Bessie Stone’s head injury and the court case that threatened cricket

If you’re the type of person who enjoys perusing old newspapers, every now and then you’ll come across a story that is more than a mere curiosity, one which either by being completely extraordinary, by having a significant effect on its era or – rarest of all – by having a continued impact on modern society transcends the time and place in which it occurred. This is very much one of the smallest and most treasured group, the story of an event that threatened but ultimately failed to destroy hundreds of clubs across the country, is still regularly quoted in legal circles more than 70 years later, and also made 48-year-old Bessie Stone of Cheetham Hill, Manchester really quite upset.

The story starts on 9 August 1947 when, midway through Denton St Lawrence CC’s away match against Cheetham, Miss Stone left her house on Manchester’s Beckenham Road and stopped for a chat with a neighbour. Meanwhile, over the road, beyond a 7ft fence, down a further 10ft of natural slope and across 75 yards of playing field, a certain Walter Leadbetter, teacher at a Southport school, was batting for the visitors. The bowler’s name has been lost to history, which is probably as he would have wanted it: with one ball of his first and final over of the game remaining, Leadbetter had already hit two sixes and a four. The final delivery was no better than those that had preceded it, and Leadbetter swung his bat, connected sweetly, and sent the ball soaring.

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The ball flew over the outfield, it screamed over the boundary, it cleared the fence and it sailed over Beckenham Road before landing, some 98 yards away from Leadbetter’s bat, on Bessie Stone’s head. So it was that when someone arrived to fetch the missing ball, they found it lying next to the prone body of a passing, and passed-out, neighbour.

Stone was rushed to Manchester Northern hospital, where she was treated for shock and concussion. The wound required two stitches, two months’ treatment as an outpatient and the removal of a considerable amount of hair. What remained, Stone said, suddenly turned white. Claiming terrible long-term effects – “I’m just a bundle of nerves,” she sniffed, nearly two years later – Stone sued. And suddenly every cricket team, golf course and tennis club within hitting distance of the general public was at risk (or, at the very least, at risk of having to pay for costly insurance policies).

She came up against a cricket-loving judge at Manchester Assizes, Mr Justice Oliver, who decided against her but, particularly given the lack of precedent on the issue – which he considered astonishing “since balls are always flying out of all sorts of grounds in all sorts of places” – he granted leave to appeal.

And so it was that 70 years ago this week the court of appeal in London was hearing evidence about how far WG Grace could throw a cricket ball (about 150 yards, apparently), how far Albert Trott, then as now the only player to have cleared the pavilion at Lord’s, could hit one, and discussing whether that would be a fair way to decide the minimum size of a club’s grounds.

Stone’s case was that although Cheetham CC had come into existence in 1864, long before Beckenham Road, they were guilty of negligence and nuisance for allowing innocent humans to roam within six-hitting range. Even though several witnesses insisted that no one at Cheetham had ever struck the ball as far as Leadbetter, such feats were clearly possible, and a near-neighbour of Stone’s – whose house was closer to the ground – testified that cricket balls did turn up in his front garden occasionally, even if he couldn’t be quite sure how often. The crux of the argument, and the idea that really scared so many other clubs, was that if it was possible for a ball to be struck out of the ground and hit someone on the head then an offence was committed every time cricket was played, even if the ball remained grounded and heads unhit. “I appreciate that goes a long way and seems to be an attack on cricket but it is the logical conclusion,” Stone’s lawyer insisted.

It was clear that the case’s importance was not confined to north Manchester, and when two of the three judges sided with Stone the situation was suddenly critical. Cheetham were small and could not afford to fund lengthy legal battles – particularly having hired the eminent Sir Walter Monckton, who by the time the case concluded was MP for Bristol West and minister of labour as well as being president of Surrey CCC, to represent them – but neither could they simply accept defeat. To help them, clubs across the country contributed to a fighting fund that was quickly big enough to take the case to the House of Lords.

In the final battle Monckton successfully convinced the Lords that just because the club knew a ball might bounce into a quiet road in suburban Manchester, it would not be reasonable to expect them to know that it would land on someone’s head. “The existence of some risk is an ordinary incident of life,” said Lord Porter, in conclusion, “even when all due care has been – and it must be – taken.” Porter suggested that if the Lords found for Stone, it would mean that no one could drive a car or fly an aeroplane, or for that matter undertake any activity that might, however unlikely, result in injury to someone else. “The remote possibility of injury occurring is not enough,” he said. “There must be sufficient probability to lead a reasonable man to anticipate it.”

So sport was saved, and Stone ordered to pay costs for both sides, a sum of around £3,000 – about £95,000 in today’s money. Even though she had dragged her local cricket club through the legal system for four years, she was not minded to do so. “Cricketers claim to be sportsmen, and I suggest that as sportsmen they could make a gracious gesture by offering to pay the legal costs they incurred,” she said. “I think they might go even further by paying my legal costs as well. I think I have suffered enough from this case.”

“My sister enjoyed normal health before the cricket ball accident, but her health has declined terribly because of all the worry about these long and expensive legal proceedings,” said her brother Mark. “About anything that looks unsportsmanlike the English people instinctively say: ‘Well, it isn’t cricket.’ And I think it isn’t cricket if the cricketers expect Bessie to pay the whole costs. The money that cricketers up and down the country raised to contest this action is probably adequate to cover the costs of both sides.”

Cheetham, the cricket community and all lovers of sport and slight risk had already secured the only victory they needed. They did not force Stone to pay their costs. The case is still regularly quoted in court. In 1952, the year after the case finally concluded, the ball that struck Stone was mounted on an oak plinth and presented to Monckton, a token of every cricketer’s appreciation for his work in ensuring that they should be free to hit the ball as far as they possibly can in the knowledge that while they might end up getting caught, they will not end up in court.

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