Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

85 Family Life and Decline 1880 to 1901 daughter, Lucie, had been born on 16 January 1875 at 8 Beaufort Street Liverpool, and she is listed as a scholar along with Samuel. The eldest three children were now working, John as a dock labourer, Kate as a shop assistant and Harry as a milk seller. And thereby hangs another of the little mysteries that keep intruding into this biography. In the early 1870s we find Jackson writing to his old pal, Richard Tinley, asking him for money, £15, to help him to buy a milk lorry. Jackson had begun to find himself in more straitened circumstances as the money he could earn from cricket dried up. It seems that Tinley may have sent the money as John Jackson is shown on Lucie’s 1875 birth certificate as a ‘provision dealer’, although by 1881 he had reverted on the census to being a professional cricketer, the only job he had ever known. He may also have bought the lorry out of the proceeds of his benefit match, of which more anon. It is perhaps too simplistic to regard Tinley as a generous benefactor. Letter from Jackson to Tinley asking for financial help. This may have been written by Henry Jackson who is described in the 1871 census return as a milk deliver seller.