The Preston Leader (and Melbourne newspapers) noted the death in a private hospital in Richmond on November 6, 1930 at 78 years of age of George Alexander, describing him as “a resident of Northcote for over 60 years” and living at ‘Terracedale’, 3 McLachlan Street at the time of his demise.
(Preston Leader, 13 November, 1930)
International career
Although his on-field career was relatively modest, Alexander can claim to be Northcote’s first “international” sportsman, having visited England in 1880 and 1884 as manager of the touring Australian team.
“Manager” and “Player” were inter-changeable terms in those times – the players effectively organised the tours, paid their own expenses, and shared the profits accumulating from the tour; hence the manager’s role was to organise as many matches as possible. The first match in 1884 was early in May; the last in the middle of November.
With only 12 players in the party and a couple of injuries, Alexander was pressed into playing in the first-ever Test match on English soil in October, 1880, and batting at number 10 in the second innings he along with the number 11, W. H. J. Moule ([[1]|later Judge Moule and senior partner in the legal firm Moule, Hamilton & Derham]) helped his captain W. “Billy” L. Murdoch to carry his score to 153 not out and Australia to avoid an innings defeat (Alexander’s contribution was 33).
On the tour as a whole, he took 109 wickets at an average of nine runs each.
Alexander also acted as manager in Australia for the visiting English team led by the Hon. Ivo. Bligh in 1882-83 and played his only other Test at Adelaide in December, 1884 with little success, making 3 (run out) and 10, and bowling 40 deliveries for 24 runs and no wickets.
His skill as a manager was exceptional.
That an international match was arranged in 1880 was a tribute to his negotiating skills as Australian cricket was very much ón the nose’ in England after a near-riot at the Sydney Cricket Ground in February, 1879 which saw the crowd invade the pitch and the English captain Lord Harris struck before the team could reach the pavilion. (By an uncanny coincidence, the disruption started after Victorian umpite George Coulthard controversially gave out Murdoch, then the N.S.W. captain).
Most Australian commentators thought it would be impossible for Alexander to arrange a match against an English representative side and the tour was doomed to failure; in fact, the Test was the last match played in the seven month tour.
These were days where players paid their own expenses and divided the profits at the end of tour, hence as many games as possible were arranged. Many commentators believed the 1880 venture was doomed after an acrimonious tour of Australia by an Australian team in 1878-79. One obituary following Alexander’s passing suggested that the players on the 1880 tour had paid in £50 beforehand – and received £700 at arriving back in Australia!
The ‘Bible’ of cricket, Wisden’s Cricket Almanac has a rare error in suggesting Alexander was “born in Fitzroy, in Victoria, on April 22, 1851”. While the date is correct, according to official Victorian records, there was no George Alexander born anywhere in the state in 1851. The mistake appears to have originated from an obituary published in The Sporting Globe<ref>The Sporting Globe, November 10, 1930</ref> which claimed he “was born in Fitzroy 79 years ago”.
Lawn Bowls
In later years, Alexander was a keen lawn bowler, and at one time captain of Northcote Bowling Club. In 1922, he had an unexpected reunion with a fellow member of Murdoch’s touring team of 1884 in W. (William) H. Cooper. The Victorian Bowling Association final was held at Alphington where Alexander was helping out. The pair had not seen each other for nearly 40 years, but were suddenly reunited when Cooper arrived as the scorer for Middle Park.
“It was a grand sight to see the light that shone in W. H.’s eyes as he gripped hands with George Alexander – like George, W. H. Cooper carries his cargo of years on an upright keel – may they both knock up another century and still be not out”.<ref>Preston Leader, 14 May, 1922</ref>
it was noted that just four of the party that toured England in 1880 were still alive; Cooper, A. J. Jarvis, Judge Moule, and ‘the prince of Wicketkeepers, Jack Blackham’. Cooper died in 1939 at 90 years of age, at the time the oldest living Test player; he was also the great-grandfather of 1970s Australian player and long-time headmaster of Geelong Grammar, Paul Sheahan.
Alexander was interred in the Melbourne General Cemetery; Blackham and Cooper were amongst the pallbearers at the funeral, another Joe Brown “a well-known Northcote first eleven player who obtained his early tuition in the game from Mr. Alexander”.
Strangely, there was never any mention of Alexander’s achievements in what served as ‘local’ papers of the day, those from Collingwood and Fitzroy.He is now to have played with the two leading clubs of his time, East Melbourne and Melbourne and was a regular in Victorian inter-colonial teams.
The Leader obituary on his death also suggested that Alexander played with, and later coached the Northcote Presbyterian Cricket Club, but there is no surviving evidence to suggest at what time this may have been. It also suggested he was still actively involved in the game at sixty years of age.
Alexander in private life was co-proprietor of the Preston Abattoirs and before that, as a contractor, he constructed the cable tramway system along St. Kilda Road.
Family
Alexander was born at Britwell Salome, Oxfordshire, England on April 22, 1851, the first-born child of Charles and Sophia (nee Hawting) and certainly found his sea-legs at an early stage, the family arriving in Melbourne in November of the same year on the S.S. Googhly after a voyage of around seven weeks.
George was the only child born in England, but other siblings Susanna (1856), William (1857, died 1904 in the Melbourne Hospital in East Melbourne) and Frederick (1859 were all born in Collingwood and the youngest, Albert in Fitzroy in 1865. Albert was George’s partner in the Abbatoirs in Oakover Road at the time of the latter’s death.
Alexander was married twice, leaving a widow Caroline Jane (nee Wollington or Wallington) from a second union in 1913. Caroline was a widow following the death of her first husband, John Timmins. One of her four children of that marriage was Cr. Clarence Timmins, who at 33 years of age in 1920 became the youngest councillor to be elected as Mayor of the City of Northcote.
Alexander’s first marriage in 1876 was to Jeanette Candy, a daughter of William and Mary Candy of George Street, North Fitzroy. Jeanette died on 24 July, 1879, aged 24 years, possibly in child birth. She was not related to later Northcote councillor and Mayor, Ralph Candy, who was born at Hamilton. The Leader’s claim to him being a resident of Northcote for over 60 years may have involved a little journalistic licence. Directories do not show a Charles or George Alexander in the town until 1879 when a George Alexander was listed in High Street, the following year shown as a butcher. There was a Charles Alexander listed for at least ten years previously as a butcher in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy with a boiling-down works in Ramsden Street, Collingwood, in almost certainty George’s father.
Just where Alexander received his early education is not known, but it is recorded that he attended Scotch College in 1867, seemingly just for the one year.
Victoria and Its Metropolis – Past and Present published in 1888 covered the development of Melbourne and what were thought of as suburbs, with an additional section devoted to “outlying districts”, which included Preston. Included were a number of pen-pictures of local identities :
Alexander, Charles; was born in Oxford-shire, England and arrived in Melbourne in 1851. He started for the golf-fields, working there as a digger for eight months, and then returned to Melbourne, built a shop and dwelling at King William-street, Fitzroy, and commenced business as a family butcher there in 1853, He carried on a successful trade there for several years, and later moved into larger premises in Brunswick-street. Three years later, he bought property in Gertude-street and built a shop and dwelling, to which he removed and carried on a successful business there until 1881 when he relinquished the retail trade. He had, however, earlier entered the slaughtering trade on the Saltwater River, and the tallow business at Ramsden-street, Collingwood, both of which he still carries on, and had also formed an extensive poultry farm at Preston, where he now resides. He is a large purveyor of poultry and eggs to the Melbourne market, having about 4,000 birds on the farm.<ref>Victoria and Its Metropolis – Past and Present, 1888</ref>
Sands and MacDougall directories of the time show Charles Alexander in Spring Street, North Preston, but suggest he was still a butcher by trade.
