Thomas Selby

Thomas Selby

Thomas Selby was born in November 1791 in Gillingham, Kent.  At the time of writing, we know little about his early life and any additional information would be gladly welcomed.  What is known, however, follows.

His parents were Thomas and Mary Selby who were living in the Bishop’s Palace, Otford around the time of his birth.  In 1817 he married Louisa Cline at Hythe, but sadly she died in 1831 and in the same year he married Marie de Loecker (a Belgian) in Lambeth.  Basic information on Thomas Selby can be found here, although the mention of a third wife is believed to be incorrect.

In 1828 he went into partnership with his younger brother George, who was a solicitor practising in London, and his cousin Silas Norton joined as well.  (There is a separate plaque in West Malling to Silas Norton.)  Thomas continued to practise in West Malling, but in the 1850s the practice ran into financial difficulties.  What actually went wrong is very complex, but it seems that he and his brother had accumulated enormous debts, amounting to over £20M in 2021’s value.  The partnership dissolved in 1844 and all three went bankrupt.  Thomas Selby and Silas Norton applied for discharge certificates in November 1855, and George Selby followed soon after in December of the same year.  Perhaps Thomas was already thinking of retiring, but in the middle of 1855, he sold off his considerable assets (probably including Abingdon House) and a little later moved to France.  His wife Marie died in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1858, and Thomas died there in 1874 leaving less than £200 to his son Thomas.

The story of the bankruptcies is a very complex one and they were no doubt very notable and scandalous events of the time.  There is more information with links to external documents here. 

In 1827, while he was living in West Malling, he and two others, Silas Norton and Lord Harris, founded the West Malling, then Town Malling, cricket ground (see the blue plaque for Norton).  In 1835 Selby enticed Fuller Pilch to move to Kent (see the blue plaque for Pilch), and in 1836 Selby inaugurated a new Kent County Cricket Club with the West Malling ground as its headquarters, and he became the team selector for matches.

Thomas Selby was also a cricketer himself, and played on the Kent cricket team from 1839 to 1841.  In this period West Malling was the centre of Kent cricket.  Here Kent played the Town Malling Club itself as well as sides from Sussex, Nottinghamshire and England.  Crowds of over 6,000 spectators would gather for these matches, in an outer circle surrounding only about half the current ground, in the pavilion corner. The circle would contain carriages of the nobility and gentry, hop wagons covered with awnings made of hop cloths, marquees and booths.  Order was kept by the cracking whip of a “ringmaster”.  The mower was a scythe, and players changed in hop oast houses.

Thomas Selby was part of a very ancient Kentish family of worldwide influence, and it is thought that he was part of the family that owned Ightham Mote.  The Bodleian Library holds documents relating to the Selby family including 24 catalogued documents dating from 1450 concerning property in West Malling, still with their original seals.

For more information on Selby click here.