The cricket superstar who quit to open a ladies’ hair salon

Billy Caffyn helped turn Australia’s novice cricketers into superstars – then quit the top job for an unlikely new career.

Official souvenir photograph of the first English cricket team to travel to Australia in 1861. Caffyn is sixth from the left.

Englishman Billy Caffyn taught Aussies how to bat and bowl on his way to becoming one of the most influential figures in the development of our national sport.

But his allegiances were divided, not between Australia and England, but rather between cricket and his second love – hairdressing.

Eventually, Caffyn walked away from his highly paid gig as a professional coach at Melbourne Cricket Club to run a ladies’ hairdressing salon.

Caffyn is the subject of the latest episode of the In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters with reference librarian Andrew McConville from the State Library of Victoria.

Caffyn was part of the first international cricket team to tour Australia.

The All England 11 docked at Port Melbourne after a two-month journey on Christmas Eve, 1861 and were greeted like superstars by enormous crowds.

Huge crowds greeted the All England 11 when they arrived aboard a coach at Melbourne’s Cafe de Paris. Picture: State Library Victoria.

On New Year’s Day, the All England 11 played at an early version of the MCG, though the locals were allowed to field 18 players to give them half a chance.

The match at the Melbourne Cricket Club ground in January, 1862, with the All England 11 in the field. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Mr McConville estimates one in five locals attended the match, with 15,000 paying spectators, and another 10,000 fans watching from the hill overlooking the ground.

Thousands watched from a hill when the first touring All England 11 played a Victorian team in January 1862 at the Melbourne Cricket Club ground. Picture: State Library Victoria.

After the Melbourne match, the All England 11 played matches in Beechworth, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Hobart, Bathurst and Sydney.

Caffyn, who had also played in the first English cricket tour to North America in 1859, returned to Australia when a second All England 11 toured two years later, and this time was made an offer he couldn’t refuse.

A second All England 11 played in Melbourne in 1864. Picture: State Library Victoria.

The talented all-rounder was appointed as a professional coach with Melbourne Cricket Club.

Caffyn’s fiancee travelled over from England to join him, and the couple married in Melbourne.

But before long the Caffyns made a surprising decision.

They left Melbourne for Sydney, where Billy, a hairdresser like his father, took up a lower-paid position with the Warwick Cricket Club.

At the same time, the Caffyns opened a posh ladies’ hairdressing salon in George St, boasting in advertisements that they had styled the hair of royalty including Prince Alfred.

“I think part of the catalyst may have been that his wife had come all the way to Australia and she was a hairdresser and may have wanted to continue,” Mr McConville says.

“And Billy Caffyn was always proud of his heritage as a hairdresser and his skill as a hairdresser.

“He does claim that he was the first ladies’ hairdresser in Sydney. I’m not sure if that’s true.

“It might have been a case of them perhaps poaching him by offering him … an opportunity as a hairdresser as well as a cricket coach.”

Cricketer Billy Caffyn.

Caffyn was part of the second All England 11 to visit Australia, in 1864. Picture: State Library Victoria.

As well as coaching, Caffyn continued playing cricket. Overall he took 602 wickets in his 200 matches.

Caffyn and his family returned to England in 1871 and he continued hairdressing well into his later years.

The All England 11 played a Victorian team of 22 at the Melbourne Cricket Club ground on New Year’s Day, 1864. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Mr McConville says Caffyn was enormously influential in the development of Australian cricket to the point that within a generation Australia and England were on an even playing field.

“When the English arrived in that first tour of 1861-1862, Australia was really in awe of these English cricketers – they were like supermen,” he says.

“Within a generation we went from this sort of master-pupil relationship …. of being absolutely awe-struck … to playing them as equals, to learning all those aspects of cricket from people like Billy Caffyn … and being able to defeat them by the 1870s.

“I think it was an importance way beyond just cricket matches.”

Listen to the interview about Billy Caffyn with Andrew McConville in the In Black and White podcast on iTunes, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.