Dear fellow chess players and enthusiasts from Bedfordshire, courtesy of his sustained efforts on his truly excellent website Britbase, archivist John Saunders has done what no one else has online and provided us with games from a reported former county champion of Bedfordshire. This means W. B. Dixon, formerly of Leighton Buzzard, becomes the first reported county champion who we have games for and can thus establish his chess playing prowess to some degree, and his successes further afield also.1
Who exactly was W. B. Dixon? I have twice posted about him,2 although I must say the evidence is rather depressing as he was indeed peripatetic but do click on the links in the footnote.
The exact page you need on John’s excellent site is already linked about but here it is again- Britbase. May I suggest you scroll down before you look at the games provided? Should you do so, you will note that W. B. Dixon not only did exceptionally well in the tournament he played in in Kent but also beat American champion H. N. Pilsbury in a simul. That game can be found as number 19.
N.B. Establishing exactly when the Bedfordshire County Championships began and who the first champion was is problematic as its inception has been left undocumented. There is a list of former county champions on Adrian Elwin‘s site, which can be found here –Former County Champions, however, this only begins in 1926/7. The local reportage in a previous post cites W. B. Dixon as county champion in 1906 and describes him as ‘the champion’, from which we must assume he was the current champion otherwise they would have described him as a former champion one would expect. How he also became champion of Buckinghamshire -I have no material pertaining to that. Until further evidence is uncovered, we can only state that W. B. Dixon is the first to be reported as county champion. We have no evidence that former multiple champion of London and participant in the Anglo-American cable matches as well as runner-up of the 1908 British Championships William Ward, was ever Bedfordshire County Champion.
In reaching out for further assistance on the English Chess Forum, further info on W. B. Dixon was provided by the knowledgeable contributor Jon D’ Souza-Eva
Pictures of his grave from the links above are shown below.
- There are only two games and in both a lack of king safety is abundantly clear and proves decisive. It is commonly argued that in Victorian times -from which the players involved emerged- chess was focused on attack and gambits much more than defence. Both games seem to lend support to that argument. ↩︎
- https://mccreadyandchess.com/2024/05/09/w-b-dixon-of-leighton-buzzard/
Regarding Our Clash of Future Champions, you will need to scroll down to find him.
https://mccreadyandchess.com/2016/02/12/our-clash-of-future-champions/ ↩︎
M J M
McCreadyandChess 