No one who reads with attention the chequered career of James Burke will deny that “The Deaf’un” deserves to rank as one of the most honest, courageous, hardy, simple-minded, and eccentric fellows who ever sought praise and profit in the Prize Ring. Jem was the son of a Thames waterman who plied at the Strand Lane stairs. Left at an early age to the charge of a widowed mother, young Jem betook himself to the amphibious calling of “Jack-in-the-Water,” at the stairs where his father once plied with his “trim-built wherry.” At the time of which we write, before steam-boats, with their gangways and ugly dumb-lighters (the latter to give way yet later to a noble embankment with its broad granite-stepped landing places) had superseded the “caus’eys,” and “old stairs,” from Wapping to Westminster, the favourite and popular mode of transit of the dwellers in Cockaigne to Lambeth, to the glories of Vauxhall with its al fresco concerts and 30,00 (additional) lamps; to Cumberland Gardens, with its trellised tea-boxes, and “little gold and silver fish that wagged their little tails;” to the Red House, Battersea, with its gardens and pigeon shooting; to “Chelsea Ferry,” with its elm-bordered promenade and Soldiers’ Home, and to the numerous places of riverside resort, was by “oars or sculls,” plied by the brawny arms of the “firemen-watermen,” one of the most laborious and deserving fraternities who devoted their well-earned and well-paid services to the pleasure-seeking public who patronised the broad highway of the Thames. The popularity and consequent prosperity of the stalwart “firemen-watermen” (for most of them wore the handsome coat and badge of, and were retained by, one or other of the great London Insurance Offices, and were the only organised body for the extinguishing of fires and saving of life) extended to the humble “Jack-in-the-Water,” whose duty consisted in wading bare-legged into the rippling tide, dragging the sharp nose of the wherry on to the paved causeway, or by its pile-protected side, and there steadying it, while the “jolly young waterman” politely handed his “fare” over the rocking “thwarts” of his smart, light boat to his or her cushioned seat in the “stern-sheets.” For his services in thus holding on, and thereby securing the balance of the staggering land-lubbers, for a pair of “sea-legs” were never included in the cockney’s qualifications, “poor Jack” seldom went unrewarded by one or more “coppers,” for we had not then come to the “age of bronze.” This humble and weather-beaten calling was by no means an unprofitable one to a hardy, handy, and industrious lad, such as young Jem Burke undoubtedly was.
JAMES BURKE (“The Deaf’un”).
The date of Jem’s birth was Dec. 8th, 1809, in the closing years of the “war of giants,” and in his earlier days London was alive with war excitement; with processions on the Thames of the gilded and bannered barges of the Corporation and the public companies, with gaily painted pinnaces, shallops, and house-boats, aquatic fireworks and illuminations, and galas in honour of our victories in Portugal and Spain; to say nothing of frequent grand doings along the then bright river on all sorts of City “gaudy” days. It was moreover the line of procession on the 9th of November and other times when my Lord Mayor went in state to Westminster; and of continually recurring wager matches of skill and strength for prizes given by citizens, public bodies, and aquatic clubs, for the encouragement of the Thames watermen “between the bridges.” All these have vanished with the crowds who enjoyed them. The “fireman-waterman” is as extinct as the dodo. The half-penny or penny steam-boat of an utilitarian age has “improved him off the face of the earth,” and the picturesque silver Thames runs a paddle-churned cloaca maxima of the great towns in its upper course, by the stately buildings of our Palaces of Parliament and Palatial Hospital, sweeping by where once Strand Lane stairs offered itself as a convenient outlet for “taking the water,” along a spacious embankment, with its leafy avenues, bordered by lofty stone-built public edifices. Far different the Thames by which the young Deaf’un earned his “crust,” and added to the poor comforts of a widowed mother. Then the merry-makings we have above alluded to made the miscalled silent highway a lively and populous show-scene, to the profit of such snappers-up of unconsidered trifles as our “poor Jack,” whose Christian name was Jem. As to the “schooling” of our hero—for a hero he unquestionably was—it amounted to that sort of general knowledge which could be picked up in that “university” which Mr. Samuel Weller declares to be the best for sharpening a boy’s wits—the streets. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge as yet was not; the “schoolmaster” was altogether “abroad,” in the wrong sense; and the Briarean School-board had not yet “comprehended all vagrom” boys and girls, and taught them the “three R’s” in spite of their teeth. “Reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic” not being in the curriculum of young Jem’s “’varsity,” he was perfectly innocent of those accomplishments, despite Dogberry’s assertion that to “read and write comes by nature,” though at figures, we can certify from our own personal converse, the Deaf’un had, on special occasions, an almost intuitive aptitude. His knowledge too, upon out-of-the-way subjects, was occasionally surprising; he had much “mother-wit,” a quaint felicity of expression, a sly touch of humour, and a quiet stolidity of look and manner, the outcome of his infirmity of deafness, which amused the hearer, from the apparently unconscious humour with which his comical notions were set forth. Of Jem’s physical powers and muscular endowments, the story of his Ring performances in after years will sufficiently speak.
Thus the young “Jack-in-the-Water,” like Topsy, “grow’d,” and we need not say he was well furnished in these respects to take his own part in the very rough “battle of life” to which he was from his earliest infancy introduced.
That the future Candidate for the Championship, born and bred in those “fighting days,” when Gully and Gregson, Belcher and Cribb, were on every tongue, should have yearnings to “improve his gifts,” as the goody-goody books express it, was but a natural sequence to what philosopher Square calls “the eternal fitness of things.” Hard by the Strand Lane stairs stood a well-frequented public-house, known as “The Spotted Dog,” the landlord of which was an ex-pugilist of no mean renown, hight “Joe Parish, the Waterman.” What wonder, that Joe’s judicious eye noted the good “points” in the sturdy little “Jack-in-the Water’s” build and disposition, and that he befriended the boatman’s orphan, patting his head as he warmed his chilled hands by the tap-room fire, where he dried his always damp and scanty clothing, and, as the Deaf’un himself has told us, saying, “You go straight, Jemmy, and we’ll see if you won’t be a topsawyer among ’em yet”? This early patronage by Joe Parish, as we shall see hereafter, continued down to Burke’s latest days, a fact creditable to both parties.
A passing remark on the pugilistic eminence of watermen may here be in place. Jack Broughton, the Father of the Ring, was a waterman; as also was Lyons, who beat Darts for the Championship in 1769; while, passing over many boxers who plied the oar, the names of Bishop Sharpe, Harris, “The Waterman,” Harry Jones, and the Deaf’un’s “guide, philosopher, and friend,” Joe Parish, occur to us. No wonder, then, that on the 5th of February, 1828, young Jem Burke, under the wing of old Joe, was by the ring-side at Whetstone, near Barnet, an admiring spectator of the eccentric battle which there and then took place between a couple of dwarfs; one a Welshman named David Morgan, a vendor of shrimps and shell fish well known in various sporting and other public-houses, and the other Sandy M’Bean, a Scotch professor of the Highland bagpipes and the “fling.” After a ludicrous display of bantam game, Taffy was declared the conqueror, the second of the canny Scot carrying him out of the ring vi et armis, in spite of his protestations that he “wasna beaten ava’,” though the poor little fellow had not the ghost of a chance.
And now there was a pause, and a purse of £14 being collected, Ned Murphy (who had already fought M’Carthy, and a commoner or two), presented himself as a candidate for the coin. Our hero (who, doubtless, knew something of the challenger), eager of the opportunity of showing the stuff he was made of, at once, with the approval of Joe Parish, stepped into the ropes, and threw down his cap as a reply. No time was wasted in elaborate toilettes, and the ring being cleared, all eyes were bent on the “big fight” of the day, which, on this occasion, was presented as the afterpiece. Mister Murphy was so cock-sure of the money, and so eager to win, that he went off at score to polish off “the boy” for his presumption. Not only was his gallop stopped by some clever straight ’uns from the resolute young Jack, helped by an occasional upper-cut as he went in, but he, in turn, was fain to stand out, and retreat to “draw” his opponent. Young Jem, however, was not to be had twice at this game, and Mister Murphy not quite liking the look of the job, began to fight for darkness, which was fast coming on. Harry Jones, who was picking up Murphy as a “pal,” seeing the dubious state of affairs, stepped up to the referee and asked a “draw.” The men had now fought 50 rounds in the like number of minutes, and were quite capable, if they were of the same sort as the last dozen, of fighting 50 more; so the Young’un was persuaded to “whack” the stakes, and make up matters over a pot and a pipe at “The Spotted Dog,” by which arrangement Mr. Murphy got the “half a loaf” which is proverbially “better than no bread,” while the young “Jack-on-the-water” was in the seventh heaven of delight, not only at his success (for he felt he must win), but at the possession of several golden portraits of His Majesty George the Fourth, of a value which to him seemed to vie with the fabulous treasures of Aladdin’s cave.
Jem was now “a card,” not only at the Strand Lane soirées, but was a free and accepted brother at all the sporting cribs in the hundred of Drury, Wild Street, the pugnacious purlieus of Clare Market, and among the “porterhood” of Covent Garden. Those were rough times, and among other rough entertainments the “rough music” of the butchers of Clare Market was not the least popular. Their marrow-bones and cleavers were always ready to “discourse” loud, if not “sweet music,” upon occasions of a wedding, a birth, or a christening among their own fraternity, or when any popular or well-known inhabitant took unto himself a wife. Foremost in these charivaris was one Tom Hands, who further had the reputation of being “sudden in quarrel,” and with him and the Deaf’un there had passed a sharp round or two at one of these uproarious gatherings, which had ended in their being separated by their friends.
On August 14th, 1828, Ned Stockman and Sweeney were matched to fight at Old Oak Common; the affair being arranged at a dinner at Alec Reid’s, at Chelsea. The ring was pitched, the expectant crowd assembled, and “time” was called. Peter Sweeney showed in battle array, but where was the “Lively Kid”? and echo answered “where?” He didn’t show at all, and a forfeit of the stake being then and there declared, his representative urged as a reason for what Sweeney called “making a fool of the public,” that Stockman “preferred his match with Harry Jones” (in which he was deservedly thrashed on September 16th, 1828). As the day’s draw thus proved a blank, and the meet could hardly separate without sport of some kind, a whip was made for an impromptu fight. The hat went round, and the cash being gathered by Alec Reid and the renowned Frosty-faced Fogo, a hint from one of the Clare Market Guild of Kill-Bulls that Tom Hands would like to cross hands with Jem Burke, there and then, if the namesake of “the author of The Sublime and Beautiful” dared face him, was at once seized with avidity. A shout went up from a hundred lungs as the burly butcher, his hair shiny with grease, and his cheeks red as a peony, drew his blue smock over his head and proceeded to divest himself of his upper clothing; nor was “poor Jack” without friends. Behind him stood Joe Parish and Alec Reid; Hands being seconded by Sweeney and a Clare Market amateur. The fight was a sad exposé of Tom Hands’ want of skill in the opening, and lack of what a slaughterman never should be deficient in—pluck. The Deaf’un, who looked hard as iron and solid as the trunk of a tree, fought the first three or four rounds on the retreat, jobbing the butcher fearfully, and bleeding him from every vein of his fleshy jowl; then, having got him down to his own weight, he reversed the process, and fought him all over the ring so effectively that in the 10th round, 17 minutes only having elapsed, Hands’ second threw up the sponge in token of defeat, the butcher being terribly punished, while the Deaf’un was scarcely marked.