Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

14 taking honours in English. At this point he was obliged to finish his education and take up paid employment for, as his brother Arthur wrote later: ‘my father could not afford to keep him at school ... as there were four other hungry boys, who had to be educated, clothed and fed’. There is no evidence of Lionel playing cricket while at Scotch College but when he left he was still too young to be selected for the first eleven and no details of younger cricketers survive. On leaving, Lionel joined the newly founded Defence Department of the State of Victoria. He soon tired of pen-pushing and found new employment as a clerk with the Melbourne stockbroking company of James Donaldson & Co. He would shortly marry Mary James on 12 March 1890 at St Jude’s Anglican church at Carlton in Victoria; she would bear him a son (named Lionel Wyndham), who did not survive infancy, and two daughters, Viola Murielle and Eirene Marguerite, the latter being known in the family as ‘Queenie’. 12 His father-in-law was T.R.James, who was head of the Telegraph Department of the Colony of Victoria for many years. 12 In 1889 (just prior to his marriage) Lionel had purchased a property in Melbourne, with the address of “Euroma”, 2 Beaconsfield Road, which was located in the suburb of Upper Hawthorn. As his younger siblings were still being educated, he was probably unable to receive a financial “leg-up” from his family and had to finance the purchase entirely off his own bat; it remains unclear how he retained ownership of the house when he was declared bankrupt. In March 1897 he transferred ownership of the house to his wife by a Deed of Settlement and she retained possession even after departing the state and the country before selling it to Lionel’s brother Frederick in 1906. The early life of Lionel Robinson Letter from Lionel to his parents 1897 showing his dutiful and loving nature as a son (courtesy of Michael Robinson)