Graves of Famous Chess Players: No 7 in a Series of 7

Finally, we reach the end of the road on this series (for the time being!), and our last visit takes us back to Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery in South London. Not far from the grave of Samuel Tinsley (see the previous post in this series) lies the last resting place of an altogether more eminent British chess player - one of the greatest of all, in fact - Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841-1924).

The grave, shared with his third wife Mary who predeceased him by two years, is sadly neglected and untended, with the headstone now horizontal. Once again I was totally indebted to Martin Smith's excellent research on the Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog for locating the grave so easily. His fascinating article on both Blackburne and Tinsley is well worth a read here.

Born on the same day as me, just the small matter of 113 years earlier, Blackburne was amongst the world's top five players for the best part of 20 years, between about 1870 and 1890, while according to the Chessmetrics website, he reached a peak rank of number 2 on no less than 77 monthly lists between September 1873 and February 1889. His peak Chessmetrics' rating was 2748 in August 1886, when he was very nearly 45 years old, while his peak performance of 2785 was achieved the following year at Frankfurt, where he scored 10/12 against average opposition of 2613 strength. Even as late as his early 60s, he was still amongst the 20 best players in the world, so there is no doubt that we are talking about a genuine chess superstar.

Famously nicknamed "The Black Death", he notched up major tournament victories at Vienna (1873, equal with Steinitz who beat him in a play-off); London (1876, ahead of Zukertort); and Berlin (1881, no less than 3 points clear of Zukertort). He was also victorious in matches against Gunsberg and Zukertort (though he also lost matches to each of these players) and he was well beaten on the two occasions (1862 and 1876) he played matches against Steinitz.

His longevity gives us all hope. He won a brilliancy prize (against Nimzowitsch) in 1914 (at the age of 72), and in the same year tied for first in the British Championship, but could not contest the play-off due to ill health. He was still reportedly giving simultaneous displays at the age of 78. He died of a heart attack on September 1, 1924, at the age of 82.

And so to a game. It can't get much better than beating the reigning World Champion with the black pieces in your home country, so there could really only be one choice.