Spofforth's Emigration — The Demon Settles in Derbyshire, 1886-1890

Cross-Atlantic, cross-continental marriages were not unusual among 1880s touring cricketers — Billy Midwinter had moved between English and Australian sides for similar reasons — but Spofforth's standing made his case high-profile.

Spofforth had been part of the 1882 Oval side, the architect of the Ashes legend. By 1886 his bowling had lost half a yard of pace and the Australian selectors were beginning to look elsewhere. The marriage and the move to England came at exactly the moment a younger Australian bowling generation — Turner, Ferris, the new pace-spinners — was taking over.

Spofforth's status in 1886 was already that of a cricket immortal. He had been Australia's leading bowler for almost a decade, had bowled the spell that birthed the Ashes (14 for 90 at the Oval in 1882) and was the public face of Australian cricket on every English tour. He was 33, however, and his powers were starting to ebb.

During the 1886 tour he met Phillis Marsh Cadman, daughter of Joseph Cadman, a successful tea importer based in Breadsall, Derbyshire. They married at Breadsall in September 1886, on the eve of the Australians' return home. The couple lived briefly in Australia but by 1888 had decided to settle in England permanently. Spofforth took a position in the Cadman family business, eventually rising to manage it.

He was not finished with cricket. The Derbyshire County Cricket Club, then a struggling minor county trying to establish first-class status, attempted to register him in 1888 but the County Cricket Council refused to waive the standard two-year residential qualification. Yorkshire, characteristically, agreed to play matches against Derbyshire in 1889 with Spofforth in the side, and he took wickets in those games as good as any of his Australian best.

From 1890 he was qualified and played first-class cricket for Derbyshire, captaining them in his first full season. The county was strong by their own modest standards but not yet first-class, and Spofforth's appearances were intermittent. He continued in club cricket for Hampstead Cricket Club through the 1890s, where his bowling figures were occasionally absurd — at one point he took 201 wickets in a single club season at under five runs apiece.

Spofforth lived in Surrey and London for the rest of his life, became a successful businessman, and died at Long Ditton on 4 June 1926 aged 72. He was buried at Brookwood Cemetery — the most famous Australian cricketer to lie in English soil.

“Spofforth has settled among us, and is now as much an Englishman as the rest of his family.”

Spofforth's later years saw him become a cricket establishment figure in England. He attended Test matches at Lord's and the Oval as a guest of MCC; his obituaries in 1926 ran in the English broadsheets as if he had been a county professional rather than the most lethal Australian bowler of his generation.