Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

was W.J.Bates! His return to Richard was accompanied by an act of treachery, as he took with him a complete list of all Shaw and Shrewsbury’s overseas contacts. Before any use could be made of the information, the new venture went bust during the summer. F.H.Ayres, the London sports business, bought out the stock and the lease and kept on Bates as manager – but not for long. In 1895, Richard borrowed £1,400 from his daughters, Ann, Amy and Mary, to enable him, in partnership with Harry, to take over the Trent Bridge Inn, where he had been involved in the eighties. The combination of the name of Daft and Trent Bridge ought to have been a winner. There must have been countless thousands of young men living on till the 1950s or 60s who later recalled Richard’s upright figure and mane of white hair behind the bar, aided and abetted by the roguish, heavily moustached Harry. But their partnership did not last two years before they were advised to cut their losses. They petitioned for their own bankruptcy on 30 November, 1897. It was not for Richard an easy way out. First, it also brought down the sports business which Harry was carrying on in partnership at 85 Carrington Street, Nottingham – Richard junior had resigned a year or two before and Harry had taken in Bernard Barnett – and it could have been disastrous for the Radcliffe Brewery, but as that did not come into the frame as one of his assets, either it was in Mary’s name or they must have already closed it down. Second, there was the public examination in bankruptcy to be faced. The hearing in the Nottingham County Court commenced on 20 January, 1898 with an investigation of the joint failure of Richard and Harry at the Trent Bridge Inn. They had started trading there in March, 1896. By the end they had trade assets of only £127 7s 0d to set against joint liabilities of £3,374 9s 2d – at least £170,000 in modern terms. Richard would have been just about solvent outside of the business, but Harry’s debts exceeded his assets by £260 – you could have purchased a decent house for £260 in 1897. They had no capital at all when they took over the inn and so, as already described, had borrowed from Richard’s daughters. Their drawings had been double their income; they had spent a considerable sum on ‘building up the business’ which they expected to get back later. They agreed that they did not see themselves as insolvent. Questioned about how the sum of £1,000 had been spent, one of them responded, ‘Of course, there were household expenses at Radcliffe, and a considerable part of it has 128 Winding Up