Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

devoted to their investment. Things really began to go wrong for Richard in 1888 when Shaw engaged W.J.Bates, who had been the manager of Richard’s shop, to supervise the partnership’s store. Shrewsbury wrote: ‘I hope Bates turns out well. . . . Daft had said he would get rid of Bates very soon. If he is a really good man, Daft has acted simple in losing him.’ Yet the reason for Daft releasing Bates may have been that Harry Daft, now aged 22, had joined his father in the business. In 1888, Richard’s Nottingham shop was described as the ‘largest athletic emporium in the world’. The following year, the Shrewsbury partnership closed their Carrington Street Bridge shop, as well as their factory, but they had positive intent as they reopened both sides of their undertaking under a single roof at 6 Queen’s Bridge Road. Meanwhile, Richard had widened his interests: as we have seen, after his trip to the United States and Canada, he had opened an agency supplying cricketers of particular skills, even dispatching spin bowlers to India in response to telegrams from maharajahs as well as responding to requests from the States. By September 1888, he had that second shop in Nottingham at St. Peter’s Square, where he retailed bags and portmanteaux. In 1891, Richard found that licensed premises which he occupied were to be sold by auction. They were in the Bingham Road at Radcliffe, and every detail of the house was in the auction particulars – except the name of the inn. Slow retrenchment became the order of the day. On 27 November, 1891 Richard gave up the licence of the Chesterfield Arms. A little more than a year later he closed the business at St Peter’s Square on expiry of his lease. Two weeks later, an announcement appeared in the local papers: ‘Messrs. R.P. and H.B.Daft beg to inform their friends and the public that their father, Mr. Richard Daft, having given up the business for many years carried on by him at Lister Gate and St. Peter’s Square, Nottingham, as a manufacturer of and a dealer in articles connected with cricket and British sports and outfittings, they have commenced business on their own account at Carrington Street Bridge, Nottingham, and hope by strict attention to business and by supplying first-class goods at moderate prices, to merit a share of the support so liberally bestowed upon their father.’ On 3 March 1893, an announcement appeared in the local press that Richard Daft’s business had removed from St. Peter’s Square to 18a Wheeler Gate, the Central Sports Depot, where the manager Winding Up 127