Adam Meredith

Adam Theodore "Plum" Meredith (16 June 1913 – 30 January 1976) was a British professional bridge player and world tournament champion.

Meredith was born in Bangor, County Down, Ireland, (now Northern Ireland), to Hugh Meredith and Olive Christabel Margaret Meredith (née Iles). Little is published about his early life, excepting that he was well educated.

Fearlessly honest, he refused to claim his ill-health from severe asthma and acute diabetes as a basis to avoid military service for World War II and instead registered as a conscientious objector. Initially allocated to work as an ambulance driver and ARP warden, he was petitioned against by those who objected to working with "conchies" (conscientious objectors) and was reassigned to farm work, highly problematic for an asthmatic. It was "no secret, however, that for a great deal of the war he was in London; and when he was in London, he was playing cards." After the war, he spent months each year in the south of France where the dry climate helped his asthmatic lungs.

Meredith was passionately artistic with interests in ballet and theatre. When the Ballet Nègre (a creation of Katherine Dunham) came to London "and teetered between success and failure ... he backed it with hard-earned savings he had amassed at bridge".

Terence Reese referred to Meredith as "even-tempered, a staunch friend in an undemonstrative way, and quite immovable when he took up a position about anything."

Meredith was semi-retired from tournament play in 1957 when he moved from London to New York. There, he formed a friendship with Ruth Sherman, a leading American player, who supported his bridge activities and who upon her death in 1965 bequeathed to him the income on the bulk of her $450,000 estate.

According to an obituary bridge column by the English expatriate and expert, Alan Truscott, Meredith played rubber bridge but little tournament bridge in the US and "the last ten years of his life were sad ones, marred by progressive ill health". He died in New York City in January 1976. "in obscurity" when alcoholism further reduced his vitality and shortened his life.

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