It was a melancholy end which closed the career of Richard Humphrey, the
famous Surrey batsman of the seventies. He was found drowned in the
River Thames near Waterloo Bridge on February 24th, having been missing
from his home for nearly a month.
“Dick” Humphrey was in his fifty-seventh year, and from the time that he
first gained a place in the Surrey eleven he was always closely
associated with cricket, at first as a very good batsman and afterwards
as a coach and umpire. Tom Humphrey, the elder brother, made the family
name famous in the cricket world, and the many long partnerships for the
first wicket between Tom Humphrey and Harry Jupp made the fame of “the
two Surrey boys.”
Unlike many of the mainstays of Surrey cricket, Dick Humphrey was a
_bona fide_ product of the county, and learned his cricket in common
with many another great player at Mitcham. In 1870 he gained his first
trial for Surrey, but, with the exception of a score of 82 against
Cambridge University, his performances scarcely justified his promise.
Next year he was much more successful, as his scores of 70 against
Gloucestershire, 80 against Yorkshire, and 116 not out against Kent,
bear ample evidence.
The year 1872 found Dick Humphrey at the top of his game, and in the
very front rank of professional batsmen. He did well both at Lord’s and
the Oval for the Players against the Gentlemen, and at the Oval, going
in first, he was ninth man out for a score of 96. Towards the end of
that season he scored 70 in each innings against the formidable bowling
of Yorkshire when Tom Emmett and Allen Hill were at their best.
Considering the difficulty of making runs in those days as compared to
present day first-class cricket, we may well regard these two seventies
as a much bigger performance than some of the double centuries which
have been not infrequent in recent years. Unless we are mistaken, he
scored over 1,000 runs in that season, with an average of something like
24 runs for forty-five innings.
Richard Humphrey never gained such a high measure of success again,
although he continued to be a useful member of the Surrey team, for whom
he played his last match in 1881.
He also visited Australia with the team taken out by Mr. W. G. Grace. He
was a batsman of the academic and steady school, and, like most of that
school, paid chief attention to careful defence, combined with some
strokes on the off side. After his retirement from the active pursuit of
the game he did a good deal of coaching, and amongst others some
generations of boys passed under his notice at Clifton College. He also
umpired very regularly, and for years was in the list of umpires for the
county championship, and, but for his untimely death, he was to have
acted as umpire in the second-class counties’ competition for next
season.
Dick Humphrey was an amiable and pleasant companion, and his melancholy
death comes as a shock to his many old friends.