Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

The final years When war ended in late 1918, no village could have quite the same intimacy as before the years of fighting. Villagers had been exposed to a much wider community and daunting experiences. The motor car and the bus also led to a knowledge of a wider working world. Yet Thwing for some years was able to carry on a way of life similar to that of decades before the turmoil of 1914- 18. In 1919 the Scarborough Festival was resumed as Yorkshire played the MCC and the Gentlemen engaged again with the Players. The Festival again hosted three matches and this time Mr C.I. Thornton’s Eleven replaced Lord Londesborough’s in playing the visiting Australians. The 1921 Gentlemen versus Players match became historic for, as captain of the Players, George Hirst took his formal farewell of first-class cricket, being received by an enthusiastic and grateful crowd. In 1922 and possibly the last first-class match ever watched by Carter, Herbert Sutcliffe scored a century for Mr Thornton’s Eleven against the MCC South African team. His opening partner was the great Jack Hobbs. So the years that Carter had spent at Thwing had a lovely cricketing unchanging pattern at their beginning and end, the Scarborough Festival in 1922 being as colourful, popular and talented in play as that in 1908. Carter could have felt justifiably proud in his part in the promotion of a wonderful ending to each year’s cricket. In 1920 Edmund Carter, and throughout the war, had remained in his huge Rectory, and now in his 70s carried out his public and clerical services as he had done since his appointment. He had been for some years a councillor and guardian with Bridlington Rural District Council, but gradually ill health affected his working capability. At one of the post-war Scarborough Festivals he had a seizure and then a sequence of four heart attacks. He resigned his Bridlington positions in April 1923 and his ill health led him to be then moved to Stamford House nursing home, Westwood, Scarborough. He was only at the home for a week before he died there on 23 May 1923. He had conducted a final funeral at Thwing on 25 January 1923 - that of a child, James Old Ebor, Hawke, Thwing 104