Empire Cricket Booklet

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A. B. TANCRED AND HIS BROTHERS

where 'everything was brown, as though the dusty, d ry , uncovered, ugly earth never knew the blessing of verdure'.11 Besides which, England was not home to all of those present. In 1874, five years after the discovery of the first diamond in Kimberley, Cecil John Rhodes formed a partnership with Charles Dunell Rudd and thus consolidated his holdings in the De Beers diamond mine in Kimberley.The effects of events in Kimberley on the lives of thousands of black and white individuals and families, including the Tancreds, were sudden and dramatic. On 27 June 1881, the Tancred family left Port Elizabeth to trundle almost a thousand miles inland by cart or ox wagon, for A F. Tancred to take up a new post in Kimberley

the diamond that became known as 'The Star of South Africa' and before long thousands of diggers descended on the area. In the quarter of a century until Augustus Frederick's death, the town mushroomed to include prospectors, prostitutes, thieves, and those who bought and sold diamonds, food, drink, accommodation, tents, wagons, weapons or clothing - anything with a price. In this heaving town the civic responsibilities of the town clerk may have been immense, but still there was time for cricket. If cricket came early to Kimberley, so did other totems of empire. The name had not always been 'Kimberley', but in 1873 a proclamation announced thatthetownwasinfuturetobeknownthusinhonour of the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, the

A. F. Tancred and C. D. Rudd were interesting figures in Mr Judge's XI that played a 'veterans' match in 1885

Left to right, back row: W. S. Barratt, Major Maxwell, E. A.Judge, J. P. Ablett, M.M.Steytler, Dr McKenzie Middle row: C. D. Rudd, A. F. Tancred, J.J. Beningfield, H.B. Roper In front: W. T. Graham, D. J. Haarhoff

as secretary to the Griqualand West Board of Executors. 12 Before long, in 1882, he was appointed town clerk and treasurer; by 1884 he was serving solely as town clerk, a post he held until 1894, when ill health preceded his death. In 1885, aged 51, he was pictured in a cricket team of 'Kimberley Veterans' together with C. D. Rudd, among others. 13 The De Beers Annual Report of 1889 shows A F. Tancred and H.F. E. Pistorius as the company's auditors. He became a member of the Kimberley Club, a colonial

Earl of Kimberley, who thought the original 'New Rush' too undignified for any place in Victoria's empire, and 'Vooruitzigt' unpronounceable and impossible to spell. Astonishingly perhaps, time had been found to establish the post of town clerk as well as a thriving cricket and social scene. Merrie England it was not, but the attempt to recreate a facsimile edition of 'home' engaged several energies. Not that it altogether succeeded. Writing at the end of the 1870s, Anthony Trollope disliked the place