Martin for many years was the landlord of the Crown at Croydon; he subsequently removed to the Horns Tavern, Kennington. He finally retired, first to St. Alban’s, and afterwards to a rural retreat in Devon, where he long resided. He died in the year 1871, aged 75, having become a convert for many years to the doctrines and practice of total abstinence from liquor, and a strict vegetarian.
CHAPTER IX.
JOHN PALMER, KNOWN IN THE P. R. AS “JACK SCROGGINS”—1803–1822.
To whom this hardy little hero, who so long performed “clown to the ring,” was indebted for his grotesque sobriquet, is a point upon which history is silent, nor can its elucidation be expected, even from the editor of “Notes and Queries,” assisted by his staff of contributors. There was, however, a popular comic song by George Colman the Younger, in which the loves of Giles Scroggins and Molly Brown were involved with “a horrible” ghost story, and possibly the mere oddity of the name suggested itself as an alias for this eccentric pugilist.
John Palmer was born, December 31, 1787, near New Cross, Deptford. It should seem that as Hercules in his cradle betook himself to serpent strangling, by way of prefiguring his future monster-destroying propensities, so Jack was pugilistic from his cradle; and, although not an ill-natured lad, was continually fighting the boys of New Cross, till his victories were so numerous, that he was considered as the cock of the walk. At a more advanced age he went to live as a servant on the farm of Mr. Giblett (the great butcher of Bond Street), at Kilburn. Here he had frequent turns-up with the hardy race of navigators belonging to the Paddington Canal, and here he first received the name of “Scroggins,” which continued with him throughout his services in the navy, and stuck to him to the end of his boxing career. The oddity of this nickname was merited by a corresponding grotesquerie of personal gesture and appearance. In height only five feet four inches, in weight hard upon eleven stone, “his appearance when stripped,” says Boxiana, “is not unlike the stump of a large tree, and from his loins upwards he looks like a man of fourteen stone.” Add to this, much native humour, the antics of a merryman, undaunted courage, and a love of riotous fun, and the reader will admit that the comic lyric poet of Bell’s Life in London could not have chosen a better known or more comic public character than “Ould Jack”—or, after his departure for another world of spirits beyond the grave, “Ould Jack’s Ghost”—for the vehicle of his fancy facetiæ. What follows here is a resumé of the introductory pages of the memoir of Scroggins in “Boxiana.”
JOHN PALMER (“Jack Scroggins”).
From a Portrait by G. Sharples, 1819.
In May, 1803, when sixteen years old, he was ill-treated by one Bill Walters, at the sign of the Waggon and Horses, at Brentford. Walters was a full grown man, possessing strength and some knowledge of milling, but Jack was not easily to be intimidated, and an immediate turn-up was the result, in a field near the above inn. The battle continued upwards of an hour, when Scroggy was proclaimed the victor. Jem Belcher witnessed the mill, and praised Scroggy for the hardy courage he displayed.
Not long after this occurrence, Scroggins dined at a club-feast, at the sign of the Swan, Sunbury Common. The harmony of the company experienced great interruption from the improper conduct of a fellow named Sam Beak, better known as the “Bully of Harrow.” His name was a sort of terror to all present, and the company would have been compelled to endure his insolence for the remainder of the evening, had it not been for the pluck of little Scroggy, who insisted upon his quitting the room. The threat produced a regular fight out of doors, and after a severe battle for nearly an hour, Beak was glad to give in.