Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

Foster’s next court appearance was on 26 September at Southend Quarter Sessions. He changed his plea to ‘Guilty’ through counsel. Mr George Pollock, for Foster, said that in his day Foster had been a great cricketer, but his head had been turned by admiration. His mother, on her death, had left an estate worth £300,000, of which Foster’s share had been approximately £7,000 per annum. Foster was reported to have been receiving £150 a month, which sounds an unlikely sum. ‘Money flowed from him like water in a brook.’ He acquired a number of so-called friends, of whom a better description would have been ‘spongers’. Mr Pollock said Foster clearly needed protection because he had become a nuisance to people. The sum involved here had been £115 9s 6d, of which practically the whole amount had been paid back by the trustees of his mother’s estate. After hearing medical evidence, the Recorder announced he was placing Foster on twelve months probation on condition that he became a voluntary hospital patient. It was stated that Foster, ‘grey bearded but upright’ bowed to the Recorder as he consented to the discharge conditions. So Foster was escorted to St Andrew’s Psychiatric Hospital in Northampton and he is not known to have left until his death nearly eight years later. His record card, but no file, survives to this day. This states merely that he was ‘a psychopath’; no medical training was needed for that diagnosis. The cloudy days of autumn and of winter 113