On 30th March 2022, a memorial service was held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for Shane Warne, the great Australian leg-spin bowler. Some 50,000 cricket fans were there to pay their respects. Warne had died of a suspected heart attack at the age of 52, his death likely hastened by a lifestyle that embraced cigarettes, alcohol and junk food, not to mention an extensive and complicated love life.
120 years earlier, on 15th January 1902, 4,000 cricket fans attended the funeral in Stretford cemetery, Manchester of Johnny Briggs, slow left-arm spin bowler for Lancashire and England, who had died at the age of 39. Those numbers, while lower than at Warne’s memorial service, were impressive for the time, with many travelling by special train from Manchester Oxford Road station. The event was testimony to the esteem in which Johnny Briggs was held in Lancashire and the wider cricket world of the late 19th century.
The parallels between Johnny Briggs and Shane Warne are striking. Both were great spin bowlers. Warne was the first to take 700 test wickets, and his total of 708 has only been beaten by Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Murulitharan. Johnny Briggs was the first bowler to take 100 test wickets, at a time when far fewer test matches were played, and was the leading test wicket-taker of the 19th century. He took over 2,000 first-class wickets in total, with only Dr. W. G. Grace taking more wickets during the 19th century, in a much longer career. Like Warne, Briggs was a larger-than-life character, a cheerful extravert and a showman, who endeared himself to team-mates and spectators alike. And as we will see, like Warne, Briggs’s lifestyle contributed to his early death.
Briggs’s obituary in Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack stated that he had died from ”a form of epilepsy [that] admitted...no permanent cure”. This diagnosis has been accepted uncritically by subsequent writers, including Briggs’s recent (2007) biographer, Stuart Brodkin, despite him having view of Briggs’s death certificate. In this article, we will consider the life and cricketing achievements of Johnny Briggs and will explore the actual cause of his early death.
Johnny Briggs: Life and Career
John Briggs was born on 3rd October 1862, in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. In the cricketing world he was always known as Johnny, but there is evidence that he was Jack within his family. His father was a stocking-framework knitter and club cricket professional, and in 1875, Briggs senior was appointed professional of Widnes cricket club, leading to Johnny qualifying for Lancashire. He made his Lancashire debut in 1879, aged just sixteen, and initially played as a batsman and a fine fielder in the covers, a skill he maintained throughout his career, despite being just 5’ 5” tall and inclined to stoutness. For his first few years he rarely bowled, but in 1884 he took 17 wickets and was selected as an all-rounder for that winter’s tour of Australia. Injury restricted his bowling during that tour, but he did make his only test century, 121 in the third test at Melbourne.
 |
| Johnny Briggs, 1862-1902 |
During the 1885 season his bowling suddenly matured, and from then on he played primarily as an attack bowler who could score useful late-order runs. He took over 100 first class wickets in a season twelve times. Lancashire’s attack during that period lacked depth, and the county relied on Briggs and the fast bowler Arthur Mold, this pair regularly opening the bowling (it was common at the time for a fast and slow bowler to share the new ball, a trend that has been revived in today’s T20 tournaments). In 1897 Johnny’s 155 wickets helped Lancashire win their first county championship title.
Johnny married his wife Alice in 1885. There was no honeymoon for the young couple: two days later he was scoring his highest first-class innings, 186 against Surrey at the Oval. In 1893, Alice gave birth to twin boys, Johnny receiving the news by telegram while playing for Lancashire at Stourbridge. After his death, Alice briefly went into business with the widow of another Lancashire player, Dick Pilling, running a sports shop on Manchester’s Oxford Road.
When he died, Shane Warne was holidaying in a luxury villa in Thailand. Johnny Briggs could not have dreamt of being able to afford such an indulgence. While probably better off than the average working man, 19th century cricketers were not rich, and long-standing professionals relied on the windfall afforded by a benefit match for their financial security. Briggs was granted the Roses match at Old Trafford in 1894 as his benefit, and a large crowd assembled to mark the occasion. The game was spoiled by the weather (and by Yorkshire’s captain, Lord Hawke insisting on a different wicket to that which had been prepared) and finished within two days. Briggs earned around £1,000, a good sum, but less than it would have been if the game had gone into the third day.
Briggs played 33 test matches for England, all but two of them against Australia. He was a member of every touring party to Australia from 1884-5 up to the end of his career, and also toured South Africa in 1888-9. He took 97 wickets against Australia; only three men took more Ashes wickets during the 19th century (the bowler who currently holds the record for the most wickets in Ashes tests is – of course – Shane Warne, with 195). His best test bowling figures were, however, on his only tour of South Africa, when he took 8 for 11 and 7 for 17 in the second test at Cape Town.
 |
| The
England touring party to Australia, 1891-2, the only one to be
captained by Dr W. G. Grace. Due to his small size, Johnny Briggs often
sat on the ground in team photographs |
Johnny Briggs was a character, and never forgot that he was in the entertainment business. He was an extravert who showed off his spectacular fielding, and went for big hits when batting. His biographer Stuart Brodkin wrote: “Briggs was one of the most popular players to have graced the game. He was a true working class hero”. Nevill Cardus, doyen of early 20th century cricket writers, said, “No cricketer who ever lived was so much the child of nature as Briggs”. More soberly, his old adversary Lord Hawke, Yorkshire captain, opined, “With a wicket to help him, he could be a terror. He was a cheery, podgy soul, full of humour, who perhaps played a little to the gallery, but never gave anything away”.
Johnny Briggs bowled consistently well for Lancashire and England for thirteen years, from 1885 to 1897. As mentioned above, in the latter year he took 155 wickets in 1897 and was an automatic choice for that winter’s England tour of Australia. On that tour, however, his form suddenly disappeared. He played in all five test matches, but took just nine wickets at an average of 53.88, and bowled poorly in the other tour matches. He performed better in 1898, while still being below his best, but improved sufficiently in 1899 to be picked for the third test against Australia at Leeds.
On the first day of that test, Briggs took 3 for 53 as Australia was bowled out for 172. That evening, Briggs accompanied members of both teams to a music hall in Leeds city centre (no ice baths and curfews in those days). In the middle of the performance Briggs suddenly collapsed, with an apparent epileptic fit. He was taken from the theatre, and a doctor was called. During the night Johnny may have had more fits, and was mentally disturbed enough to be taken by train the next morning to the Manchester Royal Hospital for the Insane (later Cheadle Royal Hospital), where he stayed until the end of March 1900.
On discharge, Briggs appeared to be completely cured, and he took his place in the Lancashire side for the 1900 county championship (there was no test series that year). His form had returned, and he took 120 wickets, including all ten in an innings against Worcestershire at Old Trafford. All seemed well, but it was a remission rather than a cure. In March 1901 Briggs was readmitted to Cheadle asylum, and remained there until his death the following January.
So What Killed Johnny Briggs?
We have cast doubt on the official explanation that Briggs’s death was due to “a form of epilepsy”. Certainly, he appears to have had an epileptic-like fit, and people with epilepsy were sometimes confined to asylums during the 19th century. Occasionally one would die from complications of the condition. But Johnny’s symptoms do not match the typical profile of epilepsy, and are much more persuasive of a different condition, that was sadly common at the time. Certainly, he experienced neurological disturbance, which affected his performance on the cricket field. But he also experienced serious mental disturbance, that affected his grasp of reality. A clue as to his mental state can be found in this account by Nevill Cardus (embellished, but with a ring of truth) of his demeanour while in Cheadle:
“Poor Briggs, it was necessary to send him to an asylum; yet need we be sorry for him? I am assured that during his incarceration he was bowling Australia out every day, and driving four after four through the covers. One of his attendants told me that he’d go into his patient’s room and find him beaming, if a little exhausted. ‘Eight for 52’ he would report, recovering his breath. ‘Bring me ‘alf a pint, George’”.
Now, if another asylum inmate had said this, we would call it a ‘grandiose delusion’ – a false belief that they were highly important, accomplished or talented. With Johnny we must be a bit more careful, for he had bowled Australia out, on more than one occasion. But the principle still holds; it is an example of a delusion of grandeur as Johnny thought he was still bowling Australia out. So we can add grandiose delusions to the signs and symptoms of Johnny’s illness. Other aspects are also indicative. Paradoxically, the fact that Johnny appeared to recover during 1900 was another sign of his condition, and his doctors knew that he would inevitably relapse and deteriorate into dementia and physical decline, with an early death ensured.
In short, Johnny Briggs had a classic presentation of an illness that was depressingly well-known among late 19th century psychiatrists, and which was stated to be the cause of his death on his death certificate: General Paralysis of the Insane.
General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI)
So what was GPI? It had been identified as a specific illness in France in the early 19th century, and by the time of Johnny’s incarceration it had reached near epidemic proportions, with around 20% of asylum inmates diagnosed with the condition. All displayed the familiar signs of severe mental disturbance, with grandiose delusions and erratic behaviour; neurological signs such as tremors, gait disturbances and vision problems (and sometimes epileptic-style fits) and a rapid decline into dementia and physical paralysis, which inevitably proved fatal. At the time of Briggs’s illness, the cause of GPI was not known for sure, but it appeared to be a lifestyle-related condition. It largely affected men who, like Johnny, were in their 30s or 40s, and it was predominantly found among the working classes or the military – clergymen had very low rates of the condition. The few women who contracted GPI tended to be prostitutes, or had apparently caught it from their husbands. Many theories abounded: it was a “disease of civilisation”, that may have been caused by excessive mental labour, heavy physical work, emotional strain, alcohol, sexual excess or blows to the head. But by the early 20th century, a few years after Johnny’s death, the real cause was found, with the discovery in the brains of individuals who had died of GPI of the bacterium Spirochaeta pallida, which is the cause of syphilis. Johnny Briggs, and the thousands of others who succumbed to GPI, had died of a sexually transmitted disease.
Today, syphilis can be easily identified and treated with a single injection of penicillin, but prior to the 1940s no such treatment was available. Mercury, arsenic and bismuth were the common treatments for syphilis, but they were of dubious effectiveness and were potentially dangerous. They could only be applied if the person recognised that they had the disease and sought treatment, which many did not. Untreated syphilis can progress through three stages. In the primary stage, the person develops a painless chancre (ulcer) in their genital area, a couple of weeks after infection. This heals after a few weeks, and some 60% of infected individuals do not notice its presence. Some weeks later, however, the person may enter the secondary stage, in which they develop a rash and fever, and may experience neurological or mental disturbances such as vision difficulties, mood or memory problems and sometimes fits and convulsions.
After some time, these symptoms die down and the person enters the ‘latent stage’, which may last a year or more, but sometimes with recurrences of secondary symptoms. During the latent stage, the person may seem to be cured, but the bacterium is still multiplying within the body. Eventually, the person reaches the stage of tertiary syphilis, which may take a number of forms, including ‘neurosyphilis’, another term for General Paralysis of the Insane.
It is possible to (speculatively) follow the course of Johnny Briggs’s illness through his performances on the cricket field. We saw earlier that the high point of his career came in 1897, when he took 155 wickets and helped Lancashire win the county championship, but that his form dropped dramatically during the 1897-8 tour of Australia. We may speculate that he was infected with syphilis in the early days of that tour, or perhaps during the long, tedious voyage out. We cannot know if he recognised his condition or sought treatment, but he did not apparently miss any tour games through illness or injury. As the tour progressed however, he is likely to have experienced secondary symptoms, including neurological disturbances that will have affected his ability to play cricket at a high level, leading to his loss of form. These symptoms may have persisted on his return to England, and throughout the 1898 season.
 |
| Johnny
Briggs suffered a spectacular loss of form during the 1897-8 tour of
Australia. This may have been due to him contracting syphilis in the
early days of the tour |
By 1899, Briggs will have entered the latent stage, and his form improved. It was always possible, however that the secondary symptoms could recur, and they did in spectacular fashion when he had the fit in the music hall in Leeds during the test match. This was accompanied by mental disturbance sufficient to lead to his incarceration in Cheadle asylum.
The symptoms died down again, and Briggs returned to the latent stage in 1900. He also returned to cricket and had a successful season, including taking 10 for 55 against Worcestershire. But the tertiary stage was just around the corner, and by March 1901 Johnny was back in the asylum with full-blown GPI, which was to end his life just 10 months later.
Conclusion: Sex and the Professional Cricketer
We may tut tut moralistically at the revelation that Johnny Briggs died of a sexually transmitted disease. After all, if he did contract syphilis in Australia in late 1897, he would have been married for twelve years, and his twin sons would have been four years old. His third child, Alice Nora, was actually conceived in late 1898, a year after his first infection. But professional cricketers have never been saints. Wally Hammond, one of England’s finest batsmen of the 1920s and 1930s, and an England captain, was a notorious womaniser, pursuing conquests throughout his first marriage. His England teammate, Eddie Paynter, when asked about Hammond’s proclivities, laconically replied, “Wally, well, yes – he liked a shag”. In 1991, Jonathan Agnew’s aside on Test Match Special that Ian Botham was out hit wicket because he “didn’t quite get his leg over” caused his fellow commentator Brian Johnston to corpse on air with knowing giggles. And piquancy was added to the reports of Shane Warne’s last hours when it emerged that on the afternoon of his death he had been visited by two Thai masseuses.
Nor was Johnny Briggs the only cricketer to contract a sexually transmitted disease. On tour in the West Indies in 1925-6, Wally Hammond was struck down by a mysterious disorder that led to him missing the 1926 season and nearly cost him his life. It was reported that his illness was malaria, caused by an insect bite, but his biographer David Foot revealed that it was actually a sexually transmitted disease, possibly a form of chlamydia. In the 1930s, an Australian Aboriginal fast bowler, Eddie Gilbert, who once dismissed Don Bradman for a duck with one of the fastest balls the Don had ever faced, was confined to an asylum and I have it on good authority that his diagnosis was General Paralysis of the Insane. Another possible GPI victim was a Lancashire team-mate of Johnny Briggs, Jim Hallows, an all-rounder good enough to be named as one of Wisden’s Cricketers of The Year in 1905, but whose career was cut short by ill-health and who died of “epilepsy” in 1910, aged 35. Perhaps there are other cricketers who succumbed to the disease in the years before penicillin, their fates buried euphemistically in their Wisden obituaries.
Recently, a more sinister light has been shone on the sexual behaviour of professional cricketers. In 2019, Alex Hepburn, a reserve all-rounder for Worcestershire, was jailed for rape following a sexual conquest ‘game’ that was condemned by the trial judge as “pathetic, sexist and foul”. It also emerged that Hepburn shared unpleasant and derogatory WhatsApp messages about women with his Worcestershire team-mates Joe Clarke and Tom Kohler-Cadmore. Clarke’s belated apology for his involvement in the WattsApp group came suspiciously soon after reports that he was being considered for England’s one-day international squad.
Professional cricketers are virile young men, often single and with a degree of celebrity, who frequently spend long periods away from home. We would not wish to deny them a sex life, even if we could. But as some have found, from all-time greats such as Johnny Briggs to nonentities such as Alex Hepburn, their behaviour can have consequences, for themselves and for others.
Sources Used
Barker R & Rosenwater I (1969) Test Cricket, England v Australia. Batsford Books
Brodkin S (2007) Johnny Briggs: Poor Johnny. ACS Publications
Cardus N (1953) Cricket All the Year. The Sportsman’s Book Club
Foot D (1996) Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why. Robson Books
TheBMJ (2019) Syphilis: Clinical Update
Wallis J (2012) Looking Back: This Fascinating and Fatal Disease (GPI). The Psychologist.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.