Then good-bye for the present—I wish you all mércies;
You see I’m no bad one at tagging of werses,
And ready at all times for going to vork,
I’m yours, without any more gammon,
Deaf Burke.
This was the last “flare-up” of the Deaf’un’s pugnacious spirit. Late hours and long fasts, alternated with creaming sillery, lobster-salads, devilled biscuits, ditto kidneys, and a deluge of meaner liquors, soon reduced poor Burke to a shadow of his former self, and he died of consumption on the 8th of January, 1845, in Francis Street, Waterloo Road. His good qualities were his own, his vices the grafting of his so-called “betters” in society.
[14] In Fistiana (edit. 1864), Burke’s fight with Fitzmaurice is set down as having taken place on June 9th, 1834; i.e. thirteen months after the Deaf’un’s fatal affair with Simon Byrne, and is so placed. It occurred five years earlier, in 1829, as above narrated.
[15] Omitted from the list of Lazarus’s fights in Fistiana, but inserted under Brown.
[16] Butting was not yet prohibited, and was frequently resorted to when a man wished to escape from the hug of a fibbing or wrestling adversary.—Ed. Pugilistica.