Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

118 by the end of his life, he was in need of assistance – firstly in finding short- term employment, and later, in the shape of a grant of 10s a week from Yorkshire County Cricket Club, by which time ill-health had started to take an effect. He had possibly eaten through his benefit by this time, and – as we saw earlier – had experienced some business disappointments. In his study of professional cricketers, Sissons suggests that earnings of £120-£150 per annum would have put a professional cricketer on a par with the income of a skilled worker, and possibly a lower middle-class family. 81 Emmett managed to sustain such an income for longer than most cricket professionals, but doing so meant a lot of travel and time away from home, which meant he incurred costs. Out of their match payments, the players had to pay hotel bills and railway travel. Whilst such travelling was necessary to earn a decent living, it would have also eaten into his earnings, particularly if he was not disciplined about his outgoings. However gruelling the experience of appearing all over the country in order to earn a living was, Emmett took his contractual obligations seriously. He wanted to be seen to be keeping his word, and so be re- engaged. In the case of the diary clash in 1876, Emmett made every effort to meet his commitments to Lord Londesborough, for whom he had played for a number of years, and tried to negotiate a way in which he could keep everyone happy. On this occasion, the Secretary of Keighley Cricket Club said of Emmett, on the basis of 12 years of dealing with him, that he had always found him ‘never out of temper....honourable, upright, and truthful’. Another observer described him some years later as ‘always obliging and thoroughly straightforward.’ Emmett wanted to be trusted because he knew that his was a precarious lifestyle. Early on in his Yorkshire cricket career, he had seen how illness and injury could abruptly end the career, and ultimately the life, of one famous Yorkshire bowler, Ike Hodgson, and he was probably mindful that he was always a short step away from disaster. Emmett also enjoyed the game because he knew what life away from cricket was like. Having worked 14 hours a day from an early age and not played for Yorkshire until he was 24, he knew that, whatever the stresses and strains of the cricket professional might be, other people had much more demanding, dangerous and mundane existences, with few of the pleasures and opportunities that he enjoyed. Cricket brought him respect, attention and the patronage of many people well outside the normal social circles of a working-class man from Halifax. These realities provided the incentives to make the most of his skills for himself and his family, but it also made him keen to support others. In 1869, for example, he was thanked for having travelled a long way to support the benefit of a fellow professional, Harry Barber. In 1888, it was noted that he was ‘always ready to give a brother professional a lift’, turning out for the benefit match of Littleborough professional, Walter Robinson. Allen Hill too remembered that the only occasion on which he got talent money from Yorkshire for his batting was when he made 49 against Middlesex in 1876. Although it was usually only given for reaching 50, Emmett told him ‘You must bustle Personality, performance and popularity