Fred Gale and the first cricket auction

Martin Chandler | 8:32am BST 28 April 2024

Published: 1994
Pages: 24
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4 stars

Fred Gale is an interesting character. He was born in 1823, attended Winchester College and qualified as a solictor. As a cricketer he was good enough to have appeared in a couple of matches for Kent in 1845 that are now reckoned as First Class.

In the main though Gale is known for his connection with Surrey and for writings on the game that appeared in numerous publications, often under the byline of ‘The Old Buffer’. There were also a few books, the best known being Echoes From Old Cricket Fields from 1871 and The Game of Cricket in 1887.

The greater part of this Rosenwater monograph consists of his meticulously researched summary of Gale’s life and achievements, but it does have another purpose. In 1891 Gale, by then 68, planned to emigrate to Canada to spend the autumn of his years with his son. The sale of a collection of books on a variety of subjects followed at Sothebys in July of that year.

There are no Britchers, Denisons or Wisdens present, and the names Epps, Bentley nor Nyren appear in the catalogue, but there are 20 cricket books amongst the 100 lots listed, and the relevant pages of the catalogue are reproduced in the second part of the monograph.

With Fred Gale and the first cricket auction Rosenwater once again provided cricketing bibliophiles with an excellent summary of the life and times of one of our own from the dim and distant past. It is must be likely that without his researches much of what Rosenwater wrote on many of the men whose lives are the subject of his monographs would have remained uncovered, and that would have been a matter of some regret, and particularly so with Fred Gale.