Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

93 Tragedy missing several RA matches in that year. Woolwich Barracks is only a mile or so west of Plumstead, where lived a young lady called Susan Annie McKay, usually though not invariably known by her second forename. In 1883 she was only 18 (she was born, to a Scottish father and Stepney- born mother, in Plumstead on Christmas Day 1864), living at 39 Pattison Road as a servant in the house of Charles and Jane Carter. How she met Musician Boys we do not know, but they became engaged, and named the day for Wednesday, 1 August 1883, with the ceremony to be at St Margaret’s Church in Plumstead. Ever the rebel, John did not seek the necessary permission from his military superiors to be married; but that wasn’t going to stop him. A house had already been furnished for the couple, and on 31 July John spent the evening at the house of Susan and her parents, no doubt helping to prepare the wedding breakfast ahead of the ceremony at 10am the following morning. The ceremony never happened, for John Boys died on the morning of the day when they were to be married. Detailed reports in the Woolwich Gazette and Jackson’s Woolwich Journal 66 , from which the following paragraphs are derived, tell us more. At Pattison Road, Annie McKay was dressing for her wedding in the presence of her bridesmaids, while carriages waited outside to take the party to the church. Then came news that her husband-to-be had been taken ill, but she decided to wait a while before changing any of the arrangements. A crowd gathered around the house as news of what had happened started to spread, and eventually the brougham that was to take the bride to the church could wait no longer, and left; and fearing the worst - for rumour was spreading fast - the blinds of the house were drawn. Shortly afterwards, one of John’s brothers arrived, ‘and in reply to the girl’s anxious enquiries, he informed her that he was dead, on which she gave a frightful and agonizing shriek and became insensible’ ( Gazette ). The Gazette details the tragic events at the barracks thus: ‘[Boys] was in bed at 20 minutes to 8 on his wedding morn. A brother bandsman named Bombadier Ruddell was reminding him of his approaching marriage, and he was talking and laughing with them in response to his remarks, when he made a noise as if choking. Ruddell and another bandsman named James Egan held him up, and he was removed to the Auxiliary Hospital, and on arriving there Surgeon-Major J.E.Clarke pronounced him dead.’ A post-mortem, held the following day, found the cause of death to be ‘apoplexy’ (what today would probably be called a stroke); a large clot of blood was found on Boys’ brain. Cheerily, the Gazette added that ‘there were no grounds for the rumour which has been going the rounds of the barracks that he had poisoned himself. An inquest will not be held.’ 66 Jackson’s Woolwich Journal was a monthly paper, dealing mostly with the doings of officers at Woolwich. The fact that it saw fit to report, over a month later, on events of 1 August that had affected a ‘mere’ Musician highlights the tragic significance of those events.