The contract to take the aboriginal team to England was signed in Melbourne on 8 January 1867. As an historical resource, the contract was largely forgotten until recently.516 After being fleetingly mentioned in newspaper reports of the time, the contract became a forgotten document until an obscure reference to it was made almost 40 years later. In the last five years the contract has been the subject of detailed legal analysis and mentioned in at least two recent books.517
Sampson provides a thorough analysis of the legal implications of the contract as they pertained to the aborigines. The agreement was between William Reginald Hayman Esq., Gentleman of Lake Wallace in the West Wimmera district of the colony of Victoria; the second part Messrs Unamurriman and others; while W. B. Gurnett Esq, Gentleman of the City of Melbourne, was the third part.518 At the time, newspapers reported the contract as between the aboriginal players, Wills and Hayman on one side and Gurnett on the other. When the contract is examined all participants are named except Wills. Wills did not sign the contract. In fact the contract gives no suggestion that Wills was even present. It is not clear at all why this should be the case. There is no suggestion that Wills was not to be part of the tour. It is possible for some reason that he
tendency to elevate Wills in the absence of any evidence or even if there is evidence to the contrary. The black team was repeatedly recalled with varying degrees of accuracy and research. See, ‘Murdoch and Bligh’, The Imperial Review, no. 9, April 1883, p. 7. The degree to which Wills or Lawrence is recalled as associated with the team varies. Here they are both recalled, ‘Before this, Wills and Lawrence’s Australian Aboriginals had played through England’. ‘The Aboriginal Cricketers’, Old Times, April 1903, pp. 33-4. Also see, Jas Scott, A Cricketing Miscellany (Sydney: publisher unknown, 1942), p. 113.
516
Agreement between W. R. Hayman Esq, Unamurriman and others, and W. E. B. Gurnett relating to engagement of cricketers on 8 January 1867. No contract has been cited for the tour conducted by Charles Lawrence. Many early references to Wills incorrectly indicated that he went to England with the team. This has largely been rectified in more recent references.
517
It next appears in a 1902 article reminiscing about cricket stating that the document exists in the Melbourne Public Library, see, ‘Cricket Tour’, The Imperial Review, 1902, No. 36, pp. 4-6. Its existence is mentioned again in Bernard Whimpress’ Passport to Nowhere.
518
For further details as to the legal nature of the contract and its context see Sampson, ‘The Nature and Effects Thereof Were ...’, pp. 54-69. He notes the inequities faced by the aboriginal sportsman despite the apparently detailed contract and how such inequity was underpinned by racial attitudes of the time. Also the parallels with other colonial exhibitions of indigenous peoples from around the world as a form of circus troupe. He notes, ‘Esquire being a courtesy title for those who could not claim a specific title but “were gentlemen by virtue of birth, position or education”’ from, Pam Peters, The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (Cambridge; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 251-2. Also see, The Sports Factor, 17 August 2001, 1868 Aboriginal Cricket Team, http:\\www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/stories/s347703.htm. Sampson claims that it was Hayman, sniffing entrepreneurial expansion who organised for Tom Wills to captain and coach the team. There is no information to support this claim.
was not present at the time of the signing though he is reported by at least one newspaper as being present.519
Why did Wills not sign the contract? Given the apparent detail of the contract it seems inconceivable that this was an oversight. Pavey, the MCC club solicitor, had scrupulously and meticulously mapped out the details of the aboriginal tour. Wills at this point was by far the most prominent figure associated with the tour and perhaps seen to be an indispensable one. The lack of a signature must have been deliberate either from Wills or from the organisers’ side. Despite this there was never the suggestion that Wills was not to be part of the tour. It is known from incidental accounts from family letters and newspapers reports that Wills clearly intended to go to England. It is quite possible that a more informal agreement had been struck between Wills and Hayman.
The contract established Gurnett at the head of the enterprise. It is possible that an early antagonism between Gurnett and Wills might help explain why Wills was not a signatory to the contract. This suggestion is consistent with the culmination of the dispute between Wills and Gurnett which was later voiced in a public letter from Gurnett after the arrest of Wills, Hayman and Gurnett. Wills had aspirations to be the entrepreneur and his actions and Gurnett’s retort strongly suggest that he temporarily vied with Gurnett for such a role. Wills may not have signed if he was already in dispute over the course of the tour with Gurnett. Equally Gurnett may have been seeking to squeeze Wills out of the deal. At the end of the failed attempt to take the team to England the financial details of who was to be paid what amounts were outlined.520
4 Conclusion
519
Geelong Register, 10 January 1867, p. 2. This report implies that Wills signed the contract. More recent secondary references incorrectly claim that Wills signed this contract. For example, see how Mallet, Black Lords of Summer, p. 24, quotes this from Mulvaney and Harcourt, Cricket Walkabout, p. 51.
520
Bell’s Life in Victoria, 4 May 1867, p. 4, this was a letter from Hayman explaining the financial arrangements of the tour, ‘… I may state that I was to received no benefit from this match, but that Mr Newberry, the keeper of the Melbourne cricket ground was to receive all proceeds and pay all the expenses … Mr Gurnett to go with the blacks and him to Europe. He engaged to pay all … expenses, board … of the blacks, Mr Wills’s travelling expenses, as well as my own, with board etc to Europe and back again to Victoria. The blacks were also to received a weekly allowance and at the end of the engagement a further sum of 50 pounds each; Mr Wills to receive a weekly allowance with a fixed amount also on our return’.
Two of the main links between Tom Wills and indigenous Australians are examined in this chapter. The murder of his father on 17 October 1861 was the critical point in Tom Wills’ adult life. The murder remains the largest recorded killing of European settlers by aborigines in a single battle. Tom Wills was absent at the time, only by chance, and would most likely have died if he had been in the camp that afternoon. Wills responded with extreme fear and anger towards those who committed the murders and those Europeans who he felt were accomplices to the act and who protected local aborigines. Tom Wills maintained this stance for many years in private and public letters. The evidence for his psychological reaction is continued in chapter six on alcohol abuse. It comes as a surprise to then find that Tom Wills was hired to coach the western district aboriginal cricket team less than five years after his father’s death. The reasons for his accepting this position are not spelled out comprehensively in any archival source but the context suggests that Tom’s need for money was a powerful factor in his accepting the position. The Boxing Day cricket match in 1866 was the high point of the tour throughout Victoria and NSW and was a further opportunity for Tom Wills to berate what he considered was an uncharitable Melbourne Cricket Club. The tour became a focus of European-Aboriginal relations and Tom Wills a focus, probably unintentioned on his part, onto which colonial society placed its diverging views on the management of future relations between the races. Tom Wills’ family adopted a perhaps surprisingly benign attitude to his coaching and the suggestion is very much that Tom and his family were quite clear in distinguishing the aborigines in Queensland from the Victorian aboriginal team. The tour started to collapse almost as soon as the Boxing Day match was over. Soon afterwards the entrepreneur William Gurnett was revealed as a confidence trickster. By the end of the tour Tom’s place was usurped by Charles Lawrence who took the team to England in 1868.
Chapter Five A Father’s Care
‘My brother was the nicest man I ever met,’ he said. ‘Though his nature was care-free, amounting almost to wildness, he had the sweetest temper I have seen in a man, and was essentially a sportsman’.521
Horace Wills, 1923
If you knew how Tom is despised by all who know anything of him … Poor Ma would be terribly cut up if all her sons turned out like her first born … I wonder if he intends to loaf on Ma in all ways. He never ever helps in the garden but reads novels and sometimes plays football or cricket.522
Emily Wills, 1864
1 Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to examine how aspects of Tom Wills’ upbringing and his family, particularly the influence of his father, shaped him at key points in his life. A detailed examination of how other family members influenced him, other than in passing, is not undertaken in this chapter. The chapter commences with a brief review of aspects of his family background and a summary of important genealogical data on Tom Wills. It then moves to a study of Horatio Wills and his aspirations for Tom and his other sons. In turn, it covers the interaction between Tom and his family while at school in Rugby; his return to Australia; his brief flirtation with the legal profession; his trek with Horatio to Queensland and the murder of Horatio. Throughout this chronological journey there are references to Tom’s personality and how this shaped family views of him and influenced his life’s trajectory. The chapter does not cover in detail his early school years in Melbourne; his relationship with other key sportsmen as revealed in private and public documents; his romance and failed engagements; and his relationship with his family during the last decade of his life. There is only a limited analysis of his relationships with his extended family, that is, his aunts and uncles.
521
‘Wizard Bowler. Stories of T. W. Wills. Brother in Melbourne.’ Evening Sun, 7 December 1923, p. 5. Wills was described as 5ft 11in. in height, with great chest development, and handsome.
522
Underpinning this chapter is the relationship between Horatio Wills and his son. The importance of this relationship necessitates a significant detour to give biographical details of Horatio that helps set the stage for an understanding of the most critical force in Tom’s life. Flanagan and Perrin note the importance of Horatio in Tom Wills’ life as do the many brief biographical references on Tom Wills. Flanagan’s view of his father is deliberately caricatured. Horatio is portrayed as an autocratic and bombastic individual whose presence in life and death dominated the family. It is less than complimentary with its doses of religious mania, surges of libidinal fantasy, images of buffoonery and gun-toting evangelism. It seems that Horatio is drawn in such a light to contrast with Tom Wills. In doing so, Tom Wills can then be drawn more sympathetically.523 Perrin takes a more conservative approach but the analysis of Horatio is less searching.524
The sources for this chapter are primarily unpublished archival family correspondence. This material is supplemented by unpublished official documentation and published documents. These latter sources were accessed to provide corroboration, context or a more complete picture where the family correspondence did not provide sufficient information.525