John Saunders who runs the excellent Britbase website pointed me in the direction of a County Match between Hampshire and Buckinghamshire in October 1951 where one of the Hampshire players was Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield. He was the second “Sir” to play for Hampshire with the other being Sir George Thomas who won the British Chess Championship twice.
In regards to Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield though his claim to fame as reported by John was that he was the judge who sentenced Mahatma Gandhi to six years in prison!
Whilst I was browsing through the names of the players (some of them being people I remember from my own time as a Bucks player in the 1960s and 1970s), I happened to spot the name of a “sir” in the Hampshire team and looked him up. He was Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield (1883-1957) who was a high court judge in India between the wars and presumably retired to Hampshire. I discovered that he was the (in)famous judge who sentenced Gandhi to six years’ in prison – he was played in the Attenborough film by Trevor Howard.
John Saunders – April 2023
Photo is of Trevor Howard as Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield in Gandhi.
The Hampshire County Chess results from the early to mid 1950’s are pretty scarce to me at present and I only have Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield playing in three matches, although I am sure he would have played in many more from this period. He was very successful in these games winning all of them. He played on board 11, 13 and 25 and was ahead of a number of strong players.
I wondered as to his chess strength and with only three County results I decided to do a bit more digging. My assumption was that he was a reasonably strong player and to support this assumption I give the following arguments:
- 1949 match against Bucks – Played on board 13 above AS Dance who was close to the end of his County career (played from 1920 to 1951). AS Dance played in the first three Hampshire Individual Championships from 1930 to 1933 as well as a number afterwards. He progressed to the final section from the preliminaries in 1938.
- 1951 match against Bucks – Played on board 11 again ahead of AS Dance and other Hampshire regular GL Pritchard.
- 1956 match against Glos – Played on board 25 (bottom board) although I would not put much weight on this, as he could have been a late replacement (he was also 73 at this time).
- Sir Broomfield played for Bournemouth Chess Club who had an annual match against the Dorset Chess Association (Bournemouth was part of Hampshire at this time). The 1949 match was over 27 boards (Bournemouth won 14½ – 12½) and he was on board 10 and he defeated Capt. PH Di Marco who normally played on the top 10 boards for Dorset in the 1920’s but would not have been as strong by 1949. In the 1950 match Sir Broomfield played in the middle of the boards. Bournemouth won 14 – 6 and this time he lost his game.
With all this in mind I would state his strength was probably 1700 to 1800.
Many thanks to John for pointing me in the direction of Sir Robert Stonehouse Broomfield and if anyone has any additional information on him please do let me know.
Acknowledgements and sources:
- John Saunders
- The British Newspaper Archive
- Western Gazzette for Newspaper cuttings
He is the great uncle of both FM Matthew Broomfield and Lucy Broomfield.
Many thanks, this means I have a very small connection, as I drew with Matthew Broomfield at the 1997 Portsmouth Major (he would have been a junior, but still very strong).