The fight, which began at twenty-four minutes past seven, was over at a quarter to ten, lasting two hours and twenty minutes.
When the ring was broken in, in the thirty-seventh round, and the referee shut out from view, Heenan, who was fast becoming blind, hugged Sayers on the ropes. The ropes were lowered by Tom’s friends, doubtless, but were not cut. Had the referee been there, he would unquestionably have ordered the round to have been closed. Rule 28 of the Ring Code was as follows, before the Farnborough fight. It has since been enlarged in its scope to prevent similar dangerous practices more effectually:—“28. Where a man shall have his antagonist across the ropes in such a position as to be helpless, and to endanger his life by strangulation or apoplexy, it shall be in the power of the referee to direct the seconds to take their man away, and thus conclude the round; and that the man or his seconds refusing to obey the direction of the referee shall be deemed the loser.” Of this the Yankee scribes chose to be utterly oblivious, though the articles specified the battle to be under the New Rules of the Ring—i.e., those of 1853. The referee, however, so say the American party, sent an order for the cessation of hostilities. This, though since confirmed, was not believed by Sayers’ friends, who, seeing victory within his grasp, thought it a mere ruse to obtain a drawn battle.
Five rounds were thereafter fought, Heenan’s sight being so defective that, in the fourth of these, the forty-first, Heenan rushed from his corner while Sayers was on his second’s knee, and, letting fly at Jemmy Welsh, knocked him nearly over, and kicked at Harry Brunton, if he did not strike him, of which we are not certain. He then hugged Sayers, and they both fell; Tom hitting up sharply in Heenan’s battered frontispiece. A cry was raised that the referee had declared the fight over, whereon Heenan rushed from the ring with great activity, followed by his clamorous friends. We stayed, and found Sayers strong, with his sight good, and in all respects but his injured dexter arm—of little use since the fourth round—able, as he said, “to fight an hour.”
Leaving Tom, we hurried to the carriages, the train standing on the Farnborough embankment, where we saw Heenan, already blind as a bat, lifted into his compartment. Arrived at the Bricklayers’ Arm Station, we accompanied the gallant Champion to the hostelrie of his old friend, Ned Elgee, “The Swan,” Old Kent Road. Here no sooner was the hero seated, for he refused to go to bed, than he inquired after his opponent. His friend and backer (Mr. John Gideon) suggested that the heroes should meet and shake hands, and the writer of this hastened across the road to invite the Benicia Boy and his friends to an interview. He was in a close cab wrapped in blankets—blind, unpresentable, and seemingly unconscious. Tom was soon cheerful, and over a little tea regretted that the doctor’s veto prevented his partaking of the champagne creaming around him to his health and success, amid plaudits to his bravery.
Sayers was next morning at Norfolk Street, at the stakeholder and referee’s office, and a photograph has fixed beyond dispute his condition, which, save his right arm already spoken of, was nothing beyond a tumefied mouth and a few bumps on his hard forehead. Heenan, on the contrary, despite the absurd declarations of his American letter-writer, was not in a condition to see or be seen. For fully forty-eight hours he was in “darkness,” in bed in an upper-room at Osborne’s Hotel in the Adelphi, and for more than that time in a critical condition, as we know from unimpugnable proof. The friends of Heenan pretended to base their great grievance on the fact that, as the contest was not finished on the day, it ought to have been resumed during the week. The answer to this is, first, that this was mere bounce, as Heenan was in no condition to resume hostilities; secondly, that in the condition of Sayers’s right arm he was entitled, by Ring precedents (the fight having been once interrupted) to a reasonable period to recover its use; thirdly, that it would have been contrary to all dictates of humanity—and fairness, which includes humanity, is a prized attribute of British boxing; fourthly, that public opinion was opposed in the strongest manner to the two brave fellows who had so heroically contended, and had been baulked of a result by no fault or shortcoming of either, after such punishment as they had undergone, renewing their interrupted struggle. For these and other cogent reasons, it was proposed by the referee and stakeholder, and—after the subsidence of the American mortification to a better state of feeling—agreed to by both men, that two similar belts should be made, one to be presented to each champion.
We shall not record the ceremonial of this presentation—which was performed on the part of England by Frank Dowling, Esq., editor of Bell’s Life, and on that of America by G. Wilkes, Esq., editor of the New York Spirit of the Times—as the whole affair, speeches and all, savour too strongly of the circus style of bunkum and bombast. The modest paragraph in the Times of May 30th, 1860, though written as an avant courrier, is more to our taste:—
“The Championship Belts.—America and England shake hands cordially to-day. What our greatest diplomatists and engineers have failed to achieve has been accomplished by the Benicia Boy and Tom Sayers, whose fame will descend to future generations, and whose posterity will each be enabled to show a fac-simile of that much desired ‘belt,’ so boldly challenged, so manfully defended. The Atlantic cable has not linked the two nations together, but the good feeling which has been shown by the two gladiators, who on this day receive at the Alhambra their respective ‘belts,’ will be responded to by the two nations on either side of the Atlantic. We have been favoured with a view of the old belt, ‘the belt’ still open to competition, and of the two other belts to be presented to the ‘two Champions of England,’ for such is the inscription upon the case of each. Both are precisely similar in every respect, and the somewhat clumsy workmanship, in frosted silver, carefully copied from the original, is by Mr. C. F. Hancock, of Bruton Street.”
How British admiration of true courage expressed itself in the substantial form of a public subscription, and how Members of Parliament, the Stock Exchange, Lloyd’s, and Mark Lane, clubbed their gold pieces to enable the Champion to pass in peace and competence the remainder of his days, guarded from the stings and sorrows of poverty, have been told in the columns of the contemporary sporting press.
After Mace’s victories over Sam Hurst and Tom King, there was some talk of Sayers coming out from his retirement and having a turn with the Norwich man, but it ended in smoke. As Tom, from the universal interest excited by his heroic display, was an object of interest to the multitude, he received liberal offers from some Yankee circus proprietors, and by the aid of the “rhino” thus earned became first a shareholder, and then proprietor of Howes and Cushing’s Circus, under the management of Jem Myers. The speculation, we suspect, carried Tom out of his depth, and the horses, mules, carriages, &c. were sold off some twelve months after their purchase. Tom’s free living degenerated into excess during this loose and excited life of a travelling showman and exhibitor; for poor Tom, in his simple faith, was by no means an Artemus Ward, and no match for Yankee smartness. There is little doubt that Tom at this time laid the seeds of the inflammatory disease which shortened his days, and cut him off at the early age of thirty-nine.
The kind friends who uncompromisingly stipulated, when Tom’s capital was invested, that he should “fight no more,” did not place any restriction on his re-appearance in the roped arena. When King and Heenan fought, on December 10, 1863, Sayers conformed to the etiquette of his profession, and seconded “the American.” Heenan’s party evidently believed that Tom’s prestige would scatter dismay in the ranks of King’s followers, and help to overwhelm the “jolly young waterman” at the outset. Poor Sayers’ descent had, however, commenced, and when he stepped into the ring, in Heenan’s corner, it was plain he was there more for dramatic effect than anything else. Attired in a fur cap, a yellow flannel jacket, and jack-boots, he was vociferously applauded when he commenced his duties in attending to Heenan’s toilette. Even then people said, “How are the mighty fallen,” for poor Tom was no more equal to his onerous task than a child. During the fight at Wadhurst he looked in strange bewilderment at King and Heenan, and when the “Benicia Boy” required assistance, his second was perfectly helpless. Still the gladiator quitted the scene in a graceful and generous manner, in having stood esquire to the opponent who was instrumental in bringing out that steel, courage, and pluck of which the first of English pugilists was composed.