Charles Dallas Alexander (25 December 1839 – 22 January 1917) was an Indian-born English lawyer, engineer and school teacher who played

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

. He was born at Calcutta, the third son of William and Janet Alexander. His father worked in the

Bengal Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million p ...

and served for a time as a judge at Bhagalpur.Charles Alexander
ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 2017-03-19.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 26–27.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 2020-12-21.)Venn JA (ed) (1940) Alexander, William Stuart in '' Alumni Cantabrigienses'', p.30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available online
Retrieved 2019-12-22.)

Early life

Alexander was educated at

Harrow School (The Faithful Dispensation of the Gifts of God) , established = (Royal Charter) , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent schoolBoarding school , religion = Church of E ...

, Cheltenham College and King's College School, London. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1859 and graduated in 1863 after being admitted to

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

in London to study law in 1861.Venn JA (ed) (1940) Alexander, Charles Dallas in '' Alumni Cantabrigienses'', p.28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available online
Retrieved 2019-12-22.)

Cricket

Alexander had played in the Cheltenham cricket XI and at university,Hunter AA (ed) (1890) ''Cheltenham College Register, 1841–1889'', p.132. London: George Bell & Sons.
Available online
Retrieved 2019-12-22.) although not for the full Cambridge side, as well as for Town Malling and the Gentlemen of Kent. He made a single first-class cricket appearance during the 1864 season against England. He scored eight runs in the first innings of the match and three runs in the second, in a match in which Kent fielded thirteen players to England's eleven.Charles Alexander
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-03-19.

Professional and later life

Professionally Alexander enjoyed a varied career. He abandoned a legal career in favour of engineering, becoming an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1868 and taking up a position at the London, Chatham & Dover Railway's Longhedge Locomotive Works at

Battersea Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Batter ...

. By the 1881 census he had moved to become headteacher at Grange School in Ewell before moving back into engineering by 1888. He also seems to have worked as a private tutor. Alexander married Helen Shuldham. The couple had at least five children, one of whom went up to Cambridge in 1896. In later life he appears to have suffered from some form of mental collapse and was living in private medical care at both the 1901 and 1911 census. He died at

Tankerton Tankerton (formerly Tankerton-on-Sea) is a suburb of Whitstable in Kent in south-east England. It was designed in the late 19th century as the train network brought holidaymakers to the sea. It gives its name to a ward of Canterbury City Counci ...

in Kent in 1917 aged 77.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander, Charles 1839 births 1917 deaths English cricketers Kent cricketers Cricketers from Kolkata