In his social hours, Jem was good-natured in the extreme, and modest and unassuming to a degree almost bordering upon bashfulness. In the character of a publican, no man entertained a better sense of propriety and decorum; and the stranger, in casually mixing with the Fancy in his house, never felt any danger of being offended or molested. It would be well if as much could be said of all sporting publicans.
After his last defeat by Cribb, much of Belcher’s fine animal spirits departed. He was depressed and taciturn, and his health much broken by twenty-eight days’ imprisonment to which, with a fine, he was condemned for his breach of the peace by that battle. The old story too, for Jem was not prudent, is again to be told. His worldly circumstances had suffered with his health, and
“The summer friends
That ever wing the breeze of fair success,
But fly to sunnier spots when winter frowns,”
forgot to take what old Pierce would have called their nightly “perch,” or “roost,” at Jem’s “lush-crib.” His last illness approached, and, with at most two of his firmest friends, the once formidable champion departed this life on Tuesday, July 30, 1811, at the sign of the Coach and Horses, in Frith Street, Soho, in the thirty-first year of his age, and, on the following Sunday, was interred in the burial ground of Marylebone. The concourse of people to witness the funeral was immense; and a more general sympathy has rarely been witnessed. The proximate cause of his death was a family complaint, having its origin in an enlargement of the liver. The following inscription may be yet read upon his tombstone:—
IN MEMORY OF
JAMES BELCHER,
Late of St. Anne’s Parish, Soho,
Who died