Mr. Bullock won £20,000 by the battle. He backed Johnson, taking high odds, and afterwards made him a present of £1000 (and he deserved the generous gift). The door-money amounted to £800, of which Johnson had £533, after expenses deducted. As the song says,
“Shall we ever, shall we ever;
Shall we ever see the like again?”
The remarkable print from which our engraving is furnished, is certainly, when we compare it with most of the art-productions of the day, a most creditable production. The descriptions which we have quoted from witnesses of the fight, and from persons who well knew the combatants, are fully realised. Although the stoop of Johnson certainly exaggerated the vast proportion of Perrins, the disparity, upon closer examination, is not so extreme. The faces, you feel, must be portraits.
The fights which followed will be found under Brain (Big Ben) and George Ingleston (note to John Jackson).
Johnson now seemed to be without a rival to dispute his supremacy; but about the year 1790, the Duke of Hamilton, who had been the firm friend and patron of Ben Brain of Bristol (Big Ben), was extremely anxious to back his protégé against the renowned, and as yet invincible Johnson. A challenge was accordingly published, the Duke backing Ben for 500 guineas.
“Johnson,” says “Pancratia,” “who the year before possessed the amount of £5000 acquired by his astonishing success in the battles he had fought, by an unlucky ‘leter’ of shaking the elbow, found himself obliged, in order to replenish the exchequer, to accept Ben’s offer. The conditions were agreed upon, and the day fixed for January 17th, 1791. Never was public curiosity more on tiptoe;” but as this battle belongs by our system to the memoir of the victor, it will be found in the memoir of Big Ben. This was the last fight of both these celebrated pugilists.
Johnson’s name appears from time to time as second to Hooper, the tinman, “Gentleman Jackson,” and other pugilists, but no more as principal. We find Bell soon after his victory over Stanyard, the Birmingham boxer, (in December 1792) challenging Johnson to “mill for a guinea;” whereon the reporter remarks: “Tom, however, has lost too many of the yellow-boys lately to trouble himself to win a single one, and left the stage.” A sufficient allusion to Tom’s improvidence.
Johnson, becoming a Boniface, took the “Grapes” in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields. Here he failed in business, owing to his gambling propensities, which also caused the loss of his license. He then became the proprietor of an EO table at races, etc. This, too, failing, he migrated to Ireland. In Dublin he kept, as we see by advertisements, a public house in Cooper-Alley: but here again the gaming practices and frequenters incensed the magistrates, and he was deprived of his license. He next is found in Cork, where he advertised for pupils in the art of boxing, and where, on the 21st of January, 1797, aged forty-seven years, the Champion fell before the arm of the great leveller—death.
“Johnson’s appearance,” says a contemporary, “indicated, when stripped, more of strength than beauty of form. He was in height nearly five feet nine inches, and about fourteen stone in weight; a remarkably round-made man, with very fine chest and shoulders, and displaying immensely strong loins. He was by no means a showy fighter, and his guard was generally considered inelegant, and his attitudes more defensive than otherwise. In the fight he was peculiarly steady, watching every movement of his antagonist with a coolness unequalled, receiving the attack unappalled, and scarcely ever failing in the return of planting a most desperate hit. The head was his favourite object, and if his adversary did not possess considerable science, he was in extreme danger of being put in the dark. Johnson walked round his antagonist in a way peculiar to himself, that so puzzled his adversary to find out his intent, that he was frequently thrown off his guard, by which manœuvring Johnson often gained the most important advantages. Tom was thorough game, and showed the utmost contempt for retreating; at the same time careful to avoid exposing his person too much to the attacks of his antagonist. One pugilist,” continues the author of “Pancratia,” “may be superior in strength, a second in science, a third in endurance, but in Johnson have been more fully combined the requisites of a complete boxer than in any pugilist up to this day.”