WITH Australia entering the most eagerly anticipated battle with England for The Ashes in decades, the Bendigo Advertiser continues a series by avid historian PETER MacIVER looking at Bendigo’s links to the origins of perhaps the most famous trophy in world sport...
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On December 4, 1890, the Bendigo Advertiser reported the sad death of former Sandhurst resident William Evans Midwinter at the age of 39 years in the Kew Asylum.
Billy Midwinter (“Mid” to his friends), along with two other former Sandhurst residents, Harry Boyle and Billy Murdoch, was one of the greats of Australian cricket in the 1870s and 1880s and the only man to have played for Australia, then England and then Australia again.
Billy Midwinter was born at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in June 1851 and came to Australia with his parents as a child.
The family settled in Sandhurst, where, according to Bohemia writing in the Bendigo Advertiser in 1890: “‘Mid’ learnt his cricket on a little patch of grass amongst the Bendigo mines where he and his father bowled to each other in turn, the field being a dog. Sometimes when the ‘Bucks’, as the Bendigo United Cricketers were generally known in those days, were beaten in a match, the old man stood on the seats and told the team in no sort of undertone, ‘Me and Bill and the dog could play the crowd on yez.’”
Interestingly, Bohemia, in the same article, claimed that “It is extremely doubtful whether Midwinter was really born in Gloucestershire. The fiction was, it is understood, started by either (Harry) Jupp or Andrew Greenwood on the occasion of a match at Lord’s, and with the charitable intention of giving ‘Mid’, who had just then arrived from Australia, a chance, WG jumped at it and ‘Mid’ was playing for the county in a few days.”
Billy Midwinter (sometimes called the “Sandhurst Infant” by the press) started his cricket career with the California Gully Cricket Club before playing for Bendigo United Cricket Club in the 1860s and early 1870s.
Whilst there, he and Harry Boyle were the two best players each season, sharing the honours between them.
In 1872 he and Boyle were brought to Melbourne to play for the Jolimonters (the East Melbourne Cricket Club). “Mid” enjoyed several successful seasons in Metropolitan cricket, including representing the colony of Victoria.
He played for Victoria in nine inter-colonial matches between 1875 and 1887, his batting average for 17 innings being 20.53 runs per innings, and he bowled 1956 balls, taking 32 wickets at an average cost of 16.81 runs per wicket.
In 1877, Billy played in the first two test matches between England and Australia, performing particularly well with the ball.
That same year he left for England, where he was recruited to play for the Gloucestershire County Eleven, of which the three Graces were members.
He performed well for the county and was only headed in batting by the Graces. His bowling was also highly regarded.
When the 1878 Australian team arrived in England, Billy joined up with his compatriots and played the first five matches.
He was ready to open the batting for Australia against Middlesex when WG Grace virtually kidnapped him to play for Gloucester against Surrey.
Harry Boyle takes up the story in a letter published in the Bendigo Advertiser on August 13, 1878: “Shortly afterwards WG and JA Bush came, and, after some talk, Midwinter went away with them; I believe they gave him a rise in screw and a benefit. WG’s language was disgraceful, and after his remarks I cannot see how we can meet him, except he sends us an apology. Surrey beat Gloucester, and we beat Middlesex without Midwinter. We are now done with him, as he was very well paid by us, and it was his own wish to continue with us, but I suppose he got a better offer.”
The bad feeling between “Mid” and his fellow players did not last, but it did in the Australian press for a number of years, with comments about the fact that he couldn’t decide who to play for not being uncommon.
In 1882, The Bulletin published this barbed comment: “Midwinter, who is an Englishman in Australia, and an Australian in England, has decided to permanently settle in Australia. Sandhurst is to be the favoured spot.”
In a country where a national identity was partially being created through the Australian Eleven, it is understandable that many were annoyed by Midwinter’s seeming indecision, or pursuit of money in playing for both England and Australia. It is equally understandable that Midwinter would seek to make a decent living from a sport where he had a limited playing life. This is the age after all where amateurs made fortunes in the form of expenses, while professional players were paid poorly, looked down upon and often had short, hard lives.
After several successful years in England, Billy returned to Australia as a member of the English touring eleven of 1881. With the end of the tour in 1882, he stayed on in Australia, but did return to England as a member of the Australian Eleven of 1884. Following that tour “Mid” continued playing metropolitan and intercolonial cricket, but after the game against New South Wales in 1887, he retired from cricket and concentrated on being the lessee of several hotels in the Melbourne area, including Midwinters in Bourke Street.
In 1889, at the same time as business was dropping off due to an economic downturn, Midwinter lost his wife and two children and another child was in hospital and not expected to recover.
The pressure of this led to him developing a nervous affliction, so he gave up his business interests and returned to Sandhurst to stay with his sister.
In June of 1890, the Bendigo Advertiser reported that “Midwinter had to be removed to the lunacy ward of the Bendigo Hospital, where he now remains a raving and malicious lunatic.”
Later Billy was moved to the Kew Asylum, where he was visited in late November 1890 by Harry Boyle and another old Sandhurst friend, David Scott, as well as Tom Horan, a fellow Australian Eleven cricketer.
Billy by this time was partially paralysed and had very few lucid moments, but responded to Harry Boyle, “crying ‘Boyle, cricket I know,’ and his face lighted up at the mention of the name of WG Grace.”
Billy Midwinter passed away a week later, much mourned by his many friends and cricket lovers in England and Australia. An article in the Bendigo Advertiser summed up the general tone of reports on his death: “Few better cricketers (states Bohemia), taking him all round, ever played a match; no quainter man ever gossiped about the game in the pavilion. He never seemed to try to say a funny thing, yet he shared with old Robert Toms, the English umpire, a facility for quaint expressions that made him always worth listening to.”
In all, Billy Midwinter played eight tests for Australia, four for England and 160 first-class matches.
Footnote: The information for this article was sourced from Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digitised newspaper site.
Editor’s note: The Bendigo Advertiser thanks Peter MacIver for producing this Bendigo Ashes legacy series.
Click below to catch up on on the rest of the series:
