Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

of ‘the Bloomsbury Group’, the other ‘George Duckworth’ title-holder sounds a bit mundane among the Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Thoby Stephen and Lady Ottoline Morrell brand of names. In Warrington, ‘George Duckworth’ sounds spot on. Wigan-born George Formby, whose life-cycle of 1904-1961 is close to George Duckworth’s in length as well as period, was a contemporary who gave the forename a profound Lancastrian resonance, while, like the borrowed ‘Formby’ styling, the surname, too, speaks of broad vowels and ample spirits. The two Georges rivalled each other in displays of infectious optimism, and the one was as nimble as a stumper as the other was insouciant as a ukulele strummer. Of course, George Duckworth came, so to speak, to inhabit his name and give it the down-to-earth, jovial character that his admirers associated with the name, but he could have shopped around for years to find a pseudonym that would have matched the original. As it happens, there was a tradition of having a ‘George’ in the Lancashire professionals’ dressing room. ‘George’ was something of a whipping-boy, if only in self-visualisation, the one who received the unplayable ball or the duff decision or was burdened – ‘Let George do it’ was the title of a 1940 Formby film - with the difficult task. The lugubrious Winston Place was ‘George’ incarnate, having inherited the title from the composed and laconic figure of Ernest Tyldesley (whose first name was George), and he famously bequeathed the sobriquet to the nonpareil Brian Statham. It makes for a pleasing little lineage. George Duckworth was the son of Arthur James Duckworth. His mother was Elizabeth Duckworth, formerly Wright, and she delivered him safely at home at 17 Selby Street, Warrington. Their home was in traditional working class territory in the very centre of the town, adjacent to Warrington General Hospital and some of Warrington’s gaunt manufactories Arthur Duckworth had been born in 1875, one of the three children of James Duckworth, whose family hailed from the Rossendale Valley, whence he had come to Warrington during and probably because of the Cotton Famine of the 1860s. He found employment as a clerk at the Rylands wire works and as a part-time book-keeper at the Greenall Whitley breweries, whilst he used the front room of his house in Napier Street as a shop, selling, among other commodities, black stockings to factory girls. He also had a pedlar’s certificate. The whole forms a significant picture of The Background 5