#England cricket history

[morrieandlicky]

In E.M. Forster's Maurice, Where Did the Idea for the Cricket Scene Come From?

Having visited Edward Carpenter's house, where E.M. Forster initially conceived the idea for Maurice during his visit in 1913, I find it interesting that the Carpenter estate is located right next to a cricket club called "Holmesfield Cricket Club," established in 1905.

For those familiar with Maurice, cricket likely carries some significance—in the novel, it is through cricket that Maurice and Alec first experience their "us against the world" moment:

"Maurice played up too... and he felt that they were against the whole world, that not only Mr Borenius and the field but the audience in the shed and all England were closing round the wickets. They played for the sake of each other and their fragile relationship If one fell the other would follow. They intended no harm to the world, but so long as it attacked they must punish, they must stand wary, then hit with full strength, they must show that when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph." - Maurice, E.M. Forster

This "us against the world" mentality is exactly what Edward Carpenter and George Merrill (the real-life models for Maurice and Alec) had lived by. The couple resided in this remote, secluded place, surrounded by forests and woods, outside society, like two brave outcasts, mirroring how Maurice and Alec live in their own fictional "greenwood'.

The cricket scene in the novel is obviously a foreshadow to that life as outcasts away from society, but I'd never really thought about why Forster chose cricket as a medium for Maurice and Alec to have their first pivotal "us against the world" moment. I simply assumed that cricket, being a popular sport, was an easy and natural plot device for Forster.

Then, I visited the Carpenter house, and saw the Holmesfield Cricket Club right next to it, and couldn't help but deduce that Forster, who had previously visited the house on a few occasions before 1913 and was inspired by Carpenter and Merrill during his 1913 visit to write Maurice, likely also noticed the cricket club. This observation might have sparked the idea of incorporating a cricket match into the story, thus establishing a direct connection between Maurice and Alec's "us against the world" moment and the Carpenter house—the very physical birthplace of the novel where the real-life models of Maurice and Alec lived.

This is just my theory. In fact, there isn't any mention of the Holmesfield Cricket Club in Forster's diaries and drafts related to Maurice. However, one thing I learned from reading Maurice is that there is no coincidence in the novel, so it's my personal belief that this connection between the fictional plot and the reality of the Carpenter house is also no coincidence—all the more reason why Forster was a freaking genius.

[georgefairbrother]

Remembering Sir Michael Parkinson, who passed away August 16th, 2023, aged 88.

From his Australian series, one of Parky's more interesting and intense encounters was with media mogul Kerry Packer, who had bankrolled the rebel Word Series Cricket competition in the late 70s. Packer was famously intimidating and, despite earning a large portion of his massive wealth from news and media, generally could not abide journalists and often made that very clear. It was rare that he spoke candidly and publicly as he did during this extended interview.

The battle to establish World Series Cricket had been bruising for everyone involved, and Parky clearly felt strongly about what he saw as Tony Greig’s betrayal, actively signing players for the rebel competition while still England captain, while Packer unsurprisingly had the opposite point of view. What followed was a masterclass in how to disagree robustly and remain courteous, and might have been Parky’s best interview of all on television.

[egyptianking]

My manager just told me he's leaving in 3 weeks so we spent our whole hour long 1 to 1 meeting talking about Liverpool's season and also how he's suddenly become a lance stroll fan instead of anything to do with my job 🫶

[olxpracasports]

Yashasvi Jaiswal: A promising cricketer ready to create history in the fifth test against England

Yashasvi JaiswalYoung and talented Indian cricketers are taking the cricket world by storm with their extraordinary performances. In the ongoing Test series against England, Jaiswal has been in great form, and he has the opportunity to achieve something remarkable in the fifth and final Test match in Dharamsala. Second fastest Indian to score 1,000 test runs Jaiswal currently has 971 runs in 15…

[rjnello]

A Bat And A Ball... And Two Worlds

Time for some fun. If you have seen the streaming TV series Ted Lasso, the (mostly comedy) program about an American college football (American football) coach from Kansas who ends up in London managing a Premier League football (soccer) team, chances are you know the show’s English journalist character, “Trent Crimm.” He begins the series covering sport (no “s” here in England) for the…

[traincoded]

Sports and Politics reading list

(all can be found for free/libgen links)

The ‘Ungrateful Athlete’: Anti-Black, Anti-Labor Currents in Sports Media: Podcast episode from Citations Needed about the coverage of sportspersons in the United States. Interviews professor Amira Rose Davis.

Revolt of the Black Athlete, by Harry Edwards. Remember that fist raised in protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics? Sociologist and activist Harry Edwards was the architect of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which led to the Black Power Salute and called for an Olympics boycott.

Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan by Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson is a set of essays about what complicates sports fandom in modern sports by two journalists.

Beyond a Boundary by CLR James is a history and memoir of cricket in the West Indies and colonial legacies. James is a Trinidadian Marxist best known for writing The Black Jacobins.

Soccer in the Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeanos is a rebellious history of football through an anti imperialist lens. Galeanos is better known for his book Open Veins of Latin American.

Anyone but England: Cricket, Race and Class by Mike Marquesse: A Jewish American takes a look at cricket’s storied history when it comes to race and class, with particular focus on apartheid South Africa.

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sports is a collection of essays in the Routledge Critical Studies in Sports series. Of interest is Chapter 7 on black Marxism and the politics of sport. Chapter 8 overviews theories of sporting celebrity, class and black feminism in context of the Williams sisters.

A Woman's Game: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Women's Football by Suzy Wrack is a history of english women's football. If you've heard that women's football was banned by the FA in reaction to its encroaching on the popularity of the men's game, this is a good place to start abt that history to the present day.

[myauditionfordrphil]

Ok I'mma vent this out at once and will try to not utter a word about this cursed night again. India deserved this cup, they really did. Because if there's been a team who performed the best and embodied the spirit and passion of cricket it's been India. They did their best from the very first game against Australia... Jaddu's wickets (especially Smith's), the top order collapse and King and Rahul's partnership winning us the game (also Rahul's 97). Then came Afghanistan and Bangladesh - Rohit's century, Virat in delhi (vs Naveen, their hug), Hardik's injury resulting in our dear Cheeku's bowling, KL refusing runs to complete Virat's century, Ro - Vi - Rah hug 🤌and ofc umpire not giving the wide. The Pakistan rivalry came into the tournament but our streak was saved when we defeated them 8 - 0. Then came the most dreaded match against New Zealand - Vi's missed century was definitely a sore spot but the revenge was completed. Shami being shami showing why you should not bench him with his fifer and Jaddu hitting the final runs to avenge Mahi Bhai. England and Sri Lanka were no match - they were destroyed by our balling - the only good thing was Gill's knock, Shreyas' century and ofc RohiRat hugs ✨. We made a Sri Lanka out of South Africa with the King getting a century on his b'day and destroyed Netherlands but the main part was Virat and Rohit taking wickets. Then came the semis against NZ and honestly the whole desiblr was scared as fuck bcz of our history but Revenge was taken... Kohli shattering all records and hitting his 50th century making us prouder than ever (anushka's kisses and bowing to the God Sachin will forever be remembered) and Shami's 7 wickets, like is there a way to stop Lalaji bcz I can't think of one (amd what's this 7 factor? 397 runs, all out at 327, won by 70 runs, shami taking 7 wickets ? tribute to Thala ig). But it all came down to this, we lost the finals... After all this we lost, 1.5 billion hearts are broken, the 12 year wait continues. But this tournament will never be forgotten, we laughed and we cried with our team and supported them at every step. We saw moments we'll never forget, we made memories seeing records being broken and our boys having the time of their lives, hugging and dancing on the field and being more excited for the mighty fielding medal than the actual match itself. So this tournament will forever be remembered. You'd expect me to say congratulations to Australia but no, they played well ofc but no team played cricket better than India... Just bcz this team didn't performed in one single match didn't mean that they didn't deserve to win this. Kohli gave all of his soul, Rohit made this team what it is and Shami gutted all his haters but sadly luck was not on our side. After winning all 10 matches our unbeaten streak got broken in the finals only. Yes I'm heartbroken to core but at the same time I'm bloody proud of our boys who gave everything they had, your heads should be held high. In my own delusional world India won this cup and not just team India but the whole country. In my mind we are the winners and the team got the prize for their blood, sweat and tears. You'll all be remembered forever as champions.

Bleed blue 🩵

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 31 May 1989, CLR James, Trinidadian Marxist and author of The Black Jacobins, the definitive history of the Haitian Revolution, as well as other texts on class, colonialism and cricket, died aged 88 in Brixton, London. As a young man he joined the movement against British colonialism, and later moved to England and became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, forerunner to the Guardian newspaper. He lived in the US for a time, where alongside Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs (pictured L-R), he formed the influential Johnson-Forest Tendency. Returning to Britain, he continued to write fiction and non-fiction, including a history of the Ghanaian revolution, until his death at home. We have some of his works available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/c-l-r-james https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=635615218611697&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[georgefairbrother]

On February 3rd, 1960, British (Conservative) Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressed the South African parliament in Cape Town, using the iconic phrase ‘wind of change’, that was blowing through the African continent as majority black nations moved toward decolonialisation and independence. He described this ‘growth of national consciousness’ as a political fact, whether welcome or not, and talked about the creation of a society which respects the rights of individuals;

"…A society in which individual merit, and individual merit alone, is the criterion for a man’s advancement, whether political or economic…"

Given the regime of Apartheid in South Africa at that time, it’s unsurprising that the speech received a frosty reception, although the South African Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, at least remained courteous, but argued;

"…We are the people who brought civilisation to Africa. To do justice in Africa means not only being just to the black man of Africa, but also to the white man of Africa…"

The BBC reported;

"…Mr Macmillan’s speech is the first time a senior international figure has given voice to the growing protest against South Africa’s laws of strict racial segregation. The speech was widely anticipated throughout the country, as Mr Macmillan had already said he would take the chance to say what he thought about the situation in South Africa. Even so, the plain-speaking nature of the speech took many in Cape Town by surprise…"

Harold Macmillan’s courageous speech was widely credited in expediting independence across Africa. It was also influential toward encouraging a more vocal opposition to Apartheid internationally, and by 1962, the UN had passed a non-binding resolution calling for an international trade and cultural boycott of South Africa.

The British government's resolve in terms of isolating South Africa proved to be a little fluid - at the inaugural Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 1971, the Heath government mightily annoyed African member states over proposed arms sales to South Africa in defiance of a voluntary UN embargo.

The sporting boycott was credited as being a major factor driving reform in South Africa, however this was lost on a number of professional cricketers who participated in highly lucrative rebel tours over several years. This is how long time anti Apartheid activist (Lord) Peter Hain described what would be a disastrous tour by a rebel England side, in early 1990, with Apartheid in its very last days;

"…This was on the cusp of a historic change in South Africa. So for Gatting and his ­tourists to go, clodhoppers and all, into this transformative moment was ­grotesque beyond belief. It was not surprising it caused such offence. The rebel tours were a doomed attempt to shore up the ­tottering apartheid system, when it needed to be isolated…"

More on rebel tours by Australia and England;

Literature circulating in South Africa during an earlier Australian rebel tour, stated;

"...The 8 million Rand that will be paid to 15 well nourished but greedy cricketers can buy bread for each and every day of an entire year for 250 000 South Africans – enough to save a quarter million from dying..."

[mohabbaat]

top 5 moments in cricket history

ahhhhh. best question, anon. 😭

india vs pakistan match during the 2022 t20 world cup. those last few overs, especially that no ball and that last wide live rent free in my head.

the semi final of world cup 2023 where maxwell played the greatest innings i have ever seen while having cramps. insane batting.

2011 world cup final!!!! ICONIC.

that one india vs australia test match at gabba in 2021 where pant went insane.

2019 world cup final. that super over. england winning by boundary count. it was so insane. 😭

[handeaux]

Why Did Cincinnati Abandon Cricket To Become America’s First Baseball Powerhouse?

You can blame the Civil War for Cincinnati becoming the home of professional baseball. Well into the 1860s, this was a cricket town with “town ball” and “base ball” taking a distant second place to bowlers and wickets.

The curious researcher can still find references to Cincinnati’s early cricketeers today, but most often as footnotes to the history of baseball. However, it is not too much of a stretch to say that baseball would not have prevailed in Cincinnati without the boost it received from the old-time cricket clubs.

Cincinnati’s cricket clubs were formidable opponents, hosting international matches with Canadian teams and participating in home-and-away rivalries with cricket clubs in Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Cincinnati cricketeers were professionals long before the nascent Red Stockings decided to pay their players.

Cricket was most definitely an Englishman’s game and Cincinnati before the Civil War was largely a city of English origins. The Cincinnati Gazette [6 October 1853] summed up the popularity of the “manly old game”:

“Cricket matches are now quite in fashion. We see notice of them in numerous exchanges, East, North and West. Wherever Englishmen are found, there a Cricket Club is found with them.”

Although Cincinnati newspapers carried stories about out-of-town cricket matches as early as the 1820s, local cricketeers didn’t get organized until the 1840s. The Queen City Cricket Club convened in 1843 every Thursday at 2:00 p.m. at “Wade’s Woods” northwest of the intersection of Liberty Street and Central Avenue. By 1845, the Western Cricket Club offered some stiff competition to the Queen City club and the two teams battled it out on grounds located “at the foot of Eighth Street” in the Millcreek bottoms near the Whitewater Canal. It appears that the players were solidly middle-class – salesmen, plumbers, carpenters and shopkeepers – the sorts of folks who could spare a weekly afternoon to indulge in outdoor recreation.

By 1850 the Union Cricket Club, apparently a merger of the Queen City and Western clubs, was the dominant local team. Cricket grounds were hard to come by and the Union Club played variously at the Orphan Asylum lot where Music Hall now stands, on a wood-ringed field off Madison Road in East Walnut Hills, near the canal in Camp Washington and at the back of what later became known as Lincoln Park, location of Union Terminal today. From time to time, reports indicate that adherents of “town ball” or “base ball” also made use of the Union Cricket grounds, but only on days when the cricketeers were otherwise occupied.

Among the Cincinnati cricket stalwarts back in the day was Jonathan Hattersley, born in Sheffield, England, in 1835. Hattersley emigrated to the United States as a young man, arriving in New Orleans and working his way up the rivers to Cincinnati. After a failed start as manager of a weaving operation, he set himself up as the sales agent for a number of British steel refineries. He later joined the firm of Thomas Turner, manufacturer of cutting and slicing equipment. Hattersley married the owner’s daughter, bought out his father-in-law, and set up a saw manufactory with his son, Harry. Before the Cincinnati Fire Department went professional in 1853, Hattersley battled blazes with the Franklins, one of the amateur companies active in the city. He was among the founders of the Western Cricket Club and later became president of the mighty Union Cricket Club. His office in the saw blade factory on Third Street served essentially as the club’s headquarters.

The Union Cricket Club dominated Cincinnati cricket from the 1840s into the 1870s. Its bench was so deep that the club supported two teams – the stars and a farm team both under one roof. While the “first eleven” participated in matches from Chicago to the East Coast, the “second eleven” kept the hometown fans occupied by playing clubs from Northern Kentucky, Lawrenceburg and some smaller Ohio towns. The Union Club even challenged a championship English club then touring the states but couldn’t reconcile schedules. About half the Union Cricket Club players were paid professionals.

It was Jonathan Hattersley who recruited George and Harry Wright to Cincinnati from New York’s stellar St. George Cricket Club. Although the Wright brothers carried the original Cincinnati Red Stockings to baseball glory, they arrived in the Queen City as professional cricket players. Harry Wright was also from Sheffield, born the same year as Jonathan Hattersley. One may assume they had met in childhood. In an interview with the Enquirer [20 August 1875], Harry, by then manager of the Boston Red Stockings, recounted his arrival in Cincinnati:

“I was under contract, and was offered very fine inducements to leave New York. When I arrived in Cincinnati cricket was all the rage, but it finally subsided, and from the club I managed the old Red Stockings of that city was organized. I would like to say in this connection that the uniform I used as the cricketer was adopted by the Base-Ball Club.”

Wright glosses over what specific factors caused the “rage” for cricket to “subside,” but baseball scholars generally point to the Civil War, which brought young men from all over the United States together and gave them a great deal of free time when they weren’t busy shooting each other. Simon Worrall, writing in Smithsonian Magazine [October 2006] describes the wartime conditions that promoted baseball over cricket:

“A year before the Civil War broke out, “Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player,” published in New York City, sold 50,000 copies in the United States. Soldiers from both sides of the conflict carried it, and both North and South embraced the new game. It was faster than cricket, easier to learn and required little in the way of equipment: just a bat (simpler to make than a cricket bat, which requires sophisticated joinery), a ball and four gunnysacks thrown on a patch of ground, and you're ready to play.”

By the time the war ended, Cincinnati seethed with baseball fever. Even Jonathan Hatterley’s son, Harry, took up baseball, catching for the junior-league Pickwicks in Cincinnati. A group of young executives – many of them Civil War veterans – organized the Cincinnati Base Ball Club on 23 July 1866 and quickly allied with the Union Cricket Club, who already had very nice facilities ready for play. According to Harry Ellard’s 1907 “Baseball in Cincinnati”:

“In 1867 the club moved to the grounds of the Union Cricket Club, with which was made a quasi alliance. These grounds were situated at the foot of Richmond Street. They were used in the summer for cricket and baseball and in winter were flooded and used for skating purposes, where great enthusiasm was manifested in this winter sport, with a series of interesting carnivals.”

Harry Wright and his brother George were convinced to give up cricket to lead America’s first professional baseball team. The rest, as they say, is history. Still, Harry, George and the rest of their team did not totally abandon cricket. It is not often reported that the Cincinnati Red Stockings, during their undefeated inaugural season, actually played a cricket match. In San Francisco, on 28 September 1869, the Cincinnati baseball team engaged the “All California Eleven.” According to Ellard:

“For the sake of variety and amusement they played a game of cricket with the California eleven, in which they showed that they could play cricket as well as baseball.”

The former cricketeers now known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings prevailed 118 to 79.

[mariacallous]

People who don’t join political parties imagine that membership is an expression of opinions held in common. It starts that way, but over time, party loyalty comes to be defined at the threshold of tolerable extremism. What ugly attitude can you rub along with without recoil because, politically speaking, it’s family?

That is the question that Lee Anderson, a former deputy chair of the Conservative party, forced on fellow Tories with his assertion that “Islamists” have “got control” of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

The whip was withdrawn. Rishi Sunak saw a line being crossed but struggled to name the crossing point, observing only that Anderson was “wrong”, not racist or Islamophobic. There was an awkward void in the place where the Conservative leader located the wrongness.

The transgression was severe enough to merit expulsion from the parliamentary party, but it can’t be defined by words that are applied without hesitation by anyone who really understands the offence.

The prime minister doesn’t want to call it Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hate because that would cast a net of opprobrium over everyone in his party who agrees with Anderson. They are too numerous to anathematise. It would drag in Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, who has written that Keir Starmer is “in hock” to Islamists who have nobbled parliament and “bullied our country into submission”.

Some Conservative MPs reject such paranoid hallucinations for what they are. Most finesse the question as a matter of rhetorical taste. “Not the words I would have chosen,” is a standard non-repudiation. It avoids naming the ingredient that is too spicy for more subtle Tory lips.

Press for clarity and the conversation is diverted on to pro-Palestinian demonstrations, antisemitic placards appearing in the throng, chants celebrating a Middle East with Israel erased and, since Hamas pursues that goal by indiscriminate murder, a shadow of intimidation felt by many British Jews.

Those are not imaginary issues, but they can be raised without plunging into the murky water where Anderson and friends swim. “Control” is the keyword. It unlocks the insinuation that Khan is a cipher, a sleeper agent. He might sound like a mainstream politician of the centre-left, but that is a front. He might have a commendable record of running a multiethnic capital with respect for the cultural sensibilities of its diverse communities, but his true agenda is sectarian.

That is not a plausible depiction of the actual Sadiq Khan. But Anderson speaks to an audience (mostly outside London) that doesn’t see beyond the mayor’s Muslim faith and the colour of his skin, taking them as proof of ulterior and unsavoury allegiance.

Encoded in the attack on Khan is the old “cricket test”, formulated by Tory grandee Norman Tebbit. Tebbit’s question: do immigrants and their children cheer for England in the Test match, or do their non-native hearts crave victory for some other land? The cricket test sets a cruel bar for belonging in Britain. It can only be cleared by jettisoning intimate components of identity. That is nationalism doing what nationalism does – narrowing the criteria for who counts as part of the nation and policing the boundary with menaces.

The left traditionally rejects that way of thinking, with one exception. A socialist variant of the cricket test applies to Jews who feel some cultural, religious or family affinity to Israel, which is most of Britain’s Jewish community.

Formally, the test is not racial. The passport for admittance to left virtue is repudiation of “Zionism”, which is a polyvalent word, narrower than Jewishness, wider than Israeli. It has a complex history, disputed among Jews themselves, which is what gives it utility in laundering the ancient animus. Much of the “anti-Zionism” that exonerates itself from racism replicates the imagery and idiom of what, a century ago, was denounced as “International Jewry”.

The progressive Geiger counter that crackles on contact with most particles of racist radiation passes silently over talk of “Zionists” exerting control over the media, finance and British foreign policy.

No alarm was raised at the Labour meeting in Rochdale where Azhar Ali, then the party’s candidate in a local byelection, said that the Israeli government had knowingly permitted the Hamas atrocities of 7 October as a pretext for military aggression in Gaza. It took a few days for Ali to lose Keir Starmer’s endorsement.

Many were dismayed by the propagation of a wild conspiracy theory while doubting that antisemitism was in the room. But it takes irrational fixation on the evil of a Jewish state, and intuitive reluctance to empathise with a narrative of Jewish victimhood, to embrace the idea that Israel organised a blood sacrifice of its own people to facilitate conquest of Palestinian land.

Conspiracy theory as conduit into the mainstream is a common factor in the spread of antisemitism and Islamophobia. It is the difference between conversations about “Islamism” or “Zionism” as terms that Muslims and Jews might recognise, and the deployment of those words as pseudoanalytical camouflage on blanket vilification of a minority community.

Purported vigilance against “Islamism” is a bridge between the mainstream right and the morbid ultranationalist fantasy where Muslim communities in “no-go areas” wage demographic war to replace Christian populations. “Anti-Zionism” causes a blurring of vision on the mainstream left that makes it hard for some people to distinguish between the struggle for Palestinian justice and railing against inveterate Jewish bloodlust.

I have written this far without a personal expression of horror and despair at the plight of Gaza. Does a Jewish journalist have to declare non-affiliation to the Israeli government, and confess to a sickening dread of every news bulletin, as his licence to participate in conversations about the Middle East?

We are not all freelance ambassadors for a foreign state. We are often made to feel like it, which induces an impulse of resentful emotional retreat. I imagine something similar is felt by British Muslims after terrorist attacks carried out in the name of jihad. It is hard not to resent the suspicion of complicity, the unspoken charge of guilt by cultural adjacency, that flickers in a stranger’s eyes.

None of these experiences is exactly equivalent. Antisemitism on the left and Islamophobia on the right can’t be formulated as a balanced string of political algebra. But there is a grim symmetry of blind spots, self-righteous denial and selective outrage. There is an unhealthy division of vigilance with partisans from each end of the political spectrum appointing themselves arbiters of the prejudice they have decided belongs to the opposite side.

Jewish and Muslim identities are not signifiers of ideology or party loyalty. But British politics, in its relentless polarising vortex, seems unable to treat them, treat us, as anything other than potential recruits for a dangerous round of mutual antagonism. And we are tired, I am tired, of having personal identity, family attachment, culture and innermost anxiety scored and folded into darts for other people to hurl across party lines. So very tired.

[olympic-paris]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

August 15

15 Août *Assomption * Assumption

1857 – Montague Druitt (d.1888) was one of the suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders that took place in London between August and November 1888.

He came from an upper-middle class English background, and studied at Winchester College and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he was employed as an assistant schoolmaster at a boarding school and pursued a parallel career in the law, qualifying as a barrister in 1885. His main interest outside work was cricket, which he played with many leading players of the time, including Lord Harris and Francis Lacey.

In November 1888, he lost his post at the school for reasons that remain unclear. One newspaper, quoting his brother William's inquest testimony, reported that he was dismissed because he "had got into serious trouble", but did not specify any further. It has been speculated that he had homosexual tendencies which caused him to molest his students.

Others, however, think that there is no evidence of homosexuality and that his suicide was instead precipitated by an hereditary psychiatric illness. His mother suffered from depression and was institutionalised from July 1888. She died in an asylum in Chiswick in 1890.[ His maternal grandmother committed suicide while insane, his aunt attempted suicide., and his eldest sister committed suicide in old age. A note written by Druitt and addressed to his brother William, who was a solicitor in Bournemouth, was found in Druitt's room in Blackheath. It read, "Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die."

One month after he disappeared his body was discovered drowned in the River Thames. His death, which was found to be a suicide, roughly coincided with the end of the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. Private suggestions in the 1890s that he could have committed the crimes became public knowledge in the 1960s, and led to the publication of books that proposed him as the murderer. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, however, and many writers from the 1970s onwards have rejected him as a likely suspect.

1920 – Officials at the Boise City Traction Company catch two men having sex in a restroom, having installed a spy hole from above. The men are convicted of sodomy. Officials had tried to cover the glory hole with wood or metal, but the coverings always 'came off.'

1921 – A bill in England to outlaw 'gross indecency' between women is defeated in the House of Lords on the ground that women do not know of such things. The sponsor of the bill makes the understatement of the year: '...it is a well-known fact that any woman who indulges in this vice will have nothing whatever to do with the other sex.'

1927 – John Cranko (d.1973) was a choreographer with the Sadler's Wells Ballet (which later became the Royal Ballet) and the Stuttgart Ballet. Born in Rustenburg in the former province of Transvaal, South Africa, as a child, he would put on puppet shows as a creative outlet. Cranko received his early ballet training in Cape Town under leading South African ballet teacher and director, Dulcie Howes, of the University of Cape Town Ballet School.

John Cranko choreographed the comic ballet Pineapple Poll, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas, in collaboration with Sir Charles Mackerras, for a British Festival, following the expiration of the copyright on Arthur Sullivan's music in 1950.

Estranged from his mother his parent's acrimonious divorce, Cranko's father, Herbert, a balletomane, spent a great deal of time with him in London.

John Cranko wrote and developed a musical revue Cranks, which opened in London in December 1955, moved to a West End theatre the following March, and ran for over 220 performances. With music by John Addison, its cast-of-four featured singers Anthony Newley, Annie Ross, Hugh Bryant and dancer Gilbert Vernon then transferred to New York. Cranko followed the format of Cranks with a new revue New Cranks opening at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in 1960 with music by David Lee and a stellar cast including Gillian Lynne, Carole Shelley and Bernard Cribbins, but it failed to have the same impact.

John Cranko took the moribund tradition of the full-length narrative ballet and, with dazzling productions of Eugene Onegin and Romeo and Juliet, gave it new life. And he brought, to a world of dying swans and sighing swains, a puckish humour that found expression in comic ballets like Pineapple Poll and Jeu de cartes.

But his energy and humour were not without a darker side. A biography by John Percival paints a portrait of a man capable of great friendship but unable to sustain the stable romantic relationship he felt essential to his well-being. The whirl of one-night stands and brief homosexual affairs seems not to have been enough, and his unhappiness was manifested in bouts of drinking and depression.

Cranko choked to death after suffering an allergic reaction to a sleeping pill he took during a transatlantic flight. His mother, Grace, who was divorced from Herbert and lived in what was then Rhodesia, heard about his death from a radio broadcast.

1963 – Waide Aaron Riddle was born in Kingsville, Texas. Raised in Houston, Texas, Riddle eventually moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a barber and in various jobs in the entertainment industry. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Riddle began writing poetry and short stories. His first poem, "Two Men Kissing," won the National Author's Registry Honorable Mention in 1996 and the Registry's President's Award in 1997.

Riddle went on to self-publish two books of poetry: All-American Texan, in 1999, and The Chocolate Man: A Children's Horror Tale, in 2002. In addition, his short stories and articles have been published in anthologies and magazines, and he has won a number of awards in poetry competitions.

All-American Texan is a collection of Gay poetry with cross-over appeal to a broader audience. Included are several award winning poems and works displayed in the Simon Weisenthal Center Library/Museum of Tolorance, and the University of Southern California Gay and Lesbian Archives and Library.

1964 – Michael Berresse is an American actor, dancer, choreographer, and director.

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but reared primarily in Joliet, Illinois, Berresse's father was a chemical engineer and his mother is the artist and author Cynthia Berresse Ploski. A nationally competitive gymnast and diver from age eight, he went straight from high school to a stint performing in Walt Disney theme parks in Orlando and Tokyo before moving to New York and making his Broadway debut in the 1990 revival of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1992, he appeared on Star Search in a dance group called "The Boys Back East", winning the title of Best New Dance Group and a shared prize of $100,000.

He has appeared on Broadway in many shows.

Berresse was the director and choreographer of the Broadway musical, [title of show] for which he was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award and a recipient of off-Broadway's Obie Award and which starred and was co-created by his partner Jeff Bowen.

He made his film debut as the Stage Manager in Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, played an assassin in State of Play, starring Russell Crowe, and recently appeared in The Bourne Legacy, with Jeremy Renner.

1977 – Stefan Maysztowicz creates the micro-nation of the Gay Parallel Republic (GPR) on 308 square miles near Quebec, centered on the city of Sherbrooke.

2013 – Sweden issues the first family-based visa for a same-sex partner’s spouse. It is a direct result of the June 2013 decision of the US Supreme Court to expand recognition of same-sex marriage to the federal level. This allows the husband of Ambassador Mark Bezezinski to now travel to the United States as a fully recognized spouse.  Brzezinski is an American lawyer who served as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011–2015.

[cobblestonevoid]

I’ll preface this by saying that I hope and pray that this post reaches its extremely niche target audience (people that like Oscar Wilde, Good Omens, and paranormal/dark history Quite A Bit), as it’ll not be nearly as fun to people that don’t enjoy all three. That said,

I was going through the Wikipedia page for Eccles Cakes, because my brain had gotten stuck on the line and I’d been repeating “Eccles Cake?” to myself all day. Anyways, the point is, I’d gotten to the part about similar cakes they periodically get mixed up with when I spotted THIS:

This, in and of itself, is unremarkable. However, me being an Oscar Wilde fan first and reasonable second, I noticed a striking resemblance to the name for the ailing fictional character invented by Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest (who conveniently suffers bouts of exceptionally bad health whenever Algy’s relations invite him to something dull.)

While this may seem like a stretch to the untrained eye, it is a well documented historical fact that Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is named for the seaside town in the south of England where Oscar Wilde wrote the play. As such, it is not an unnatural conclusion that he would do something similar with Bunbury’s name.

So, naturally, I went to the Wikipedia page for the Importance of Being Earnest. While I did not find anything in the page’s primary text, I did find this in the notes:

According to a Wikipedia note, I’d been corroborated by noted spiritualist and occult researcher Aleister Crowley (who, as an aside, Neil Gaiman has confirmed on tumblr that Our Crowley is named after, along with the town of Crawley). It is well documented that Aleister (as this is tumblr, and referring to him by his surname would inevitably lead to confusion) knew Wilde, which would hypothetically give him authority on the matter. Now, as much as I’d love to say that I’m the type of person to see that their theory has been corroborated and be happy and done with it, the American school system has done nothing if not engender an inherent distrust of Wikipedia in me. As such, I did some digging around the internet, and what I wound up finding was that every single site making this claim traced its evidence back to this book:

The book is $50. The author, Timothy D’Arch Smith, has a bio describing him as a ���bibliographer, antiquarian bookseller (author’s note: oh my god he’s an antiquarian bookseller), and author, whose wit and scholarly predilections – Montague Summers (see Bibliographies), Aleister Crowley, rock 'n' roll, and cricket (see Games and Sports) – inform his contribution to the genre.” My question is,

Regardless, I think it’s really fun how all of my silly little interests intersected here and I needed to yell about it

[as-nowilove]

THE SCOP

My imagination turns upon words. I am certain that I was there in the forest when a storyteller recited Beowulf to a gathering of villagers in Anglo-Saxon England, common folk for whom such a performance was magical. And I have heard the thunder of King Lear's voice on the boards of the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan London. I was spellbound.

Emily Dickinson read to me a poem she had written about crickets in which she realized a precision of statement that defies description. Czeslaw Milosz read his magnificent "Esse" to an audience in Ohio. I was there. I know these voices as well as I know my own, for I have heard them in my dreams.

Dreams are the language of the imagination, and words are the conceptual symbols of our dreams. The scop, the actor, the writer, the storyteller draw with words. All of human history and all that can be dreamed of the future is contained in such drawings. I hear ancient voices striving for meaning and art, and I see crude and beautiful images on the walls of caves.

Deo gratias.