Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

An announcement eventually appeared in the London Gazette of 15 June 1869: William Pilch, late of the Saracen’s Head Inn, Burgate Street, Canterbury, Kent, licensed victualler, having been adjudged bankrupt by a Registrar attending at Maidstone Gaol, on the 19th day of May, 1869, and the adjudication being directed to be prosecuted at the Court of Bankruptcy, London aforesaid, a public sitting, for the said bankrupt to pass his Last Examination, and make application for his Discharge, will be held before Edward Holroyd, Esq., a Commissioner of the said Court, on the 9th day of July next, at the said Court, at Basinghall-street, in City of London, at two o’clock in the afternoon precisely, the day last aforesaid being the day limited for the said bankruptcy to surrender. Mr Peter Paget of 22 Basinghall-street, London, is the official Assignee, and Mr Hicklin, of Swan Street, Trinity Square, is the solicitor acting in the Bankruptcy. William evidently reached an understanding with his creditors and his petition for bankruptcy was granted, with his principal creditor being William Rideal, a wine merchant of Union Street, Southwark. He left the court to return to Canterbury and rejoin Fuller, Hephzibah and Alfred at 5 Lower Bridge Street. Frederick Gale wrote: ‘The last time I saw Fuller Pilch was a few months before his bankruptcy, which, I believe, killed him. The world did not prosper with him as it ought, and he was out of spirits, and got so excited about the old times that I had to drop the subject.’ It is not clear whether Gale had his facts wrong and believed that Fuller had indeed been made bankrupt himself, or whether he was describing Fuller’s natural distress at the prospect of William’s financial ruin which was, to all intents and purposes, his own. Whatever the case, it seems that Gale was right about one thing, Fuller had less than a year to live. Fuller Pilch passed away on Sunday, 1 May 1870, at Lower Bridge Street. The Herald reported: ‘Poor old Fuller’s gone! After an illness of about a fortnight, he died peacefully and without pain on Sunday afternoon last, attended in his last moments by his nephew and other members of his family.’ The paper also gave some clues that go some way to explain the reasons for his financial decline in the final years of his life: ‘it would indeed be a sour and mean disposition which could prompt ill-speaking of poor old Fuller now he’s gone. He certainly was not a shrewd businessman, but he was kindly, unselfish, and essentially manly – ready to help in his way anyone needing help, never giving offence, loath to take offence, but never permitting offence without rebuke.’ Whatever the circumstances, the news of Fuller’s death came as a shock to the residents of Canterbury and the rest of Kent. The Kentish Gazette printed an obituary notice which reviewed his career at Bury, Norwich, Town Malling and Canterbury, and confirmed that he had been ‘failing for some months’ but the immediate cause of his death was ‘dropsy’, an accumulation of fluid around the heart, which doctors would today record as congestive heart failure. 128 A pension and a monument