Spring-heeled Jack at the wicket?
Roy Hyde on HD Beresford
In Scores and Biographies (vol. 4), Haygarth records a gentleman called HD Beresford as having played for Bedale against the All England XI in 1849, for XXII of Stockton-on-Tees, also against the AEE, in the same year, and for Bedale against Knaresborough in 1850.[1] In the second of these matches he is listed as H. de-la-P. Beresford; in the other two as H.D. Until now Cricket Archive has always identified him as Henry de la Poer Beresford, born April 26 1811, died March 29 1859, from 1826 known as the 3rd Marquess of Waterford.
The Marquess was an interesting and, in his younger days, infamous man. A notorious roisterer, whilst at Eton in the 1820s he so frequently incurred the wrath of the (equally notorious) flogging headmaster, Dr Keate, that he and some friends eventually broke into the library and stole the Doctor’s birching block, which is said eventually to have found its way to Waterford’s house in Ireland. Another of his well-authenticated escapades is said to be the origin of the expression ‘painting the town red’. In 1837, after a drunken day at the races, he and some friends arrived at Melton Mowbray in the early hours of the morning. The toll-keeper demanded the toll to open the gates; Waterford and his friends seized some pots of paint that happened to be at hand, and painted him and his toll-house red. They then rampaged through the town, painting red various objects, including sundry citizens and constables, and generally creating havoc. The following day, Waterford paid for the damage, and he and his friends were later fined for their trouble.
Furthermore, an unauthenticated, but widespread, rumour also associated Waterford with the bogeyman known as ‘Spring-heeled Jack’, who liked to jump out at harmless passers-by (especially women), tear at their clothing with claw-like hands (though nothing more serious—his aim seems to have been to scare rather than to assault), and when pursued was able to leap extraordinary distances, supposedly with the aid of some kind of spring-operated footwear. He seems to have worn a sort of Batman costume, although he sometimes appeared in a bear skin. The association of Waterford with Spring-heeled Jack appears partly to have originated through a letter received by the Lord Mayor of London in 1838 claiming that Jack’s activities arose from a wager made amongst ‘some individuals (of, as the writer believes, the highest ranks of life)’. Nothing was proven either way; if Waterford or his friends were behind these stunts, they must have spawned some copy-cats, as Jack was said to be still active as late as 1904.[2] In any case, and no doubt to everyone’s surprise, in 1842 Waterford married and settled down, at Curraghmore in Co Waterford. His wife was Louisa Stuart, daughter of the 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay; an unlikely match, at first sight—Louisa was a gifted painter, associated with members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and known for her artistic inclinations and philanthropic outlook. But the marriage appears to have been a happy one, and the couple lived quietly on their Curraghmore estate for the remaining seventeen years of the Marquess’s life—as quietly, that is, as events in Ireland in the 1840s would permit: these were the years of the great Potato Famine. The Waterfords seem to have done their best to alleviate their tenants’ sufferings: more, certainly, than most Irish landowners did; and at least they were not absentee landlords.[3]
The Marquess was a keen sportsman, a horseman and rider to hounds—he even rode one of his own horses in the Grand National—and his death in 1859 was a result of a fall from his horse whilst hunting. He was a yachtsman and a big-game hunter, and in Ireland he sponsored a hurling team. At Eton he is said to have been an oarsman, and to have stroked the 1st VIII against Westminster.[4] Rowing did not necessarily preclude cricket at the public schools and universities of the time, and Waterford must have been exposed to cricket even if he did not play himself. But at no time in his life, as far as I can see, is he recorded as having played the game, until he appears, in his late thirties, in the matches referred to above. Nor does he seem to have any subsequent cricketing career. How is this to be explained? The answer—disappointingly, perhaps, as it means that we cannot add him to the list of the ‘bad boys’ of cricket—is that the Bedale and Stockton player was not him. There was another Henry de la Poer Beresford.
This one—Henry William de la Poer Beresford—was born on September 20 1820, son of the curiously named Admiral Sir John Poo Beresford, Bart, G.C.H., M.P., by his second wife Harriet Elizabeth Peirse, a daughter of Henry Peirse M.P., whose family held the Manor of Bedale in North Yorkshire, where Sir John and his wife settled; from 1826 he was M.P. for nearby Northallerton.[5] Despite his distinguished career, Sir John was illegitimate: he was the son of George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford (1735-1800). The 2nd Marquess, George’s eldest legitimate son, another Henry (1772-1826), was the father of the roistering 3rd Marquess, who inherited the title whilst at Eton.[6] Thus the two Henry Beresfords were half-cousins. Henry William was also at Eton, in the 1830s,[7] along with his younger brother John, later Rector of Bedale. John went on to Cambridge, and was presently ordained. The Eton Lists[8] refer to Henry as late of the 5th Fusiliers’, but any military activity can only have been for a short time after his leaving Eton, and I can find no record of it. In September 1841 he was at Bedale celebrating his coming of age. The York Herald[9] describes the festivities at some length: the whole village took a holiday, the local gentry and common folk alike were entertained and fed, and there were games on the lawn in front of Bedale Hall, the main family residence.
The Herald does not say whether these games included cricket. Nor is there any record of Henry having played at Eton, although in the light of his interest in the game later it may well be supposed that he did. In the early 1840s he seems to have settled into the life of a young country gentleman: He can be found taking out a game licence and renewing it annually;[10] he pursued the family interest in horses and horse-racing;[11] he is found at agricultural shows,[12] balls,[13] attending the County Sessions at York,[14] serving on a Grand Jury at the York Assizes,[15] etc. I have found no references to Henry’s playing cricket before 1844, but there are a number of names of cricketers or men from Yorkshire cricketing families in the lists of people with whom he was socially connected, and when, in 1845 his social status was enhanced by his appointment as a Deputy Lieutenant of the county, his fellow-appointees were M.W.V Milbank and Marmaduke Wyvill, both cricketers.[16]
The first reference to him playing is in a report of a match between the ‘Visiting Gentlemen’ and the North Riding village of Gilling, either in late September or early October 1844.[17] Henry played for the Gentlemen, who included Viscount Milton of Wentworth House near Rotherham, a well-known cricketer and patron of the game, and a Mr Fitzwilliam, probably one of Milton’s brothers, the Hons. George and Charles, both known as cricketers.[18] No doubt, given his cricketing connections, he played in matches that have gone unrecorded, but the next reference I have found is in the York Herald of August 1st 1846, when he made his first recorded appearance for Bedale, against Leyburn at Leases, presumably on the property of Frederick Milbank, as the many spectators are described as ‘guests of Mr and Mrs Milbank’.[19] From 1848 until the end of his cricketing career Henry played regularly, and almost exclusively, for Bedale, with moderate success: but he was by no means a rabbit; after a match against Tunstall in 1848 his batting was described as ‘exceedingly good’.[20]
The Bedale side of the late 1840s and early 1850s was a strong one: the future Yorkshire players George Anderson and Roger Iddison, Richard Clark(e), considered worthy of a brief biography by Haygarth,[21]; the several Mace brothers[22]; the fine wicketkeeper George Morton, who died sadly young, of the Black Swan at Bedale, and his brother John;[23] and other less known but clearly, from their performances, competent players. There are records of a Bedale Club between 1830 and 1842,[24] but there is then something of a hiatus until 1846, by which time most of these players were active. Haygarth[25] refers to a ‘re-establishment’ of the Bedale. Club in 1845, and, having given no accounts of Bedale matches or players since 1833, again includes a number of their matches between 1849 and 1858. Newspaper reports show that Beresford was playing regularly for the club from 1848[26], and it is tempting to associate this re-establishment both with the emergence of a number of top-class players and with the involvement of Henry Beresford, the only gentleman’ regularly to play for the club; since the death of his father in 1844, he had been de facto squire of Bedale, and a figure of some consequence locally.[27] Furthermore, in 1848 and 1849, newspapers report that Bedale played two matches on the lawn’ of the residence of Miss Peirse at Bedale.[28] Miss Mary Anne (Marianne in some sources) Peirse was Beresford’s aunt; she and her sisters (one of them Beresford’s mother, the wife of Sir John) had been named co-heiresses to the Bedale estates of their father, Henry Peirse M.P., on his death in 1824.[29]
By 1849 the Bedale Club was confident enough to challenge William Clarke’s All England XI, in the first of the three matches referred to above.[30] They did not do very well, but clearly cricket was flourishing at Bedale. ‘H.D. Beresford’ played in this match, and in one against Knaresborough the following year, and ‘H. de-la-P. Beresford’ for Stockton v AEE in 1849. There can be no reasonable doubt that this is the Henry Beresford of Bedale, who was playing regularly at this time, and not the Marquess of Waterford. Indeed, the York Herald of August 18, 1849, in previewing the Stockton match, states ‘Lord Seaham and H. Beresford Esq. have signified their assent to play, and the match will be under the distinguished patronage of several noblemen in the district. If Waterford had been going to play, the paper would presumably have said so, and surely used the title by which he had been known for 23 years—as would the match reports. However, a factor that may have encouraged the attribution of these matches to Waterford is that, after the 1850 season, Henry Beresford, like the Marquess, appears to vanish from cricketing records.
Actually he does not so much vanish as become invisible, for a simple reason: He changed his name. When his aunt, Miss Peirse, the last surviving of the Peirse sisters, died in September 1850,[31] Beresford inherited from her not only the Manor of Bedale but also—as frequently happened in such circumstances—her name: from this date he was Henry William de la Poer Beresford-Peirse.[32] For official purposes, he is generally referred to as Mr Beresford Peirse, but when playing cricket, perhaps on the grounds that he had enough names anyway, he is referred to as Mr H.B. Peirse. Between 1851 and 1858 H.B. Peirse appears regularly, mostly for Bedale, but occasionally for other teams, and is recorded in twelve matches by Haygarth.[33] Cricket Archive, misled by Haygarth’s spellings, has him as H.B. Pierce and, in a separate entry, as H.B. Pierse. 1858 was his last season; on July 24, 1859, he died of diphtheria, only two weeks after one of his young sons, at the age of 38.[34]
It is quite possible that the two Henry Beresfords knew each other. The age difference means that they were not at Eton together, but the Irish connection was maintained: When Sir John Beresford was elevated to his baronetcy, he took as his title of ‘Bagnall in Co Waterford’. They may even have exchanged visits (although Beresford seems to have spent most of his time at Bedale:[35] they shared an interest in horse, horse-racing, and hunting (though not, seemingly, in hell-raising), and both were country landowners, albeit on a different scale. But there is no good reason to associate the Marquess with cricket in the North Riding of Yorkshire, or to invest him with a cricketing career which should rightly be given to his namesake, the young squire of Bedale; he was, in any case, somewhat preoccupied by events in Ireland at the time.[36] So the putative Spring-heeled Jack must be written out of cricket history. Perhaps it is a pity: he might have been a useful wicketkeeper.[37]
This article first appeared in The Cricket Statistician for Summer 2021. To join the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, and subscribe to the journal, please visit our website:
[1] S&B 4, pp 5, 103, and 169.
[2] On Waterford’s life and escapades, see ‘The Colourful Life of an Irish Aristocrat’ at www.hennessyfurlong. com, by Julian Walton, a Waterford historian, who has examined the Curraghmore archives. On Springheeled Jack, Jacqueline Simpson, “Spring-heeled Jack,” International Society for Contemporary Legend Research, January 2001. Also articles in the Dictionary of National Biography.
[3] On the Marchioness and the Potato Famine, K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Life in Victorian Britain, Oxford 1998.
[4] See Walton, above. I have not been able to confirm this, but there seems no reason to doubt it.
[5] Some records refer to him as John Poer, some as John de la Poer, but the majority, including his memorial tablet in St Gregory’s Church, Bedale, have John Poo. Presumably the name is some version of ‘Poer’; but the ‘Poo’ seems to have stuck.
[6] Eton School Lists, 1791-1850, H.E.C. Stapylton 1863, p131. Details of the family may be found in any survey of the peerage, and in the DNB.
[7] Eton Lists, p166.
[8] As previous note.
[9] October 2, 1849.
[10] First in September 1841: Yorkshire Gazette, September 9. By the Game Act of 1826 a licence was required for ‘taking game’ at specified seasons of the year.
[11] e.g. he was a Steward at the Northallerton races in 1842: Yorkshire Gazette, September 10. Sir John also owned and raced horses.
[12] e.g. Yorkshire Gazette, August 28, 1847; at Northallerton.
[13] e.g. at a charity ball in York, where he was a steward: Yorkshire Gazette, January 1, 1843.
[14] e.g. in 1846: York Herald, April 4.
[15] Bradford Observer, March 14, 1844.
[16] Mark William Vane Milbank, April 5 1819-October 6 1883, played for the Bedale XXII against the AEE in 1849, alongside Beresford. He went to Harrow, and is almost certainly the M. Milbank who played for the Old Harrovians in 1849: S&B 4 p16, and probably for Lord Guernsey’s XI v Eton in the same year: S&B 4, p30. Marmaduke Wyvill played at Lord’s in 1862 for The Government v The Opposition, in the company of some reasonable cricketers. (S&B 7, p269) He was an M.P. 1847-1865 and 1866-1868.
[17] York Herald, October 5, 1844.
[18] See their entries on CA.
[19] York Herald, September 5, 1844. Frederick Milbank, later Sir Frederick, M.P., was the younger brother of M.W.V. Milbank: see note xvi above. He was a keen field sportsman and a crack shot, and an occasional cricketer: his wife’s informative diaries are excerpted in the ‘Barningham Archive’, at www. barninghamvillage.co.uk.
[20] York Herald, September 9, 1848.
[21] S&B 4, p5.
[22] The Mace brothers emigrated to Australia and then to New Zealand, where they continued to play cricket: see Greg Ryan, Where the Game was played by Decent Chaps: the Making of New Zealand Cricket 1832-1914 (PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, NZ), pp 113 and 115.
[23] S&B (5, p199) says that George Morton himself was landlord of the Black Swan, and he may have been later in his short life (he died at 32), but William White’s History, Gazetteer, and Directory of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1840, states that the landlord was already a George Morton: at that date the cricketer was only 11 years old, so this was probably his father; George the cricketer is described as ‘junior’ in The Era, November 11, 1848.
[24] CA on ‘Bedale’; some Bedale players also played for mixed Yorkshire XXIIs in 1832 and 1833, according to S&B 2, pp204 and 236. There are regular references to Bedale teams in the York Herald until 1842, and then a gap.
[25] S&B 5. p282.
[26] Frequent references in York Herald, Yorkshire Gazette, and Richmond and Ripon Chronicle for these years.
[27] I hope to examine further the fortunes of the Bedale Club in the 1840s and Beresford’s involvement with it in a future article.
[28] York Herald, September 23, 1848, and Yorkshire Gazette, same date; Yorkshire Gazette, September 8, 1849, and note xxxii below.
[29] Miss Peirse: Yorkshire Gazette, October 5, 1850, and Leeds Intelligencer, same date.
[30] According to S&B 4, p277, William Clarke had stayed at Bedale in 1848; George Anderson said Clarke ‘taught him much’. Peter Wynne-Thomas, William Clarke, The Old General, ACS, Cardiff 2004, p88, refers to ‘Old Ebor’s conversation with Anderson in which he says that Clarke used to come to Bedale and coach the young players and also laid out the Bedale ground.
[31] See note xxix above.
[32] Miss Peirse had been interested in cricket too: the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, September 2, 1870, writing before George Anderson’s benefit match, notes that ‘Cricket was very well supported at this time in Bedale by Miss Berrisford Pierse [sic], who took a great pleasure in seeing them play on the lawn in front of the house.’ Her name is given incorrectly: the mis-spelling is probably a simple mis-hearing; and she was never called Beresford, which is perhaps an error resulting from Anderson remembering her nephew by his later name. I owe this reference to Jeremy Lonsdale.
[33] Haygarth, who is usually keen on noting changes of name, pseudonyms, etc, obviously knew nothing about him.
[34] His son: York Herald, July 16, 1859; his own death: York Herald, July 30, 1859.
[35] See his funeral notice, Richmond and Ripon Chronicle, August 8, 1859.
[36] See notes ii and iii above.
[37] I owe thanks to Jeremy Lonsdale and Keith Walmsley for discussion and comments on this article.