[41]. It would be injustice to omit a short sketch of what our Yankee friends would call so “tall” a boxer as Isaac Perrins. His immense strength was “yoked with a lamb-like disposition.” In Birmingham, where he had long followed his occupation as foreman of a large manufactory, he was respected by his employers, and beloved by the workmen under him. Perrins was far from an illiterate man. In his general conversation he was intelligent, cheerful, and communicative, and possessed of a considerable share of discernment, which, after he quitted his calling as a coppersmith at Birmingham, and became a publican at Manchester, was of great service to him in business. His house was well attended by customers of a superior class. Isaac, too, had a natural taste for music, and, at one period of his life, was the leader of a country choir in psalmody. In company, Perrins was facetious, full of anecdote, and never tardy in giving his song; and was a strong instance in his own person, among many others which might be cited, if necessary, that it does not follow as a matter of course that all pugilists are blackguards! The following anecdote from a work entitled “The Itinerant,” not only places the good temper and amazing strength of Perrins in a conspicuous point of view, but exhibits one of the peculiar traits of an erratic histrionic genius, whose reckless riot ruined and extinguished his higher gifts. “It happened that Perrins, the noted pugilist, made one of the company this evening. He was a remarkably strong man, and possessed of great modesty and good nature; the last scene took such an effect on his imagination, that he laughed immoderately. Cooke’s attention was attracted, and turning towards him with his most bitter look, ‘What do you laugh at, Mr. Swabson, hey? Why, you great lubber-headed thief, Johnson would have beat two of you! laugh at me! at George Cooke! come out, you scoundrel!’ The coat was soon pulled off, and, putting himself in an attitude, he exclaimed, ‘This is the arm that shall sacrifice you.’ Perrins was of a mild disposition, and, knowing Cooke’s character, made every allowance, and answered him only by a smile, till aggravated by language and action the most gross, he very calmly took him in his arms as though he had been a child, set him down in the street, and bolted the door. The evening was wet, and our hero without coat or hat, unprepared to cope with it; but entreaty for admission was vain, and his application at the window unattended to. At length, grown desperate, he broke several panes, and, inserting his head through the fracture, bore down all opposition by the following witticism: ‘Gentlemen, I have taken some panes to gain admission, pray let me in, for I see through my error.’ The door was opened, dry clothes procured, and about one o’clock in the morning we sent him home in a coach.” Despite the second-hand wit, the credit remains with the pugilist.
In the “Annual Register,” under date of December 10, 1800, we read, “Died at Manchester, aged 50, Mr. Isaac Perrins, engine-worker. This pugilistic hero will ever be remembered for the well-contested battle he fought with the celebrated Johnson, in the month of October, 1789. Perrins possessed most astonishing muscular power, which rendered him well calculated for a bruiser, to which was united a disposition the most placid and amiable. His death was occasioned by too violently exerting himself in assisting to save life and property at a fire in Manchester. He was sincerely lamented by all who knew him.” Perrins needs no further epitaph than this tribute of one who knew him.
[42]. The account does not say whether blows had been exchanged, but we presume there had.—Ed.
[43]. Those who witnessed the memorable third fight between Caunt and Bendigo (at Sutfield Green, Oxfordshire, Sept. 19, 1845), so unfairly reported at the time, may think they are perusing an account of it. So does pugilism, like history, under like circumstances, “reproduce itself.”—Ed.
[44]. This seems to have been such a hit as that with which the Tipton closed accounts with Tass Parker in their last fight, or Tom King gave Mace at the conclusion of their second meeting. Those hits, when a man is “shaky,” are receipts in full.—Ed.
[45]. Jacombs, whose provincial triumphs are unrecorded, was a strong rough, with an Englishman’s heirdom, unyielding pluck. We find only one other notice in the journals of the time. “March 10 (1790). A desperate contest was fought at Stoke Golding, near Coventry, between Jacombs, the Warwickshire boxer, and Payne, of Coventry. At setting-to Jacombs was the favourite, but after a most severe conflict of two hours, in which the combatants contested ninety-five rounds, and during which both the combatants were several times thrown from the stage, Payne was declared victorious. The conduct of Payne was cool, but admirably courageous, whilst that of Jacombs seemed brutally passionate. He seemed to depend more upon driving and bruising his opponent against the railings than fair and open fighting with the fists.” We regret to say that Jacombs has had too many successors in this unmanly art, even with the less dangerous ropes and stakes of the modern ring.
[46]. Tom Tring in person, but not in physiognomy, resembled the late burly and clumsy boxer Ben Caunt. He was, however, a civil, inoffensive, and mild looking giant. He was the original of several Academicians’ drawings and paintings of Hercules. “He challenged all England” (except his friend Tom Johnson—a judicious exception), “for one thousand guineas;” so do the advertising hair-dressers: but when Pierce asks us to believe that poor Tring’s “qualities as a pugilist were of a most tremendous nature, and few men appeared who were capable of resisting his mighty prowess,” and of his being “clad in the rich paraphernalia (which of the princesses married him?) of royalty,” we begin to ask ourselves whether we are reading the history of Tom Thumb. To support this magniloquent introduction, we are told he beat Tom Pratt, “a very formidable man,” in 1787, a guinea to four shillings, “Pratt ran away, leaving Tom in possession of the ring.” We find, instead of this, under date of August 19th, 1787, that “a boxing match was contested on Kennington Common, between Jacob Doyle, the Irish boxer, and Tom Tring, which the latter won with ease. Tring is said to be the finest made man in England, and the talents of several of the first artists have been employed to delineate the symmetry of his person. As a boxer he possessed little science, but good courage.” (Quoted in “Pancratia,” p. 72). A terrible “street fight” with one Norfolk, a bricklayer, is here improvised, to introduce his thrashing by Big Ben. Poor Tring was another of the victims of the heartless dandy and unprincipled egotist miscalled “the first gentleman of Europe,” without a particle of the gentleman in his whole composition. Tring obtained a precarious living as a model to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hooper, Sir William Beechey, and others, and earned a crust as a street porter. He was a civil inoffensive fellow; in height six feet two inches, and weighing fifteen stone in prime condition. He died in the pursuit of his humble calling in the year 1815.
[47]. “Fighting for darkness,” a few years since, became a sort of calculated “off-chance,” to save bets among the “down the river” second-class pugilists of the London ring.—Ed.
[48]. Rather too small for big men.—Ed.
[49]. The distribution of duties of seconds, and a third party in care of the water, etc., in modern times, is noted elsewhere.—Ed.