Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

Chapter Twenty-Six A pension and a monument By 1867 Fuller’s health was deteriorating. He was no longer able to take an active role in the management of the Saracen’s Head Inn where his nephew William, as the licensed victualler, was running into financial difficulties, although he continued trading under their old ‘style’ as F. & W.Pilch. Fuller had been retained as groundsman at the St Lawrence Ground, but even that was now beyond him. The Kent Herald later reported that during the years 1867 and 1868 he was much affected by rheumatism and much of his work had to be done for him. It added: During the summer of 1868 a movement was made for a subscription to be entered into to give him a maintenance, but although it was taken in hand by several gentlemen, little result was made until in the Cricket Week some £40 was collected on the ground, and the Old Stagers added £10 from their fund. In the expectation that this subscription would be equalled by gifts from other friends in the ensuing year, one pound per week was paid to the veteran, which, with his frugal requirements, kept him in comfort; although the renewed subscriptions last year fell very short, and the fund therefore became entirely exhausted this spring. A few gentlemen guaranteed to co-operate with the Hon Secretary of the Beverley Club, and the stipend was accordingly kept up until his death. The award of a pension was agreed only just in time. In 1868 William had been arrested for debts of £698 20 and taken to Maidstone Gaol, but was released on 22 May 1869. The fall-out from the collapse of the Overend, Gurney bank in 1866, with liabilities of £11 million, had caused something of a panic in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Derby and Bristol, and triggered off a business downturn similar to the financial crisis of 2007. There was a minor recession between 1867 and 1869 and businesses everywhere were feeling the effects of the tightening of commercial credit, with many bankruptcies in the wine and beer trade. 21 A local factor referred to in William’s bankruptcy hearings was that farmers and butchers had previously put up overnight at the Saracen’s Head, but now travelled back and forth on the new London, Chatham, and Dover Railway which had opened in 1861. It was William’s bad luck that the new bankruptcy laws introduced in 1869, thanks largely to the campaign of Charles Dickens and the success of his novel ‘Little Dorrit’ in drawing attention to the iniquities of imprisonment for debt, came too late to save him from prison. 127 20 About £32,000 at 2010 prices. 21 In the week of William’s bankruptcy, the courts dealt with another 45 cases in the licensed trade.