Top players at
Manchester United Football Club earn about £15 million year and it’s one of the
richest clubs in the world. However in 1878 it was called Newton Heath, a local
team and part of the Carriage and Wagons railway department. The workers create
a football team and in their first recorded game in 1880 they lost six nil to
Bolton Wanderers.) The man who lifted the club from doom and made it go zoom
was John Davies and here I am at his impressive grave.
The club had a ramshackle start. In 1880 Newton
Heath applied to join the Football League but were rejected. They applied again
but were rejected again so they formed another league called The Alliance
(along with 11 other teams.) After three seasons the Alliance merged with the
Football League. Soon they were relegated to the Second Division and were
insolvent. Tickets sales fell and debts grew to £2760 but thankfully John
Davies helped out. He was a self-made brewery owner who acquired Newton Heath
in 1902.
He was born of humble origins, the fifth of nine
children. He grew up in Chorlton-on-Medlock in
Greater Manchester and was an estate agent and inn keeper. In his twenties he
formed his own brewery which thrived. This graduated to the chairmanship of
other breweries which bought up pubs across Manchester. His wealth multiplied
when he married his wife Amy who was the niece of sugar titan Sir Henry Tate.
The couple were so rich they enjoyed giving money away, supporting sports
activities in the Manchester area. They bought a Tudor mansion called Bramhall Hall (see photo) in Cheshire where they lived
until the end.
How did John save to club? How did he get
involved? Newton Heath football club received a winding up order they tried to
raise some money. The club captain Harry Stafford had an idea: at a grand
bazaar he would strap a donation box on the back of his St. Bernard dog and let
it wander between the stalls. It worked but on the
fourth day it got lost and made its way to John's big mansion. His daughter
loved the dog so much that he tracked down the owner to see if he could buy it.
The two men became friends and John decided to take over the club, pay its debts
and save it from doom. Over the next decade John transformed the club, buying a
land plot from the Earl of Trafford to build a 100000-capacity stadium. This
became Old Trafford and John was 36 years old when he watched its first game on
19th February 1910.
Sadly John's money and success couldn't save him
from death and he conked out aged 63 and now lies here with his wife and
daughter. His grave stands in the main circle of the c with a few other wealthy
notables. He did well - from meeting that lost dog the club changed its name,
avoided extinction, changed its colours to red and white (from yellow and
green) and can now overpay its top prima donna players £16 million a year each.
The grave is still in good condition bearing in
mind he died in 1927. Is the woman with her head on her hand his wife? No
flowers on it, no red and white scarf draped over it, no mentioned of
Manchester United. A man came strolling toward me as I took some footage of it.
Hours earlier a man with dementia had walked out of a nursing home in his
slippers and had been missing for hours? Had I seen him? No. I told him about
the man buried there. He gave it a brief glance and said, "I'm blue
through and through; I'll do my best to avoid it in the future."
Wonder where the dog Major is buried? His owner
Henry Stafford died penniless in Montreal. He emigrated to Australia and ended
up in Quebec as a boil inspector. His ashes lie in an unmarked grave.