Hello Richard:

Following is the obituary:

“The death has taken place at 33, St. Savior-gate, York, of Mr. James Edmund Hardie, M.R.C.V.S., a veterinary surgeon well known in York and district, where he had practised for the past thirteen years. The deceased gentleman, who was 41 years of age, was the son of the late Mr. George Hardie, who was also a well-known York veterinary surgeon. He took up his father’s practise when the latter died in 1902. Mr. Hardie was first privately educated, and later went to Dick’s College in Edinburgh, where he qualified in 1895 at the age of 21, being at that time the youngest veterinary surgeon in the country. *(While at Dick’s College), he was an enthusiastic billiard player and captained the team of the Central Conservative Club, of which he was then a member, when they won the Faber Championship Shield some years ago. He leaves a widow and one child.”

*Note - Someone crossed off the words above in brackets on a very battered obituary notice.

James Hardie married Eveline Doye Hagger & had one child, Joan. Date of death is Oct. 30, 1915.

I’m just beginning to seek Hardie family particulars, & would be interested in any further information you might learn.

When I first received an email from this lady, she did not indicate which Conservative Club James had captained. I only that he had died in 1915 and so I thought it logical that he could be a member of Fulford & District Conservative Club as they had won all but two of the titles prior to this date.

As some of you know, Fulford Conservative Club has a number of team photographs on it's wall from years gone by. I knew one of the photographs dated back to 1905 when Fulford first won the Faber Shield. I decided that I would look at the Fulford photographs before I replied to the email.

I did not find a James Hardie on the photograph, but I did notice a Fred Hardie present on a number of photographs - the oldest one dating back to 1924. This made me more certain that James Hardie must have been a member of Fulford & District Conservative Club. I passed on this information in my reply to the original email and requested the obituary be emailed to me so that we could try to confirm this.

Upon receipt of the obituary it became clear that James Hardie had in fact capatained Central Conservative Club. As they had only won the Faber Shield once prior to his death, it became clear that James Hardie was the first captain to win the Faber Shield!

Further research into the history of James Hardie took me to the 1901 census. Here I discovered that James Hardie (aged 27 at the time) was indeed the son of George Hardie, and that both were in the trading as Vetinary Surgeons.

The census also revealed that James had four brothers - John Charles (aged 21), Holmes (19), Fred (19) and Harry (18) - and one sister, named Eliza (aged 13).

It appears that Fred Hardie, who was listed as working as a Clerk Timber Merchant at the time of the census, later joined and played for Fulford & District Conservative Club. He is pictured, left, on two photographs. The top picture is from 1924 where Fred is third from the right on the top row. He can be seen more clearly in the second photograph from 1948, where he is centre of the top row.