by Arunabha Sengupta
According to his many enemies. supposedly had the “audacity and cunning of an ape and the modesty of a phallic symbol”.
Yet he was charming, a teetotaller and a magnificent all-round sportsman.
Cricketer, runner, pigeon shot, billiards player, rugby star, swimmer and rower, Arthur Coningham was the son of a glass finisher and lived the life of a journeyman. Yet, his occasional appearances for Queensland were sparkling enough to raise a cry for his inclusion in the 1893 team to England.
He did not play a Test on the tour, but that did not prevent him from having a grand time. 5 for 74 against Lord Sheffield’s XI to start with, 6 for 41 against Liverpool and District, he did not restrict himself to deeds on the pitch.
The morning the team had sailed from Sydney, Coningham had married Alice Downing. However, he was too busy meeting new girlfriends in England to bother to turn up for half the net sessions. Captain Jack Blackham, already a harried man trying to control drunk brawlers in the side, could not rein in the one man who did not drink.
When not shirking training and carrying on with his many lady friends, Coningham also received a medal for diving into the Thames and saving a drowning boy.
And when in August the Australians played a XVI at Blackpool, Coningham did his bit, picking up 5 for 21 in the second innings. However, when he felt the biting wind while patrolling the outfield, he gathered twigs and branches to light a fire and keep himself warm. That’s right. In the playing area.
A kindly spectator offered him hot potatoes to warm his pockets.
He finally made his Test debut at Melbourne in 1894-95 against Drewy Stoddart’s men and dismissed Archie MacLaren with the first ball of the match.
But, later at Brisbane, playing for New South Wales and Queensland against the English side, he was called for no-balling and angrily threw a ball at Stoddart. Even the mild-mannered England captain was stirred to demand an apology.
Later, knowing he was a drawcard in Queensland’s match against New South Wales, Coningham successfully demanded double his agreed fee. When the amount was paid, he showed his gratitude by scoring a double hundred.
Coningham trained as a chemist, was a playboy by temperament, and also worked as a tobacconist, hairdresser and bookmaker. His bag at the Randwick Races proudly proclaimed ‘Coningham the Cricketer’ in big white letters.
Pleasant looking with fair skin, blue eyes and auburn moustache, he could be agreeable and entertaining.
His wife, Alice Downing, daughter of a British warrant officer, married him at a Protestant church in Sydney, but retained her Catholic faith with her husband’s sanction. For a while it seemed the marriage was happy and there were two children to show for it.
However, Alice soon started an affair with Rev. Denis Francis O’Haran, a handsome Irish-born priest, Administrator of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, and personal secretary to Cardinal Moran.
Acts of adultery were committed in the Cathedral and adjacent buildings, and there was a third child that Alice confessed was fathered by O’Haran.
It led to a massive scandal and court case involving an Australian athlete, his English wife and an Irish priest … and made it to Cyril Pearl’s Wild Men of Sydney where the author termed it, “As bitter and shameful a sectarian conflict as ever inflamed Australia.”
Aided by some curious manipulations, the jury found against Coningham. The couple emigrated to New Zealand and there they were divorced in 1912, because Arthur Coningham was now charged with adultery. Alice admitted to pointing a revolver at her husband, but denied the charge of breaking a water-bottle over his head, and the jury ruled in her favour.
Coningham told a reporter, “In Sydney my wife said she did, and a jury said she didn’t. In Wellington I said I didn’t, but a jury said I did.”
Conningham spent a fair portion of his later years in jail and died in an asylum.
He was born on 14 July 1863.