Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

78 Thomas qualified as a solicitor and remained in England living with his parents at Malton. According to the family website of Frank Mitchell’s wife, Theresa Kelly, his brother Herbert, was working in Johannesburg in 1902 and may have been in that city for some years beforehand. The youngest brother, Cecil Henry, did go to Australia as a very young man and in 1902 moved to South Africa, where Herbert got him a job as manager of the Bellsbank Estate at Barkly West. Mitchell would have discussed all of this with his mentor and county captain, Lord Hawke. Hawke knew Abe Bailey, of whom more below, and may also have known that Bailey was looking to employ men with British connections and with ability at sport. As it happens there was in England in 1901 a South African team financed by J.D.Logan which had embarked on an itinerary of 25 matches, including one against Yorkshire at Harrogate in early August. Both Lord Hawke and Frank Mitchell were playing in that match. Though this was Logan’s South African team, Phil Gilbank, the East Yorkshire historian and writer, understands that Abe Bailey was present at that match, that Hawke mentioned to Bailey that Mitchell was looking for work, and that over breakfast the following morning the offer of employment was made and accepted. An introduction would not have been specifically needed, for Mitchell had met Bailey on Lord Hawke’s most recent tour to South Africa in 1898/99. There was still time for a presentation to be made to Mitchell by Yorkshire CCC before he departed to South Africa. Abe Bailey, eight years older than Mitchell, was a son of a Yorkshire father and Scottish mother. He was born in 1864 at Cradock in South Africa but partially educated at Keighley Trade and Grammar (now Oakbank) School in Yorkshire, and then at Clewer School near Windsor. He started working life in London in the woollen industry at the age of 15, but by 1884 he was back in South Africa working in his father’s manufacturing emporium. He was not an employee for long. He saw for himself a future in the financial world, and in the attractions of investment in the new gold mines. By 1894, and now a stockbroker and financial agent, he had become head of his own group of mines and was fast establishing himself as one of the mining magnates of the Witwatersrand. He accumulated a vast income and became one of the richest – perhaps the richest – man in the Transvaal. His admiration for Cecil Rhodes also attracted him into politics so that when Rhodes died in 1902 Bailey succeeded him as Member for the Barkly West constituency in the Cape Town Parliament. Later he became the representative for Krugersdorp in the first Transvaal elections. He shared the imperial dreams of Cecil Rhodes, seeking to continue and develop a close connection between the white settlers in South Africa and the mother country of England. In 1911 Bailey was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, in recognition of his active role in the creation of the Union of South Africa. In 1916 his London home at Bryanston Square was used as a meeting place to secure the wartime transition of power from Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to David Lloyd George. In 1919 he Johannesburg 1901 - 1904