28.—Ward, fresh and jolly, hit with his left twice. Byrne bored in, and tumbled Ward down at the ropes, falling upon him.
29.—One hour and ten minutes had now elapsed, and Ward, instead of getting weaker, gained strength, showing the excellence of his condition. Byrne got away from a left-handed finisher. In a new attempt he was caught. He popped in his left at Ward’s bread-basket, but as he went down had a left-handed upper-cut.
30.—Counter-hits with the left on the mouth; both told, and were allowed to be the best exchanges yet made, all before being on the side of Ward. Byrne went down, but Ward caught him as he fell with a left-handed muzzler.
31.—A slaughtering round for poor Byrne, who had it repeatedly on the mouth with the left, and in going down received the upper-cut from Ward, who was never astray.
32.—Byrne greatly distressed. Ward went in to finish; planted his left three times. Byrne down.
33 and last.—Byrne now came up to make his last effort, but he was too far gone to make a change, and this more from exhaustion than hard hitting, for the blows were not delivered in dangerous places; still he was constantly receiving, and now again he had pepper in abundance, without being able to make any adequate return. In going down, Ward made a desperate back-handed offer with his right, but missed. It was clear to Spring and Reynolds that their man had no chance, and they prudently acknowledged Ward to be the better man. Jem immediately gave an active bound, shook hands with his fallen foe and his friends, and quitted the ring amidst loud cheers. The fight lasted one hour and seventeen minutes.
Remarks.—Thus ended Ward’s last battle for the championship of England, to which it may now be said Byrne had not the slightest pretensions. He had the vanity to hold his antagonist too cheap, and, unfortunately, deceived his friends, who followed his example. Ward, throughout, proved himself a consummate general, and never gave his opponent a chance, nor did he himself throw a chance away. He fought skilfully and scientifically, and has fulfilled that high character of his talents which was never doubted. Byrne proved himself an easy customer: he was clearly not in tip-top-condition; but it was never in his nature to beat a man like Jem Ward. He must now look for a second-rate customer, and profit by experience. That he is a game man at receiving, no one will doubt; but he was clearly afraid of his opponent after the first few rounds. It puzzled his friends to account for his never trying to stop Ward’s left, nor to rush to a ruffianing fight; but the fact was, his spirit was broken, and he had not his wits about him. He says, after the third round his arms felt as heavy as lead, and that he never was so transmogrified before. It is a singular fact that neither of the men had a black eye; neither had an external cut worth mentioning; nor was there a single good fall or cross-buttock throughout the fight. Byrne was beaten solely by exhaustion and repeated slaps on the nose and mouth, which would not have prevented his coming again had such a step been wise.
The men reached London on Wednesday night, Ward without a scratch, and Byrne only exhibiting a swollen mouth and nose, rather a surprising state of his phiz considering the repetition of Ward’s left-handed jobs.
On the Thursday following the fight Jem Ward was presented with a second champion’s belt by Tom Spring, at the Tennis Court, Windmill Street, on the occasion of Reuben Martin’s benefit; and on the following evening, when the battle-money was given up, he (Ward) offered to make a match to fight any man in the world for any sum from £100 to £500 a-side. This challenge was not accepted. Young Dutch Sam, however, offered to fight Ward if the latter would confine himself to twelve stone, and stake odds; but of course, as Ward could not so far reduce himself, the offer was not accepted. On the 25th of June, 1832, Jem wrote a letter to the editor of Bell’s Life in London, in which he stated that he had taken the Belt public-house at Liverpool, that it was his intention to retire from the ring, and to hand over the champion’s belt to the first man who proved himself worthy of it. Several challenges were subsequently issued to Ward, but none of them ever led to any meeting, and Jem adhered to his intention of not again entering the prize ring. He carried on business as a tavern keeper, first at the Star and then at the York Hotel, Williamson Square, Liverpool. In 1853, Ward removed to London, and became host of the Rose, in Jermyn Street. This speculation proving unsuccessful, his friends placed him in business at the Three Tuns, in Oxford Street, renamed the Champion’s Stores. Thence Jem Ward removed to his native locality, the east end of London, becoming landlord of the George, in Ratcliff Highway. The generation, however, who knew Jem as “the Black Diamond,” had passed away, and Ward once again migrated westward, this time opening the theatrical house, opposite Old Drury, known by various signs, and then as the Sir John Falstaff, in Brydges Street, a name now merged in Catherine Street, of which it is a continuation. We last saw Jem at the ring-side, looking, as a daily paper observed, “like a grey-moustached half-pay major,” at the wretched burlesque of a championship-fight, performed by Jem Mace and Joe Goss, at Farningham, Kent, on the 17th of May, 1866.
We must not omit to note that Ward possessed an inborn gift of artistic talent. His favourite pursuit was the wielding of the painter’s brush and maulstick. On several occasions Ward’s pictures were received with credit at the Liverpool Exhibition, and were mentioned approvingly by the public journals as displaying a remarkable degree of natural talent; so much so that an art critic wrote, “had Ward devoted himself to the study and practice of painting in his earlier years he would doubtless have attained eminence.” The writer, on his visit many years ago to Williamson Square, inspected in Jem’s studio, paintings (some sea-pieces especially) which bore marks of peculiar talent and no mean skill in manipulation. At this time too (she has retired from professional life), Miss Eleanor Ward, a pupil of Sir Julius Benedict, was fast rising in public esteem to the first ranks of pianoforte performers in the best of our concert-rooms. Ward’s hobbies, painting and music, adopted late in life, we fear injured his worldly calling as a sporting boniface, and, after several failures, he retired, by the assistance and votes of his friends, into that admirable institution, the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum, in the Old Kent Road; in the parlour of one of the snug separate dwellings of which we conversed with him, still cheery and animated, in the month of June of this present year, 1880, in his 80th year; Jem dating his birth, as we have already stated, from “Boxing Day” in the last twelvemonth of the last century.