As a foil to the bright memoir of a high-minded, self-respecting, and honoured athlete, we cannot better “point a moral” than by devoting a brief chapter to the sudden rise and inglorious fall of the “lion-hearted” boxer, known in the latter part of his career as “Bully Hooper;” his story is a beacon of warning to the successful pugilist in the day of his patronage, prosperity, and success.
William Hooper was born at Bristol in 1766, and previously to his unfortunate connexion with the notorious Lord Barrymore, followed his trade as a tinman in Tottenham Court Road, where he had the character of a smart, industrious, well-behaved young man. His qualifications as a pugilist were undoubted. Fear formed no part of his composition. His confidence was innate; and neither the size nor strength of his antagonist deterred him any more than a thorough-bred bull-dog would calculate the bulk of his unwieldy bovine foe. Transplanted from making saucepans to the festivities of Wargrave, and made the personal companion of a roué nobleman, he lost his head, as many better nurtured men than poor Hooper have done. The transition from narrow means and humble station made him insolent, overbearing, and ostentatious, and finally the petted pugilist sunk into the ferocious “bully,” thence from dissipation and violent excess into a shattered human wreck, his melancholy end marked by poverty, desertion, and disease.[[65]]
In person Hooper was compact and symmetrical. His shoulders and arms were fine, his chest deep and broad; his height under five feet eight inches, giving him the weight of 11 stone, showing him to have been nowhere overloaded.
He is said to have fought “a number of good battles,” of which we have no evidence, save Pierce Egan’s assertion, to set against the per contra of a contemporary, that he had “fought but twice before he met Lord Barrymore’s man.” We suspect, however, an incidental trace of our hero to lurk in the following paragraph at the end of the account of the great battle between Tom Johnson and Ryan, at Cashiobury Park (see ante, page 59).
“Two other battles were likewise fought on the 11th of February, 1789, on the same stage. The first between Solly Sodicky, the Jew, and Wilson, in which the Jew beat. The second was between the Welchman and a Tinman, in which the former was cleverly defeated.” Be this as it may, on the 19th of August, 1789, Hooper was matched with a local celebrity, Bill Clarke, the plasterer, and the affair came off in Bloomsbury Fields, a plot now covered with streets and squares, adjacent to Tottenham Court Road, where Hooper exercised his vocation of a tinman. The battle was obstinately contested, Clarke being a powerful man, but the intuitive skill, activity, and courage of Hooper carried him through, and his fame as a boxer spread.
Cotterel, the shoemaker, challenged Hooper for 10 guineas a side, and they met on Barnet Common, September 5th, 1789. There was a numerous assemblage, for Hooper was looked upon as something surprising, and was seconded by Tom Johnson, the Champion, while Bill Warr picked up Cotterel. Thirty-five minutes’ desperate fighting on the part of Cotterel led to his utter defeat, and Hooper, little the worse for the conflict, was proclaimed the conqueror.
A carpenter at Binfield Heath, of the name of Wright, having acquired much fame in Berkshire for his fistic skill, was proposed by Lord Falkland as a competitor for the Tinman, and Lord Barrymore, who had witnessed Hooper’s prowess, at once accepted the cartel on Hooper’s behalf, naming his own seat of Wargrave as the place of battle. Whatever might have been Wright’s pretensions among the yokels, he made a poor figure before Hooper, who fought with such skill and rapidity at his opponent’s head, that in twenty minutes Wright[[66]] was all wrong, and so punished as to be compelled to give in. This battle took place December 3, 1789.
Bob Watson, of Bristol, whom we shall have occasion to mention elsewhere (see Watson, Appendix to Period II.), was next introduced as an antagonist for Hooper. This proved a most remarkable battle. The place was Langley Close, near Salt Hill, in the neighbourhood of Windsor, and the day February 17th, 1790. Bill Warr seconded, and Joe Ward was bottleholder to Watson; Hooper was waited on by Tom Johnson and Butcher. Major Churchill and Colonel Harvey Aston acted as umpires, but called in a referee, owing to several differences of opinion during the prolonged contest. In the third round the Tinman cleverly floored his opponent, being the first knock-down blow; and this success he repeated in the three following rounds: the odds were now high in favour of Hooper, and continued to increase as the battle went on. Watson, though he could not ward off Hooper’s attacks, proved thorough game, and rallied strongly at the close of each bout. Two hours and a half, and one hundred rounds were fought, not without several appeals as to Watson’s style of delivering a blow and falling, and other unfair practices. Finally, after Watson had been “seven times accused of striking unfairly,” Hooper was acknowledged the victor.
Lord Barrymore’s increasing folly now led to Hooper being matched with Brain (Big Ben). This mockery of boxing took place at Chapel Row Revel, near Newbury, Berks, August 30th, 1790; night coming on, after three hours and a half harlequinade by Hooper, it was declared “a drawn battle!”[[67]] (See ante, p. 67).
This exhibition much tarnished the fame of Hooper, who was now the boon companion of the depraved Lord Barrymore’s excesses, and for more than two years he did not appear within the ropes, save in the capacity of a second. As on one of these occasions we find him officiating for Bill Treadway in a combat which brings under our notice the earliest record of a black pugilist, we preserve the paragraph as we find it, under the date of—