Finance

It does not need saying that monetary values were different in the Eighteenth Century from what they are now. A very rough guide would be to say that, if you multiply Eighteenth Century values by 300, you get something like contemporary values. Fifty pounds then is now around £15,000, €18,000 or $20,000. £10,000 then is now around £300,000, €360,000 or $375,000. These sums, however large they may be, only represent part of the picture. Standards of living were much lower, so a little cash went a long way in terms of enhancing quality of life.

General

Around 1700, cricket was a popular rural sport but confined to the South of England. Rules were subject to negotiation between players, and the outcome of games was not seen as being of any great significance so no records were kept. Above all, there was no money in the game, so participation was purely on a recreational basis. The story of Eighteenth Century cricket is how that came to change.

For one thing, London grew, from a population of 575,000 at the start of the century to over a million by the end. There was much poverty and deprivation, but for all that it was still a vibrant commercial city, attractive to monied young aristocrats keen to enjoy the lifestyle of fashionable society. The city proved to be fertile ground for cricket to evolve from a rustic pastime to become an important part of the nascent entertainment industry.

Early cricket promoters were people associated with public houses and breweries keen to sell their products. Only a little is known of these characters and that often from court cases reported in the local press – not surprisingly, the picture that emerges is not especially attractive. There were also announcements of matches, this is the first one that has been discovered, from The Post Boy of 30 March 1700:

These are to inform Gentlemen, or others, who delight in cricket playing, that a match of cricket, of 10 Gentlemen on each side, will be play'd on Clapham Common, near Fox-Hall [Vauxhall], on Easter Monday next, for £10 a head each game (five being design'd) and £20 for the odd one.

I do confess, I do not understand the phrase “for £10 a head each game (five being design’d) and £20 for the odd one”. Perhaps each player had to pay out a five-pound stake and would get £10 for winning, with £20 for something like the Man of the Match award. I don’t know, but it is clear that money was to the fore of this endeavour and that gambling and cricket were already becoming intertwined.

The next step, one that was perhaps already in progress, was the growing interest of the monied aristocracy. Cricket would have been encountered by the upper classes at school, both private and the free-school system set up under Edward VI, which were open to all classes. The influence of the noblemen who involved themselves in the game was to be central to the path cricket took, not merely in the Eighteenth Century, but how the game has been played ever since. The money they made from wagering and gambling led to the possibility of talented individuals earning a living from the sport as well as creating the need for a tightly defined code of rules so that contests could be properly regulated.

Patronage

Central to the involvement of aristocrats in eighteenth-century cricket was the concept of The Challenge. One nobleman or gentleman would gather a team together and challenge the team of another for a set stake, often a substantial sum, maybe as much as £1,000. I haven’t conducted any in-depth analysis of this question, but I believe that the overwhelming majority of Important Matches and single-wicket matches, would have been for financial stakes. Frequently, the patron was a player himself (or at least thought he was) and would captain the side, e.g. Edwin Stead, the Duke of Richmond and Sir William Gage. Such teams would often take the name of a district or county, and this was the beginning of County Cricket.

The start of the first great era of Patronage was around 1720. The great players would be identified and matches would be set up close to the Patron’s home. In due course, these matches migrated to London, mostly played at the Artillery Ground, with the best players from Sussex, Kent and Surrey moving to the capital to take part. Some of these matches would be eleven-a-side double-wicket games, but often there would be three, four or five-a-side single-wicket matches.

After a lull in elite cricket activity around the time of the Seven Year War, elite cricket re-emerged in Hambledon, near Winchester. The importance of that club is detailed elsewhere on this site. For this page, it is worth noting that the importance of money in the club’s story is demonstrated by considering that between 1770 and 1790, it is documented that the teams which represented the club played for at least £32,527 in stake money and won £22,497. Total stakes in today’s coinage of perhaps half a million pounds per annum for their great days.

Commercial cricket returned to London around 1785 and was marked by the formation of the MCC, based at Thomas Lord’s ground at Dorset Square. The later generation of Hambledon players refocused on the capital, much like the players from fifty years earlier.

Promoters

As well as patrons there were promotors – those who staged matches and whose tangible rewards arose not from stakes or prestige but from ground admission charges and sales of refreshments. Such individuals were generally not of aristocratic background so their lives were not as well known. Very often they were members of the artisan class and perhaps players as well, and may have made it into my Hall of Fame. Any list of those whose lives are remembered must include:

• George Smith – who ran the Artillery Ground from 1730 – 1732.
• Stephen Amherst or Amhurst (1750 – 1814) – was a fine player, but is most associated with organising Kent matches towards the end of the Eighteenth Century
• Richard Nyren – of Hambledon.
• Thomas Lord – of Lord’s.

Professional players

In the great upsurge of sport after the Restoration in 1660, cricket flourished because so many people had encountered it as children, especially at school. Although the sport was popular, its evolution into a major sport was accelerated by gambling because, along with horse racing and prizefighting, cricket soon attracted the attention of those who were seeking to make wagers.

To boost their chances of winning, some gamblers formed their own teams, giving them County names, for example, as Kent and Surrey, who played each other in 1709. Many patrons captained their sides and asked their friends to play, while hiring better players to also take part, and this was the beginning of the amateur/professional or the gentlemen/player division. Thus, a Sussex team of the 1720s might be captained by Richmond and include not only additional gentlemen like Gage but also professionals like Thomas Waymark, who was employed by the Duke of Richmond as a groom. Later in the 18th century, professionals like Edward “Lumpy” Stevens and John Minshull were employed by their patrons as gardeners or gamekeepers.

Later on, the professional became close to an employee of his club, and the beginnings of this trend could be observed in the 1770s when Hambledon paid match fees to its players, making it almost certainly the first fully professional team in any sport. Exactly how much money Hambledon players were paid is not known; the club’s accounts only survive for a few years in the 1790s. They would have been paid by the match patrons who would very often also be club members. In the 1780s, according to Billy Beldham, players would normally get five guineas for a win and three guineas for a defeat. Players could also indulge in private wages, and there may be special bonuses on occasions – for example, in 1777, after Hambledon had beaten an England XI, the owners of the Artillery Ground divided £50 between the teams as a proper encouragement for another year. Players were also paid for attending practice matches. In the 1790s, weekly payments of this nature amounted to between £1 and £7, though we do not know how these were shared. Overall, David Underdown concludes that cricket income was useful supplementary cash but would not, at this stage, have constituted a living in itself.¹

The original Lord’s was opened in 1787 and was intended to be the private preserve of a gentlemen’s club, which soon reconstituted itself as MCC. Only a gentleman could become a member, but the club, from its beginning it employed or contracted professionals. Lord’s immediately began to stage major matches, and these attracted the crowds that some members had originally sought to avoid.

Gambling

If stakes were for the aristocratic patrons, gambling with bookies was for the lesser elevated followers of the game. Gaming was a hugely popular eighteenth-century activity, and lay behind the growth in the popular sports of horse racing and prize-fighting. Newspaper reports of cricket were concentrated on betting odds rather than aspects of the contest that might be of interest to today’s typical spectator. In this respect, horseracing hasn’t changed all that much – I know many people who love horseracing, but it must be said, the connection of the sport with money in general and gambling in particular is never difficult to discern. Newspaper reports about races, to this day, are centred around the odds that are prevailing and tips on who is likely to win. I suggest that it how it was with Eighteenth Century cricket, at least for matches at the elite level.

James Pycroft’s great book, The Cricket Field, pulls no punches about the role gambling played in the game. Writing about what he calls A Dark Chapter in the History of Cricket, he talks of how important gambling had become in the cricket world towards the end of the Eighteenth Century. He had discussed the matter with Billy Beldham:

“If gentlemen wanted to bet,” said Beldham, “just under the pavilion sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds: these were by far the best men to bet with; because, if they lost, it was all in the way of business: they paid their money and did not grumble.” Still, they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe. “One artifice,” said Mr. Ward, “was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead.” Then these men would come down to the Green Man and Still, and drink with us, and always said, that those who backed us, or “the nobs,” as they called them, sold the matches; and so, sir, as you are going the round beating up the quarters of the old players, you will find some to persuade you this is true. But don’t believe it. That any gentleman in my day ever put himself into the power of these blacklegs, by selling matches, I can’t credit. Still, one day, I thought I would try how far these tales were true. So, going down into Kent, with “one of high degree,” he said to me, “Will, if this match is won, I lose a hundred pounds!” “Well,” said I, “my Lord, you and I could order that.” He smiled as if nothing were meant, and talked of something else; and, as luck would have it, he and I were in together, and brought up the score between us, though every run seemed to me like “a guinea out of his Lordship’s pocket.”

Lord Frederick Beauclerk claimed to have made at least £600 a year – a colossal sum at the time – from playing cricket for stakes.

There was of course, another side to cricket and one that this site explores. Mary Anne Mitford, in writing about the game in 1824, emphasises the involvement of residents in the success (or otherwise) of the local team and the emotional rewards this can bring. My view is that Mitford’s vision of the game was the one that won the day, more or less – though the battle still rages, and will never be over.

Match Fixing

Again from Pycroft²:

“You see, sir,” said one fine old man, with brilliant eye and quickness of movement, that showed his right hand had not yet forgot its cunning, “matches were bought, and matches were sold, and gentlemen who meant honestly lost large sums of money, till the rogues beat themselves at last. They overdid it; they spoilt their own trade; and, as I said to one of them, ‘a knave and a fool makes a bad partnership; so, you and yourself will never prosper.’ Well, surely there was robbery enough: and, not a few of the great players earned money to their own disgrace; but, if you’ll believe me, there was not half the selling there was said to be. Yes, I can guess, sir, much as you have been talking to all the old players over this good stuff (pointing to the brandy and water I had provided), no doubt you have heard that B—— sold as bad as the rest. I’ll tell the truth: one match up the country I did sell,—a match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a match just before, and lost £10, and happening to hear it I joined two others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won 10l. exactly, and of this roguery no one ever suspected me; but many was the time I have been blamed for selling when as innocent as a babe. In those days, when so much money was on the matches, every man who lost his money would blame some one. Then, if A missed a catch, or B made no runs,—and where’s the player whose hand is always in?—that man was called a rogue directly. So, when a man was doomed to lose his character and to bear all the smart, there was the more temptation to do like others, and after ‘the kicks’ to come in for ‘the halfpence.’ But I am an old man now, and heartily sorry I have been ever since: because, but for that Nottingham match, I could have said with a clear conscience to a gentleman like you, that all that was said was false, and I never sold a match in my life; but now I can’t. But, if I had fifty sons, I would never put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that I have witnessed. The temptation really was very great,—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to,—no richer than ten shillings a week, let alone harvest time.—I never told you, sir, the way I first was brought to London. I was a lad of eighteen at this Hampshire village, and Lord Winchelsea had seen us play among ourselves, and watched the match with the Hambledon Club on Broadhalfpenny, when I scored forty-three against David Harris, and ever so many of the runs against David’s bowling, and no one ever could manage David before. So, next year, in the month of March, I was down in the meadows, when a gentleman came across the field with Farmer Hilton: and, thought I, all in a minute, now this is something about cricket. Well, at last it was settled I was to play Hampshire against England, at London, in White-Conduit-Fields ground, in the month of June. For three months I did nothing but think about that match. Tom Walker was to travel up from this country, and I agreed to go with him, and found myself at last with a merry company of cricketers—all the men, whose names I had ever heard as foremost in the game—met together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing at the Green Man (that was the great cricketer’s house), in Oxford Street,—no man without his wine, I assure you, and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose, and five to win (that was then the sum for players) could never pay for long. To go to London by the waggon, earn five guineas three or four times told, and come back with half the money in your pocket to the plough again, was all very well talking. You know what young folk are, sir, when they get together: mischief brews stronger in large quantities: so, many spent all their earnings, and were soon glad to make more money some other way. Hundreds of pounds were bet upon all the great matches, and other wagers laid on the scores of the finest players, and that too by men who had a book for every race and every match in the sporting world; men who lived by gambling; and, as to honesty, gambling and honesty don’t often go together. What was easier, then, than for such sharp gentlemen to mix with the players, take advantage of their difficulties, and say, ‘your backers, my Lord this, and the Duke of that, sell matches and overrule all your good play, so why shouldn’t you have a share of the plunder?’—That was their constant argument. ‘Serve them as they serve you.’—You have heard of Jim Bland, the turfsman, and his brother Joe—two nice boys. When Jemmy Dawson was hanged for poisoning the horse, the Blands never felt safe till the rope was round Dawson’s neck: to keep him quiet, they persuaded him to the last hour that no one dared hang him; and a certain nobleman had a reprieve in his pocket. Well, one day in April, Joe Bland traced me out in this parish, and tried his game on with me. ‘You may make a fortune,’ he said, ‘if you will listen to me: so much for the match with Surrey, and so much more for the Kent match—’ ‘Stop,’ said I: ‘Mr. Bland, you talk too fast; I am rather too old for this trick; you never buy the same man but once: if their lordships ever sold at all, you would peach upon them if ever after they dared to win. You’ll try me once, and then you’ll have me in a line like him of the mill last year.’ No, sir, a man was a slave when once he sold to these folk: ‘fool and knave aye go together.’ Still, they found fools enough for their purpose; but rogues can never trust each other. One day, a sad quarrel arose between two of them, which opened the gentlemen’s eyes too wide to close again to those practices. Two very big rogues at Lord’s fell a quarrelling, and blows were given; a crowd drew round, and the gentlemen ordered them both into the pavilion. When the one began, ‘You had 20l. to lose the Kent match, bowling leg long hops and missing catches.’ ‘And you were paid to lose at Swaffham.’—‘Why did that game with Surrey turn about—three runs to get, and you didn’t make them?’ Angry words come out fast; and, when they are circumstantial and square with previous suspicions, they are proofs as strong as holy writ. In one single-wicket match,” he continued,—“and those were always great matches for the sporting men, because usually you had first-rate men on each side, and their merits known,—dishonesty was as plain as this: just as a player was coming in, (John B. will confess this if you talk of the match,) he said to me, ‘You’ll let me score five or six, for appearances, won’t you, for I am not going to make many if I can?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you rogue, you shall if I can not help it.’—But, when a game was all but won, and the odds heavy, and all one way, it was cruel to see how the fortune of the day then would change about. In that Kent match,—you can turn to it in your book (Bentley’s scores), played 28th July, 1807, on Penenden Heath,—I and Lord Frederick had scored sixty-one, and thirty remained to win, and six of the best men in England went out for eleven runs. Well, sir, I lost some money by that match, and as seven of us were walking homewards to meet a coach, a gentleman who had backed the match drove by and said, ‘Jump up, my boys, we have all lost together. I need not mind if I hire a pair of horses extra next town, for I have lost money enough to pay for twenty pair or more.’ Well, thought I, as I rode along, you have rogues enough in your carriage now, sir, if the truth were told, I’ll answer for it; and, one of them let out the secret, some ten years after. But, sir, I can’t help laughing when I tell you: once, there was a single-wicket match played at Lord’s, and a man on each side was paid to lose. One was bowler, and the other batsman, when the game came to a near point. I knew their politics, the rascals, and saw in a minute how things stood; and how I did laugh to be sure. For seven balls together, one would not bowl straight, and the other would not hit; but at last a straight ball must come, and down went the wicket.”

How prevalent all this was, it is hard to say, for the vast majority of matches, there is no suggestion that anything was amiss. Nyren, in Cricketers of My Time, denies that Hambledon players ever did this, but his mentioning it alone confirms that it was an issue. Nevertheless, players were at the centre of a world in which big sums of money were changing hands, and they often didn’t see very much of it. Temptation would have been there, and, human nature being what it is, some would have been open to offers. Equally certain is that any who succumbed would not have made it public, and there was very little by way of investigative efforts to track down and discourage any instances of corruption.

Further reading

• Cricket and Community in England: 1800 to the Present Day – Peter Davies (Author), Robert Light (2015) – on the involvement of aristocracy in Early Cricket.
• Start of Play – David Underdown (2000)
• More Than a Game – John Major (2007)
• A Social History of English Cricket – Derek Birley (1999)

Footnotes

1. Underdown page 120 ↩︎
2. Pycroft Chapter VI ↩︎