Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

84 Tragedy Of his style as a wicketkeeper we are told little, though on the occasion of his benefit in 1894 the local Burnley newspapers told us that he ‘for a great many years did excellent service in this capacity’ and that ‘his services behind the sticks were simply invaluable’. As a mark of his skill even when past his 45th birthday, we may note that he recorded nine stumpings over five (single-innings) Lancashire League matches between 11 August and 1 September 1894, twice in this period making three stumpings in a single innings. When not keeping wicket he sometimes turned his arm over, bowling ‘rather fast’ according to a report in the Burnley Express . He is twice recorded as taking seven wickets in an innings in second eleven matches; his best for the first eleven was four for 18 in ten four-ball overs against Bacup in July 1882. Bowling seems to have been a mid-career thing for him: he bowled little before 1873 or after 1884. He had a life away from cricket, of course. He married Rebecca Briggs, from the Brontë village of Haworth in Yorkshire, in 1870, and they had four children: daughters Ada (born 1871), Minnie (1876) and Eva (1879), and son Gilbert (1885). Cricket did not make him rich, not by a long chalk, but his reputation and character (‘cheerful in temperament, good hearted, and thoroughly straightforward in all his dealings’ - Burnley Express ) gave him good local standing. In 1891 an attempt to gain election to the town council (as a Liberal) was unsuccessful, but he sat on the local board of guardians (the local Poor Law administrators) for three years until resigning early in 1895. Dick Boys, like many another sportsman of the day, looked to sport as a means of earning a living. ‘A poor man he was, whose life from boyhood had been a hard struggle for the means to live’ ( Burnley Gazette ), and it was natural that he should look to diversify. During the peak of his playing career he opened a business as a hatter and sports outfitter in Standish Street, a crowded area close to the centre of Burnley. By 1891 the business and the family home had moved a little way south to 103 St James’s Street; separate newspaper advertisements a year or two later identify him as ‘The People’s Hatter’ (with a large quantity of cricket, tennis and cycle goods always in stock), and as a ‘Cricket and Football Outfitter’ selling full-size match bats for 3s 11d, match balls for 3s 3d - and, perhaps remembering the days when kid leather gloves gave his hands no protection at all - proper wicket-keeping gloves for 2s 6d. An attempt to enlarge the business by opening a shop in nearby Accrington apparently failed badly in 1894. The Gazette tells us that in that year ‘some of his business ventures ended in misfortune’, while the Express described him as ‘peculiarly unfortunate in his enterprises’; but the Gazette turns his unhappy business experiences of 1894 to advantage by pointing out that ‘in the midst of his troubles he never deserted his old club, and played at every available opportunity’. Whether because of these ‘troubles’ or not, late in 1894 he moved to a different address in St James’s Street: number 149, known as the Criterion, in a general area described by the Lancashire Evening Post as ‘a rather