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Yorkshire Chess History |
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Contents: |
1873: First Annual Oxford-Cambridge Chess Match |
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This is not an obvious event to include under the “Yorkshire” banner, but the captain of the Oxford team was Yorkshireman Walter Parratt, who was thus the first Oxford intervarsity chess team captain. Also, Yorkshireman Samuel Redhead Meredith was at the time president of the OU chess club. So there was significant Yorkshire input to match, and perhaps to the event in principle. There was, incidentally, a Yorkshire-born player on the Cambridge team, Leeds-born Charles Burdett Ogden.
The first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, as it came to be known, took place on 10th June 1829. The second was on 17th June 1836, and the third on 3rd April 1839. Thereafter it became more or less an annual event, as now. The one held on 29th March 1873 was the thirtieth.
Somebody, possibly Staunton, had the idea of a similar chess match. Accordingly, the first Oxford-Cambridge annual chess match took place on Friday 28th March 1873, the day before the boat race. The match was hosted by London Chess Club in their premises at 34 Milk Street, Cheapside.
Leeds chess-player Samuel Redhead Meredith, an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, had been elected as chess-club secretary for a term on 4th December 1872, so he must have been involved, though was not necessarily an initiator of the event.
Also at Oxford at the time was Walter Parratt, formerly of Huddersfield Chess Club, who had taken up the post of organist at Magdalen College, Oxford. This was his third job after leaving Huddersfield, but he was still in contact with his home town where his widowed mother and older brother still lived, and he was in contact with John Watkinson at the chess club. Walter Parratt too could have been instrumental in initiating the event; it’s difficult to believe he wasn’t a driving force, at least once the idea had been broached by others. He captained the Oxford team.
The intention was that two games be played on each board, reversing who had first move for the second game. On board seven only one game was played. When “time” was called, two games were still in progress, and these were adjudicated by Steinitz as umpire, and are indicated below by “@”.
They were apparently playing under rules (or lack of them) whereby colour and first move were independent of each other, thus on board one Cambridge had white in both games, but Cambridge moved first in the first game while Oxford moved first in the second game. It saves turning the boards round!
The Huddersfield College Magazine reproduced results published by Staunton, who typically omitted forenames or initials. Watkinson comes up with initials for players in the second match, and some of those players can be assumed to be ones in the first match. Referring to Alumni Cantabrigienses, compiled by Venn (the eponym of Venn Diagrams) and his son, helps identify most of the Cambridge team.
Walter Parratt of Huddersfield was known personally to John Watkinson, and also known to him was Samuel Redhead Meredith, son of the first incumbent at St James, Methley Mills, to the south of Huddersfield. Charles Burdett Odgen, was a Leeds-born player, probably unknown personally to Watkinson, as after leaving Cambridge he taught for thirty-six years at Rossall School, near Fleetwood. He died in Birmingham “suddenly, Dec. 10, 1923, whilst playing a game of chess” according to Venn, who was probably quoting the Times of 17th December, 1923.
Walter Parratt supplied to John Watkinson the scores of both his games, and these were included in the Huddersfield College Magazine, Vol. 1, pp 154 & 155.
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Created 25/04/2012 |
Copyright © 2012 Stephen John Mann |
Last Updated 25/04/2012 |