JMS Pearce
Hull, England

By the time he qualified in medicine in 1879, William Gilbert Grace (1848–1915), known as “WG”, had established himself as the world’s greatest cricketer. Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack and the annals of cricket amply chronicle his career¹ but are replete with boring statistics, which fail to do justice to his extraordinary, dazzling achievements on the field. Relatively little is known of his medical career, which he pursued as a family doctor in the poorer working-class areas of Bristol. There can be few people who have managed to combine careers both in medicine and an international sport.

In his day, the physical giant WG Grace was more instantly recognized by the public than any other personage except Mr. Gladstone² and Queen Victoria.

One of nine children, he was born in Downend, a small Gloucestershire village. He was the fourth son of Dr. Henry Mills Grace, a local general practitioner. The brothers WG, Edward (EM), and Fred Grace played in the first Test match for England at the Oval in 1880. WG’s three older brothers all became doctors. Henry and Alfred were general practitioners, and Edward became a medical coroner in Gloucestershire. Fred, his younger brother, died aged twenty-nine of pneumonia, one week after playing in his first Test match.

When he was six, WG’s mother took him to see the All-England Eleven play, a team which included his father, uncle, and brother. Aged sixteen, in 1864 he made his debuts at Lord’s and the Oval. When he scored 224 not out for the All-England Eleven against Surrey a few days after his eighteenth birthday, Grace recorded the highest score ever made at the Oval.

As a youth, he excelled at hurdling and sprinting, and played golf to a handicap of nine. He captained England against Scotland at bowls in 1903. He was a keen fisherman and shot. His impressive frame (aged sixteen he was 6 ft 2 in [1.88 m] tall, weighing 70 kg) and massive beard merged into the familiar, much heavier Falstaffian figure in his thirties. He had a high, piping voice with a Gloucestershire accent.

Both Oxford and Cambridge universities tried to enroll him, but at his father’s insistence he followed the family tradition by reading medicine at Bristol Medical School beginning in 1868, but taking until 1879 to qualify because cricket took precedence. In 1869, Grace became a member of the famous MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club). In the same year, he scored four centuries. Gifted with natural timing, athleticism, and immense stamina, he perfected his own straight-batted style and highly competitive if sometimes egotistical attitudes, which transformed the game.³ His slow medium round arm bowling yielded more wickets than most of his contemporaries. Overarm bowling was first allowed under MCC rules in 1864.

Medical practice

He moved to London in February 1875, when he was attached to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to further his clinical studies. Mixing medicine and cricket, after the 1878 season he attended the Westminster Hospital Medical School for his final year where he studied with WH Allchin, FRCP, a physician and physiologist. He decided not to play cricket in the 1879 season until June in order to concentrate on medicine. He eventually completed his studies at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and qualified in 1879.⁴ Such was his cricketing prowess that in that year the MCC presented him with £1500* from a national testimonial it had instigated.

He practiced medicine for twenty years for the Bristol Poor Law Union in his own largely working-class practice with a surgery at 61 Stapleton Road. Aware of his obligations to his patients, when cricket fixtures permitted, he was generous and devoted to his medical practice. In the first five years after his qualification, he gave priority to his patients and did not once top the first-class batting averages. He was regarded as a practical if not an academic doctor. If at times he appeared gruff and domineering, he was widely respected by his patients. It was observed he was “ever ready to lend a helping hand” and “poor families knew that they did not need to worry about calling him in, as the bills would never arrive.” He worked as medical officer to the Barton Regis Union for relief of the poor and was a public vaccinator.

His rumbustious manner and practical joking on the cricket field were also evident when a patient, a jovial and slightly inebriated sweep, asked him for a tonic medicine. Grace said: “What you need lad is exercise, not medicine.” He called to his maid, “Mary, fetch my boxing gloves.” The patient rushed out screaming, “The great big bugger wants to fight me!”

Grace once sat up all night with a confinement and proceeded next morning to make an innings of 221 against Middlesex.4 On another occasion, he saved the life of a player (ACM Croome) by compressing his throat for an hour after he had been spiked on the ground’s railings. Grace stitched the cut eye of Palmer, the Kent wicket-keeper (struck by a bouncer) who then promptly stumped him; an infuriated Grace told him, “After alI I’ve done for you—that’s what you do to me!” Richard Tomlinson recalls many engaging stories illustrating his quirks, humor, and many kindnesses. As an example, he tells of the district nurse in his parish who:

 …Often had occasion to go to his surgery for my poor people and he was always most kind. On one occasion I remember, he gave me money to get food for some poor people. His patients loved him…I shall never forget his kindness.³

His county club, Gloucestershire, paid him expenses of £50 a season so that he could pay a locum tenens when he was engaged in playing county cricket. In subsequent years, he secured several generous payments. He played for the Gentlemen (amateurs) versus the Players (professionals) from 1865 to 1906. As an amateur, paid only for expenses and travel, he managed to secure several large testimonial payments, which when added to his expenses far exceeded the earnings of most professionals, who were understandably envious of him. The supremely gifted athlete, cricketer, and respected author CB Fry (1872–1956) commented on his dominating figure as a merry monarch with childlike humor prone to playing tricks on and off the cricket field. But according to Fry, he retained a sense of his own Olympian dignity.

In 1880, he marked his first appearance in Test cricket by scoring the first century by an England batsman against Australia. (In 1877, England toured Australia, playing two matches against full Australian XIs that are now regarded as the first Test matches.) He played first-class cricket for 44 years from 1865 to 1908, during which he had captained England and Gloucestershire, but managed to continue medical practice albeit with interruptions.⁵ In total, Grace played in twenty-two Test matches through the 1880s and 1890s, all against Australia.⁶ In first-class cricket he scored 54,896 runs (average 39.55), was the first man to score a hundred hundreds, and took 2,876 wickets (average 17.92).³ These figures are even more impressive when one considers that cricket pitches at the time were ill-prepared, bumpy, and uncovered. Such was the fame and attraction of WG that billboards on cricket grounds would announce: “Admission 3 Pence—if W.G. Grace plays—Admission 6 Pence.”

In 1873 he married Agnes Nicholls Day, the daughter of his cousin, William. Two weeks after the wedding, they began their honeymoon in Australia to fit in with Grace’s 1873–74 tour. Before Test matches began this was an England side, known as the WG Grace XI.

WG and Agnes had three sons and a daughter: Henry Edgar, Agnes Bessie, Charles Butler, and William Gilbert, Junior, who played cricket for Cambridge University and Gloucestershire before an early death from appendicitis.

In 1899, aged fifty-one, WG played his final Test match for England. He retired to London in 1898 because of the death from typhoid of his daughter, Bessie. Shortly afterwards he ended his Bristol parish medical work that had been marred by reorganization. A year later, he severed his connection with Gloucestershire County Cricket Club after a row possibly provoked by his autocratic insistence on his selecting the teams. Darwin, his biographer, suggested that a re-arrangement of districts had caused difficulties with other parish doctors. Having ceased medical practice, living in his new home “Fairmount” in suburban Mottingham, he served the London County Cricket Club and played club cricket, golf, and bowls.

He died from a stroke in 1915 and is buried in the family grave at Beckenham, Kent. Accolades and commemorations abound. Blue plaques were placed at 15 Victoria Square in Bristol and at his final London home.

A ward in the Queen Elizabeth II Wing at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was named the WG Grace Ward; the building was later demolished. The MCC commemorated Grace with a Memorial Biography.¹ At Lord’s, the Grace gates were erected in 1923. A pub in Bristol is named The W. G. Grace.

A legend in his lifetime, WG remains one of the most accomplished and best-known British sportsmen.4 The Guardian newspaper obituary of 25 October 1915 stated:

Dr. William Gilbert Grace was by common consent the greatest and most attractive figure that ever appeared on the cricket field… no cricketer, living or dead, has ever approached him, and it is doubtful if any ever will.

Note

* According to the inflation calculator, £100 in 1879 was equivalent in goods and services to £10,416.03 today.

References

1. Lord Hawke, Lord Harris, Sir Home Gordon (eds). The Memorial Biography of Dr. W. G. Grace. Constable, 1919.
2. Snowise NG. Memorials to Dr WG Grace – general practitioner and cricketing legend. Journal of Medical Biography 2024;1-5.
3. Tomlinson R. Amazing Grace: the man who was W.G. Little, Brown, 2015.
4. Toghill PJ. Dr W G Grace, LRCP Edinburgh, MRCS England, 1879. British Medical Journal 1979;1:1269-70.
5. Toghill PJ. Dr W G Grace: medical truant. The Samuel Gee Lecture 1996. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 1997;3:95-9.
6. Darwin B. W. G. Grace London: Duckworth, 1934.