Corroborative evidence was given by Edward Noakes, the cellarman and waiter, by Sarah Martin, the barmaid, and by Dominic Carr, sergeant of police.
John Short, conductor of the fire escape stationed by St. Martin’s Church, proved having attended with his machine immediately after the alarm was given. He first directed the machine to the second floor window, through which he entered. He found no person in this room, and as the fire prevented his getting further, he came down, and having thrown up the top ladder, reascended to the parapet. He tried to make an entrance through the parapet window, but the flames and smoke at this time shot through with such violence that all his efforts were unavailing, and he again descended. He heard no cries coming from the attic window while he was there.
The coroner briefly charged the jury. It was a most deplorable case, but he apprehended, after the testimony they had had from the various witnesses, the jury would have little difficulty in arriving at a conclusion.
The jury, after consulting for a few moments, found “that the deceased parties were suffocated in a fire, the origin of which they had no evidence before them to determine.”
Caunt did not return from the country till the following morning. His feelings may be more easily conceived than described. Both himself and his wife were so deeply affected as to excite the commiseration of all classes.
The last appearance of our ponderous hero in the P.R. was one that adds no leaf of laurel to his pugilistic biography. Some absurd family quarrels (Nat Langham had married a relative of Mrs. Caunt), together with some petty trade jealousy, (Nat being the popular landlord of the “Cambrian Stores,” Castle Street, Leicester Square, hard by Big Ben’s “Coach and Horses”), gave rise to all sorts of unpleasant personalities on more than one occasion. Nat, though a civil and, except professionally, non-combative sort of fellow, having over and over again expressed his opinion that Caunt had no pretensions to pugilistic honours beyond the possession of unwieldy bulk and clumsy strength, and further, that “he couldn’t hit him (Nat) in a month of Sundays,” the feud, aggravated by crabbed old Ben Butler and Mrs. Caunt, assumed the bitterness of a family feud, and finally Ben proposed and “Ould Nat” accepted a challenge to settle this “difference of opinion” in the manner and form prescribed by the fair rules and regulations of British boxing. The articles were formulated on the 16th of May, 1857, by which, and a deposit of £10 a side, the parties agreed to stake £200 a side in instalments, the battle to come off on the 23rd of the ensuing September. It is regrettable to find that the “feud of kindred” received yet another proof of its exceeding intensity over all ordinary quarrels among strangers. At the second deposit Nat (he was going out of town) actually left his £10 with the final stakeholder a week before it was due, whereon Caunt and Co. appealed to the “letter of the articles,” which declared that the “said deposits should be made at the times and places hereinafter mentioned,” and claimed forfeit of the money down; although the “final stakeholder, to whom all deposits should be paid over in time for insertion in Bell’s Life in London” had actually given notice to “uncle Butler,” (Caunt being away at Brighton,) of the previous deposit of the money in his hands. This quibbling plea was, however, repudiated by Caunt himself, as will be seen below, and the match went on:—
“Mr. Editor,—I respectfully ask that you will admit into your columns this declaration on my part: That my match with Langham is the result of a dispute that can only be settled, so far as I am concerned, by an appeal to the fists. That the articles will be strictly abided by on my part, and that so far from throwing any impediment in the way of the match it is my anxious desire to bring it to an issue in the Ring. Thus far, I beg my friends will take my assurance of ‘honourable intentions.’ Were they but aware of the personal nature of the affair, such assurance would not be needed; but, as many must necessarily be unacquainted with its cause of origin, it is due to my own character to take the course I have now done in writing to you an emphatic statement of my intentions, which I solemnly assert are unalterable, until that result comes to pass which shall prove either me or my antagonist the better man.
“Yours, &c. BENJAMIN CAUNT.
“‘Coach and Horses,’ St. Martin’s Lane, London,
May 27th, 1857.”
To which the editor adds:—