Round 1.—Science was not much in request. A few random hits, however, were exchanged. In closing, Carter endeavoured to weave the man of colour, and, in going down, Richmond had the worst of the fall. Carter held Richmond so fast, that his friends were obliged to pull the man of colour away; in the struggle the buttons of Richmond’s coat were floored. Upon the Lancashire hero getting up, the claret was seen trickling over his mouth.
2.—This round was full of bustle; in fact, it was pummelling and hugging each other; but Richmond was not idle, and had the best of it till they went down.
3 and last.—This was the quietus; and the man of colour was not long in putting in the coup de grace. Carter seemed confused, when Richmond planted one of his desperate right-handed hits (for which he was so distinguished in the ring) upon Carter’s upper works, that not only loosened his ivories, but produced the claret, and floored the late hero of Aix-la-Chapelle like a shot. He laid stunned for a short period, when, once more feeling the use of his legs, he exclaimed, “I’ve been finely served out this evening.”
Thus ended the skirmish, and Carter retired, weeping over the stupidity of the fracas and folly of intemperance. “Oh that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains!”
Richmond returned to his company to finish the evening with the utmost nonchalance over his sober heavy wet, with no other damage but knocking up his right hand a little.
Richmond was an active, excellent second, and, from his temperate mode of living, preferring exercise to wasting his time or injuring his constitution by a too frequent repetition of the charms of the bottle, obtained the character of being a good and steady trainer, and, notwithstanding the defect in one of his knees, excelled as a cricketer.
In concluding this sketch, we cannot omit stating of our hero that in private life Richmond was intelligent, communicative, and well-behaved; and, however actively engaged in promulgating the principles of milling, never so completely absorbed with fighting as to be incapable of discoursing upon any other subject; in fact, he was rather facetious over a glass of noyeau, his favourite wet with a swell, and endeavoured to gain his point by attempting to prove that there is more certainty in his preservation of bodies (in allusion to his method of training) than either the cobbler or parson have in their taking care of the “soles!” He had much more to say than many who style themselves “amateurs,” but was never known to be so deficient in eloquence as when Molineaux experienced defeat. His experience in life taught him to be awake to the tricks of it, and there were few subjects upon which Richmond was not capable of conversing. It could never be denied that he “wore a head;” and although its colour did not prepossess the million in its favour, yet the liberal part of mankind will acquiesce with Desdemona, that “the visage” may be often best “seen in the mind!”
Richmond may be pointed to as one of the men who never lost sight of the situation in which he was placed in society. In the elevation of the moment, he always bore in mind that, however the Corinthian fancier may connect himself with milling, there are times when he has a different character to support, and must not be intruded upon. Would that many of our whitefaced boxers would take a hint on this point from Bill Richmond, the Black.
Thus respected and supported lived Bill Richmond, till the universal visitor, grim Death, gave him his final summons, on the 28th of December, 1829, at the house now occupied by Owen Swift (the Horse-shoe Tavern), Titchbourne Street, Haymarket, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
