Barney Aaron, whose victorious career we have just given, was the Sailor Boy’s next opponent. In weight the men were about equal, but the fame of the “Star of the East” shone so brightly that the £100 staked were already “as good as won,” and so discounted by the denizens of Duke’s Place. But the soundness of Mark Twain’s advice, “never to prophesy unless you know,” received here another illustration. On the 11th of November, 1828, at the Barge House, Woolwich Marshes, the renowned Barney struck his colours to the gallant Sailor Boy, after eighteen sharp fighting rounds, lasting fifteen minutes only.

Tom Reidie, “the Colonel,” conceiting himself upon his shifty performance among the cabbages at Battersea, already noticed, having spoken disparagingly of Harry’s victory as “a fluke,” followed it up by expressing a wish that “somebody” would back him for “half a hundred,” and let him “stand in a tenner of his own.” A patron of the “silver” or “copper hell,” whereof the Colonel was for the time being “groom-porter,” volunteered “the needful,” and, in the short period of seven weeks from his victory over Aaron, the Sailor Boy was face to face with Reidie at Hurley Bottom, Berks, on the 30th of December, 1828, for £15 a-side. This time the Colonel’s “strategic movements to the rear” entirely failed him. The stakes and ropes enclosed him in the limits of twenty-four feet, and in less than that number of minutes (the fight lasted twenty-two, minutes) down went Tom Reidie for the last time, at the close of the sixteenth round, perfectly satisfied that he had quite another “boy” to deal with than the lad he had tired out in Battersea Fields.

Frank Redmond, whose game battles with Barney Aaron we have already chronicled in these pages, proposed to try conclusions with the Sailor Boy for a stake of £100 a-side, which Jones had now little difficulty in getting together. It was a game and, for a few rounds, a tremendous struggle, but Harry had “a little more left in him” in the last three rounds (there were only ten in all), and in thirty-six minutes he was hailed the victor of a well-fought field.

We should unduly extend the bulk of our volumes did we attempt to give the detailed rounds of all the fights of the minor celebrities to whom we have given niches in our gallery of pugilistic pen-portraits. We shall therefore summarise Harry’s other battles by merely enumerating them.

On the 19th May, 1829, at Harpenden Common, he fought and beat George Watson for a stake of £50 a-side. Time, thirty-nine minutes; rounds, thirty.

June 7th, 1831, beat Dick Hill (the Nottingham Champion), for £100 a-side, at Bagthorpe Common, Notts, in sixty-nine rounds, eighty minutes.

Harry next met “the Oxford Pet,” Perkins, whose victory over Dick Curtis had placed him on a pinnacle above his real merits as a boxer. On January 17th, 1832, Harry Jones disposed of “the Pet’s” lofty pretensions in twenty-two rounds, occupying forty-six minutes only. The battle was fought at Hurley Bottom.

On April 2nd, 1833, Jones, who had just recovered from a long illness, fought Gipsy Jack Cooper for £25 a-side, at Chertsey. It was a long and tedious battle, with heavy punishment on both sides, for two hours and ten minutes, twenty-six long rounds, when Jones was hailed as conqueror.

For some time Harry, who was suffering from a chronic disease of the lungs, caused by exposure, earned money by sitting at Somerset House as an artists’ model; and we can well say a finer bust and arms for an athlete, or an exemplar of muscular development and symmetry, could rarely be met with. As poor Harry, too, was a civil-spoken and good-looking fellow, he had a numerous clientèle.

Another “Sailor Boy,” with the prefix of the words “The East End,” hight Tom Smith, was now in the field. He was ten stone four pounds; and having disposed of the nine stone lad, Owen Swift, and also Jack Adams and Aaron, he challenged Harry. The match was made for £50 a-side, and the two “Sailor Boys” met at Shrubs Hill, Bucks, on the 17th June, 1834. Harry was no longer the “Gay Sailor Boy.” His heart was sound, but his breathing apparatus was rapidly going out of repair, and in five rounds, occupying only fourteen minutes, down went poor Harry for the last time, and his colours and the £50 were the prize of “the East End Sailor Boy.”