Richard Vaughan (cricketer)

Richard Thomas Vaughan (28 May 1908 – 1 April 1966) was an English cricketer who played for Berkshire and Wiltshire, as a right-handed batsman who fielded as a wicket-keeper. In later life he was a farmer and magistrate.

The son of Thomas Hallowes Vaughan and Elsie Vaughan,[1] he was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico. He was educated at Repton School, where his house and headmaster was the future Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher.[2]

Vaughan proceeded to Clare College, Cambridge, where he gained a Cambridge Blue in football for three consecutive years. He captained the university football team during this time.[2] He made his first-class debut for Cambridge University against Leicestershire in 1928. In this match, he was dismissed for 3 runs in the Cambridge first innings by Ewart Astill; he was not required to bat in their second innings.[3] He played a second and final first-class match for the university in the same season, against Sussex,[4] where he was dismissed for a duck by Arthur Gilligan in the university first innings. In their second innings, he scored 13 runs before being dismissed by Maurice Tate.[5]

He made his debut for Berkshire in the 1928 Minor Counties Championship against Wiltshire. He appeared in three further matches for Berkshire in 1930, the last coming against Oxfordshire.[6] He later joined Wiltshire in 1937, appearing again for the county in 1939 and after World War II, playing Minor counties cricket for Wiltshire until 1951 and making 16 appearances.[6]

Outside cricket, Vaughan worked for Shell in Ceylon during the early 1930s. Returning from there, he took up farming in 1935, buying Middle Farm in Winterbourne Monkton, Wiltshire.[1][2] He married Blanche Innes Dickson in 1937, the couple having three children, their daughter Sarah Merion Vaughan being bestowed an OBE.[7]

He served in World War II with the Royal Army Service Corps, obtaining the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in 1940.[8] He was later promoted to a full Lieutenant and in March 1941 to a Temporary Captain.[1] The Service Corp was later attached to the 18th Infantry Division, arriving in Singapore three weeks before the Japanese invasion, which ended in a British surrender.[2] He spent time following the surrender as a prisoner of war in Changi Prison, before being sent to work on the Burma Railway, working there for eight months. During his internment he came across his brother-in-law John Austin Dickson, and they helped each other through their captivity.[1] His experiences during the war were rarely mentioned by him in later life.[2]

Following the war, he resumed farming in Wiltshire. He also served as a J.P., and as chairman of the local branches of the National Farmers Union and Conservative Party.[1] He gave up farming in 1963 following a series of heart attacks, later dying in Woodborough, Wiltshire on 1 April 1966. His wife died 41 years later in 2007.