A Tale of Two Victorian Yorkshiremen

Between 1869 and 1889 Lord’s was the venue for seven matches between teams styled as ‘Colts of the South’, and ‘Colts of the North’. The fixture was played seven times in all, at irregular intervals. All the matches were of two days duration and between twelve on each side, so none of the matches were First Class.

All seven of the games were in May. That in 1883 was just the third time the fixture had taken place at all and was Lord’s first match of the season. The two sides were invitational twelves, the choice of invitees being that of the MCC. ‘Colt’ does not appear to have a precise definition over and above referring to a man not yet established and in his early twenties. The sides were led by more experienced men, the South by 26 year old George Hearne, who went on to play a solitary Test eight years later, and the North by 35 year old Fred Wild, who had a long career with Nottinghamshire.

Hearne was a good enough all-rounder to, on one occasion, score his thousand runs for a season, and twice take a hundred wickets. Wild was a wicketkeeper and a decent batsman whose record includes four First Class centuries. It seems their roles in this game were essentially to guide their young charges as both batted at number twelve and Hearne did not bowl.

The make up of the two sides give little in the way of clues as to the criteria applied to those who were selected. Of the South only one man, Fred Martin of Kent, went on to play Test cricket, and he was only capped twice. Only one member of the rest of the side, Hearne apart, enjoyed a long career in the First Class game. The North had two future Test players, Lancashire’s Frank Sugg, who like Martin was to play twice for his country, and a 19 year old Nottinghamshire all-rounder, George Bean, who played three times against Australia in 1891/92 with limited success. Generally however the North’s players did go on to achieve rather more in the First Class game than their southern counterparts.

In this era the Lord’s wicket was not the best, one measure of that being that only in one of these seven fixtures did a batsman score a half century, and it certainly wasn’t in 1883. History doesn’t record which of Wild and Hearne called correctly that May morning but the North batted first and were soon all out for 43. All the bowling was done by just two men, John Richardson and John Shilton. Richardson was a right arm fast bowler who went on to play eleven times for Derbyshire. He took four of the South’s wickets. Shilton bowled orthodox slow left arm and took the other six. In those days an opening attack that consisted of a slow bowler and a fast bowler was the norm. The North did a little better in their reply, getting to 119 before the last wicket fell.

The South improved on their first innings showing, but by the smallest possible margin as they managed just 44 in total to lose by an innings before the end of the first day. Neither Richardson nor Shilton were called on in the second innings however. One wicket was taken by William Cropper, who went on to play sixty matches for Derbyshire. Another fell to a man who cricket history records simply as J Smithurst. There is no record of Smithurst having played in another match of any importance. The matchwinner was George ‘Shoey’ Harrison, a fast bowler from Yorkshire, whose figures were 12-7-14-9.

All of Harrison’s nine victims were clean bowled. At one point he took five wickets in six deliveries. The fourteen runs he did concede might have been less. In those days at Lord’s there were no boundaries so everything had to be run. One of the few scoring strokes made from Harrison ended up under a pile of chairs and the batsmen ran six whilst the ball was retrieved, so the figures could have been even better. Years later Harrison would tell the story that after the South’s first innings debacle he had approached his captain and said; sithee ‘ere, awm Harrison of Scarborough, aw coom ‘ere to barl not to be jiggered abaht in t’ahtfield.

Over the next decade both of the North’s star bowlers, Shilton and  Harrison, made names for themselves, although neither ever played Test cricket. They are both long forgotten, but interesting characters nonetheless, and their stories are well worth telling.

In truth the pair had little in common, but there was a Yorkshire connection. Shilton was born in the West of the county, at Horbury Junction, in October 1861. Four months later Harrison came into this world around 80 miles to the north east, in the seaside resort of Scarborough.

Shilton was just 15 when he enlisted in the Army as a bugler and drummer boy. He stayed in the Army for five years, spending time in Kent, Portsmouth and Carlisle. On leaving military service Shilton took up a job on the railways, supplementing his income by playing cricket professionally. Yorkshire watched his progress with interest. When he received his invitation to play for the Colts he was coaching at Cambridge University, although based at that time in Northumberland.

One thing that Shilton did not lack was confidence in his own ability. Legend has it that when he arrived at Lord’s for the Colts match he introduced himself to Wild as the man Yorkshire had chosen to replace Edmund Peate. He did later get an opportunity to impress the county, but he didn’t make the most of it and in the end it was Bobby Peel who succeeded Peate. History suggests the county were wise.

When Harrison left school he took, as his father requested, an apprenticeship with a shoemaker hence the nickname that stayed with him for the rest of his days. He was soon recognised as a quality cricketer and thanks to a local landowner and former President of MCC, Sir Charles Legard, whose family owned nearby Scampston Hall, he had plenty of opportunity to play the game, eventually securing a professional contract in Scarborough.

Harrison’s invitation to play for the Colts came via his club secretary. He had never travelled to London before and the suggestion was made by the secretary to his MCC counterpart that there should be someone at the station to meet Harrison and take him to Lord’s. In the event there was no one there when Harrison arrived at about 9.15pm, and he had to make his own way to the ground. He was fortunate enough to be recognised as a likely candidate for the following day’s fixture by a couple of members of the Lord’s groundstaff. To further illustrate the slapdash way in which arrangements were made no provision seems to have been made for Harrison’s accommodation, and he ended up staying with the two ground staff lads who he met. Or perhaps it was just a means of his pocketing his expenses?

Having waited until he was 21 before first visiting London Harrison was back less than three weeks later, making his First Class debut for Yorkshire against a strong MCC side the first seven of whose batsmen were all Test players. In the circumstances to emerge with the wickets of Lord Harris and ‘Monkey’ Hornby was a satisfactory performance. Three days later there were five wickets against Cambridge University at Fenners before Harrison made his County Championship debut against Kent.

Yorkshire beat Kent by an innings and Harrison had a remarkable debut. He and left arm spinner Peate bowled unchanged throughout the match. In the first innings, four ball overs in those days, Harrison’s figures were 28-18-27-6. In the second he added 26-8-49-5. Of those eleven victims seven were bowled.

The successful season continued and in Harrison’s first Roses match a few weeks later he took nine wickets. A Manchester newspaper reported that it is not too much to say that Harrison is the finest fast bowler in England, being wonderfully straight, and so fast at times he appeared to be too quick for the eye to follow.

In all First Class matches in 1883 Harrison took exactly 100 wickets at 13.26. Wisden stated Harrison signalised his admission to the ranks of the county eleven by carrying off the bowling honours of the season, and his average of 11.81 for his 88 wickets – 72 of which were bowled out – proving him to be the most destructive fast bowler of the year. It was a remarkable performance for a debutant to be the leading bowler of an attack that contained, as well as Peate and Peel, Tom Emmett, Billy Bates and George Ulyett, all successful international bowlers.

Despite that start Harrison was never the same bowler again. The reason for his fall from grace has become misunderstood over the years. The more interesting, but incorrect version of the story is that, having been selected for the Players to play against the Gentlemen at Lord’s so early in his career, he was so savaged by WG Grace in the match that his self-confidence took such a knock that he was finished. His Yorkshire captain Lord Hawke is the source of the story after the following paragraph in his 1924 autobiography; Fast bowling never held any terrors for Grace and in a quarter of an hour he had given Harrison a demonstration of batting which literally broke his cricket. The rest of the Gentlemen, perceiving that the colt was no Spofforth, went for him, and EFS Tylecote, in particular, fairly scotched him, and he went straight to bed in sheer grief when play was over for the day. He never was much good to us again …. it is the only case I recall of a cricketer’s career being ended by a single match.

The first flaws with Hawke’s recollection come from the scorecard of the match. Firstly Grace only scored 26 before Peate bowled him. Harrison was the most expensive of the Players’ bowlers, but conceding 108 in 54 overs is hardly a disaster, particularly as Harrison took three wickets, and in Charles Studd, AP ‘Bunny’ Lucas and Lord Harris his victims were all Test batsmen. In the second innings, which saw the Gentlemen comfortably victorious by seven wickets he removed Studd for a second time. There is no doubt but that WG did get after the youngster with the big reputation, and the experience was one which Harrison doubtless dined out on in years to come, but it can only have been a brief assault. There was a marginal decline in Harrison’s returns over the remainder of the season, but Harrison still took 53 more wickets at 13.50, so hardly career-ending and a lengthy report of the match in Wisden makes no mention of Harrison’s bowling, be it positive or negative.

The truth behind the loss of effectiveness was rather more prosaic. Yorkshire’s first match of the 1884 season was at Moreton-in-the-Marsh against Gloucestershire. Rain delayed the start, but Hawke won the toss and chose to bat. There was not enough time left in the day for there to be any possibility of Harrison, at that time a number eleven, having to bat or bowl so when the home side asked to borrow a member of the opposition to field for one of their amateurs who could not arrive until late afternoon Harrison was the man given. The home skipper was, of course, WG, so in a sense he was responsible for what happened next. Unsurprisingly he put the fit young bowler in the long field, and before long Harrison felt a sharp pain in his bowling arm as he threw in a return. He was never quite the same bowler again, losing the element of raw speed that had made him so feared. He played a few matches later in the season, and a few more in 1885, but after that he left the Yorkshire staff.

His pace compromised Harrison went into the leagues and played as a professional, initially with Bowling Old Lane in the Yorkshire Council. In 1890 he moved on to Lincolnshire with a view to qualifying for the Minor County. He had played occasionally for Yorkshire in the meantime but his form was such in 1890 and 1891 that he earned a recall. His first game back was against the eventual champions Surrey at the Oval, and he took five wickets in each innings. He repeated that against the MCC in the last of his four appearances. Harrison’s 31 wickets at 10.41 comfortably topped the Yorkshire bowling averages, although given that he was never noted for his batting it seems that his achievement of leading the county’s batting averages as well gave the man himself the greater pleasure, even if it was only 28.50 and courtesy of seven not outs in his nine innings.

The following summer saw Yorkshire fall to sixth in the Championship table (out of nine). Harrison played almost the full season. His 52 wickets came at the reasonable cost of 18.36, but Wisden commented that whilst he was at times effective, he could not be said to have maintained the form which was so valuable to Yorkshire towards the close of the summer of 1890. There was just one more Championship match for Yorkshire in the 1892 season, against Gloucestershire. At least Harrison had the satisfaction, never having taken WG’s wicket before, of the Grand Old Man being his final First Class victim.

Returning to Shilton he had just one chance for Yorkshire, in a two day match against Leicestershire six weeks after the Colts game. One wicket in each innings was all he managed. For 1884 he was playing professionally for Bradford. The next summer saw him taking over the licence of a hotel in nearby Batley and playing cricket for Liverpool. His successes there brought him to the attention of Warwickshire, then a Minor County. Shilton was not qualified to play for the county either by birth or residence, but he showed the committee the birth certificate of a cousin from Coventry who shared the same name, and he was in. It was an early indication of an inclination to be less than honest when needs required.

In 1886 Shilton’s business in Batley failed. It seems he was probably too fond of his own product, and too generous with his friends and in 1887 he was adjudged bankrupt. The death of one of his two daughters and his only son cannot have helped his mood, but he continued to play the game successfully at both Minor County and club levels. He must have been a quality bowler, as no lesser judge than Sammy Woods, who played Tests for both England and Australia as well as skippering Somerset for a dozen years, described him as a bowler full of genius and impudence. His relationship with Warwickshire cannot have been entirely easy as he seems, unsurprisingly perhaps, to have been constantly looking for ways of increasing his remuneration. The Club kept him on however, and he certainly performed well enough on the field.

By the spring of 1889 life had certainly picked up for Shilton. He acquired another Public House, the Albion in West Bromwich, and in addition he went into a sports outfitting business with the secretary of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. In time he became so closely linked to the club, who were one of the founder members of the Football League in 1888, that on a couple of occasions he turned out for them and, as a tough tackling defender, a man who had already made a mark as a Rugby Union player in the winter, would appear to have done a more than satisfactory job.

Unfortunately for Shilton things went wrong again in 1892. His partnership in the sports outfitting business was dissolved and he left the Albion and moved to Dudley where he took over The Castle, another pub, but this time one that Shilton wanted to develop the catering side of. It was well located and he should have been able to make a success of it. As it was the venture failed after only a couple of years, and at the beginning of the following season he went back to Birmingham and sought the licence of The Sherbourne Hotel, a hostelry in the Balsall Heath area of the city and for which, initially at least, he had some grand plans to convert it, following the acquisition of a neighbouring building, into a theatre.

In 1894 Warwickshire made their bow as a First Class county. There was another row with Shilton who was adamant that it had been agreed when he first signed for the county that he would receive a benefit. The club refused and wouldn’t back down. In the end Shilton had a benefit the following year a compromise which presumably satisfied him. Shilton was not his side’s most successful bowler in their first summer. That honour fell to Henry Pallett, a right arm slow bowler who paid just 11.87 for his 79 wickets. Another similar bowler was James Whitehead who took 73 at 13.17 leaving Shilton’s 50 wickets at 20.82 in third place.

By 1895 Shilton was a shadow of his former self and only played four times in his county’s debut season in the Championship. There were just six wickets at 43.16 and he almost missed his benefit match. Once again it was a failed business that was the cause of the problem and more specifically a brewery who got fed up with waiting for their money. In those days debtors could be imprisoned for debt, and Shilton was carted off to what is now known as HMP Winson Green and it was only when the proceeds of his benefit were pledged to his creditors that he was released in time to turn out in his benefit match against Yorkshire. The fund succeeded in raising what would now be a sum equivalent to around £50,000, and it still wasn’t enough to pay off everyone.

By now Shilton was in no fit state to play the First Class game, and he contributed just four wicketless overs to the match against Yorkshire. His health failing badly there was still however enough goodwill amongst the Birmingham public for another sum of money, this time the equivalent of £20,000, being raised for a convalescent fund to get him out to South Africa which, it was hoped, would facilitate a recovery.

In some ways South Africa did help, and Shilton even gained a professional contract with Western Province where he was due to play with George Lohmann. The problem he found was that the trustees who were in charge of his convalescent fund did not release to him the amount of money the lifestyle he wanted demanded. He therefore made a few desperate attempts at cheque fraud, and as a result was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment. In the end he didn’t serve the entire custodial term, being released early due to poor health, and he returned to Birmingham in the summer of 1897.

Shilton stayed in Birmingham for that summer, and even turned up at the Edgbaston nets occasionally, but his cricket career was palpably over. At the end of the season he left a room full of empty bottles and went to live with his aging father in Cumbria. The last couple of years of Shilton’s life were not happy. There were allegations of domestic violence towards his wife and surviving daughter and although Shilton did some coaching, and at one point gained a professional contract from a local club it was, realistically, downhill all the way and in September of 1899, still not 38, he died. A measure of the misery that Shilton inflicted on those closest to him was that after his funeral his widow declared she would never speak of him again a promise that, so his last surviving granddaughter told his biographer Robert Brooke, she kept.

Shoey Harrison’s life after cricket was much happier and longer than Shilton’s. He continued to play as a league professional with considerable success until he became a First Class umpire in 1907. He remained on the list until the end of the 1924 summer and was a popular character, his obituary in the 1941 edition of Wisden opening with the observation that he was a typical Yorkshireman of the old school.