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

22 family soon moved out of Hunslet and to the periphery of the Leeds-Hunslet metropolis. (Leeds and Hunslet were still technically separate towns at this time – until 1924 that is – much in the manner of Manchester and Salford, for example.) We can see a traditional role model of Annie as a home- based wife and mother almost certainly not from any conscious sexism but due to the tradition itself and the fact that changes in society had not yet unfolded. (The same can be argued later when we come to Johnny’s marriage to Mary.) Stephen, Johnny’s youngest son regarded his father’s upbringing as quite Victorian in style and it certainly appears to be the style of abode and clothing in early photographs. Ralph Middlebook describes Johnny himself as a ‘Pickwickian’ character, so good-humoured and so ‘totally admirable’. Johnny went to Carlton School and would have been there from infancy until the then school-leaving age of 14. We can imagine him as an intelligent and industrious pupil but there was no apparent opportunity for scholarship and he would doubtless have been needed as a bread-winner by his family at the earliest opportunity. All the school records have been destroyed so we must rely on conjecture! At school Johnny was a wicketkeeper-batsman in the manner of his father and had not yet considered bowling as a serious cricketing option. He kept wicket in an adult league match and this was reported in the local press at the time, but from the newspaper cutting which survives – removed from its source – we cannot tell what club he was playing for. Johnny remembers the event in his notes: “My father was a wicketkeeper and Captain of the village side – Carlton in the Wakefield and District League so naturally, at school, they thought of me as a wicketkeeper. I kept wicket for the school team, but was more interested in batting. I left school to be an apprentice carpenter and my first chance to play with a league team was when the wicket keeper was ill and couldn’t play. They came for me on a Saturday morning; the match was against Middleton Early days