Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

88 Tragedy August, when the amount remaining was £482, which was duly divided up with (to this writer’s eyes, a rather ungenerous) £20 to James McCluskey, £50 to Peter Grant junior, and £412 to the four Boys children. Earlier, the owner of the mill had paid compensation of £200 to the children and £100 to Dick Boys’ outstanding creditors; they also generously (?) waived his outstanding debt of £12 10s in rent. These sums probably ensured that the children did not have to struggle in their later lives, but it was hardly enough to make them rich. Whether because of the awful circumstances in which they lost their parents or for quite other reasons, Dick and Rebecca Boys’ four children remained close for the rest of their lives. In 1901 - all still single - they were sharing a house in Brougham Street, just north of what is now Burnley Central railway station. Five years later, still in Burnley, the second daughter, Eva, married John Alexander Galt, a Belfast man whose occupation at the time of his death in 1940 was given as ‘hardware merchant’. It seems the whole family then decamped to Belfast, for that is where Eva’s first (only?) daughter was born in 1907, and where we find the three other siblings in 1911, still living together under the same roof. As far as the available records show, none of these three ever married (Minnie certainly didn’t). Both Eva (in 1945) and Minnie (in 1953) died in Belfast; sadly I have been unable to trace any records of the later lives, or deaths, of Ada or Gilbert. Unlike their father, they seemed to have slipped away peacefully. One of the Boys in the band The second of our tragic Boys was John James Boys , cricketer, musician, and perhaps a bit of a rogue. Because he played three first-class cricket matches he isn’t one of the briefest of Brief Candles; but I trust that, given the coincidences both of surname and of tragic end that he shares with Dick Boys, readers will allow his inclusion here. All is calm at the junction of St James Street (foreground) and Calder Street today.