and last child Charles Butler (1882–1938) was born. After leaving Gloucestershire in 1900, the Graces lived in Mottingham, a south-east London suburb, not far from the Crystal Palace where he played for London County, or from Eltham, where he played club cricket in his sixties. A blue plaque marks their residence, Fairmount, in Mottingham Lane. Personal tragedies Grace endured a number of tragedies in his life beginning with the death of his father in December 1871. He was badly upset by the early death of his younger brother Fred in 1880, only two weeks after he, W. G. and E. M. had all played in a Test for England against Australia. In July 1884, Grace's rival A. N. Hornby stopped play in a Lancashire v Gloucestershire match at Old Trafford so that E. M. and W. G. could return home on receipt of a cable reporting the death of Mrs Martha Grace at the age of 72. The greatest tragedy of Grace's life was the loss of his daughter Bessie in 1899, aged only 20, from typhoid. She had been his favourite child. Then, in February 1905, his eldest son W. G. junior died of appendicitis at the age of 30. On 26 August 1914, in response to news of casualties at the Battle of Mons, Grace wrote a letter to The Sportsman in which he called for the immediate closure of the county cricket season and for all first-class cricketers to set an example and serve their country. It was published next day but did not, as is often supposed, bring an immediate end to the cricket season as one further round of County Championship matches was played. Grace was reportedly distressed by the war and was known to shake his fist and shout at the German Zeppelins floating over his home in South London. When H. D. G. Leveson-Gower remonstrated that he had not allowed fast bowlers to unsettle him, Grace retorted: "I could see those beggars; I can't see these". Grace died at Mottingham on 23 October 1915, aged 67, after suffering a heart attack. His death "shook the nation almost as much as Winston Churchill's fifty years later". He is buried in the family grave at Beckenham Cemetery, Kent. Legacy MCC decided to commemorate Grace's life and career with a Memorial Biography, published in 1919. Its preface begins with this passage:Never was such a band of