Now! Then! The police are invited to an illegal cricket match on Woodhouse Moor (Leeds), designed to test the byelaws passed during its conversion from common land to People’s Park

8 August 1863: The police are invited to an illegal cricket match on Woodhouse Moor (Leeds), designed to test the byelaws passed during its conversion from common land to People’s Park

Older illustration of knorr and spell by George Walker (Walker 1814).

Leeds Mercury. 1863/08/17. Cricketing on Woodhouse Moor. Leeds: Edward Baines Junior. Get it:

Excerpt

It appeared from the evidence of Sergeant Greenwood and another policeman that on Saturday, the 8th inst., the defendant Lee went to him at the Woodhouse Police station and said “We are going to play a match on the moor. It will be out of the boundary, and we wish you to come and take our names down.” He went and said to the defendants “Now lads, do you know you are playing out of the boundary?” Lee and one or two more replied “Yes, we know. We want it settling.” At the suggestion of Mr J. Hope Shaw, the conveyance of the moor from the lords of the manor to the corporation was put in, and Mr Harle said he had been requested by the defendants to say that they played on the moor because they had done so for a long time past, and because they believed they had a right to play there. It was also the wish of the defendants, and a great number of other people, that the question of right should be settled, and Mr Marshall, the judge of the county court, having declined to prosecute the appeal against his conviction for riding on the moor, if there was a conviction in this case a subscription would be raised to try the validity of the byelaws in a superior court. Mr John Hope Shaw said: We have only to say that until these byelaws are held to be invalid by a higher authority we think it our duty to hold them valid. In this case there seems to have been a determination to put their validity to the test. We find no fault with that, but we most adhere to our former judgment upon the question, end we must increase the penalty. Before it was merely a nominal penalty of 1s., but now the penalty will be 5s. each and costs, or in default three days’ imprisonment.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Via Woodhouse Moor Online (Bill 2014/05/20), which gives an excellent summary of Samuel Waite’s campaign and points to a Mercury editorial on the subject, prefiguring the WMO suggestion that allotments constitute unacceptable privatization of the park (Bill 2020/10/04):

We do not know with what feelings the people of Leeds have watched certain recent legal proceedings affecting Woodhouse Moor, or whether they have paid but little attention to them, trusting to the Town Council to vindicate their rights; but if they have hitherto been easy or apathetic on the subject, the sooner they awake to impending danger the better. On Saturday next a third magisterial decision is to be claimed really on the point whether the Moor which has been bought, drained, and roaded at the expense of the ratepayers is to belong to the entire community for the enjoyment of all, or their enjoyment of it is to be seriously interfered with, not for a time only but for ever. More definitely put, indeed, the question to be settled by the Magistrates is, whether some twenty or thirty people at Woodhouse who play cricket are to exercise virtual rights of ownership over the entire Moor, leaving to the Town Council and its 200,000 constituents to make the best they can of such portions as this select few unknown individuals choose to allot them by abstaining from pitching their stumps thereon. A modest question truly, but one to which our fellow-townsmen must be prepared to give as emphatic “No,” till it ceases to be put either in a Court of law or anywhere else. One answer only can await it to the Court of Common Sense, to which we appeal while briefly stating the facts as follows:

The consternation which prevailed when a rumour arose a few years back that Woodhouse Moor was not unlikely to be sold for building ground has doubtless not been forgotten. Up to that time Leeds had had no People’s Park of the usual kind, nor had much felt the want of any; for was there not this Moor, swept over by the pure breezes of heaven, which anybody might reach by a few minutes’ walk, and be sure of drinking in at the same time health and beauty? To be sure it had drawbacks, owing to the absence of all exercise of ownership by those who were known as Lords of the Manor. The turf was cut up by the hoofs of cavalry, and imperfect drainage helped to render the surface generally, at certain seasons, a mere quagmire; but then when dry it could be daily resorted to, and nothing could shut out the air or the view. What had then to be complained of was the want of a few simple regulations to prevent the exercise or sports of comparatively few persons endangering the comfort, sometimes even the limbs, of quiet strollers outnumbering them by thousands. Horses inspirited by the keen air galloped, or knors or cricket balls from knots of players flew in many directions; so that pleasure to the multitude was pursued under difficulties, and the Moor, though free to all, was not nearly so useful or agreeable as it might have been. Well, the alarm about its being sold came, followed by a unanimous protest that such a thing must not be. Emboldened and urged on by this cry, the Team Council resolved, if possible, itself to buy the Moor, and thus secure it in perpetuity for the town; the Lords of the Manor met them handsomely, the purchase was made on reasonable terms, and Leeds had at length, as was thought, its People’s Park. Unfortunately, the rights of a few individuals to commonage, etc., were not bought up at the time, so that even yet cows, donkeys, and geese graze and nibble, not unpicturesquely if rather inconveniently, here and there. But having obtained possession, the Town Council proceeded to improve the Moor. As we have said, it has been well drained; an excellent road now runs all round it; and seats are placed in many parts for the public convenience. Never, we venture to say, was Woodhouse Moor so attractive as now, with its bright green garb and smooth surface.

But after is purchase and improvement it was still liable to other evils, which had originated in its apparent want of ownership previously. The Town Council therefore passed a series of of byelaws for their correction. The game of knor and spell was prohibited altogether; limits were marked out within which alone cricket might be played; while, to prevent danger to individuals and injury to the Moor, horses and carriages of all kinds were forbidden to traverse it. These byelaws were confirmed at the April quarter sessions of this year, and have since been in force with the entire approval of the inhabitants generally. Two of them, however, interfere with practices which individuals are indisposed to abandon. The first of these is that of riding on the Moor, the antiquity of which is pleaded as banning all legal action against it. No less an authority than our County Court Judge put in this plea before the magistrates, who declined to recognise it in the face of a byelaw confirmed at quarter sessions. Appeal to a higher court was threatened, but we understand that subsequently the Repairs Committee of the Town Council, which has special care of the Moor, while maintaining the legality of their prohibition, has expressed a belief that that the formation of a kind of Rotten Row alongside the carriaged roads to tho south and west need not be objected to. If an arrangement to this effect can be made, we do not think the general frequenters of the Moor will object any more than the Council. Another lively feature may, indeed, thus he added to the attractions of the place. What must be secured is the non-interference of a small number of the inhabitants with the pleasure or safety of the rest. There must be no return to the old practice of riding all over the Moor.

The claim of the Wcodhouse cricketers to play where they please avowedly sprang out of the action of the County Court Judge. They assumed that if a horse could be forced through the barriers set up for public convenience and protection, a cricket ball would have no difficulty in following, and therefore they actually gave the policeman in charge of the Moor notice of their intention to play beyond bounds… Whatever may be the revised decision of the Magistrates – and we cannot suppose they will reverse that already pronounced – the public will expect the Town Council to stand by their own act. Should they even be beaten on technical grounds, their constituents will gladly back them in seeking for ample powers at the earliest moment to protect the many against the selfishness of the few.
(Leeds Mercury 1863/08/20)

The Sheffield-based Yorkshire County Cricket Club was founded in 1863, which I suppose may have contributed to enthusiasm for the game in Leeds that year.

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Original

At the Leeds Town Hall, on Saturday, Henry Lee, Richard Hardaker, John Warrington, George and James Wormald, Geoffrey Wilkinson, Samuel Wright, Thomas Dean, William Wainwright, William Killerby, and James Peat appeared to answer to summonses charging them with cricketing on the prohibited part of Woodhouse Moor. Joseph Demaine, Isaac Leatham, and Thomas Stones were also summoned but did not appear. Mr. Bruce (barrister) appeared in support of the informations, and stated that the defendants were charged with the breach of one of the byelaws made for the regulation of Woodhouse Moor, by playing at cricket on the prohibited part of the Moor. On recent occasion a similar case was heard by the magistrates, and as the law was then fully gone into and a decision given it was only necessary now to prove the facts. It would be seen from the evidence that the byelaws had been designedly set at defiance, and he therefore asked that a substantial penalty might be inflicted. It appeared from the evidence of Sergeant Greenwood and another policeman that on Saturday, the 8th inst., the defendant Lee went to him at the Woodhouse Police station and said “We are going to play a match on the Moor. It will be out of the boundary, and we wish you to come and take our names down.” He went and said to the defendants “Now lads, do you know you are playing out of the boundary?” Lee and one or two more replied “Yes, we know. We want it settling.” At the suggestion of Mr. J. Hope Shaw, the conveyance of the Moor from the Lords of the Manor to the Corporation, was put in, and Mr. Harle said he had been requested by the defendants to say that they played on the Moor because they had done so for a long time past, and because they believed they had a right to play there. It was also the wish of the defendants, and a great number of other people, that the question of right should be settled, and Mr. Marshall, the Judge of the County Court, having declined to prosecute the appeal against his conviction for riding on the Moor, if there was a conviction in this case a subscription would be raised to try the validity of the byelaws in a superior court. Mr. John Hope Shaw said: We have only to say that until these byelaws are held to be invalid by a higher authority we think it our duty to hold them valid. In this case there seems to have been a determination to put their validity to the test. We find no fault with that, but we most adhere to our former judgment upon the question, end we must increase the penalty. Before it was merely a nominal penalty of 1s., but now the penalty will be 5s. each and costs, or in default three days’ imprisonment.

487 words.