John Atkinson Pendlington (September 1861 – 15 January 1914) was the inventor of a linear scoring system for cricket before 1893.
Any link between the linear scoring systems used by Ferguson and Pendlington remain unclear.
The probate records that identify his date of death describe him as an "accountant".
A report of Pendlington's death in January 1914 - sent to Richie Benaud by Pendlington's grandson in 1994 and mentioned in Benaud's book My Spin on Cricket (2005) - mentioned that Pendlington used his system at a match between C. I. Thornton's XI and the Australian tourists at the North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough in September 1893, the penultimate match played by the Australian team on that tour.
Bill Frindall in his book Bearders: My Life in Cricket (Orion, London, 2006, page 70-71) also acknowledges Pendlington as the inventor, and mentions other evidence of it pre-dating Ferguson.