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description= Cricket From the Dim and Distant Past;
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school where he displayed aptitude for cricket but little else giffard was sent very much against his wishes to rugby school where he had a miserable time for four terms again evidence was abundant at the trial one of his housemasters testified that he was abnormal and one of the worst cases he had seen his academic progress was poor and the school suggested he would be better served elsewhere eventually in 1940 his father relented giffard was treated by several psychiatrists who made a tentative diagnosis of a rare form of schizophrenia and he transferred to blundell s school much closer to home cricket still provided an outlet and in his final term in 1942 he reached the school first eleven he was listed in the averages in the schools section of wisden that year 154 runs at an average of 14 00 after leaving school giffard had one of the few settled spells of his life when he was conscripted into the royal navy during the second world war but upon leaving his father insisted that he should follow in his footsteps and study law it went very badly giffard moved to london but showed no inclination to study attending few lectures and beginning to drink very heavily and lead a hedonistic lifestyle he was also plagued by guilt at his own actions and a fear of his father with a career in law ruled out he lived on an allowance and briefly worked as a land agent before being sacked an inherited 750 sustained him for a few months but he wasted most of it on alcohol and hired cars he was reduced to selling ice cream for a time before resorting to fleeting trips home to cornwall during which he broke into the house and stole his mother s jewellery which he sold back in london giffard as a cricketer in an undated photograph image the murder club guide to south west england and wales 1989 by brian lane such a lifestyle was clearly unsustainable and by 1948 had was forced to return to live with his parents during this period he resumed his cricket career and represented cornwall in the minor counties championship he played five matches in the 1948 season scoring 89 runs at 12 71 with a highest score of 27 it was not an imposing record but it was enough for newspapers to later denote him as a county cricketer when reporting the murders but not long after that he returned to london and to his heavy drinking lifestyle financed by bouncing cheques and begged loans while in london he began a relationship with a 19 year old called gabrielle vallance who was just over seven years his junior it was intense and giffard was deeply in love he was wracked by jealousy particularly when his lack of money and general shabbiness commented on by vallance forced him once again to return to cornwall he remained in communication with her telling her how his father had cut his allowance and restricted him to one pint and twenty cigarettes per day he considered suicide but vallance encouraged him to return to london and find a job on 3 november 1952 he wrote to her i have had a terrible row with the old man made worse by the fact that as usual he is right anyway the upshot is that he has forbidden me to return to london he says he will cut me off without the proverbial penny so there does not seem to be any alternative short of doing him in i see no future in the world at all at the end of that week on friday 7 november having told vallance over the phone that his father was lending him his car for the weekend giffard beat both his parents to death with a lead pipe when they returned home around 7 30pm his father was attacked when inspecting the engine of his car his mother was attacked in the house before giffard could leave for london his father began to regain consciousness so he struck him repeatedly he also found his mother coming around so after striking her again he placed her in a wheelbarrow and wheeled her out of the garden and along a path to the cliff edge over which he tipped her a post mortem suggested that she had been alive until this point his father was already dead and giffard also took him in the wheelbarrow although he had to roll the body for the final part of the journey porthpean beach in 2003 giffard then drove to london in his father s car even taking hitch hikers for part of the journey and after sleeping in his car and changing some of his bloodstained clothes he spent the saturday with vallance paying for their drinks with the money he received from selling more of his mother s jewellery late in the evening when both were very drunk she turned down his marriage proposal and he told her that he had murdered his parents they returned to his house by taxi where the police were waiting the bodies of giffard s parents had been found and a statement had been released by police that they were looking for giffard details of the distinctive licence plate of his father s car erl 1 had been sent around the country it had been spotted near vallance s house and so giffard was arrested he confessed almost immediately even though his letters to vallance from prison suggested he did not quite grasp the enormity of the situation after a hearing before magistrates on 4 december 1952 giffard s case was heard at cornwall assizes on 3 february 1953 it lasted four days he was only charged with the murder of his father there was no dispute from the defence that giffard had murdered his parents the question was whether he was legally insane when he did so his defence was insanity and the arguments ultimately came down to this point there were parallels to edmund kesteven s story in late 1894 the former professional cricketer had murdered his common law wife after weeks possibly years of increasingly eccentric behaviour that might have been precipitated by a blow to the head by a cricket ball there had been no clear motive other than a combustable relationship fuelled by alcohol although kesteven had shown little interest in his own fate his friends had organised his defence and argued that he was legally insane but that was incredibly hard to prove in a court at the time legal insanity was defined by the so called m naghten rules from 1843 that every man is to be presumed to be sane and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of the committing of the act the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or if he did know it that he did not know he was doing what was wrong for kesteven this threshold was too difficult to prove he was found guilty and hanged in 1895 giffard faced a situation practically unchanged almost sixty years later the m naghten rules were still in force but as the understanding of mental illness has grown over the intervening period this definition was viewed as increasingly weak and narrow particularly when a guilty verdict for a capital crime meant death even someone in the grip of medically recognised psychosis could still be hanged under this rule as long as it could be proved they knew what they were doing and knew that it was wrong just like kesteven s defence giffard s lawyers had to prove that either he did not know that his actions would have harmed his parents or that he did not realise that killing them was wrong even if he could have been proven to be medically insane such as a confirmed diagnosis of schizophrenia that would not have been enough the prosecution contended that giffard had simply murdered his parents to spend the day with his girlfriend the defence countered that this showed insanity and that his subsequent actions meant that his arrest was inevitable he was driving to the gallows differing medical testimony was offered defence experts said that he was schizophrenic and had been at the time of the murders so would not have known that his actions were wrong prosecution experts said that he was not mentally ill that he had shown sane premeditation particularly his letter to vallance about killing his father and had been causing hurt to his parents his whole life legally there was little room for manoeuvre because insanity was such a high bar to clear on 6 february 1953 in just 35 minutes the jury found giffard guilty of murder the judge who had no choice after such a verdict sentenced him to death he was hanged on 24 february 1953 but the m naghten rules would not hold the same weight for much longer in 1957 a new provision was introduced as part of the homicide act the defence of diminished responsibility a killer found to be suffering from a medically recognised abnormality of mental functioning could be convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and therefore spared the death penalty albeit with an almost certain life sentence someone like kesteven or giffard would likely have been able to prove that mental illness was affecting their judgement or their self control the insanity defence was no longer necessary because diminished responsibility was much easier to prove the criminal procedure insanity act of 1964 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 further refined the arguments even if the m naghten rules are technically still in force in the united kingdom even today but such matters move beyond the scope of an article about a supposed cricketer such a brutal murder remained in the public mind for a long time newspapers frequently revisited the story it featured regularly in various retrospectives until the 1970s and still makes occasional appearances and in 1970 it was dramatised as part of a series called conceptions of murder for london weekend television in an episode called conversation piece john castle played giffard in addition numerous books about murders and murderers included giffard there was a sensationalist tint to such retellings but a shift gradually occurred later writers offered more sympathy to giffard than was displayed at the time as understanding of mental illness increased the legal question of insanity was closely intertwined with most of these retellings and particularly in later years the idea that the verdict was perhaps unjust for a man who clearly had some form of mental illness even if one not robust enough to satisfy the m naghten rules giffard s obvious issues earlier in life were seen as warning signs that were ignored and writers just as giffard s defence team and neustatter had done pointed fingers of blame at giffard s father and the difficult relationship between the two even today the story of the double murders features in podcasts documentaries and news articles each version of the story mentions giffard s cricket background no matter how flimsy the association doubtless the particularly gruesome killings and giffard s apparent cold bloodedness remain a source of fascination so too the suspicion that the legal system of 1955 was not quite developed enough for the complexities of the case and yet the suspicion lingers that even after seventy years there is still the element of wonder that harks back to an earlier time and an earlier social framework how could a public schoolboy commit such horrific crimes and how could a cricketer stoop so low share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit print opens in new window print share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on whatsapp opens in new window whatsapp share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin share on threads opens in new window threads share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky like loading leave a comment a want of gratitude the untidy resolution of the nottinghamshire strike 16 february 2026 old ebor 1880s cricket alfred shaw amateur cricket arthur shrewsbury cricket cricket and class henry holden john selby lord harris nottinghamshire nottinghamshire strike of 1881 professional cricket strike wages william scotton alfred shaw amateur cricket arthur shrewsbury benefits charles alcock fred morley henry holden henry perkins john selby lord harris nottinghamshire nottinghamshire strike professional cricket wages walter attewell walter wright wilfred flowers william barnes william gunn william scotton the leaders of the 1881 strike alfred shaw image wikipedia and arthur shrewsbury image wikipedia what had begun as a dispute over the title of a cricket match quickly escalated into a test of authority at a time when amateurs had seized control of english cricket from the professionals who had popularised it two nottinghamshire players sought to assert what they saw as their rights before the 1881 season alfred shaw and arthur shrewsbury agreed to play in bradford for a team that was to be styled as nottinghamshire organised without the approval of nottinghamshire county cricket club the committee of the club in the person of henry holden the honorary secretary protested strongly and a series of letters passed between the various parties neither side showed any willingness to back down the crucial turning point came when shaw and shrewsbury were joined by five other professionals john selby fred morley william barnes william scotton and wilfred flowers who presented a list of demands in a letter to the committee the first of these was that shaw and shrewsbury should be able to play at bradford for an unofficial team styled nottinghamshire second that the seven rebels should be guaranteed selection for all county matches that season the usual practice then and for many many years later was for the players to be selected one match at a time finally that they would receive a guaranteed benefit match after ten years of playing for the county again this was unprecedented benefits were granted by county committees to players seen as deserving but were often dependent upon the state of county finances these were not mere demands for individual gain they were a challenge to the authority of the nottinghamshire committee the resulting dispute variously labelled as the nottinghamshire strike or the nottinghamshire schism almost tore the county apart in the aftermath of this letter the claims and counter claims further poisoned relationships between the already entrenched sides the rebels insisted that one of the committee captain william denison who had previously been the mp for nottingham had suggested each of their requests would potentially have been acceptable and shaw offered to apologise on behalf of the rebels for their non attendance at the committee meeting to which they had earlier been summoned but correspondence later leaked to the press continued and attitudes hardened the nottinghamshire assistant secretary edwin brown now insisted that any such apology from shaw had to be in writing shaw replied in a dismissive telegram that he was playing in edinburgh for the next three days would not sign any agreement and would only play on the terms submitted brown also wrote privately to shaw...
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