Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

97 in Aylesbury before becoming manageress of the refreshment room at Kingston upon Thames railway station, then Tom’s ‘housekeeper’. 230 She was very evidently more than that. Housekeepers are not as a general rule major beneficiaries or appointed to be guardians of the testator’s children. Newspapers at the time were not intrusive into sportsmen’s private lives and no evidence has been found as to whether Emily was the cause or the result of Tom’s break with Edith. Marital break-ups, mistresses and repartnering are now the bread and butter of tabloid journalism, but there was no mobile phone hacking in those days. One of Tom’s executors was William Strutt-Cavell, a ‘sporting reporter’, to whom Albert Craig was to dedicate a poem and who, four years later was to make most of Richardson’s funeral arrangements. In the grant of probate, he is described in Gilbert and Sullivan terms as ‘(in the will called ‘Will’)’. The other executor was Percival Coles who played a little first-class cricket with Sussex and Oxford University and played for three years in the Oxford University rugby XV, the last of them as captain. He was a founder member of the Barbarians and the first paid Secretary of the Rugby Football Union. 231 It is not clear how or where he might have crossed paths with Richardson. It was probably in the Prince’s Head . It is not a million miles from Twickenham. Both executors are described as ‘friends’. In July 1909, with the death of Albert Craig, Surrey lost one of its keenest supporters and admirers. His funeral on 12 July was attended by club officials and by eleven past and present players, including TomRichardson. Ironically it was three years almost to the day before Tom’s own funeral. Still a name in cricketing circles, although no longer active, Tom appeared once again in Wisden in 1910, outside the record pages, extolling the virtues of Dr Williams’ Pink Pills. 230 Censuses of Population 1891, 1901 and 1911 231 Wikipedia The Twilight’s Last Gleaming