Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

On 17 June the court instructed the petitioner to supply, within seven days, details of dates, times, destinations of trains and class of carriage. Pattrick’s solicitor duly replied a week later, alleging that the adultery took place ‘amongst other times and places in first-class carriages [what else?] of trains arriving at Chelmsford at 6.03 pm, 7.47 pm and 8.41 pm, at Ingatestone at 5.09 pm and 6.36 pm, and at Liverpool Street at 11.45 am and 11.55 am.’ The only minor details he failed to supply were the dates on which all this was supposed to have happened, and any other supporting evidence to corroborate the allegations. Patiently, the court gave Pattrick and his solicitor a week to provide the information, and then an extension of a further week. Eventually they admitted that they could give no more particulars. Not surprisingly, on 10 August 1904 the court threw out the case and Pattrick was not awarded costs. It is hard to know what Pattrick hoped to achieve. In a society where the scales of justice were often weighted in favour of the upper classes, the court might well have thought of a gas engineer as a ‘rude mechanical,’ even though his was a skilled trade. He would have needed cast-iron evidence against a public school and Cambridge man, whereas in fact he had no case at all. Perhaps he thought that Lucas would be afraid of a scandal and settle out of court but, if so, he seriously misjudged his man. In 1911 Fanny was living at Sudbury in Middlesex with the four children while Charles was living on private means at a hotel in Lincolnshire, so they may well have been separated. What really happened between Lucas and Mrs Pattrick? Only they could know for certain. It was apparently a coincidence that Lucas made a will three months before the case came on, and left the bulk of his property to his wife. They had been married for nearly twenty years and, even though they had no children, there is no reason to suppose theirs was an unhappy marriage. Censuses sometimes suggest that couples were living apart like the Pattricks, but the Lucases were always together on census night. If he had been unfaithful to her, it would be out of character with all we know of him and he would surely have felt guilty about it. If there was nothing in the accusation, he would have found it deeply distressing, and a great relief when it was dismissed. Perhaps it was a Brief Encounter type of affair, in which two people were attracted to one another but kept a very English stiff upper lip in not doing much about it. Country house and club cricket At a time when first-class cricket did not always take precedence over other forms of the game, Lucas and many other leading amateurs, as we have seen, often preferred the more relaxed social atmosphere of country house cricket. In 1876 Lucas scored 30 and 77 for Uppingham Rovers against the Free Foresters and, perhaps as a result of this, he was invited to play for the Foresters. He made 53 in a seven-wicket win against Warnham Court near The man and the cricketer 78