Charles Alfred Absolom (7 June 1846 – 30 July 1889) was an English amateur

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 ...

er who played for

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

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 ...

and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in the period from 1866 to 1879.

Early life

Absolom was born at

Blackheath Blackheath may refer to: Places England *Blackheath, London, England ** Blackheath railway station **Hundred of Blackheath, Kent, an ancient hundred in the north west of the county of Kent, England *Blackheath, Surrey, England ** Hundred of Blackh ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, the son of Edward Absolom, a tea merchant, and his wife Elizabeth.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 19–23.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-21.) The family later moved to

Snaresbrook Snaresbrook is a district of East London in the London Borough of Redbridge. It is located 8 miles east of Charing Cross. The name derives from a corruption of Sayers brook, a tributary of the River Roding that flows through Wanstead to the Ea ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

and Absolom was educated at a school in

Calne Calne () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, southwestern England,OS Explorer Map 156, Chippenham and Bradford-on-Avon Scale: 1:25 000.Publisher: Ordnance Survey A2 edition (2007). at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs h ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

and at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. He won

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

in cricket and athletics at Cambridge before graduating in 1870.Venn JA (ed) (1940) Absolom, Charles Alfred in ''

Alumni Cantabrigienses ''Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900'' is a biographical register of former members of the University of Cambridge whic ...

'', p.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available online
Retrieved 2019-12-22.) He was known to friends as "Bos" and nicknamed "The Cambridge Navvy", possibly in reference to his size and strength.

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2017-11-17.Green B (1980
The Curious Affair of Charlie Absolom
''The Cricketer'', 1980. Retrieved from

, 2017-11-17. In 18 matches for the university he took over 100 wickets and played in the

Varsity Match A varsity match is a fixture (especially of a sporting event or team) between two university teams, particularly Oxford and Cambridge. The Scottish Varsity rugby match between the University of St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh at Murray ...

in each year between 1866 and 1869.Mukherjee A (2016
Charlie Absolom becomes first to get out obstructing the field in First-Class cricket
Cricket Country, 2016-05-11. Retrieved 2017-11-17. He played in several games for the Gentlemen against the Players and in 1868 started playing for Kent.Charlie Absolom
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-11-17. After Cambridge he enrolled at

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...

but did not complete his law studies.

Cricket career

Absolom toured Australia with

Lord Harris Colonel George Robert Canning Harris, 4th Baron Harris, (3 February 1851 – 24 March 1932), generally known as Lord Harris, was a British colonial administrator and Governor of Bombay. He was also an English amateur cricketer, mainly active f ...

's team in 1878/79 and played in the only

Test match Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to: * Test cricket * Test match (indoor cricket) * Test match (rugby union) * Test match (rugby league) * Test match (association football) ...

of the tour. He was selected by Harris, his county captain, for the tour, although at 32 both his batting and his bowling ability were declining. After Australia's

Fred Spofforth Frederick Robert Spofforth (9 September 1853 – 4 June 1926), also known as "The Demon Bowler", was arguably the Australian cricket team's finest pace bowler of the nineteenth century. He was the first bowler to take 50 Test wickets, and the fi ...

had taken a

hat-trick A hat-trick or hat trick is the achievement of a generally positive feat three times in a match, or another achievement based on the number three. Origin The term first appeared in 1858 in cricket, to describe H. H. Stephenson taking three wic ...

and helped reduce England to 26 for 7, Absolom came in and made 52 runs from ninth in the batting order, adding 63 runs with Harris for the eighth wicket.Liverman D (2017
A profile of Charlie Absolom
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-11-17. He did not play another Test match and had completed his career with Kent by the end of the 1879 season. He had played in 57 matches for the county and taken 87 wickets. In 1868, whilst playing for Cambridge, Absolom became the first batsman in first-class cricket to be given out

obstructing the field Obstructing the field is one of the ten methods of dismissing a batsman in the sport of cricket. Either batsman can be given out if he wilfully attempts to obstruct or distract the fielding side by word or action. It is Law 37 of the Laws of cr ...

when a ball being returned to the wicket came into contact with his bat whilst he was attempting to complete a seventh run.

Later life

After leaving the legal profession, it is unclear how Absolom made his living through much of the 1870s. He left England in late 1879, travelling to the United States, initially at

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Cha ...

and then in the New York area as well as spending time living with the

Spokane people The Spokan or Spokane people are a Native American Plateau tribe who inhabit the eastern portion of present-day Washington state and parts of northern Idaho in the United States of America. The current Spokane Indian Reservation is located in ...

along the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

Washington Territory The Territory of Washington was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1853, until November 11, 1889, when the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Washington. It was created from the ...

. He worked as a ship's purser on the SS ''Orinoco'' and the SS ''Muriel'' and played cricket for

Staten Island Cricket Club The Staten Island Cricket Club (SICC) is a cricket club on Staten Island, New York that was incorporated as the Staten Island Cricket and Base Ball Club on March 22, 1872. It became the first tennis venue in the United States.Morris, Ira K. (1 ...

. He died in 1889 aged 43 in an accident whilst cargo was being loaded onto ''Muriel'' at

Port of Spain Port of Spain (Spanish: ''Puerto España''), officially the City of Port of Spain (also stylized Port-of-Spain), is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municip ...

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Absolom, Charlie 1846 births 1889 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Sportspeople from Blackheath, London Cambridge University cricketers English cricketers England Test cricketers Kent cricketers Gentlemen cricketers Accidental deaths in Trinidad and Tobago Gentlemen of the South cricketers Southgate cricketers Gentlemen of Kent cricketers Oxford and Cambridge Universities cricketers