Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

9 India, Jersey and Edinburgh as possible, spending his time riding, swimming, shooting and sailing. At sixteen he went to stay with his eldest brother Charlie, who suggested that if he was going into the Army as an officer he needed to get some work in. He did, and passed into Sandhurst. He had also become a fine fencer and won the foil competition three times running. In 1871 the census shows that Broderick, after Sandhurst, was living with his aunt, Theodosia Prichard, at Yatton in Somerset. She was an independent lady of 53, born, like her brother Charles, at Trichinopoly. Also in the household was a lady visitor of 22 (Catherine S.B.Willis) and two servants, a parlourmaid and a cook. Theodosia had been living there in 1861, but not apparently in previous censuses, and was still there in 1881 and 1891. Broderick would have been at this time waiting for a posting. So where were his parents? There is no obvious answer – in 1871 there is no sign of them in that year’s census, though from Kate’s account they might have been living ‘somewhere on the South Coast’ but certainly by 1881 Charles was retired and living in Hastings, a widower, with several unmarried daughters and another son, Arthur, born in England in 1874. Anne had died in Hastings just a few months earlier. Charles was now at 2 Victoria Road, a substantial and respectable middle-class semi. Broderick had joined the Army, and seemed to be on the way to a glittering military career. He had passed out third at Sandhurst, and was six feet six inches tall and immensely strong. He went out to India in October 1871 to join the King’s Own Borderers. On 16 July 1872 the London Gazette announced Hesketh Broderick Prichard’s appointment as a lieutenant in the 25th Foot – this being one of the new non-saleable commissions introduced by Cardwell’s army reforms in 1871. 4 The 25th Foot had been in India since 1868. There are references in his obituaries to the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, but the regimental website says that the 25th Foot did not become the KOSB until 1887 – they were at this time the King’s Own Borderers according to their own website. Again it says that the second battalion left India in 1875. The Morning Post for 3 February 1875 shows him still with the 25th Foot, appointed a probationer for the Indian Staff Corps, which is why he was still in India after the regiment left for Aden. India Office records show that he was shown as a lieutenant in the ‘Ben SC’, which is presumably Bengal Staff Corps. In 1875 Broderick went to Jhansi, about 70 miles south of Gwalior, and joined the 24th Punjab, where he impressed his Afghani troops by beating them at throwing the hammer, apparently an important cultural activity. There is no evidence of him playing cricket though, nor any mention of cricket at Jhansi in the histories. There would probably have been a cricket ground, as ever since Wellington’s time a cricket ground had been part of every British military base. There is a ground in Jhansi today – the 4 Before that officers purchased their commissions, so ensuring that only the wealthy could be army officers. Britain was the last country in Europe to abolish the sale and purchase of commissions.