With this “glorious defeat,” more honourable to the loser than many victories, we close the Ring career of the brave, honest, and straightforward Harry Orme. We shall conclude our Ring memoirs of this courageous champion by a few words of quotation from a contemporary account of this final fight: “Orme is a remarkably quiet, civil fellow, and is much respected by his friends at the East End, and, indeed, by all who intimately know him. He is a man who never talks about fighting, except in the briefest terms, and then only when he means business. We do not ever recollect hearing from his lips, either at home or in public, any of that slang or loose talk which many of his brother professionals consider witty, or smart, and laughter-provoking. In fact, Harry Orme is singularly modest, and not only avoids boasting, but is always ready to concede credit to his opponent, and leave to others the praising of himself.”
Harry Orme was for many years known as the landlord of the “Jane Shore,” in Shoreditch. He died on the 9th of June, 1864, in his 41st year, and rests beneath a neat memorial in Abney Cemetery.
“Rari quippe boni: numero vix sunt totidem, quot
Thebarum portæ, vel divitis ostia Nili.”—Juvenal, Sat.
CHAPTER VIII.
TOM PADDOCK.
1844–1860.
In the little world as in the great, “history never tires of repeating itself,” according to the Napoleonic axiom; and so in the period in which the rustic, ruddy, round-boned, pugnacious Tom Paddock flourished his fists, the interregnum of the Ring exhibited a parallel to our ancient Heptarchy, the combats of which were compared by David Hume, the historian, to “the battles of the kites and the crows.” Big Ben Caunt, the crafty Bendigo (William Thompson, of Nottingham), Tom Paddock (of Redditch), Con Parker (for a few months), the Tipton Slasher (William Perry), and, finally, Harry Orme and Harry Broome, bandied and buffeted about the title of “Champion of England,” until the scarcity of “good men” reminded us of the lines of Juvenal:—
“Good men are scarce, indeed so thinly sown,