One way or another the next twelve months continued to be highly eventful for me in my new role as snooker and billiards champion. For one thing I had previously bought a piece of land in Avenue Road, Whittington Moor, and now I felt that I could afford to build on it the house which I had planned. The intention was to have the place ready for habitation before our second child was born. But, then as now, builders' schedules owed more to optimism than to science; Dorothy Ann was born on May 20th, 1929 and we were unable to take possession of our new house until a month later. Unfortunately the move did not alter the worsening relationship between Queenie and myself. She never really took to my being away frequently for days at a time and would often complain that no sooner had I got home on a Sunday morning than I seemed to be packing again on Sunday night in order to start out first thing on Monday morning. This, I cannot deny, was largely the truth - but the situation was inherent in my profession. I could not alter it, and for Queenie to complain about it only exacerbated matters between us.
At about the same time my father and I opened yet another billiard-hall, this time with ten tables, in Vicar Lane, Chesterfield, and as manager we appointed a fellow called Arthur Marshall, who was a little bit older than me and who before the First World War had been taking lessons from Ernest Rudge. During the war, when he was old enough, he enlisted in the Army but, sadly, lost his right arm in France. This would have been bad enough for anyone, but for someone with Arthur's love of the game it was an especially crushing blow. Yet, like Arthur Goundrill, he was not to be disheartened, and after he took over our billiard-hall he started to practise again with his one arm. He had a small stand made about 3 inches in circumference, made of lead but silver plated, and into this he inserted a fork-like gadget which served as a bridge. This could be moved about with the cue for any shot or removed from the table if it was not necessary. So good did Arthur become with this equipment that he made many breaks of 200 or so. In fact I used to use him as a 'billiards doctor'. Whenever I was out of form I would go along to Arthur and ask him to watch me at the table and diagnose my faults. This he would invariably do in double-quick time: head going up, too quick into the delivery, not striking the cue ball in the centre and so on. He was also a great help to my brother Fred - not only with his billiards but with his love life as well!
The hall managed to stay in the black but, of course, times were hard for the working man in and around Chesterfield; we hardly expected to make our fortune. I myself had not at all as much time as I would have wished to devote to the running of the hail, being away most weeks touring the country, so we were very fortunate to have the honest and reliable Arthur always on the spot. Unhappily, a few years later he became seriously ill and had to give up the management, whereupon we appointed David Carpenter, whom I had beaten in the semi-final of the Chesterfield and District Amateur Championship away back in 1914. Curiously, where Arthur had only one arm, David had only one leg.
Alongside all this activity on the domestic front, the major professional event of my 1928-9 season was my defence of the billiards championship which was still the major competition. As any simpleton could have predicted, it was between myself and Tom Newman who beat Tom Carpenter to qualify for the final. He played a little over-confidently - which was justified ultimately - but Tom Carpenter was really in with quite a good chance until half way through the match. Before the final Tom Newman conceded that I was playing, if anything, better than when I took the title off him in 1928 but he thought that his return to fitness would be a crucial factor. He professed to be 'twice the man' he had been and felt confident of taking back the title.
The match, in April 1929 - during which I celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday - was 18,000 up, 2,000 more than the previous year. Thurston's 'House Full' notices were out a number of times during the fortnight and the takings topped £600. I played my way to a hefty lead of 2,554 in the early stages but then Tom made a terrific comeback and the lead changed hands a number of times. At this point a crowd of Chesterfield supporters arrived and seemed to put new heart in me. I nosed ahead, and more or less settled the issue in the afternoon of the last Saturday when I scored 751 points against Tom's 145 to finish the session 1,200 ahead. Tom fought back frighteningly well in the evening by scoring 1,202 but the issue was really beyond question as long as I kept a cool head. This I did, to win by 181 points. My average break for the match was 100 - a championship record - and Tom averaged 96 which was very satisfying for him, too.
After the applause had petered out, arrangements were being made for John Bissett, chairman of the BA&CC, to present the trophy and medals when the electric lighting system failed. All of us stood there in the dark making small talk for a good quarter of an hour before the lights came on again and I was confirmed as billiards champion.
This year I returned home to Derbyshire quietly. Much as I appreciated the ovation of 1928 I was very tired after the fortnight's match and wanted only to slip home unnoticed. So I and a few friends travelled by train to Birmingham on the Sunday afternoon and there were picked up by my own Morris Cowley (for which I had by this time managed to pay Fred Liquorish).
It was later that year, 1929, that Claude Falkiner made his 'return' to billiards after a few seasons playing largely overseas. Claude, a Yorkshire man from South Emsall, was a delightful and most charming personality. He started his working life as a miner but he pretty soon realised that billiards offered him a much better career prospect than coal mining and so he took over a pub billiard-room, giving lessons and practising assiduously. Soon he contrived to transfer to London where Thurston's gave him the use of a private room for teaching. But he was not one to be seduced by soft city ways; he always kept extremely fit and, at just over 5 feet tall, developed into quite a pocket Hercules.
His other great enthusiasm was collecting; he was interested in almost anything involving antiques. He built up an impressive collection of old swords and pistols - even a few suits of armour. Philately also became a great hobby with Claude, but his involvement with precious stones was more commercial. An initial interest in the stones for their own sake developed into an intimate knowledge of their value, as Claude spent a good deal of spare time with dealers. Later he used brother professionals to sell stones for him. Willie Smith, Mel Inman and Tom Newman usually wore a diamond ring of some sort which Claude had supplied. He was quite generous; he would offer a player a ring at a certain price and advise them as to what price it should fetch if they could find a buyer. If they failed to make a sale he would take the ring back and refund their money. I wish that I had the money to buy back some of the rings that he sold in those days.
Claude had a delightful touch at billiards and played nursery cannons better than anyone in the world, with the possible exception of Walter Lindrum, and it was said that he was responsible for improving Walter's nursery cannons during one of his trips to Australia. Claude's masse shots also were wonderful; I was always envious since I could never play them as well as he could. The reason he failed to make absolutely the top rung in Britain was partly because of his penchant for overseas trips and partly because, although a superb technician, he tended to be temperamental at the table.
Claude's return to the British big-time that year was not pleasure unalloyed. Not for Claude anyway. He trounced Tom Newman but on Wednesday, December 3rd, in a match staged at Thurston's, he twiddled his thumbs for an hour or so while I ran up a break of 1,280. This was a personal record, putting in the shade my 1,070 scored against Tom Newman shortly before taking the billiards title from him in the spring of 1928.
I suspect that part of the reason for Claude's return lay in the fact that big billiards in Britain had been lying fallow to some extent. People such as Tom Reece and Mel Inman, certainly Harry Stevenson, were making fewer and fewer appearances as the decade wore on, while Willie Smith was happily making his money staying under contract to Burroughes and Watts. The number of active first division participants was severely limited, to say the least. If it had not been for Clark McConachy I sometimes thought that Tom Newman and I would spend all our lives playing each other. This situation was frustrating to me as a player for three reasons: firstly because there was not a wide spectrum of styles to pit one's wits against, secondly because the monotony was not good for the game or the gate receipts and thirdly because commentators began to suggest that I was not really a worthy champion since I had had comparatively little competition.
However this billiards scene was transformed as the decade drew to a close, for hard on the heels of Claude Falkiner, and on his first visit to Britain, came Walter Lindrum, the Australian champion and the greatest billiards player that ever lived.
His background was not dissimilar to mine, in that he had been brought up in a billiards atmosphere, but in his case it was a thoroughly professional atmosphere since both his father, Walter. and his grandfather, Fred, had been Australian champions. And we were much the same age, Walter, having being born in Kalgoorlie on August 29th, 1898, was only a couple of years my senior. His father had become proprietor of the billiard-saloon at the Palace Hotel in the gold town's Hannan Street where the miners would play pyramids for £1,000 a game. It was here that Walt learned at an early age the importance of a good billiard-table. The story goes that when a fire broke out at the hotel, the volunteer firemen who eventually turned up took good care to carry out the billiard-table first of all while the rest of the hotel blazed away merrily.
He was right-handed in most things but played billiards left-handed. This was because he lost part of the forefinger of his right hand in the cogs of a mangle when he was three years old, and his father, intent even at that age of making him a billiards champion, switched him round to playing left-handed. It certainly never seemed to do him any harm.
His early years were nothing if not eventful. When he was only four the hand of fate protected him when a large tree, struck by lightning, crashed through the roof of the house into Walter's bedroom. His frantic parents burst in to find him still asleep in bed. Finally, at the age of five he nearly lost his life in true heroic Australian style. On this occasion he fell into a flooded river and was swept away. There was little hope of his surviving but somehow he managed to grab hold of a tuft of grass to which he clung until a search party discovered him later.
Some time after this overactive life in Western Australia the family departed for Sydney where Walter's father took over the billiard-room at Belfield's Hotel. Here Walter was made to practise for seven or eight hours a day, sometimes being locked in the room, and to write copious notes in a little black book. For the first six months he was given only one ball to play with - six months just to practise striking the ball! Understandably he revolted against this force-feeding and developed a taste for cricket. He would go down to the Sydney cricket ground to do some fielding for the big-name players there, but after he had stopped a few drives from the likes of Macartney, Kelleway, Andrews and Bardsley his father advised him that his rather sturdy figure was designed for a game considerably less strenuous and considerably more important. Walter, broadly speaking, agreed and never looked back. But he enjoyed some success as a school cricketer and maintained a great spectator enthusiasm for the game, becoming the friend of many distinguished players and in later years entertaining visiting English teams at his home.
When Walter was a boy his elder brother Fred followed tradition to become Australian champion. In the early 1905 he beat Tom Reece, John Roberts, Junior and Harry Stevenson during their tours of the continent and it was during the great tour of 1910 that Walter really became bitten with the billiards bug on his own account. He watched every session throughout the season and afterwards would go home to practise the strokes of the masters, staying hard at work until two or three in the morning. His back ached agonisingly at the end of these sessions but his eyes never failed him; he had quite miraculous eyesight which in later years enabled him to pick out racehorses three-quarters of a mile away while everyone else was struggling with binoculars. He used to set himself targets practically every day; if on Monday he had reached a break of 140, on Tuesday he would set himself to make 150 and so on. He excelled in all departments of the game, but at an early age he developed a wonderful technique for close cannon play which was to remain the hallmark of his outstanding game.
He made his first 100 break in public at the age of twelve, appropriately enough against the Australian cricket star Dave Nurse. And he was three more years before reaching his 500. The following year, 1910, his father took him on a tour of Australia giving exhibition matches - in one of which, against the young Clark McConachy, Walter made three breaks of over 700. In fact the lads performed so well that the match was the making of them both. It was inevitable that soon Walter would make his first four-figure break, and this he achieved at the age of seventeen. He continued practising eight or ten hours a day and his career went ahead irresistibly. Subsequent landmarks were beating Harry Stevenson by 9,000 points (making a world record break of 1,417 in the process) and thrashing Claude Falkiner during his Australian tour of 1924 - 5. During the season Walt hit Claude with a shoal of 1,000 breaks and in one match marked up yet another record of 1,879 on his first visit to the table.
Back in Britain meanwhile some of the flavour of Lindrum's unstoppable successes, though not a great deal of fact, had percolated through to me and my brother pros. We wondered what sort of man this was who so regularly scored the 1,000 breaks that were to us still a matter of considerable satisfaction. Were we, in fact, playing the same game? The brutal truth was that we were indeed playing the same game - it was just that he was better at it than we were.
In a confrontation reminiscent of the Middle Ages when, instead of doing battle, rival lords sent out their champions to settle the issue, Willie Smith appointed himself champion of British billiards and set out for Australia to challenge Walter. It was the start of a complex series of events which were first to revolutionise and then to kill the game of billiards.
Willie's intention was to persuade Walter to come over to England under contract, like Willie, to Burroughes and Watts. He and Walter would then play each other all over the country. Willie would make sure that the games would be well publicised and he promised Walter that they could expect to take £3,000 for one match. (This, at least, was Walter's story.) In Australia, billiards was big business and Lindrum was used to halls charging large amounts for seats whenever he was playing. He was therefore keen to ensure the continuance of this situation; he had no wish to lose financially by playing a season in Britain and on such a long-range tour there were considerable expenses to be offset. In the event Willie was successful in persuading Walter that he need not worry about the finances - though the details remained unclear to Walter - and the wrangles then turned on whether or not to play with the composition balls that Lindrum was accustomed to instead of the ivories which we had been using in Britain, and whether the matches should be played under rules limiting the number of losing hazards.
While inching their way through this contractual maze, Willie and Walter played a couple of matches in Sydney which opened Willie's eyes to Walter's professionalism and demonstrated the sort of gate receipts and support he was accustomed to. In fact so successful were the matches that a leading Sunday newspaper subsequently offered to put up a prize of a hundred guinea silver tea service if they played a third match. It was during this match that Willie's 'pit prop' cue was broken - but the greater tragedy befell Walter. His twenty-year-old wife had caught a chill during the first two matches and was ill in bed, but when she saw a picture of the tea service she said to him: 'You've got to win it for me.' Walter bent to the task with his usual aplomb and by the end of the first week was leading by about 3,000 points. But by then his wife's illness had turned to pneumonia and he was told that she might possibly die over the weekend. It was touch and go. However, thanks to a couple of leading Sydney specialists she rallied and persistently asked him how he was faring in his fight for the tea service. For this reason Walter felt he could not back out of the tussle, but in the second week his game began to suffer as his mind strayed elsewhere, and Willie began to overtake him. On the Wednesday the doctors told Walter that there had been another change and his wife was again desperately ill, then the next day she once more rallied and, knowing of Willie's lead, told Walter: 'You've got to make a 2,000 break for me.' The doctor was so satisfied with her progress during the day that in the evening he actually went to the match with Walter who, greatly relieved, resumed his afternoon's unfinished break of 144 and began scoring rapidly. When his break reached 1,500 Willie Smith, knowing of his troubles, offered him a glass of water and said he was happy to hear that all was well at home. And at ten minutes to ten Walter's break ended - at 2,002. He bad made it.
A few minutes later when the session ended he returned to the dressing-room and was told that his wife had suffered a relapse and that there was no hope of her living. Walter then called off the match and his wife died shortly afterwards. In later years Walter used to say: 'That 2,002 was the greatest break I ever made in my life.'
His wife's death and his wish to erase painful memories may well have had some influence on his decision to visit Britain with Willie the next season. But whatever the reason, terms were ultimately agreed and Walter arrived in this country in October 1929. Actually he was not the first bearer of the famous Lindrum name to visit these shores, for almost a year earlier his elder brother Fred arrived to play a variety of matches. I played him in January 1929 at Thurston's in what was scheduled to be a two-week match. Unfortunately, though, Fred had got rather carried away by the traditional British Christmas festivities and was unwell all the way through. There is nothing like a cold or a thick head to ruin one's play and his performances were disappointing both to himself and to spectators alike. Shortly after our game he trundled back home to Australia.
Walter's debut was rather more dramatic (though curiously, and much to Walter's chagrin, the match with Willie took place in what he termed a 'cellar' in Glasgow which could contain only 250 people - and even then the place was not full). On the first day he nearly made a four-figure break. It was, of course, an event of little significance to Walter himself - but what astounded the spectators was the ease and sheer speed with which he amassed the points. It was a feeling to be shared by thousands by the time Walter's tour had ended. Willie and he transferred to Newcastle to play in another small 'cellar' where Walter made two 1,000 breaks and one of 999, and then travelled to Leeds. Here Willie made a great fight of it and scored an average of 150 per break - yet still lost by 1,400 points. Their provincial tour then moved on to Southampton where, in a one - week match, Walter made five 1,000 breaks.
By the time the pair finally reached London in late November, the capital was waiting with whetted appetite for the Australian miracle-worker. In the provinces, during the first six weeks of his tour, he had made a dozen breaks of 1,000 or more, bringing to sixty the number of four-figure breaks made in his career to date.
Burroughes and Watts had been nettled by Lindrum's complaints about the venues and so had scoured the capital for a big hall to accommodate all the potential spectators and boost the gate receipts. They came up with the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, just a step from Ludgate Circus, which held 1,000 people. The match itself Walter duly won by 8,000 points, and in so doing he gave the paying customers what they wanted: a 1,000 break in thirty-nine minutes which he took to an eventual 1,116 in forty-three minutes all told. In fact his fastest ever 1,000, in Johannesburg in 1933, took him a bare twenty-six minutes and his fastest 100 points was recorded at just twenty-nine seconds.
Yet despite Walter's public popularity, the Burroughes and Watts tour was not working out too sweetly behind the scenes. Walter was not an easy man to get on with and his and Willie's personalities were poles apart-but because they were under contract to Burroughes and Watts they spent most of the season just playing each other. And over and above the social level the situation was clearly unsatisfactory from Willie's professional point of view, for having taken the trouble of 'digging Lindrum out of his trench', as he put it, he was now being used as a punch-bag. Like all of us, he was as yet unused to the 'Crystalate' composition balls being used, even though they were marvellous to play with when you became accustomed to them. And his beautiful all-round abilities just could not withstand Lindrum's powerful nursery cannon attack. One of the few times that he was allowed to strike form was on a return visit to Glasgow on Christmas Day. Lindrum made two 1,000 breaks in the afternoon session but Willie, on his first visit to the table in the evening, scored 1,038 - the first time that two opposing players had ever scored 1,000 breaks in one day. But otherwise the tour did little for Willie's reputation. In short, he was slaughtered. Proving the point, if proof were needed, Walter trounced Willie in their final match before his return to Australia by the not inconsiderable margin of 21,285 points.
Although contracted to Burroughes and Watts, Walter did manage to squeeze in one or two games with other players during the season. My own first taste of his play was in a hall at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue in a match staged by the Bumley billiard-table manufacturers Willie Holt Ltd. And yet again, Walter contributed to a record-breaking evening. The record in this case was the highest aggregate by two players in a two-week match - 55,288 points, in which figured thirty-five breaks of over 500 (twenty-three to Walter, twelve to me) and five 1,000 breaks (four of them Walter's). Yet at the end of this epic I had to face the fact that although I had scored 26,000 points during the fortnight I had nevertheless lost by close on 3,000. Unbelievable.
Still, I was able to console myself by retaining both the 1930 snooker championship and the billiards title, in which I beat Tom Newman by 801 points. Yet it was not the result alone which made the match memorable for me. What mattered was that in the space of one day I bad two phenomenal sessions converting a deficiency of 470 into a lead of 1,809, thanks chiefly to a break of 2,052. In the afternoon of the day in question, after three innings at the table which realised only 14 points, I put together a break of 452, using quite a few close cannons, and then lost the white - whereupon I played for safety. This meant that Tom could not get into the game and shortly afterwards I started on another substantial break which stood at 871 unfinished at the conclusion of the afternoon's play. Poor Tom bad a very unhappy session altogether, making just 286. In the evening my close cannons flowed again, to take the 871 to the double thousand before the break ended at 2,052 with my losing the object white on a long cannon. Not only was this the turning point of the match, it was both a record for the championship under existing rules and, setting aside the pendulum break, the highest break of my career.
Only fractionally below this achievement in my personal ratings for the season was a match which I played against Clark McConachy in Birmingham, as Smith and Lindrum continued to battle their way round the countryside. What happened was that a friend of mine came over to me just before the afternoon's play and offered to bet me a new hat that I would not make a 1,000 break during that session. It was true that owing to their superior consistency the 'Crystalate' balls were having a marked effect on everyone's scoring ability but, even so, one could hardly guarantee to make 1,000 at the drop, as it were, of a hat. Still, I was always willing to accept a friendly wager, and I thought I would be all the better for a new hat, so I took on the bet. Strangely enough I did make that 1,000 break, scoring 1,152, and afterwards my friend came around to see me and to ask my size in headgear. But I was so delighted with my afternoon performance that I said:
'Oh never mind that. I'll tell you what I'll do. If I make another 1,000 tonight I will give you a new hat instead.'
As I had never made two 1,000 breaks in a day I thought it was a safe bet, and my friend had nothing to lose, so the bet was struck. But for the first time, by making 1,040 that evening, I brought off the double. I paid for that hat with pleasure.