Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

6 Chapter One Jackson’s Birth and Early Life It is generally agreed that John Jackson was born on 21st May 1833 at the Suffolk town of Bungay. I say ‘generally’, because when John Jackson died in Liverpool in November 1901, the death certificate issued by the local coroner gave his age as 74 which would suggest that he was born in 1827. Census returns throw little light on the matter. In the 1871 census his age is recorded as 36 which would make his date of birth sometime in 1835; in 1881 he was shown as being 45 years old suggesting a birthday in 1836. By 1891 he had aged another 13 years in a ten year period and was 58 which agrees with his 1833 date of birth. The records of the Brownlow Hill workhouse in Liverpool, where Jackson was to spend much of his final years and in whose infirmary his death occurred, do not help very much as they record Jackson’s age on committal as being between 68 and 72, thus adding to the confusion. I am not at all sure that Jackson was very clear at any stage how old he actually was or where he was born. He always insisted that he was a Nottinghamshire man, born in the Ollerton district of Nottingham. John Jackson’s parentage is another, so far, unresolved mystery. It has not been possible to trace a birth certificate for Jackson. His marriage certificate in 1857 gives his father’s name as John, with the occupation of ‘hatter’. His mother was undoubtedly one Margaret Jackson, a gypsy lady born in Ireland, who continued to live with her son until her death in Liverpool in the 1870s. But rumours persist, so far unsubstantiated, that Jackson was the ‘love child’ of an English lord and a gypsy. The link has not been proven, but what is certain, and may well be significant, is that John and his family were rehoused at Wellow in Nottinghamshire within a week of his birth. Wellow was near Rufford Abbey and was part of Lord Savile’s estate. The cricketer himself often hinted that he had noble blood in his veins. It may have been thought politic to move the child to another part of the country before any similarities between his features and those of one of the local noblemen became too apparent. It might well have been that there was some sort of private income to tide the family over until Jackson’s cricket career took off. The census returns of 1841 and 1851 are of no help as neither Jackson nor his mother appear on either. It is all conjecture, but it might explain how the Jackson family survived on little income. Jackson’s parents were both gypsies well used to the travelling life, a fact that John may have inherited which would have been useful to him in the role of an itinerant cricketer. He was an only child. The little family lived in humble circumstances in a cottage in Wellow with little prospect of