Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

Chapter seven Old Ebor, Lord Hawke (again), and retirement to Thwing Old Ebor Carter came into some prominence, after his active cricketing life by becoming one of the subjects in a celebrated book Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers written by ‘Old Ebor’ and originally printed in the Yorkshire Evening Post in 1898 before being reproduced the same year in book form. Old Ebor was the name used by a considerable Yorkshire historian, Alfred Pullin, who wrote regular daily columns for the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post . He also later wrote an important second volume of the history of Yorkshire county cricket to supplement and add to the first history by the Reverend R.S.Holmes. Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers was later republished as Old English Cricketers when some non-Yorkshire cricketers were added to the text and the volume republished in 1902. The Yorkshire cricketers, with whom Carter was given a chapter, included John Thewlis, Tom Emmett, George Freeman, Ephraim Lockwood, Allen Hill, Edmund Peate, Louis Hall and George Ulyett. Old Ebor did not romanticise all his accounts of cricketers’ lives. His account of the finding of John Thewlis was disturbing – on making an enquiry he received the response, “Think dead; if not, Manchester.”…... “When the writer did meet him he was trudging on foot with a heavy basket of laundry clothes on his shoulder, from Failsworth to Manchester, a distance of four miles. He was anxious to walk back again to earn a few coppers by getting in a load of coals.” This account so troubled the Yorkshire club and Lord Hawke that steps were taken to support cricketers who had fallen on hard times. OldEbor’s talkwithEdmundCarter is todaya touchdisappointing for much of the chapter is taken up with a repetition of Carter’s jocular yarns which might have caused some amusement over 100 years ago but today seem flat and unexciting. There is little to be found about Carter’s limited county career, or of his views on Yorkshire cricketing colleagues – save references already 94