WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  There were intimate links between the Medical School and the Royal Infirmary, where the students acquired the practical side of their profession. Grace entered as a pupil of Mr Robert Tibbitts, a fiery character who was only five years older than Grace and had been elected surgeon earlier that year. He was a bristling, impatient man of a reforming, radical cast of mind, with a quick temper. He was a strong advocate of the most modern techniques in antiseptic surgery and was always happy to demonstrate his undoubted ability as a surgeon to his students, to whom he was known as ‘Slasher’.

  His enthusiasm for higher standards of cleanliness in the operating theatre was understandable. In those days Bristol surgeons performed minor operations in their ordinary clothes. For major operations they would put on an old black cloth coat, rows of which hung in the consultation rooms ready for use. ‘They must have been so full of germs that it is a wonder septic troubles were not even commoner than they were,’ observed the BRI’s historian, Dr G. Munro Smith. ‘As late as 1895 I have seen a former member of the Infirmary staff, when operating in private, stick the needles he was to use for sewing up the wound in the bed curtains, “to be handy” as he expressed it.’ Some of the dressers (the surgeons’ assistants) carried their instruments in their waistbands in the theatre. One burly, bearded student ‘represented a terrific aspect in the operation room, with saws, forceps and knives stuck into his belt, looking very much like a comic bandit’. (Could it have been W.G.?)

  The physicians and surgeons did their ward rounds attired in silk top hats, while their students went bareheaded. It was a student’s greatest ambition to ‘pass the College’ and be entitled to wear a topper himself. The custom slowly died out in the 1870s when one or two surgeons abandoned their hats, and the rest of the staff and students gradually followed suit.

  Grace became an Assistant Pupil in December 1870 and a Physician’s Pupil, under Dr Frederick Britan, in January 1872. He had entered the Medical School at a period of decline and crisis. Many lecturers had lost control of their students, who preferred to read newspapers rather than listen to their tutors. Lectures were often rowdy occasions, punctuated by practical jokes. Students in the dissecting rooms were left to their own devices. Indeed, at times the place seemed to be run by an elderly Irishman named William Fitzpatrick. ‘His official capacity was that of porter but he usurped charge over everything, including lecturers and students,’ wrote Munro Smith. ‘He took the liberties of an indulged, eccentric servant and talked as if he had the management of the establishment. When I obtained one of the prizes at the school, he called and told my family that “he and the lecturers thought I deserved it”.’ In such a lax atmosphere, it is easier to understand how Grace managed to take as long he did to complete his studies. Anywhere else, he might have been invited to pursue his sporting career and forget about medicine.

  Some of the senior staff at the Royal Infirmary were so concerned at the poor results of the medical school students in the Royal College of Surgeons’ examinations that they demanded reforms and even proposed setting up a rival school. Tibbitts was active in the reform group, and the controversy reached the pages of the Lancet.

  Finally a solution was reached. In 1876 the medical school affiliated with University College, Bristol, later to become the University of Bristol. Tibbitts died, aged only thirty-seven, only two months after the vital meeting that sanctioned the affiliation. The medical school moved into a new building, universally derided for its ugliness, in 1879, the year that W.G. finally qualified as a doctor, via two years at St Bartholomew’s and Westminster Hospitals in London, becoming a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, and a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was said to have owed his success in his final examinations to intensive coaching from Professor Howard Marsh at Bart’s.

  With the proceeds of the MCC’s testimonial that summer, Dr and Mrs Grace were able to move into a house in Stapleton Road, Bristol, which included a surgery. W.G. settled down to the life of a general practitioner during the autumn and winter, plus some summer weekends, and cricket during most of the spring and summer. In 1880, the Gloucestershire committee agreed to pay him £20 to employ a locum for the summer months while he was away from his practice. But before the 1882 season began W.G. was complaining that the sum was not sufficient and the committee ‘resolved that as Dr W.G. Grace was not satisfied at his allowance for expenses out of pocket last year he shall be allowed the sum of £6.1.0 towards paying his assistant in addition to the £20 already paid’. That obviously was not enough either. The following October, his allowance was increased to £36.15.0.

  Grace’s official title was surgeon, medical officer and public vaccinator to the Barton Hill district. It was a mixed practice, with patients of all classes who appear to have appreciated their famous doctor’s services. W.G. administered to their health for twenty years, even though he and Agnes eventually moved out of the area. They first moved to Thrissel House, which was not far from Stapleton Road and had a garden just big enough to accommodate the cricket net W.G. found indispensable. The Graces then bought a bigger house in Victoria Square, Clifton, several miles away, but W.G. thought nothing of walking to and from his surgery, and of doing his rounds on foot. This constant exercise, which he had maintained since childhood, should not be underestimated when considering his tremendous fitness, which lasted into his sixties, apart from bad knees and other sporting injuries. The Graces’ last residence in the area was another large house at Ashley Grange, not far from the county ground, which had been opened in 1889.

  A great deal of attention was being paid to public health in Bristol as Dr Grace embarked on his professional practice. The Medical Officer of Health to the City and County produced his first annual report in 1886. It showed the city’s population had grown from 202,950 in 1877 to 220,915, and steady progress was being made in reducing the death rate for children and adults. The infant mortality figure for 1877 had been 153.5 per 1,000 births; by 1886, this had come down to 149.1. In a study of death rates for the eight largest cities in England and Wales, Bristol’s was the lowest. The main killers were tuberculosis, which was rampant in the 1880s, diarrhoea, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever and diptheria. In 1875 an epidemic of scarlet fever had killed 408 people; by 1886 the disease’s victims had been cut to 89 by improving sanitary conditions. Typhoid was an ever-present danger too: indeed, it killed W.G.’s only daughter, Bessie, in February 1899.

  Dr Grace probably did more good for his patients by dispensing common sense rather than sophisticated medicine, and by virtue of his huge personality. For example, he was also medical officer to the Pennymills Collieries, five of whose workers were badly burnt in an explosion. They were taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary, and asked for W.G. to come and see them. Their faces were largely covered by dressings, but when he arrived he knew them all by name and raised their spirits merely by his presence and his sympathetic words.

  There were many such stories, for instance of the old woman whom Grace was summoned to see, and who exclaimed when he arrived, ‘Oh, it does me good just to see his face!’

  There was a certain amount of evidence from the cricket field of Grace’s abilities as a doctor. In 1887, he saved the life of his Gloucestershire team-mate A.C.M. Croome, who was involved in a horrific accident during a match against Lancashire at Old Trafford. Trying to cut off a four, Croome ran headlong into the railings in front of the pavilion and tore his neck so badly that he would have bled to death had not Grace rushed over and held the wound together for a full half-hour before a surgical needle and thread were found and the gash was stitched.

  The Kent amateur C.J.M. Fox was also able to thank W.G. for his medical expertise, when he dislocated his shoulder while fielding against Gloucestershire. W.G. lumbered out of the pavilion and, while E.M. held on to Fox, manipulated the limb back into place with his huge hands. The same thing happened to Fox a couple of years later, as often happens when there is a weakness in the shoulder, but incredib
ly, it was once again in the Gloucestershire match. This time, E.M. put it back without the assistance of W.G., who was not playing.

  As these incidents show, Grace’s virtues as a doctor were largely that he was an intensely practical man although he had one interesting faculty that was highly prized by his medical colleagues: he was said to be able to smell smallpox as soon as he entered a sickroom. But H.R. (later Sir Henry) Leveson-Gower, for one, had his doubts about his medical abilities. When Leveson-Gower suffered a badly-bruised thumb while fielding at mid-off one day, he asked W.G. for an immediate opinion. ‘He looked at it, gave it a pull, and I certainly felt much worse,’ wrote Leveson-Gower. ‘I said, “I shan’t pay you for this treatment, Doctor – I shall want some money from you!” But he only laughed.’

  As so often with W.G.’s cricketing career, there were a host of stories about his medical life that were probably apocryphal. For instance, he was said to have been asked to examine an old gentleman who was displaying signs of madness, with a view to certifying him. Dr Grace asked him several questions, one of which was: ‘Have you a canary that talks?’

  ‘No,’ replied the old man, ‘but I have seen you bowled for a duck.’ W.G. certified him.

  That one bears all the signs of fiction, but there were others that may have had more connection with reality. There were plenty of instances of him staying up all night attending to a sick patient or a sick infant and then going straight to the cricket ground to resume a match. In 1885 he was up all night helping a woman in childbirth, then went to the Clifton College ground to score 221 not out against Middlesex. He also took ten wickets in the match and Gloucestershire won by an innings.

  In the 1930s the (now defunct) Bristol Evening World had the inspired idea of asking its readers to send in their own personal stories of W.G. It was already nearly half a century since he had left the city for ever but dozens of ordinary Bristolians contributed their memories. There were many of Dr Grace at work. Mrs G. Langbridge recalled her brother walking along Stapleton Road late one evening during an influenza epidemic and seeing a man knocking on W.G.’s closed surgery door. At length, an upstairs window was thrown open and the familiar bearded face appeared to ask what was wrong. The man shouted up that his wife was ill again, and could the doctor visit her right away? W.G. was disinclined to oblige. ‘Warm half a pint of old beer and give her that,’ was his prescription. ‘I’ll see her in the morning. She’ll be all right.’

  The local chimney-sweep, who liked a drink, once called in at the surgery and asked for a pick-me-up. ‘Mary,’ W.G. shouted up to the maid at the top of the stairs, ‘throw down those boxing gloves.’ Turning to the chimney-sweep, he said, ‘You want exercise, not medicine.’ The man fled, shouting to a friend in the street, ‘The big blackguard wants to fight me.’

  But there was no doubt that W.G. had a soft heart and a deep concern for his poorer patients’ welfare. One winter day, he called on a sick woman in a slum house and was appalled to see that there was no fire, despite the bitter cold. Told that the woman’s husband was out trying to earn a few pence to buy fuel, W.G. told her to send him round to the surgery for her medicine, which he would doubtless have given him for nothing. As he left, he gave her little boy what he thought was a penny – but it was half-a-crown. When her husband came back, his wife insisted he take the coin to the surgery and tell the doctor about his mistake. When he did so, W.G. told him to keep the money, added another half-a-crown, and later helped the man to find a job.

  In March 1888, the district was flooded, and to reach a patient W.G. had to commandeer a water-police patrol boat to make the risky crossing through the raging waters by the Monkland Bridge. Immune to physical fear, he did not turn a hair.

  On the cricket field, he may have preferred public schoolboys to mere artisans, but in his neighbourhood he had no pretensions to social superiority. One reader remembered, as a boy, playing snowballs in the street when W.G. appeared on the way to see a patient.

  He joined in the game with us and quite a crowd gathered, women throwing at him and he pelting them. I can see him now stooping down and picking up the snow and roaring with laughter. He seemed to be the youngest boy there.

  W.G. could never resist snow. On another winter’s day, he was standing in his surgery door watching four boys playing snowballs when a man wearing a top hat came round the corner. The temptation was too much for W.G. He fashioned a snowball and hurled it at the man with the accuracy of the fine fielder he was, knocking off his topper. Then he disappeared back into his surgery while the man berated the boys. When he had gone, W.G. reappeared, hugely amused, and gave the boys half-a-crown.

  Out on his rounds, he was walking past Lawford’s Gate Prison on a winter afternoon when the schools closed for the day. Out poured the children, some of whom started bombarding W.G. with snowballs, aiming particularly at his silk hat. He stopped, made himself a pile of snowballs and bombarded his attackers in return. Then he strolled off, doubtless delighted with his day’s sport.

  Visiting a sick man one evening, W.G. arrived just as his wife was putting out the supper. ‘That smells nice,’ said W.G. ‘Would you like some?’ asked the woman, to which he replied he would like ‘a snack’ if it could be spared. She served him a plate of steak and fried onions which he polished off appreciatively. ‘That was lovely,’ he said. As the provider of the story commented: ‘He was a good gentleman, with no pride whatever.’

  He was less pleased at another patient’s house to which he had been called to attend to a sick baby. The mother was making a roly-poly pudding when he knocked. She hastily put the board with the dough on a chair before opening the door. W.G. attended to the baby, then sat down to write a prescription – on the chair with the dough-board.

  His medical career came to an abrupt end in 1899, when the Poor Law Unions in Bristol were amalgamated. He and several other doctors resigned in protest at the way their own practices would be affected. But unlike the others, W.G. had plenty to fall back on: he had just received the proceeds of a national testimonial worth about £250,000 in today’s money, and had been offered the job of running the London County Cricket Club at Crystal Palace in south-east London. So the decision may not have been a difficult one, although, at fifty-one, he might have thought there was at least a decade of doctoring left in him. He may not have been a great loss to medicine, but his patients mourned his departure for years.

  10 · ENTER THE DEMON

  1878–1879

  W.G.’S concentration on his medical studies meant that he missed the early part of the 1878 season. In May he became a father for the third time, when his daughter Bessie was born.

  The year marked another watershed, not for one man but for the whole of English cricket. English sides had toured Australia four times but the visit had never been reciprocated. Now for the first time an Australian party arrived to tour England and the impact they made on the domestic game was profound. By winning 18 and drawing 12 matches out of a gruelling programme of 37 games with a party of only twelve men, they well and truly exploded the myth of English invincibility. But they also imported new playing habits and practices which helped to transform the game in England.

  Led by David Gregory, whose nephews Sydney and J.M. were to be Test stars of the next century, they impressed with their teamwork, preparation and general slickness. Their batting was moderate; it was their bowling which time and again devastated the English club and county sides, led by the quartet of Allan, Boyle, Garrett and, above all, Spofforth, whom Grace had no hesitation in designating as the world’s finest. (It was the beginning of a long tradition of Antipodean teams taking sports invented by the English to new levels with an injection of fresh ideas and a much higher standard of fitness and athleticism. In the 1930s and 1940s Don Bradman led a succession of teams that dominated the cricket world. The Australian rugby league tourists of 1988 carried all before them but, more than that, created a new standard of speed and mobility by which all subsequent British sides were to be j
udged. Not long after that, the Australian rugby union team that won the 1991 World Cup did much the same.)

  After a low-key start (losing to Notts at Trent Bridge), the Australians exploded on to the national scene in the legendary match against MCC, containing the cream of English cricket, at Lord’s on 27 May. It was to all intents and purposes a Test match. Scheduled to be a normal three-day game, it was all over in a single, unforgettable day. By then, W.G. was playing again and despite his lack of match practice he was an automatic choice. It had been a wet May which had not done the Lord’s track any good and it rained again on the morning of what was meant to be the first day. This incidentally kept the crowd down to a mere five hundred or so, who were treated to a quite extraordinary day. The sun then came out and dried the pitch to the perfect ‘sticky dog’ and then went in again, for Spofforth remembered the Australians shivering in the field in their silk shirts, ‘not one of the team having a sweater’.

  MCC batted first, W.G. opening with A.N. ‘Monkey’ Hornby. Australia’s attack was opened by the slow-medium left-armer Allan. W.G. struck his opening delivery to the leg boundary for four but that was MCC’s first and last opportunity to celebrate. Fielding at square leg was Gloucestershire’s new recruit Billy Midwinter. Grace pushed Allan’s second delivery in the same direction as the first but this time he was easily caught by his new county colleague. Spofforth called it ‘a shocking bad stroke’ and MCC never recovered. They were shot out for 33 in an hour and five minutes largely though a savage spell by Spofforth, bowling first change, of six wickets for only 4 runs in 5.3 overs. The Australians fared little better, totalling only 41.