While sorting through some photographs in the club’s huge collection, we came across a picture inscribed “Bob The Bell Man, also called Bob Ridley.” The photograph showed a man apparently in his fifties, dressed in late Victorian clothing and carrying a large bell. We were immediately intrigued. Who was “Bob the Bell Man” and what is his connection with Kent cricket? With a great deal of help from Ian Phipps, our newly-appointed Heritage Officer, and Derek Carlaw, the source of all things to do with Kent’s cricketing history, the story of Bob the Bell Man has been pieced together, and proves bizarre and fascinating in equal doses.

The main source of our information about Bob comes from the Kentish Gazette for 26 January 1889, which reports the sad death of Bob the Bell Man. “Poor old “Bob” the Bellman is dead. He will be missed by local cricketers, by those who play matches with the St. Lawrence Club, and by thousands who visit the ground during the Canterbury Week. “Bob” was perhaps the best known character on the ground…. he was so intimately connected with the Cricket Week, and considered his post so important”. 

This sentiment is reinforced in F Milton Small’s ‘Canterbury Week’, where he writes in 1889, “this year the well known figure of Bob Ridley, the Bell Man was missing. To poor Bob, Cricket Week was a harvest. his familiar face and peculiar gait was known to thousands who patronized the ground with which he had been connected for about 20 years”.    

Clearly he was an eccentric member of the cricketing fraternity at the St. Lawrence ground and obviously a keen supporter of the St. Lawrence club. Wisden, incidentally, reports his death in the 1890 edition, but gets the date wrong, stating he died in February 1889.

The Kentish Gazette continues “It was the St. Lawrence matches he took great interest in. Every playing member of the club knew “Bob” and “Bob” knew them. It was most amusing to hear him relate in a confidential sort of a way that “him’s no good.”. Bob was an enthusiastic St. Lawrenceite. He always wanted them to win, and when members of visiting teams chaffed him he generally managed before hobbling away in disgust to let them know that from a cricket point of view, they were vastly inferior to the Canterbury men”.

“And now poor “Bob” is gone, and everyone we have heard speak of his death laments it…. He had rung the bell during Cricket Week for over twenty years, (and) he was the owner of a good bell, and he was proud of his treasure. When on the ground, he clasps it tightly. When going away he places it in a bag which never leaves his sight. And at night he locks it up safely in a box. It is a wonderful bell and bears the following inscription – “Presented to William Hatton, alias Bob Ridley, by the members of St. Lawrence C.C. June 1886”.

Wait a moment – so Bob Ridley was an alias? His real name was William Hatton? What’s wrong with William Hatton as a name? Bill the Bell Man would have worked as well? Why does a bell-ringer at the St. Lawrence club need an alias? Let’s just say that we haven’t found the answer yet. 

What we do know is that William, alias Bob, was born in Butchery Lane, Canterbury, probably in 1832, which was the year of his baptism in St. Andrew’s Church in the city. His parents were Hannah and George Hatton. George was a former Customs Officer, and later a rent and debt collector, who has no known connection with Kent cricket or the St. Lawrence ground.

His son Will/Bob was, however, definitely a well-known and well-accepted member of the Kent cricket community. We have a report of the 1877 Old Stagers presentation during that year’s cricket week:

Lord Harris: Hold I protest, for here I represent, 

All – MCC, I Zingari and Kent, 

Ne’er shall such trivial, childish schemes be found, 

 To desecrate our famed St Lawrence Ground. 

  There let Kent’s White Horse banner be unfurled, 

  Against All England – aye, ‘gainst all the world 

(Enter Bob Ridley the Bellman)  

Bob –          Well said, my Lord; that’s boldly spoke and well, 

And I’ll be always there to ring the bell.

To have a couplet written for you to proclaim in the 1877 Old Stagers revue meant you were very well-known in Kent cricket circles.

Another question is why he was given his new ‘treasure’ bell in 1886 after ringing a bell at the ground for the best part of twenty years already. Presumably the original cracked, and the club bought him another one, which one assumes he used to ring to announce start of play or resumptions after lunch and tea intervals. But sadly, Bob only lived for a couple more years to enjoy ringing it.

Or maybe somebody stole his old one. The Kentish Gazette goes on to say that “the cricketers had many a bit of fun at Bob’s expense. It is reported… that a well known Kentish bowler used, when the opportunity presented itself, to seize Bob’s “treasure” and secretly run behind one of the large trees on the Cricket ground. Here Bob would be startled by the sound of his own bell, and being somewhat short-sighted he was unable to solve the mystery. Bob would go in the direction of the tree, and then the professional, eyeing him, would walk away concealing the bell, and commence the same thing in another portion of the field. At last “Bob” discovered the delinquent, and thereafter he evidently resolved to look after his treasure with the utmost care, and during the latter part of his life he stuck to it like glue”.

Poor “Bob” was liked in his lifetime, and he will be sadly missed by many now that he has departed this earth. 

The saddest detail I leave to last. We couldn’t work out why William was living with his maternal grandparents in Littlebourne (where his mother Hannah lived before her marriage) according to the 1841 Census, and why he had no occupation listed in later returns. The answer was on the 1881 Census, where he is recorded as an “Imbecile”.  

Fool, maybe, but clearly a loveable one, who was taken to the hearts of the Kent cricket community 140 years ago.