An unexpected sportsman

I’m working my way through the census records, with the aim of creating a prosopographical study of the town, which will one day be the main focus of this site. In the meantime I’m sharing little discoveries like this one in these research notes.

Looking through the 1871 census, I found a resident who gave his profession as professional cricketer. It struck me as unusual that there was a professional sportsman in Amersham at such an early date so I’ve tried to find out a little bit more about him.

David Willoughby, born in Chalfont St Giles in 1828, was a professional cricketer. According to the fabulous The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick-Maker: The story of Britain through its census, since 1801 by Roger Hutchinson, the first such entry in the census was in 1861, just 10 years before. In that case the cricketer was John Wisden, of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. The Almanack was first printed in 1864, so may possibly have featured David Willoughby in one of it’s early editions.

I don’t have access to these early editions, and a search on the Wisden website revealed two more recent cricketers, so I suppose, understandably, they’ve only put current players on the site. I had more luck on the Amersham Cricket Club site in their history section. Where I found details of two matches which named a D. Willoughby as a player.

In 1848 he would have been 20, so it’s possible it was him. The other match was in 1834, when he would only have been 6, so possibly his father played on the team, and perhaps both entries were him. In any case, there are no entries after that, but the records on the site finish in 1856, so a lot of further investigation would be needed to find out the extent of his career. I’d assume though, that Amersham Cricket Club wouldn’t have been able to pay a full time wage, so presumably he progressed to a county team.

My cricket knowledge is very limited, and I’ll confess I don’t really understand the scores of the matches, however this little investigation has given me food for thought. I’d intended to include place of worship in my prosopography, but hadn’t, until now, thought of sports clubs. Where the congregation of a church might have been most of the village, a team is a small number of people, who would probably have known each other well, so probably gives more of an insight into friendship groups. I’ll be adding Amersham Cricket Club to my database once I’ve completed more of the initial study.