Edward Stead
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Edward Stead (aka Edwin Steed) (Maidstone, Kent, 1701 – 28 August 1735 in London) was a famous patron of English, particularly Kent, cricket during its formative years in the early 18th Century.
Stead was something of a compulsive gambler and he sought to make money out of cricket by underwriting select XIs usually made up of players from several Kent parish teams. The Dartford Cricket Club had arguably the best parish team in the game at the time and it is almost certain that Stead used several Dartford players. It is not clear if Stead played himself but, given that his rival patrons all did, it is reasonable to assume that he was the captain of his own team as well as its patron.
Stead's teams are known to have performed in "Great Matches" for several years from 1724. He was very successful in 1728 when the report of a game in August said of his latest victory: "the third time this summer that the Kent men have been too expert for those of Sussex".
But Stead was not always successful and his gambling habit eventually got the better of him. We know that he died in reduced circumstances while still only 34.
His death on 28 August 1735 was reported in the Grub Street Journal (see G B Buckley's Fresh Light on Eighteenth Century Cricket, p.12) on Thursday 4 September 1735. The report says there were two accounts of his death, one that he died "near Charing Cross"; the other that he died "in Scotland Yard".
[edit] References
- At the Sign of the Wicket: Cricket 1742 – 1751 by F S Ashley-Cooper in Cricket Magazine (1900) (ASW)
- Cricket Scores 1730 - 1773 by H T Waghorn (WCS)
- Early Kent Cricketers by John Goulstone (EKC)
- Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket by G B Buckley (FL18)
- Fresh Light on Pre-Victorian Cricket by G B Buckley (FLPV)
- From the Weald to the World by Peter Wynne-Thomas (PWT)
- Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century by Timothy J McCann (TJM)
- The Dawn of Cricket by H T Waghorn (WDC)
