He married Sarah Neal, a former domestic servant who was housemaid at Uppark[2] in West Sussex between 1850 and 1855 (later she was re-employed as housekeeper from 1880 to 1893). Joseph was the head gardener at Uppark in 1851 and married Sarah in 1853. An inheritance allowed them to acquire a shop selling china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old, and the location poor. Wells earned a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop; Joseph also received unreliable earnings from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team.[3] Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations after the matches, or from small payments from the clubs where the matches were played.
Wells was the first bowler to take four wickets in four balls in a first-class cricket match:[4][5] in 1862 he dismissed Sussex's James Dean, Spencer Leigh, Charles Ellis and Richard Fillery with successive balls. (Spencer Leigh was the great-nephew of Jane Austen.)[6]
In 1866, while living at Atlas House, 46 High Street, Bromley, the couple had their fourth and last child "Bertie", who later became the author H. G. Wells.[7]
^Wells, H. G. (2005) [First published 1905]. Gregory Claeys, Patrick Parrinder (ed.). A Modern Utopia. Gregory Claeys, Francis Wheen, Andy Sawyer. Penguin Classics. ISBN978-0-14-144112-2.
