Righting a wrong

Remembering Ted Peate

On a Tuesday in early March, in the year 1900, the Yorkshire skies hung low with grey as Edmund Peate, once the darling of Headingley and the scourge of southern batsmen, was laid to rest in Yeadon Cemetery. No marble marked his passing. No inscription testified to feats that once stirred thousands to applause. He was buried in an unmarked grave beside his old companion Thomas Bletchley.

The funeral was no lonely affair. From the White Swan Hotel, spiritual clubhouse of Yeadon cricket, emerged a procession of cricketers, old comrades of the fallen. They had assembled by arrangement, as for a benefit match or a reunion of the faithful, to accompany their friend to his grave. The White Swan, where Peate had held court with pint and anecdote, was the antechamber to his final journey.

And so this great cricketer, who had bowled for Yorkshire and England, who had once taken eight for five against Surrey and made the Australians hop like sparrows on a hot griddle, was consigned to anonymity. Ten other Yorkshire players lie in that cemetery. Each has a stone, but none a record to match Peate’s. None of them stirred the county’s pride quite as Peate did in those golden summers of the 1880s.

I have often visited Yeadon Cemetery, drawn by a sense of unfinished business, of justice deferred. Over the decades the grass grew long over Peate’s grave, and the wind whispered through the trees as if in lament at the want of a suitable memorial. There was a wrong here crying out for redress.

Some years ago I met Keith Handley, a man of quiet passion, who first recognised that Peate’s reputation had faded undeservedly into the shadows. He began a biography, a labour of love and restoration. But fate, cruel umpire, gave him out before his innings was complete. His research did not survive him. Peate’s story remained in limbo.

Then came Ian Lockwood, a man of vision and resolve, who took up the bat where Handley had left it. He wrote a book—Ten Drunks and a Parson—chronicling Peate’s life and death with humour and heart. The proceeds were pledged to erect a headstone.

And today, at last, the deed was done. Under skies much brighter than those under which he was consigned to his place of rest, the Yorkshire Old Players Association gathered to honour him. Geoff Cope and Kevin Sharp stood as emissaries, and were joined by Peate’s descendants and admirers. A service was held, simple and beautiful, beside the new headstone that bears his name:

Afterwards we repaired to the White Swan, as if to complete the circle.

It has taken 125 years to correct a wrong—a wrong born of bankruptcy and neglect, and of a club unwilling or unable to honour its finest. But today, in the sunshine, that wrong has been righted. The headstone stands as symbol of remembrance, of cricket’s conscience, of the enduring grace of a game that, at its best, does not forget those who have served it.

When wanderers pass through Yeadon Cemetery, let them pause at the grave of Edmund Peate. Let them read his name and recall his deeds, and let them know that here lies a man who once made the ball to talk and the crowd to sing. And let them be sure that Yorkshire, in the end, remembered him.