Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

61 House Hotel in Union Square. After eleven long days at sea, nobody needed to be asked twice. The Everett House was a hotel built in the grandest style in 1848, and was the Prince of Wales’ hostelry of choice when, in 1860, his mother, Queen Victoria, sent him on a goodwill mission to the American colonies at the tender age of 18. It was certainly well situated, being right in the heart of New York’s commercial district, at the intersection of Broadway and Bowery Road (now Fourth Avenue), and with several horse-drawn tram lines running through it. The centrepiece of the Square was a bronze statue of George Washington on horseback, erected in 1856. It was so fashionable by 1870 that Tiffany’s moved their premises there from Broadway, and an indicator of its political significance was its use as the site of the first Labor Day parade in 1882. If Edgar’s men had fallen on their feet, British and Irish immigrants would undoubtedly not have been so lucky. New York was by now a bustling metropolis of just over a million souls, many of whom were inevitably exposed to the extremes that any big city had to offer. In his book The Secrets of the Great City , published in the same year, Edward Winslow Martin described this very modern problem: Strangers coming to New York are struck with the fact that there are but two classes in the city – the poor and the rich. The middle class, which is so numerous in other cities, hardly exists at all here … leave Broadway opposite the New York Hospital, and pass down Pearl Street in an easterly direction. Five minutes walking will bring you to the abode of poverty and suffering, a locality which contrasts strangely with the elegant thoroughfare we have just left … in a few minutes you will see that blessed beacon of light in this great sea of human misery and sin, the ‘Five Points Mission.’ You are now fairly in the heart of the Five Points district. It is a horrible place, and you shudder as you look at it. The streets are dark and narrow, the dwellings are foul and gloomy, and seem filled with mystery and crime. We can be sure that the England party, only too familiar with such sights in all the major cities back home, were kept strictly on the tourist trail for the duration of their trip. They were, after all, here to play cricket, not change the world. Just three years after the end of the Civil War – an event handily summarised by Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum as ‘North wins; slavery is bad’ – cricket in America was in dire need of a boost. Captain of England