“When at Philadelphia I intended taking a Southern tour, but an unexpected circumstance brought me back to New York. There appeared a challenge in the papers of New York from the Michigan Giant to me; my friends at New York went to try to make a match with him; they offered to back me for ten thousand dollars a side, and sent for me to return as soon as possible. There is no match made yet, but it is likely there will be soon. I am quite prepared to fight him—he is the only man who could draw me from my first determination. This Giant is seven feet three inches high, proportionally stout, and very active; he can turn twenty-five somersets in succession, can hold a large man out at arm’s length, he weighs 333lb., and has nothing but muscle on his bones. I have all reasons to believe a match will be made. I expect to be in England in a short time if the above match is not made, when I shall be ready to accommodate Bendigo. You will oblige me by inserting some or the whole of the above in your valuable columns.
I remain, Yours, &c. “BENJAMIN CAUNT.”
“New York, December 20th, 1841.”
That there were showmen before Artemus Ward, as ingenious, if not so “genial” or witty, the reader must allow. The bathos of being ready for little Bendigo, after disposing of a monster “seven feet three inches high, and proportionally stout,” and “weighing 23st. 11lb.,” is overwhelming. The “gag” is sufficiently indicated by another paragraph from a New York paper, in which the “Michigan Giant” becomes the “New York Baby,” without any mention of fistic collision between the so-called “Champions.”
“The amateurs of the Ring have been on the ‘ki wivy’ (according to a notorious ex-justice of police) since the arrival of the English Champion, Caunt. He has just concluded a successful engagement at one of the Philadelphia theatres, after having appeared several nights here at the Bowery, in ‘Life in London.’ Caunt has put on the gloves for a friendly set-to with most of our amateurs at Hudson’s ‘Sparring Rooms and Pistol Gallery,’ corner of Broadway and Chambers Street; he hits hard, and is as active as a bottle imp. But ‘a baby’ has at length been found who promises to show both fun and fight, in the shape of a young New Yorker, standing seven feet in his stockings, and whose weight is three hundred and fifteen pounds. His name is Charles Freeman, and he is about the tallest specimen of our city boys that ever came under the notice of the ‘Tall Son of York.’ He has immense muscular developments, and is well put together, with arms and legs strong enough for the working-beam or piston-rod of a Mississippi steamboat. Freeman has lately returned from a visit through the British Provinces, where he was sufficiently successful to lay claim to Cæsar’s motto, ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’ At Halifax, recently, some one sent him a challenge, which was accepted, but upon seeing the ‘New York Baby,’ waived the honour of meeting him, except with the muffles on. It is, we believe, arranged that our specimen youth shall accompany the English Champion back to the Old World, where, we’ll lay a pile, they’ll be gravelled to match him.”
These pilot balloons were soon followed by the return of the doughty Ben with his Giant protégé, in the month of March, 1842. The “sparring tours” were carried out by Ben and his Giant partner, including appearances at provincial theatres, &c. with an undercurrent of pugilistic challenges and “correspondence” kept up in the sporting papers, in which the Tipton Slasher challenged the American Giant, and Bendigo now and then offered terms to Ben himself. These do not belong to a history of pugilism, and we pass them by, with a mere reference to our notice of Freeman’s fiasco with the clumsy Tipton Slasher in another place. (See Life of William Perry, Chapter IV.)
We may here interject a paragraph to say that the cup which Ben was wont to exhibit to visitors to St. Martin’s Lane, as the “Champion of England’s Cup,” was a handsome piece of plate, subscribed for by a number of Ben’s admirers and friends in Newcastle, Gateshead, Nottingham, &c. and presented to him at a “spread” at Izzy Lazarus’s, “Cross Keys,” Gateshead, on the date given in the inscription, which was as follows: “Presented to Benjamin Caunt, Champion of England, by his Newcastle friends, as a token of respect for his abilities as a pugilist and his conduct as a man, July 6th, 1842.”
That Ben kept himself before the public, may be gathered from the following comprehensive challenge, which we select from several of the same character, and which served for gossip for the gobemouches in 1843 and 1844:—
“A WORD FROM THE CHAMPION.
“To the Editor of Bell’s Life in London.