Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

14 lives identical witness of their fathers’ political convictions. 29 In his own cricketing career William Ewart signed his name as W.E.Astill and was known to colleagues and journalists as Ewart Astill, with the only exception that I have found being Patsy Hendren’s reference to him as Billy Astill. 30 In letters to a friend, however, he signs himself as both William and Bill, and in a postcard to an uncle as Ewart: 31 the abbreviations Bill and Billy were never used by the family according to his sister Kathleen. His birth was followed by that of five brothers, Ephraim Preston in 1892, Gordon in 1896, Lawson Owen in 1898, Maurice Howard in 1905 and John Reginald (‘Reg’) in 1906; and six sisters, Grace in 1894, Ida in 1900, Madeline Annie in 1902, Constance Agnes in 1909, Kathleen in 1911 and Margaret in 1913. 32 Their births were in Ratby up to 1900 and thereafter in Leicester. There still exists a photograph of all twelve children with their parents on the occasion of the wedding of Reg and Daisy Chadburn on 4 April 1929. 33 29 So also did a cousin of the cricketer, son of Ezra’s younger brother John Stinson Astill. (This William Ewart Astill, who worked for his father’s omnibus company and was a compulsive collector of old wirelesses, cameras and gramophone records, is the subject of a brief biography in the Ratby Record for April/May, 1979, by A.R.Tate, who mistakenly makes him the son rather than cousin of the cricketer.) 30 My Book of Cricket and Cricketers , p 121. In one letter to a younger friend he signed himself “Billy” in inverted commas. 31 See below, Chapter Nine. 32 There were two further children, still-born or dying before being named. 33 This was copied for me by Mrs Grace Briggs, daughter of Ezra’s brother John Stinson Astill and therefore a cousin of William Ewart. The County Club possesses a further photograph of a large family of two parents, six boys and six girls that was believed to be of the Astills, but I was assured by Mrs Briggs that such an identification is incorrect. The latter photograph is taken from a commercial postcard embossed on the front ‘W.J.Bull, Bridge Studio, Bourton on the Water’. Boyhood ‘Yours Sincerely Bill Astill’: Ewart signs himself ‘Bill’ in a letter to a friend, Eileen Miller.