CHAPTER VII.
NED TURNER—1814–1824.
Ned Turner, who was born in Crucifix Lane, in the borough of Southwark, November 8th, 1791, was of Welsh extraction, his parents being natives of the Principality, and his kith and kin very respectable people at New Town, Montgomeryshire. Hence the “ancient Britons” of the metropolis proudly claimed Turner as their countryman, and, as we shall see, he was heartily backed and supported by the brave sons of the Cymry in his pugilistic ventures. Turner’s calling was that of a skin-dresser, and he was duly apprenticed to that ancient craft and mystery, at a yard in Bermondsey, where a very large number of men were employed. Here there was a sparring club, or school for glove practice, in which young Turner greatly distinguished himself, by the quickness, natural grace, and intuitive steadiness of his style of sparring.
“Envy doth merit as its shade pursue,
And by her presence proves the substance true,”
and this was exemplified in the circumstances of Turner’s first battle. The foreman of the yard, one John Balch, a Bristol man, not only fancied himself, by birth-place and judgment, an oracle in matters pugilistic, but the champion of the yard. It appears he often spoke disparagingly of the Welsh, as “border” men are apt to do: indeed he forgot himself so far as to sneer at young Turner’s sparring pretensions, and intimated his ability to “snuff” the young Welshman out. Turner modestly doubted the boaster’s ability, and a meeting “for love” ended in nearly an hour’s hard fight on the side of John Balch, when Turner, though the younger (he was only in his twentieth year), lighter, and shorter man, had beaten Balch so completely blind that he was led helpless from the ring. Turner, it may well be supposed, was soon famous in the dominions of “Simon the Tanner,” yet we may here note, on the authority of a contemporary, “that never, from his earliest days to the present period of his pugilistic celebrity, did a challenge first proceed from Ned Turner to any man.”[[157]] By him the ancient sage’s precept, albeit unknown in its didactic form, was felt and adopted as a rule of life:—
NED TURNER
From a Portrait by Wyvill.
“Let us
Act with cool prudence and with manly temper,