Towards the end of his life Tom Spring got into financial difficulties, owing to his trust in friends who used him as an agent in betting transactions, and then disappeared when the wrong horse got home or the wrong man gave in. He died at the early age of fifty-six, in 1851; Langan having predeceased him by five years.

CHAPTER XIV
DEAF BURKE AND SIMON BYRNE

On the retirement of Tom Spring the championship fell to Jem Ward, who held it for many years. He was followed by Deaf Burke, whose fight with Simon Byrne is the subject of this chapter. This, as will be seen, was a disastrous fight, in that the unfortunate Byrne died immediately after it. It is, however, necessary to give some details of the circumstances, because Byrne’s death was typical of the sort of accident that occasionally happened in connection with the Prize-Ring, and has since happened more than once in connection with modern boxing. I say “in connection,” rather awkwardly like that because, as will be discovered presently, the fight in these cases is only the occasion and not the actual cause of mortal injury.

The battle in question was fought at No Man’s Land, in Hertfordshire, for £100 a side on May 30th, 1833. Almost exactly three years before, Byrne had fought and beaten a man named McKay, who died next day. Byrne had been tried for manslaughter and acquitted. The circumstances of the death of both were somewhat similar: and there is no doubt that McKay’s death preyed upon Byrne’s mind.

In the first place we find that Simon Byrne was grossly out of condition before he went into training. He weighed 15 stone, and reduced himself to 13 stone 4 lb. “An effort which,” Bell’s Life in London tells us, “as it was effected by hard work and sweating, somewhat impaired his natural stamina, especially as, his habits being far from abstemious when in Ireland, he was scarcely fitted to undergo the necessary amount of labour.” That is, no doubt, the explanation of the tragedy, as it has been the explanation of other tragedies, one of which is within comparatively recent memory. As a rule, the modern champion is a teetotaller, and generally speaking “takes care of himself.” He lives not merely a “reasonable life,” but a life, physically speaking, devoted to one end. His health comes before everything else. It is, for better or for worse, a restrained, careful, hygienic age—anyhow for boxers with pretensions. But in the old days, the fighting men alternated between bouts of the wildest debauchery and the most violently severe training. No wonder they died young. No wonder that the sudden abstention from artificial stimulant combined with over-hard work and culminating in the prolonged strain and pain of a desperate battle occasionally killed them. The wonder is that there were not more deaths from a like cause.

A VIEW of the FIGHT BETWEEN
Gully and GREGSON

[A] Gully
[B] Joe Ward his second
[C] Gregson
[D] Harry Lee his second
[E] The Umpire

They fought in Sir John Sebright’s Park near Market Street Herts on May 10, 1808 when Gully beat his antagonist there was a great crowd of Spectators.
Published May 31, 1808 by G Thompson, No 43, Long Lane, West Smithfield.