Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

11 In 1884, in his late twenties and prime cricketing form, Walter has left the parental home and moved to his bachelor pad of Ashley Lodge prior to his marriage to Florence Wells the following year. 5 Florence was the daughter of Arthur and Jane Wells who resided at Mead Lodge and the wedding is covered in some detail in the pages of Cricket , even more so in the local newspaper. Without knowledge of the family background, it is all too easy to assume that this was a marriage into the landed gentry. In fact nothing could be further from the truth…The 1861 Census of Population reveals Arthur Wells as an India Rubber Ball Manufacturer; by 1871 he is a ‘warehouseman’ and ten years later, living in Erith in Kent, he describes himself as a ‘gentleman’, his elder son, Frederick, an Auctioneer and his younger son, Harry, now following in father’s footsteps as a warehouseman. Neither Jane nor Florence are working (Women didn’t if they didn’t need to - and obviously, they didn’t). The household was completed by a servant and a cook. Arthur Wells was a Victorian entrepreneur who cashed in on a developing industry and enhanced his wealth and social status as a result. India rubber was more than a niche market. In partnership with Walter Hall he was heavily involved in pioneering work in the embryo telecommunications industry, establishing a firm of telegraph wire makers which inter alia supplied the Universal Private Telegraph Company with patent india rubber insulated cores and contracted with the government to manufacture standard telegraph wire for the army and navy, insulated with india rubber to a quarter inch diameter and weighing 90lbs per mile. No longer balls for the playground, this was big business with a national market. For such a businessman, a dashing young international sportsman fitted the bill as an extremely suitable and appropriate son-in-law. The guest list contained some distinguished names. None of W W’s professional cricket colleagues seem to have attended – or if they did, their presence was insufficiently significant to merit a mention. MR WALTER READ, the well-known Surrey cricketer was married on Wednesday November 4, at the Parish Church, Reigate, to Miss Florence Wells, youngest daughter of Mr AWells of Mead Lodge, Reigate. Though the weather was miserable, with continuous rain throughout the day, there was a large Family Background 5 Surrey Mirror 26 April 1884