Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

89 Beyond First-Class Cricket When Watson died the business was apparently carried on for a time by the Watson family. Even in 1924 a book published in distant Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on cricket in that country carried an advertisement for Alec Watson’s shop in Piccadilly, still offering a wide range of goods in cricket and other sports. Even as late as 1954 an ‘Alec Watson & Mitchell’s Ltd.’ cricket bat was on offer at a Jack Ikin benefit match in Blackpool. By then Watson’s sons would have been at or beyond retirement age, and Piccadilly Square was about to be redeveloped. What then do we know of the man himself? Certainly he seems to have been a family man. We have seen from the 1851 census that he had two brothers and two sisters. The 1881 census revealed that he now had a wife Annie, then aged 27, who had been born in the Hulme/Rushforth area of Manchester, and whom Alec had presumably met when he was professional to the Rusholme Club. They had three daughters, Frances aged 7, Rebecca 6, Catherine 2, and a son, George 4. Presumably the marriage had taken place around 1873, and they all now lived at Cricket Cottage, Stretford, apparently the building provided by Lancashire for its groundsman at Old Trafford; though Watson gives his occupation as professional cricketer. The census also gives his age as 34 – that is, born in 1846 – but again a badly written 6 on Alec’s part may have been read as a 4; not all Victorian writing was copperplate! However, as noted above, Watson may have been trying to conceal his real age for some reason. Was this the source of the confusion about his date of birth? Also the fact Rebecca seems to have been named after Watson’s mother and sister, and George after his brother, and the later Robert after his father, helped to establish to which family of Watsons in Coatbridge the cricketer belonged. The 1901 census shows them living at 518 Stretford Road, Stretford, Watson having left Cricket Cottage on giving up responsibility for the playing area at Old Trafford for life as a storekeeper. His wife’s name was now given as Ann, Frances was still living at home, as was George, whose occupation is given as athletic outfitter’s assistant – no doubt to his father. Rebecca and Catherine are not mentioned, but there are two more sons, Alexander Junior aged 17, who also seemed to have been an assistant to his father, Robert 10, and a daughter Mabel 13. Also resident with the Watsons at the time was their niece Letitia McCard, and two domestic servants, Mary Edwards 23 and Alice Edwards 13, presumably Mary’s sister. So the ‘athletic outfitters’