Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

107 Chapter Twelve Bout-du-Monde On 13 July 1912 the Gentlemen v Players match at The Oval was drifting to a draw. Between 3.50 and 4.10 play was suspended and the flags lowered to half-mast. At Giggs Hill Green, too, Thames Ditton’s club match was adjourned for half an hour as his former friends and colleagues paid their respects, the time deliberately chosen to coincide with that when Tom Richardson’s coffin would reach Richmond cemetery, having left the Catholic church at the Vineyard an hour before. Eleven days earlier, his body had been discovered in open country in the foothills of the French Alps. It was a tragic and premature death. For some time it was considered to be suicide. There is, however, no evidence for this beyond phrases such as ‘tragic end’ 254 and ‘in such tragic circumstances’. 255 It seems too much has been read between the lines; any death at a premature age may be regarded as ‘tragic’, the more so when it is that of a fine professional athlete, gone to seed and overweight at the age of 41. Research undertaken by the late Ralph Barker and described in part of his book 256 and an article 257 seems to have exploded that myth. Richardson was staying at the time at Aix-les-Bains, famous for its sulphur baths attracting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries genuine patients, hypochondriacs and ‘a rabble of nobilities, big and little, here all the time, and often a king or two, but as these behave quite nicely and keep themselves to themselves, they are little or no annoyance’. 258 Queen Victoria was an earlier visitor under the pseudonym of ‘Countess of Balmoral’. 259 In addition, the town stood second in France only to Monte Carlo in the number of visitors there for the attractions of the casino. It epitomised the belle époque of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nearest English equivalents then and now would be Cheltenham and Harrogate. Some hotels had their own spas and baths; patients staying elsewhere who were incapable of walking or unwilling to do so were transported in a sort of sedan chair to the public establishments. You see nothing of the patient in this diving-bell as the bearers tramp 254 Daily Mail 4 July 1912, Mitcham Advertiser 12 July 1912, Wisden 1913 p 195 255 Mitcham Advertiser 19 July 1912 256 Ten Great Bowlers pp 124-126 257 Cricketer 1966 [pp30-31] 258 Daily Tribune, Chicago 8 November 1891: Mark Twain Travel Letters 259 Aix-les-Bains Tourist Guide website