Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
Now I love a good Board Game at Christmas me…and one of my all time favourites has to be Cluedo - it was Astoness in the Snug with a Rolling Pin..etc...…and guess where it was invented…step forward one Anthony E Pratt, late of this Parish unfortunately…
Anthony was born at 13 Brighton Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham. He received his secondary education at St. Philip's School in Edgbaston. His favourite subject was Chemistry but he suffered from poor eyesight which affected his education somewhat. Anthony was a very gifted musician and a proficient pianist from an early age. When he left school, at 15, he wanted to pursue a career in chemistry and was apprenticed to a local chemical manufacturer. But with no formal qualifications in chemistry and a growing interest in music he went onto pursue a musical career.
During the interwar years Anthony Pratt went onto become a successful musician earning a living playing piano recitals in country hotels and on cruise ships where he travelled to places like New York and Iceland. Also an aspiring composer (he was a huge fan of Edward Elgar) he was at one time accompanist to the well known soprano Kirsten Flagstad. During the Second World War Anthony worked in an engineering factory in Birmingham that manufactured components for tanks. Working on a drilling machine he found the work rather tedious but it gave him time to think, including about the ideas behind Cluedo. He made some good friends and remained there for the duration of the war.
Cluedo – or Murder at Tudor Close
It was during the Second World War that Anthony Pratt had the idea for a Murder Mystery Board game. Evenings spent behind wartime blackouts were a world away from the pleasant musical evenings and social gathering of friends – it was all such a dampener on people’s social lives. The idea for Cluedo came from his days spent playing musical concerts in country hotels where part of the evening’s entertainment would have been murder games. These would involve both actors and hotel guests playing the characters in a plot which involves the murder of one or more of the other guests. A country house with all its different, sprawling rooms with guests gathered for evenings dining and socialising, but a body is found murdered and all the guests fall under suspicion. By putting clues together the hotel guests must solve the mystery. These were very popular at the time and given this along with his love of detective fiction including that of his favourites Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie,the spark for Cluedo was created. At the time books like 'And Then There Were None' and 'The Body in the Library' were enormously popular. So in 1943 Anthony and his wife, Elva, began designing a murder mystery board game. The original game was called ‘Murder’ with the artwork for the board itself being designed by Elva.
Anthony filed his original patent application on 1 December 1944. He knew and had spoken to a close friend, Geoffrey Bull, who had invented the board game Buccaneer and it was Geoffrey who introduced Anthony to Norman Watson, managing director of Waddingtons, the games manufacturer. In February 1945 Anthony demonstrated the game to Norman Watson who immediately saw the winning formula of the game and, after a few minor modifications, decided to go ahead and manufacture it. It was Waddingtons who renamed the game ‘Cluedo’ (a combination of the words ‘Clue’ and ‘Ludo’, a Latin word meaning ‘to play’). But unfortunately material shortages in post-war Britain meant the game didn’t go into production until 1949. Anthony Pratt was granted patent GB586817 ‘Improvements in Board Games' on 1 April 1947.
After the end of the Second World War Anthony entered the British Civil Service working for the Ministry of Labour helping demobbed servicemen and women to return to peacetime work. In 1953, 4 years after Cluedo first went on sale, Waddingtons told Anthony that the game wasn’t selling very well, particularly in America, and offered him a cheque for £5,000 (equivalent to £105,800) for the overseas rights to Cluedo. This was a considerable sum at the time and with their daughter Marcia newly born, Anthony accepted the money. Such a large sum of money meant it was no longer vital for him to work and the money enabled him and his wife to buy a sweets and tobacconists shop in Warwickshire where they settled for a while. However Elva was frequently ill and disliked her time there and this prompted a move to Bournemouth where they lived for over twenty years, initially letting holiday flats. It was early in this time that Anthony worked as a solicitors Clerk, an occupation he held for about three years before retiring around 1962 (aged 59). Eventually the Cluedo patent lapsed and in 1980 Anthony and Elva moved back to Birmingham where they both enjoyed their retirement years. Anthony continued to play and enjoy music and indulged his love of books including detective fiction.
Anthony Pratt developed Alzheimer's disease towards the end of his life and moved into a nursing home, where he died at the age of 90. He is buried in Bromsgrove Cemetery.
There was a world Cluedo Championships from 1990 – 2008, the last event being won by Jusef Kollar, a top board game player, at the Imperial Hotel Torquay. Kollar won the event several times, dressed as Colonel Mustard, featured in a hilarious Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman…
Lots more stuff here if you are interested:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 84258.html
https://www.birminghampost.net/news/news ... -24930583/
Anthony was born at 13 Brighton Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham. He received his secondary education at St. Philip's School in Edgbaston. His favourite subject was Chemistry but he suffered from poor eyesight which affected his education somewhat. Anthony was a very gifted musician and a proficient pianist from an early age. When he left school, at 15, he wanted to pursue a career in chemistry and was apprenticed to a local chemical manufacturer. But with no formal qualifications in chemistry and a growing interest in music he went onto pursue a musical career.
During the interwar years Anthony Pratt went onto become a successful musician earning a living playing piano recitals in country hotels and on cruise ships where he travelled to places like New York and Iceland. Also an aspiring composer (he was a huge fan of Edward Elgar) he was at one time accompanist to the well known soprano Kirsten Flagstad. During the Second World War Anthony worked in an engineering factory in Birmingham that manufactured components for tanks. Working on a drilling machine he found the work rather tedious but it gave him time to think, including about the ideas behind Cluedo. He made some good friends and remained there for the duration of the war.
Cluedo – or Murder at Tudor Close
It was during the Second World War that Anthony Pratt had the idea for a Murder Mystery Board game. Evenings spent behind wartime blackouts were a world away from the pleasant musical evenings and social gathering of friends – it was all such a dampener on people’s social lives. The idea for Cluedo came from his days spent playing musical concerts in country hotels where part of the evening’s entertainment would have been murder games. These would involve both actors and hotel guests playing the characters in a plot which involves the murder of one or more of the other guests. A country house with all its different, sprawling rooms with guests gathered for evenings dining and socialising, but a body is found murdered and all the guests fall under suspicion. By putting clues together the hotel guests must solve the mystery. These were very popular at the time and given this along with his love of detective fiction including that of his favourites Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie,the spark for Cluedo was created. At the time books like 'And Then There Were None' and 'The Body in the Library' were enormously popular. So in 1943 Anthony and his wife, Elva, began designing a murder mystery board game. The original game was called ‘Murder’ with the artwork for the board itself being designed by Elva.
Anthony filed his original patent application on 1 December 1944. He knew and had spoken to a close friend, Geoffrey Bull, who had invented the board game Buccaneer and it was Geoffrey who introduced Anthony to Norman Watson, managing director of Waddingtons, the games manufacturer. In February 1945 Anthony demonstrated the game to Norman Watson who immediately saw the winning formula of the game and, after a few minor modifications, decided to go ahead and manufacture it. It was Waddingtons who renamed the game ‘Cluedo’ (a combination of the words ‘Clue’ and ‘Ludo’, a Latin word meaning ‘to play’). But unfortunately material shortages in post-war Britain meant the game didn’t go into production until 1949. Anthony Pratt was granted patent GB586817 ‘Improvements in Board Games' on 1 April 1947.
After the end of the Second World War Anthony entered the British Civil Service working for the Ministry of Labour helping demobbed servicemen and women to return to peacetime work. In 1953, 4 years after Cluedo first went on sale, Waddingtons told Anthony that the game wasn’t selling very well, particularly in America, and offered him a cheque for £5,000 (equivalent to £105,800) for the overseas rights to Cluedo. This was a considerable sum at the time and with their daughter Marcia newly born, Anthony accepted the money. Such a large sum of money meant it was no longer vital for him to work and the money enabled him and his wife to buy a sweets and tobacconists shop in Warwickshire where they settled for a while. However Elva was frequently ill and disliked her time there and this prompted a move to Bournemouth where they lived for over twenty years, initially letting holiday flats. It was early in this time that Anthony worked as a solicitors Clerk, an occupation he held for about three years before retiring around 1962 (aged 59). Eventually the Cluedo patent lapsed and in 1980 Anthony and Elva moved back to Birmingham where they both enjoyed their retirement years. Anthony continued to play and enjoy music and indulged his love of books including detective fiction.
Anthony Pratt developed Alzheimer's disease towards the end of his life and moved into a nursing home, where he died at the age of 90. He is buried in Bromsgrove Cemetery.
There was a world Cluedo Championships from 1990 – 2008, the last event being won by Jusef Kollar, a top board game player, at the Imperial Hotel Torquay. Kollar won the event several times, dressed as Colonel Mustard, featured in a hilarious Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman…
Lots more stuff here if you are interested:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 84258.html
https://www.birminghampost.net/news/news ... -24930583/
Last edited by a moderator:
