Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3) / Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863

by Henry Downes Miles

The 30th of July, 1811,

AGED 30.

Universally regretted by all who knew him.

CHAPTER II.

TOM BELCHER—1804–1822.[^[86]]

The third of the Belchers, Tom, remains in the memory of a few old ’uns as, for many years, “mine host of the Castle,” a jolly, rubicund, pleasant, and generous fellow, and the worthy predecessor of the departed Tom Spring, in that ancient head quarters of the Fancy, now also Pythagorised into a feeding-shop, named after Sir Charles Napier—another fighting hero. Tom came to London in the year 1803, when his brother Jem was at the zenith of his fame, having beaten every man with whom he had fought, and attained the position of undisputed Champion of England. Although Tom’s ring career was not so brilliant as his elder brother’s, it had a less striking culmination and fall, and his thirteen battles, with eight victories and a draw (with the phenomenon Dutch Sam), tell well for Tom’s descent from the Slacks and Belchers.

Tom Belcher was born at Bristol, in the same house as his brother Jem, on the 14th of April, 1783. On his earlier years we need not dwell, and where there is little or no authentic material, we hold nothing in deeper contempt than the system of “gagging” a parcel of clumsy apocryphal battles, some of which there is inherent chronological and circumstantial evidence could never have taken place.

We have said Tom came to town at twenty years of age, and he was soon matched. His first salaam in the ring (which on this occasion was forty feet in diameter, instead of the customary twenty or twenty-four feet) was on the 26th of June, 1804. His opponent on this occasion was of a noted fighting stock, being Jack Warr, the son of the celebrated Bill Warr. The prize contested for was 50 guineas, and—hear it, ye who have in modern times travelled even to Ireland to see no fight—the battle-ground was no farther off than Tothill Fields, Westminster; the day, Tuesday, June 26, 1804.

Warr was much the firmer set and stouter man, though the youthful Tom had the advantage in the reach, and, upon stripping, the odds were a trifle in favour of Belcher, from the prestige of his family name, and the predilection of the amateurs for the school from which he came. We quote the contemporary report.