Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

20 Chapter Two Early days The family of Samuel Lawrence, who was born in Rugeley near Lichfield moved up from their native Staffordshire when he was only a few years old, first to Methley, a mining village near Leeds where his father, John, was a coal miner. We know that in 1891 Samuel at the age of 15 was living in Sharlston, another mining village – near Featherstone – and was himself by this time working down a coal mine. When Samuel’s father died the family moved to Hunslet near Leeds and by 1901 at the age of 25 Samuel was working as a shunter on the railway. Samuel met his bride to be, Annie Hayton, and they were wed on April 1, 1907 in her native Bishop Burton in the East Riding of Yorkshire. There they lived for a short time before moving to Carlton, near Rothwell, back in the Leeds area, first in a small house, where Johnny was born, and then at a larger house called the Ropery on Stainton Lane. The Lawrences were to have two children, both boys. Samuel, junior, was born in 1908 and John was born on March 29, 1911. Carlton and nearby Robin Hood where Johnny would attend chapel still retain their village identity today – and are not so much absorbed by the Leeds-Hunslet metropolis as Rothwell to the north of them. They stand amidst the ‘rhubarb triangle’ – the land between Rothwell, Morley and Wakefield which in those days produced over 90 per cent of the world’s crop of that unusual vegetable. Sam was a travelling lay preacher in his spare time from work and the family were devoutly Methodist Christian or ‘chapel’, yet this seemingly austere religion would never prevent fun, joy or happiness and a lot of good humour. (Johnny was to love every kind of humour from practical jokes, teasing his cricket opponents, wry wit to word puns.) Sam and Annie were proud working-class folk and Sam