Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

27 Never a run to dispel any idea that he was no more than a man for whom misfortune struck twice on the single occasion when selected by his county. For he had many interests away from the cricket field, professional and personal. First and foremost he was a family man. He married Mollie Doreen Appleyard, the daughter of a master boat builder in Ely, in 1931, and they had two children - son Richard and daughter Sarah. Grandchildren arrived in the next generation, but sadly Harry had passed away by then. His widow lived on into her 90s, before dying in Peterborough in May 2000. We have already noted that Harry’s father was an optician; as the 1911 census tells us, he was also a spectacle-maker. He opened an optician’s shop at number 29a Long Causeway - Peterborough’s principal shopping street - in the early years of the 20th century, and it remained at that address for the next 50 years. In due course, Harry junior followed his father into the same profession. After leaving The King’s School at the age of 18, he continued his education at the Northampton Institute in London (now part of City University) 16 , where a technical optics department had been established 20 years previously. His training was completed in 1930 with the passing of the relevant examinations of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers, and his admission, on 31 March 1930, to the Freedom of that Company. This entitled him to become, if he so wished, a Freeman of the City of London. Harry’s father (I expect he was known as George, but I don’t know this for certain, and so I will keep referring to him in these terms) did indeed obtain his City Freedom, in 1915, but there is no record of Harry himself doing so. Perhaps his aspirations did not extend too far beyond wishing to remain a highly competent ‘high street optician’ in the provinces. Having qualified, Harry joined his father in the shop in Long Causeway, and eventually took on the business for himself. In 1940, for the first time local directories name the shop as ‘G.H.Wilson and Son’. Harry’s father was eventually to outlive his son by over six years, but by 1940 he was already in his mid-60s, and we may presume that it was round about this date that Harry junior became the principal of the practice. And in due course the only member of it: his daughter has told me that he was a ‘sole practitioner’. The optician’s business brought a degree of comfort to two generations of Wilsons. Their eventual estates were each valued at well into five figures, and Harry’s and his father’s homes were both in pleasant suburban locations within easy walking distance of their shop. Harry had many interests as well as his family and the business of making a living. At school he was captain of football as well as of cricket, and he was later remembered as a distinguished athlete 17 . After school he carried on his football for a while with Peterborough Thursday, one of the leading local amateur sides. Although his football career does not seem 16 The institute took its name from the Marquess of Northampton, who bequeathed the land on which it was built, and had no more direct connection with Peterborough’s geographical county town. 17 The Petriburgian , summer 1953.