Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

120 Blackheath, Nigeria and family days was a past colleague and fellow player from Cambridge and Mitchell’s tour to North America, the Rev. C.E.M.Wilson, who had played with Mitchell in the two Tests in South Africa under Lord Hawke’s leadership, and also briefly in the same Yorkshire team. Some of these men had known Mitchell for over forty years and would deeply mourn his loss. Around the grave boundary kerb in Charlton Cemetery is a simple inscription that gives no clue to the turbulent yet exciting life that Frank Mitchell had lived: ‘IN LOVING MEMORY OF FRANK MITCHELL WHO DIED 11 OCTOBER 1935 AGED 63. R.I.P.’ His entire estate was given a gross probate valuation of £187-7s-8d. Pelham Warner wrote the obituary for The Cricketer for which Frank Mitchell had written so often and for which magazine he had devoted so much of his energy. ‘... Frank Mitchell was a well-known figure at the Rectory Field, Blackheath, and at Lord’s which he held in great esteem. He was what Nyren would have called a ‘good face to face man’, and he was a sound and discerning judge of cricket and football and a staunch upholder of their spirit and traditions. In later years his health had not been good – he had a serious breakdown some eighteen months ago, but he seemed to have made a fair recovery, and with it came a gentler and mellower appreciation of men and matters. He was a staunch and loyal friend who could talk interestingly of the places he had seen and of the people he had met in those places – for he had lived a full life and travelled in many countries’. The chronicler of Second Slip for The Cricketer now became another Baronet, Sir Home Gordon. He was an Etonian and the 12 th holder of his title. He was a prolific writer on cricket though had never played the game The final resting place – Frank Mitchell’s grave in Charlton Cemetery.