Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

M.J.K.Smith and Leslie Deakins from Warwickshire; Ronald Poulton from Nottinghamshire; players and directors from Leicester City F.C.: as well as representatives from the Leicestershire Golf Alliance. There were many floral tributes, including one from Denis Compton. In his address the minister, Rev O.C.Denslav, referred to Maurice’s honesty, sportsmanship and friendliness: ‘Seventy years were described as the allotted span of man’s life, but some people put more service and attained more character in much less than that time.’ People came out of their houses and lined the streets to show their respects as the funeral procession left his house on Winchester Road, past the cricket ground and to the Baptist chapel on Church Street. Many present wept openly, a rarity in those times, and many more sympathisers lined part of the route to the cemetery, situated on the Foston Road, and within a stone’s throw of the school he attended as a small boy. He was interred in the same grave as his father, with its inscription ‘One day, we will understand’. Many years later, his beloved wife’s ashes were interred with them. Final days 119 The Tompkin family home in Countesthorpe, pictured in 2010. Maurice lived here at the time of his death in 1956.