He suffered considerably in his illness, and died in the London Hospital, on Wednesday, July 3, 1816, in the forty-second year of his age. He was buried on the 4th of the same month, in the Jews’ burying ground, Whitechapel.
As a boxer, “take him for all in all,” while he lived he had no equal; but latterly his stamina was utterly ruined by excessive indulgence in ardent spirits.
CHAPTER VI.
GEORGE MADDOX (KNOWN IN HIS LATER BATTLES AS “THE VETERAN”)—1792–1809.
As a connecting link between the Second and Third Periods, George Maddox furnishes a career of some interest. He was a civil, facetious, illiterate man, but possessed of manly courage and forbearance. “Though,” says one who knew him, “George Maddox fought more battles than any man I knew of his time, he never had a spark of resentment in his composition. His hardihood and resolution in the battle were not more remarkable than the coolness, almost stoical, with which he spoke of victory or defeat, in his own natural and rough manner. He seemed satisfied, that having done his best, the best could do no more, and generally spoke strongly of the ‘goodness’ of the men who had given in to him.” Maddox was born in Tothill Fields, Westminster, in 1756. In his fiftieth year he entered the lists with the powerful Tom Cribb, then in the prime of his youth and freshness, and, after fighting an hour and a half, the odds were still in his favour. Seventy-six rounds and two hours and ten minutes of courageous fighting passed before “the Veteran” cried “enough!” Once more in his fifty-fifth year he met Bill Richmond, the black (whom he had formerly beaten in three rounds), and after an hour yielded to exhaustion. The spirit did not surrender, but nature left him.[[108]] There can be nothing added to this but the record of George’s boxing career.
George Maddox was as modest and independent as he was courageous. He never hung about sporting public-houses or low tap-rooms, and never sponged upon gentlemen, nor sought the patronage of the great. After a memorable fight he sunk into his desired obscurity, following his humble occupation, and content with his moderate earnings, as an industrious costermonger, a calling much more lucrative and numerous than in our times. Indeed the “donkey dragoons” of Westminster, as they were then termed, formed a formidable squadron; and, among the lower classes, the proprietor of a “neddy and tumbler”—as in the days of slang a donkey and cart were termed—was often a velveteened fancy-dressed person with gold as well as silver and copper in his pocket, or “skin,” a taste for “the Fancy,” an attendant at every sport, the owner of a “tyke” or two, and a “dealer in curiosities,”—rats, squirrels, ferrets, badgers, an occasional mongoose, and fancy “pets,” coming particularly within the range of his tastes and trading.
After many bye-battles, Maddox’s first regular contest was with Symonds (the Ruffian). This took place at Datchet, near Windsor, on Saturday, December 4, 1792. See Symonds, ante, 130.
This battle stands unparalleled for desperation and unflinching resolution in the annals of pugilism. The spot first named was Langley Broom, in Buckinghamshire, but magisterial interference preventing the rencontre, “the wayfarers crossed the Thames carrying their boards and quartering with them, and in a very few minutes erected a stage,” in the renowned Shaksperian “Datchet Mead.” We must here remark, that Maddox was two inches shorter and more than two stone lighter than Symonds, to appreciate the battle which followed. There is no report worthy of transcription of this tremendous fight which is described in generalities. “Columns of our paper would not suffice to detail the rallies, the knock-down blows, the alternate advantages and the gluttony which marked this surprising battle. ‘The Ruffian,’ who was nearly two stone heavier than his antagonist, was by far the most beaten, and totally blind, from the closing of both his eyes, before he would allow himself to be carried from off the stage. Maddox, of course, was not quite in so desperate a condition, as he had the best of the hitting in the rallies, especially towards the latter rounds. It was stated by an experienced amateur that Maddox put in two, sometimes three blows to Symonds’s one throughout the contest,” which lasted two hours, during which 100 rounds were fought.
On Monday, February 10, 1794, Maddox met Hooper, the tinman, but after a game fight of nearly an hour, surrendered to that formidable boxer. (See Hooper, ante, p. 107.)