PRIZE-FIGHTS
The only other inhabitant of Crawley whose deeds informed the world at large of his name and existence was Tom Cribb, the bruiser. But though I lighted upon the statement of his residence here at one time, yet, after hunting up details of his life and of the battles he fought, after pursuing him through the classic pages of “Boxiana” and the voluminous records of “Pugilistica,” after consulting, too, that sprightly work “The Fancy”; after all this I find no further mention of the fact. It was fitting, though, that the pugilist should have his home near Crawley Downs, the scene of so many of the Homeric combats witnessed by thousands upon thousands of excited spectators, from the Czar of Russia and the great Prince Regent, downwards to the lowest blackguards of the metropolis. An inspiring sight those Downs must have presented from time to time, when great multitudes—princes, patricians, and plebeians of every description—hung with beating hearts and bated breath upon the performances of two men in a roped enclosure battering one another for so much a side.
It is thus no matter for surprise that the Brighton Road, on its several routes, witnessed brilliant and dashing turn-outs, both in public coaches and private equipages, during that time when the last of the Georges flourished so flamboyantly as Prince, Prince Regent, and King. How else could it have been with the Court at one end of it and the metropolis at the other, and between them the rendezvous of all such as delighted in the “noble art”?
Many were the merry “mills” which “came off” at Crawley Downs, Copthorne Common, and Blindley Heath, attended by the Prince and his merry men, conspicuous among whom at different times were Fox, Lord Barrymore, Lord Yarmouth (“Red Herrings”), and Major George Hanger. As for the tappings of claret, the punchings of conks and bread-baskets, and the tremendous sloggings that went on in this neighbourhood in those virile times, are they not set forth with much circumstantial detail in the pages of “Fistiana” and “Boxiana”? There shall you read how the Prince Regent witnessed with enthusiasm such merry sets-to as this between Randall and Martin on Crawley Downs. “Boxiana” gives a full account of it, and is even moved to verse, in this wise:
THE FIGHT AT CRAWLEY
BETWEEN
THE NONPAREIL
AND
THE OUT-AND-OUTER.
Come, won’t you list unto my lay
About the fight at Crawley, O!...
with the refrain—
With his filaloo trillaloo,
Whack, fal lal de dal di de do!
For the number of rounds and such technical details the curious may be referred to the classic pages of “Boxiana” itself.
Martin, originally a baker, and thus of course familiarly known as the “Master of the Rolls,” one of the heroes whom all these sporting blades went out to see contend for victory in the ring, died so recently as 1871. He had long retired from the P.R., and had, upon quitting it, followed the usual practice of retired pugilists, that is to say, he became a publican. He was landlord successively of the “Crown” at Croydon, and the “Horns” tavern, Kennington.
As for details of this fight or that upon the same spot from which Hickman, “The Gas-Light Man,” came off victor, they are not for these pages. How the combatants “fibbed” and “countered,” and did other things equally abstruse to the average reader, you may, who care to, read in the pages of the enthusiastic authorities upon the subject, who spare nothing of all the blows given and received.