Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3) / Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863

by Henry Downes Miles

“J. H.

“J. B. C.

“April 9, 1823.”

Belasco left the ring almost without a mark. The battle had lasted twenty-seven minutes when the interruption took place.

Belasco a fourth time met Sampson, at Crawley Hurst, August 19, 1823, and was once again beaten. See Sampson, Period VI.

Resolved not to close his fistic career in defeat, Belasco, though he had formally retired and become an L. V. in Whitechapel, presented himself, after Dick Curtis and Ayres had finished their battle at Shepperton Grange, May 25, 1824, with the enquiry whether George Weston, who had promised Aby a thrashing, intended to carry out his threat? The insult to Belasco, it appears, had occurred during the fight between Ned Neale and Tom Gaynor. Weston declared his readiness, and £16 were immediately put into a purse by the amateurs. The battle was a burlesque: Aby so punished Weston all over the ring, that he surrendered after three rounds.

From this period Aby figured merely as a second and a sparrer. His later career was disreputable, as a keeper of low gambling houses, night houses, supper rooms, and such like resorts of midnight and morning debauchery, which brought him into repeated conflicts with the law. His life no further concerns the history of the ring.

CY. DAVIS, “THE GAY BRISTOL BOY”—1818–1823.

Cyrus Davis was one of those boxers who shine with a reflected light, borrowed from the renown of the man they have conquered; his defeat of the game and scientific Ned Turner establishing his claim to notice, and also his extensive acquaintance as a tradesman, in after life, first in the vicinity of old Smithfield Market, where for many years he was landlord of the Bear and Ragged Staff, of the Plough, in Giltspur Street, and subsequently an L. V. at the New Cattle Market, Islington.

Cyrus was born in the Broadway, Bristol, November 27, 1795, and was, at fourteen years of age, apprenticed to a butcher. His height was five feet nine inches, his weight a trifle under eleven stone, far exceeded in his later days. His appearance was prepossessing, and his first lessons in the art were received from his townsman, George Nicholls, celebrated as the only conqueror of Cribb. Pierce Egan gives the usual early undated victories to Davis, which we pass to come to his first recorded London display.