882-3 to ‘recover The Ashes.’ This was almost certainly because he now had a living to earn. In 1884, perhaps as a result of his illness, Lucas went into partnership with Leonard H. Gramshaw, and in 1887, briefly, with Frederick W. Crookshank. Both were young men of about his age and, apparently by coincidence, the sons of general practitioners. For ten years from 1888 he worked alone and his firm was formally known as A.P.Lucas. The entry for his profession on the 1891 census says ‘stock agent jobber’ with ‘broker’ clearly crossed out, so evidently he preferred to maintain the distinction. From 1898 Lucas was listed as a partner in the firm of Booth Brothers at 77 Cornhill. When in 1904 Frank Booth left, Lucas and Horace Booth became senior partners and were joined by Arthur Warren Whitefield and Arthur Gastrell Dear. Lucas made his will in that year and appointed Dear as executor along with Herbert Whitfeld, the best man at his wedding and no relation to Whitefield. In 1907, the firm split with Lucas and Dear setting up A.P.Lucas and Co, and Booth and Whitefield establishing H.Booth and Co. This may have been related to a move by the Stock Exchange to revive the differentiation between brokers and jobbers, for their offices were only a few doors apart in Copthall Avenue. In 1906 Booth Brothers had installed the telephone, and the two firms continued to share the same telephone number, but by 1910 Horace Booth’s firm was no longer listed separately, and he joined A.P.Lucas and Co. In 1909 the Exchange formally re-imposed the artificial barrier between brokers and jobbers, resulting in a loss of flexibility which eroded its role as an efficient and competitive market. Sometimes, Stock Exchange firms entered into closer arrangements with the companies whose shares they sold, and were shown in the List of Members of the Stock Exchange as partners with them. Early in the 1900s Booth Brothers went into partnership with the Western Australian Land Company, which had been established in the 1840s to develop the new colony and had a reliable reputation as a sound investment. A decade later A.P.Lucas and Co entered into a similar partnership with a new company called the North-West Corporation, but there is some evidence that it was an error of judgment which clouded Lucas’s last years. On 12 September 1913 the company was floated on the Stock Exchange, with shares sold at a premium of 10% above the face value to give the impression that it was an Stock Exchange agent, 1880-1923 71 The young stock jobber in 1883.