Catalogue for the auction of
Cricket, Football & Sporting Memorabilia
To be held on Friday, Saturday & Sunday
10th, 11th & 12th April 2026
Lot 974
Estimate: £500/800
H.H. Stephenson’s tour of Australia 1861/62. ‘The England Eleven. Taken just previous to their departure for Australia Octr. 1861’. Early large original sepia photograph of the team standing in one row wearing cricket attire with H.H. Stephenson to the centre and the English representative of the Australian organisers, Spiers and Pond, Mr. W.B. Mallam, behind wearing a large top hat. Other players featured are Mortlock, Mudie, Bennett, Lawrence, Caffyn, Griffith, Hearne, Iddison, Sewell and E. Stephenson. The photograph measures 11.5”x 9” and is laid down to photographer’s original mount with names and titles printed to lower mount border. Published by John Wisden, John Lillywhite and Frederick Lillywhite. Photograph by McLean, Melhuish & Co., London. Heavy horizontal crease to top edge, small tear to lower edge of the photograph. The mount with heavy wear, foxing, and some surface loss with tape repairs. Further tape repairs to verso. Otherwise a nice image in good condition. A rare and very early photograph of the first cricket tour of Australia by an English team.
In 1861, ‘Spiers and Pond’ brought over to Australia the first All-England cricket team, who sailed on Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s steamship, SS Great Britain, from Liverpool. This was the first commercial sponsorship of cricket. The idea for the tour came from the English proprietors of a Melbourne company called Spiers and Pond, which ran the Café de Paris in the city. Spiers was Felix William Spiers and Pond was Christopher Pond. Their representative in England, a Mr Mallam, had tried to interest Charles Dickens in a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand, offering him £7,000, later increased to £10,000, to travel to Australia, but Dickens turned the offer down. Instead, having noted the success of the first England overseas cricket tour of 1859 to North America and the growing popularity of cricket in Australia, Spiers and Pond decided to attract a team of leading English cricketers. Mr Mallam therefore journeyed to Birmingham in September 1861 to watch the North v. South game at Aston Park. During the game, Mallam met the cricketers at the nearby Hen and Chicken Hotel to make a business proposal. As a result, twelve players agreed to tour Australia the following winter on terms of £150 per man plus expenses.