Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

11 India, Jersey and Edinburgh rather later by Lily, Hex’s widow, to her sister-in-law after his death, where she says turning to Hesketh’s youth – he lived with his great-grandparents until he was 15 – they were well off. Mrs P had £140. While H was at his private school his fees came to £120, so there was literally nothing to spare and the [grandparents] thought the mention of money infra dig and never realised how short Mrs P and H were. When they died Mrs P had £240 a year. Hesketh’s scholarship covered all school expenses – but the extras in clothes and subs were very small compared, and no journeys because she went to live in Edinburgh so with no other children and everything so much cheaper – she loved so much. 5 In 1880, when he was three, Hesketh got his first cricket bat, and Kate says ‘he would play at “tittit” with steady interest while I or someone else bowled to him with a woollen ball.’ The 1881 census shows them living at 35 Lancaster Road, Kensington. The head of the household was Peter O’Brien, aged 74, by occupation Bengal Army surgeon (retired) born in Ireland. Kate is shown as Kate O’Brien Pritchard [sic] and as Peter’s grand-daughter. Her occupation is shown as ‘annuitant’ and she had been born in India. As she would have had no Army pension, this was presumably an annuity from her father. In 1881 her father was briefly in England, but there is no evidence that they met up, and although she used the name of her maternal grandfather, she never used the name ‘Ryall’. However there was some contact – Kate mentions in 1883 that her father had sent Hex a little dog. The household included another grandson, Peter, 18, at Balliol College, Oxford, and four servants including Hex’s nursemaid, Jane Minnie Purvis, aged 19. Shortly after this, in autumn 1881, the entire household moved to Jersey ‘for the winter’, for the benefit of Peter O’Brien’s health, though the move turned out to be permanent. Initially they stayed in St Helier, but then moved to Gorey at a house called Almorah. In March 1882 Peter O’Brien died and they returned for a while to London, but in the autumn returned more permanently to Jersey. Life there seems to have been idyllic, and once he was old enough Hex started at a day school in Gorey. In 1884 he saw his first cricket match, at Victoria College, and Parker says that although he knew nobody who played the game ‘he returned to Almorah to practise bowling in the garden.’ Kate says that ‘he put up wickets in the garden, and used to bowl patiently hour after hour.’ In the early summer of 1885 Kate and Hex went for a month to stay with Hex’s uncle Charles Prichard, who by then was a vicar in Leicestershire. Kate then decided that he should go to school in England, and Charles recommended a school at Rugby run by a friend of his, one Mr Lea. Kate says he was a ‘righteous’, practical but prejudiced man. Kate took lodgings 5 Letter from Lady Elizabeth Hesketh-Prichard to Violet Grimston, 1922, held at Hertfordshire Archives.