On the Thursday after the above fight, at Josh. Hudson’s benefit, Parish addressed the Court, observing, “that although he had been defeated by Scroggins, he was not satisfied, and was ready to have another trial.” Scroggins, in reply, said, “from the advice of his friends, he had not intended to have fought any more; but as how he was too much of a gentleman not to accommodate Mr. Parish, who was also a gentlemanly sort of a man; so he would give him another trial.” A guinea a-side was deposited; but on the arrival of the night to make the stakes good, Parish did not make his appearance, and the guinea, of course, was forfeited.
This sunshine, however, was evanescent, and the course of Scroggins’s history tends henceforth downwards. In April, 1822, as related in the life of Tom Belcher, p. 165 ante, the hardy hero came in contact with the scientific Tom; on this occasion if Tom was stale Scroggy assuredly was but a shadow of his former self, and he was moreover in that state of lush which had now become almost habitual to him. Still, however, “ould Jack,” as he was already called, haunted the ring at every mill of note, unable to quit the arena of his many triumphs. The milling “spirit strong within him,” was shown on the 12th of June, 1822, at Moulsey Hurst. On that occasion the fights between Ward and Acton, and Burke and Marshall, having gone off unsatisfactorily to the patrons of boxing there and then present, a brace of countrymen offered themselves for a purse, and had actually “peeled,” when Scroggy roared out, “Gentlemen, as you’ve had but little fun to-day, suppose I fight the Gipsy, that will produce sport?” Cooper instantly replied that he was ready; and the extemporaneous mill quickly commenced. Scroggins was seconded by Harry Harmer and Bill Eales; Abbot and Turner picked up the Gipsy. In this battle the rash and hardy little Tar showed the folly of entering the ring out of condition. He was full of oranges, ginger beer, and heavy wet, taken as antidotes to the heat of the day, and as unfit to fight as a stall-fed ox; nevertheless he came up to be set down for twenty-five minutes, during which seventeen rounds were fought; Scroggins was at length persuaded to leave off. He afterwards observed, “he could not win, but he wasn’t half-licked.” This was our hero’s last appearance in the P. R.
Poor Scroggins now became a mere hanger-on of pothouses: a droll, diverting vagabond, occasionally picking up a few shillings as a second, or receiving precarious assistance from those who had known him in more prosperous days. Among these Cribb was long his friend, and “wittles” (for which Jack had an inordinate penchant, until brilliant Juniper utterly destroyed his digestion) were often set before him from the larder of the generous host of the Union Arms. Occasionally too, Jack would get in office as a waiter at one or other of the Sporting Houses; but his invincible love of liquor soon lost him these temporary asylums. The editor of Bell’s Life in London (V. G. Dowling, Esq.), by frequent generous appeals, and taking Jack’s name as the comic pseudonyme for innumerable admirable burlesque poems on public affairs, political and pugilistic, kept the once formidable pugilist, now the poor pothouse buffoon, from actual starvation.
May the example of John Palmer have its proper weight with every man whose physical capabilities lead him to adopt pugilism as a profession; and enforce the truth, that no constitution, however good, no strength, however superior to that of ordinary men, no amount of courage no degree of determination, can supply the want of caution, of attention to training, of prudence, of moderation; in short, of steadiness of conduct and becoming behaviour in and out of the ring. This is the deduction which every attentive reader of this history cannot fail to draw from a perusal of the lives of our most eminent boxers—that in the ring, as in every other pursuit, honesty of purpose, self-denial, and sobriety are indispensable—at least while engaged in struggles to attain distinction.
Scroggins departed this life on the 1st of November, 1836, in extreme poverty, having not quite completed his 49th year.
In Bell’s Life in London of November 6, appeared a “monody” of great length, and on the 13th the subjoined—
“EPITAPH ON OLD JACK SCROGGINS, P.P.
BY SIR FROSTY-FACED FOGO, BART., P.L.F.[[163]]
“Beneath this turf, and number’d with the dead,
Poor old Jack Scroggins rests his weary head.