reduced the odds between them till he could play his former master level. About the year 1869 he was the equal of any player in the world, but after that George Lambert [q.v.] began to surpass him. Meanwhile there was no amateur player who had any chance against Heathcote, and for a number of years he could give his nearest rivals fifteen. Heathcote succeeded to the position of amateur champion about the year 1859, when C. G. Taylor retired from single match play. There was at that time no formal competition for the championship, but from 1867 the Marylebone Cricket Club annually offered prizes to its members for play in the court at Lord's, and the gold prize carried with it the blue riband of amateur tennis. Heathcote won this every year till 1882, when the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton [q.v.] defeated him. The next summer he regained the title, but after this Lyttelton passed him in the race, though Heathcote won the gold prize once more in 1886, when Lyttelton was unable to play. Heathcote kept up the game for many years and played in a number of courts after he had retired from competition play, and until the end of his life he was present at most of the great matches. He died at Conington 5 October 1912.
Heathcote was a fine all-round player, but his strongest point was return. Without having such a crushing attack as some of his predecessors and successors, he could cut the ball fairly heavily and could lay short chases with some certainty. He had a sound volley and he gave both the side-wall and the drop-service effectively.
Heathcote contributed largely to Tennis (1890) in the Badminton Library, and also wrote on Speed Skating (1891) in the same series. Lawn-tennis players owe him a debt of gratitude, for in one way he did as much as anyone to develop that game. It was he who first suggested and tried the experiment of covering the ball with flannel.
[The Times, 12 May 1915; Julian Marshall, The Annals of Tennis, 1878; Tennis, Rackets, and Lawn Tennis (Badminton Library), 1890; E. B. Noel and J. O. M. Clark, A History of Tennis, 1924.]
HEATON, Sir JOHN HENNIKER, first baronet (1848–1914), postal reformer, was born at Rochester 18 May 1848, the only son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Heaton, of Heaton, Lancashire, by his wife, Helen, daughter and co-heir of John Henniker, of Rochester. Educated at Kent House School and King's College, London, Henniker Heaton went to Australia at the age of sixteen (1864), and spent some years in the Bush. He subsequently moved to Paramatta, New South Wales, and joined the staff of the Mercury newspaper. He acted as town clerk of Paramatta from December 1869 till February 1870. Heaton then edited a paper in Goulburn with the prophetic title of The Penny Post, moving thence to Sydney, where he joined the staff of The Australian and County Journal, owned by Samuel Bennett, a writer on Australian history, described by Heaton as ‘the best friend I ever had’. In 1873 he married Bennett's only daughter, Rose. During the next ten years Henniker Heaton identified himself with the public life of Sydney, and wrote a standard work of reference, The Australian Dictionary of Dates and Men of the Time (1879). In 1882 he stood for parliament as a candidate for New South Wales, but was defeated by a small majority. He represented New South Wales as commissioner at the Amsterdam exhibition of 1883, and Tasmania at the Berlin International Telegraphic Conference in 1885, when he succeeded in materially reducing the cost of cable messages to Australia; he was again commissioner for New South Wales at the Indian and Colonial exhibition held in London in 1886. Throughout his life he so consistently forwarded Australian interests that he became known as ‘the member for Australia’.
In 1884 Henniker Heaton settled with his family in London, and at the general election of 1885 he was returned to parliament in the conservative interest as member for Canterbury, a seat which he held for twenty-six years. After the general election of 1892 a baronetcy was offered to him on condition of his giving up his seat to a former conservative minister who had just been defeated. Regarding the condition as degrading to his own career and disloyal to his constituents, Henniker Heaton refused, and on account of this circumstance rejected three times the offer of a K.C.M.G. as a reward for his patriotic services. During his parliamentary career he worked continuously and persistently at postal reform: owing to his exertions the cost of cabling to different parts of the world was much reduced, imperial penny postage (except with Australia) came into force on 25 December 1898, whilst Anglo-American penny postage was won in 1908, and Anglo-Australian penny postage during the years 1905 to 1911. At the dissolution of 1910
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