Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

116 Blackheath, Nigeria and family days Immediately after thewar, the opportunities for developing Port Harcourt in Nigeria, and expanding that country’s rail network improved dramatically. This would all have been to the benefit of the mining industry. So in 1921 Mitchell became a director, and in 1922 chairman, of the Nigerian Base Metals Corporation Ltd [NBMC] with a registered office in Finsbury Pavement House, Moorgate London EC2. This Company, incorporated in January 1920, had an initial share capital of £70,000 and was formed to take over the assets and liabilities of the Kwall Tin Field of Nigeria, a company that had been created in 1912. In essence the NBMC took mining leases over an increasing number of acres in the following ten years. It also took exclusive prospecting licences and certain water rights all in Northern Nigeria. It further acquired rights to mine for silver lead around the New Cross River within the Ogogja Province of Southern Nigeria. There is a box file in the National Archives for the activities of various companies in 1924 that show a reduction in the capital of NBMC being sought and approved in the High Court. Curiously, in that box is a file relating to the liquidation of the Philip Mead Bat Making Company Ltd., and to the liquidator’s efforts to sell vast quantities of bats and hockey sticks. Within the Mead file is a note relating to the similar business of Frank Sugg that had collapsed. In the early 1920s times were hard for many businesses at a time when the euphoria of peace had long evaporated. A brief report in an Aberdeen newspaper in September 1925 suggested that Mitchell’s old employer, Sir Abe Bailey, had some interest in NBMC. That might explain Mitchell’s own involvement in mining, as might his previous employment in stockbroking when he may have taken a particular interest in mining shares. However, Bailey was never named at any time as a Director of NBMC, though he appears as a director of many others in the region. Mitchell might too have received some encouragement from a famous amateur cricketer, Lord Harris, who had been chairman of the Gold Coast Amalgamated Mines Ltd since 1898. However, this is all conjecture. Mitchell remained chairman of the NBMC until 1926 and was a director up to 1929. From the Colonial Office’s annual report on Nigeria for 1927, it is possible to understand how capital expenditure could absorb possible profits that might otherwise have been available for dividends: ‘ The enterprising lead given by the Keffi Consolidated Tin Company Ltd, who were responsible for the introduction of the first steam-shovel into Nigeria, has been followed by others, and it is of interest to note that one such shovel erected by the Nigerian Base Metals Corporation Limited, is the largest of its kind and is capable of removing overburden at a remarkable rate. Drag line excavators are also being utilised on ground suitable for their purpose.’ The NBMC was of sufficient size for its AGM in January 1928 to attract particular press attention in the Glasgow Herald. No dividends had been paid to investors up to that time because of the cost of land and plant but with another chairman in place of Frank Mitchell and a change of management there were hopes for a 10% interim dividend in 1928, and such a dividend was paid. The chairman said that investors ‘ had to look to the future for their reward’. At its peak in late 1928 NBMC held mining