Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

8 but Katherine had by then been sent home to stay with her paternal grandmother Catherine at Stradbally. Browne Ryall, promoted to Captain in 1858, was significantly involved in the fighting and recommended for a Victoria Cross, a brand new decoration only introduced in 1856, following the Battle of Banda in that year. He was presumably also involved in the Battle of Gwalior later that year which saw the death of the Rani of Jhansi, a charismatic leader to whom the rebels looked, and whose death essentially signalled the end of the insurrection. 3 Once the insurrection was over, Katherine was brought back to India. Browne Ryall, following a brief second marriage and the burial of another wife, married for a third time to Elizabeth Hill on 12 April 1859 and between 1860 and 1871 had six children by her. It seems reasonable to suppose that he had his hands full with his new family and that Katherine was mainly looked after by her grandparents. Browne Ryall, the ultimate career officer, was to spend 38 years in the Army in Bengal, rising to the rank of Major-General on his retirement in 1881, being raised to that rank when he had already been sent home on sick leave. The 1881 census shows him, still a colonel, living with his brother-in-law at 17 Tavistock Road, Marylebone, but not with his third wife Elizabeth or their children, who were presumably still in India hoping for his return. He was waiting for a verdict on his health, and eventually emigrated to Australia with his wife and her daughters. On the Prichard side of the family, Hesketh Broderick was the fourth child of Charles Edward Prichard, who was born in Trichinopoly, India, which suggests that Charles’ father too must have worked for the East India Company. Charles was born in 1816: by 1851 he was living in Hereford with his Irish-born wife, Anne (born in 1822), and four small children, the youngest – just a month old – being Hesketh Broderick. (The Brodricks, no ‘e’, were a related Irish family and Anne was the granddaughter of Viscount Middleton who had been Lord High Chancellor of Ireland.) In 1851 the Prichards were living in Holland House in the St Martin district of the city and had four live-in servants, suggesting affluence. Charles was a solicitor with a comfortable lifestyle. But the family gene for roving seems to have taken over. In 1861 (in the census again, and named as ‘Pritchard’) the family was back in Hereford at 68 Widemarsh Street, no longer there, with four more daughters – three of them born in Christchurch, New Zealand and the other in Melbourne – born between 1852 and 1860. In 1851 they had four servants living in: in 1861 they had just the one. It certainly looks as though the antipodes did not make their fortune. So Broderick had been involved in travelling to New Zealand and back when still young. Kate adds to this account that Charles went out to New Zealand and settled at Christchurch, though they only stayed three to four years. On return the young Broderick is said to have avoided lessons as much 3 The Rani’s name is commemorated in the trophy for the Indian women’s zonal cricket tournament. India, Jersey and Edinburgh