Howzat for a blog on cricket stories from Aviva’s archive
This week I’ve been having a look in the archive for stories about cricket. It began when I read about staff at Sun Life Insurance in the early 20th century using these branded match holders for indoor cricket practice.
I’m glad that at one survived the mistreatment and is still in the archive collection today.
As well as makeshift cricket balls the archive collection includes a traditional cricket bat which was used in a game played by Commercial Union’s cricket club in 1953 as part of celebrations for the coronation.
The team from Commercial Union, dressed in specially made replica uniforms from the company’s earliest fire brigades, played a team from Hambledon, whose cricket club had been formed in 1750.
The match took place at Hambledon’s Broadhalfpenny Down ground with spectators as well as players dressed in period costume. The Hambledon team arrived by horse and cart while the ‘ancient firemen’, naturally, arrived on a fire pump. The match, which ended in a draw, was played according to rules from 1744 with under arm bowling, curved bats, no boundaries and a notched stick for scoring.
Cricket was a popular game for our staff and cricket score books are amongst the earliest records we have in the archive that relate to staff sports and social clubs. Staff at Commercial Union had their own cricket team by 1880. The photograph below shows the team in 1887 outside their clubhouse.
The photograph below shows a slightly later Commercial Union cricket team, photographed in the 1890s.
Norwich Union staff also had a cricket team which held regular annual dinners (and, I assume, cricket matches) by the early 1890s. I love the photograph of the team from 1886 and hope that none of them actually tried to play while wearing their top hats.
Staff provided musical entertainment at the annual dinners and we have several dinner menus and programmes in the archive with cricket-related illustrations by staff member E Bertram Steward.
As well as talented artists, the company had a noted cricket expert on the staff. John Nix Pentelow, who worked for Norwich Union from 1889–1891, wrote many articles and several books on cricket in the early years of the 20th century. He was recognised by the MCC as a foremost authority on the game. He is now probably better known as a war time editor of the boys’ comic Magnet which featured the first stories of Billy Bunter and chums at Greyfriars. For any fans out there, he is particularly remembered for writing a story in which ‘Courtney of the sixth form’ was killed off.
The staff register noted that his spelling was very good and his writing was good and quick, which probably came in handy in his later career. Sadly, I don’t have a photograph of him in the Norwich Union cricket team but he is in the striped top in the centre of this football team photograph from 1890.
In August 1905 the staff magazine recorded a ‘whopping’ which Norwich Union Fire’s cricket team had given to the Norwich Union Life office in a match played at Lakenham. As well as playing the life office and other local teams, staff at different Norwich Union Fire branches competed against one another. The photograph below shows a match between Norwich Union’s London staff and those at head office in Norwich. It was played in the grounds of Catton Hall in July 1900.
Unfortunately, the London side, photographed below, lost due to ‘unmistakable weakness in batting’.
The victorious head office side then treated the visitors to a meal at the Royal Hotel and entertained them with songs and musical performances. Harry Andrews (with the moustache second from the left in the front row of the team photograph below) sang ‘Belle of New York’, a song from a hit musical of the period.
Another member of the winning 1900 side, William Walton (with the moustache at the right-hand end of the middle row), was actually kept off work in the 1890s after being injured playing cricket. According to the minutes of the company’s Superannuation and Benefit Fund, he was away from his desk for several weeks in August 1894 after ‘severe contusion from a cricket ball’.
As well as helping Walton recover from his cricketing injury, Norwich Union encouraged its staff members with their cricket. In 1921 a sportsground was purchased at School Lane Norwich and a cricket match featured in the opening celebrations. By 1927 members of Norwich Union’s women staff had their own cricket team.
In the 1950s Commercial Union also had a team made up of female staff.
These spoof job adverts, which appeared in the Provident Mutual staff magazine in 1952, show a slightly less enlightened view of female cricketing prowess.
“Male Staff: Energetic young men anxious to make progress in the insurance world; cricket essential; tennis and/or badminton an advantage; no other qualifications necessary. Apply stating batting average and salary required.
Female Staff: Young ladies for clerical and general duties; must be able to read and write (spelling correct to four places); tennis and/or badminton highly desirable. Apply stating average knitting speed and salary at last four posts. (preference will be given to applicants who can watch a cricket match intelligently.)”
It is probably not surprising that several members of our staff played cricket at a high level as well as turning out for their company teams.
Raymond Hunter, who worked for Commercial Union in Belfast, played in the Irish cricket team between 1957 and 1967. He was also capped for Ireland in the Five Nations (as it was then) in the early 1960s. We also had a fair number of Scottish cricket internationals on the staff including Robert McLaren, who was assistant inspector at Dunfermline for Norwich Union when he wasn’t keeping wicket for Scotland against the likes of South Africa and New Zealand in the late 1940s. Leonard Dudman from the actuarial department of General Life was capped for Scotland in the 1950s and James Roberts, who worked for General Accident, played for Scotland in the 1960s. We also had a New Zealand cricketer on our staff. Frank Ashbolt, who worked for Norwich Union in the Wellington office in the 1930s, had played first class cricket for New Zealand in the 1890s. He was in their first touring team, which visited Australia in 1899.
It has been harder to find English cricketers with links to Aviva companies. Bill Edrich, who scored 2,440 runs for England in his 39 Test matches, was an agent for our company Northern Assurance in the 1940s. He came from a Norfolk cricketing family and in 1938 a team composed entirely of Edrich family members beat Norfolk in a one-day match! We also have a couple of first-class English players who were directors of our companies. George Kemp-Welch, who was a local director for Scottish Union and National, played cricket for Cambridge University, Warwickshire and the MCC in the 1930s and went on two unofficial England cricket tours to Jamaica and the West Indies. Stephen Soames, who was chairman of Union Assurance in 1889, had played first class cricket for the MCC in the 1850s and once played for the Gentlemen of England against the Gentlemen of Kent.
I have also found a claim in a Commercial Union staff magazine that a member of their staff bowled out Australia’s ‘unbowlable’ W. N. Woodfall. The article says that H. J. Palmer of the accounts department bowled out Woodfall while playing for Essex against Australian in 1934. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to verify the story.
Notable cricketing customers include the polymath C.B. Fry who has been described as both the handsomest and the most variously gifted Englishman of any age. Charles Burgess Fry was capped 26 times for England in cricket and scored over 30,000 runs (including 94 centuries) during his career in first class cricket. In 1907 Fry had his motor insurance with our company General Accident.
In the same period our company Yorkshire Insurance provided accident cover for Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The company paid out after an accident to Herbert Amos Sedgwick, a right arm fast bowler who took a remarkable 5 for 8 against Worcestershire in 1906. Another claim under the policy was for an injury to James William Rothery, a first-class cricketer who played 150 matches for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1903 and 1910. A right-handed batsman, he scored 4,619 runs including 3 centuries against Kent, Hampshire, and Derbyshire.
Accidental injuries sustained while playing cricket feature quite regularly in lists of claims paid by our companies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1851 the pioneering accident insurance company Accidental Death paid £110 in combined compensation and medical expenses to a lieutenant who was injured playing cricket. This would be the equivalent of a claim for over £141,000 today.
In 1878, Railway Passengers Assurance paid £250 to the family of John Stewart, the Governor and Airdrie Prison. He had been fatally injured while playing cricket against two of his sons in the prison courtyard. In a freak accident his bat hit the wall as he ran and drove the handle into his stomach. He left a widow and 8 children for whom the insurance pay out would have been very welcome.
Lesser cricket-related injuries included a manufacturer from London who twisted his knee while bowling in 1887 and a brewer from Farnham who fell and strained his knee while playing cricket in 1892. In 1906 Accident Insurance paid a claim of £66 to an architect from Stafford who sprained his ankle bowling at cricket.
Our company Scottish Accident paid several claims for bruising caused by cricket balls. In 1888 a licensed victualler from Wolverhampton claimed £45 after his leg was hit by a ball. The following year a commission agent from Pontnewydd received £32 for a similar injury.
The same company paid £30 to an engineer from Mussleburgh whose finger was fractured by a cricket ball, and £8 in 1904 to a vet from Bandon in Ireland whose middle finger was injured during a game.
In 1881 Railway Passengers Assurance paid £27 to a brick and tile manufacturer from Madeley who suffered concussion and the loss of several teeth after his encounter with a cricket ball. Nor were spectators entirely safe from injury — in 1904 General Accident paid compensation of £104 for broken ribs suffered by a hotel keeper from Meigle when the grandstand at a cricket ground collapsed.
I’ll end with an unfortunate claim for a car damaged by a cricket ball. It was received by General Accident in 1967 from one of its inspectors, Mr J M Gwyther of Leicester branch. Mr Gwyther’s car was a casualty of a cricket match between the company’s Leicester and Birmingham branches. It was parked alongside the cricket ground when it was hit by a loose ball bowled by Mr Gwyther himself and hit for six by the opposing batsman.
