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Frontispiece.

“The Close of the Battle, or the Champion Triumphant. 1. Round.—Sparring for one minute, Cribb made play right and left, a right-handed blow told slightly on the body of Molineux, who returned it on the head, and a rally followed, the Black knocked down by a hit on the throat. 2.—Cribb showed first blood from the mouth, a dreadful rally, Cribb put in a good body-hit, returned by the Moor on the head. Closing, Cribb thrown. 3.—Cribb’s right eye nearly closed, another rally, the Black deficient in wind receives a doubler in the body. Cribb damaged in both eyes and thrown. 4.—Rally, hits exchanged. Cribb fell with a slight hit and manifested first weakness. 5.—Rallying renewed. Cribb fell from a blow and received another in falling. 6.—The Black, fatigued by want of wind, a blow at the body-mark doubles him up, and is floored by a hit at great length. 7.—Black runs in intemperately, receives several violent blows about the neck and juggler, falls from weakness. 8.—Black rallies, Cribb nobs him, gets his head under his left arm, and just fibbed till the Moor fell. 9.—Black runs in, met with a left-handed blow which broke his jaw, and fell like a log. 10.—Black, with difficulty, made an unsuccessful effort and fell from distress. 11.—This round ended the fight. Black received another knock-down and unable again to stand up.”

KNUCKLES AND GLOVES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

GLAMOUR
CAKE
UNOFFICIAL
THE COMPLETE GENTLEMAN
THE TENDER CONSCIENCE
FORGOTTEN REALMS

MAX BEERBOHM IN PERSPECTIVE

THE COMPLETE AMATEUR BOXER

KNUCKLES AND GLOVES
BY
BOHUN LYNCH
WITH A PREFACE BY
SIR THEODORE COOK
Illustrated

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

Copyright
First Impression, October, 1922
Second Impression, November, 1922
Manufactured in Great Britain

To H. G. B. L.

Though I deplore the pain you felt
When you had broken my command,
And I had taken you in hand,
Planting my blows beneath your belt,
I like to think of future years
When skin that’s fair shall change to brown,
When ‘listed in a fairer fight,
You shall return to others’ ears
Blows straightly dealt with left and right,
Blows you encountered lower down!

PREFACE

In the brickwork of a well-known London house, not far from Covent Garden, there is a stone with the date, 1636, which was cut by the order of Alexander, Earl of Stirling. It formed part of a building which sheltered successively Tom Killigrew, Denzil Hollis, and Sir Henry Vane; and that great kaleidoscope of a quack, a swordsman, and a horse-breaker, Sir Kenelm Digby, died in it. Within its walls was summoned the first Cabinet Council ever held in England, by Admiral Russel, Earl of Orford. Its members belonged to a set of jovial sportsmen, of whom Lord Wharton and Lord Godolphin may be taken as excellent types. About the same time, out of the mob that peoples Hogarth’s pictures, out of the faces with which Fielding and Smollett have made us familiar, and in a society for which Samuel Richardson alternately blushed and sighed, arose the rough but manly form of Figg, the better educated but equally lusty figure of Broughton, who first taught “the mystery of boxing, that truly British art” at his academy in the Haymarket in 1747.

But, unfortunately, the beginnings of prize-fighting, or boxing for money with bare fists, were more romantic than its subsequent career, for it lived on brutality and it died of boredom. The house near Covent Garden has become the National Sporting Club. Knuckles have been replaced by gloves. To-day we see Carpentier knock his man out scientifically in less than a single round, instead of watching Tom Sayers, with one arm, fighting the Benicia Boy, and only getting a draw after two hours and twenty minutes. Mr. Bohun Lynch’s description of the battle is one of the best I have ever read, and he gives full credit to each man for the fine spirit shown throughout an encounter in which neither asked for mercy and neither expected any.

On the afternoon of June 16, 1904, there was sold in King Street, Covent Garden, the belt presented to J. C. Heenan (who was called the Benicia Boy from the San Francisco workshops, where he was employed) after the great fight was over. It was a duplicate of the championship belt, and it bore the same title as that presented at the same time to Sayers: “Champion of England.” The price it fetched in 1904 was, I fear, a true reflection of the interest now taken in its original owner and his pugilistic surroundings; and it is difficult to recall the celebrity of both from those past years when Tom Sayers seemed to share with the Duke of Wellington the proud title of Britain’s greatest hero. But it is not really so astonishing when we remember that the plucky little Hoxton bricklayer stood to the youth of his era as the gamest representative of almost the only form of sport the larger public knew or cared about. In days when golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football, and the rest not only multiply our sporting stars almost indefinitely, but attract crowds numbered by scores of thousands to applaud them, we do not seem to pitch upon the boxer as our especially typical representative of national sporting skill. There may be other reasons for that, too. English boxers seem to have only retained their characteristic style long enough to hand it on to others; they then proceeded to forget it. When Jem Mace left off boxing in England he went to Australia, and in Sydney he taught Larry Foley, who in turn educated Peter Jackson, Fitzsimmons, Hall, Creedon, and Young Griffo. The first two handed on the lighted torch to the United States. The result was soon obvious. When the Americans came over they beat us at all weights from Peter Jackson downwards, and they beat us because they had learnt from us what one of the best exponents of the art has called “velocity and power of hitting combined with quickness and ease of movement on the feet”; I should like to add to that, “the straight left,” or as it is more classically known, “Long Melford.”

No doubt the best of the old fighters now and then produced a fine and manly example of human fortitude and skill. “If I were absolute king,” wrote Thackeray in a famous Roundabout Paper after the Sayers and Heenan fight, “I would send Tom Sayers to the mill for a month and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of Clerkenwell.” I am tempted in this connection to reproduce what must be one of the few letters Tom Sayers ever wrote. It was caused by a public discussion after his famous fight, which is little short of amazing when we look back at it. The newspapers were filled with frenzied denunciations, Parliament angrily discussed the question, Palmerston quoted, with every sign of satisfaction, a French journalist who saw in the contest “a type of the national character for indomitable perseverance in determined effort,” and then (cannot you see his smiling eyes above the semi-serious mouth?) proceeded to draw a contrast between pugilism and ballooning, very much to the disadvantage of the latter. A correspondent wrote to the Press inquiring indignantly whether it were true that the Duke of Beaufort, the Earl of Eglinton, and the Bishop of Oxford had attended “this most disgraceful exhibition.” Tom Sayers, roused to unwonted penmanship, retorted in the Daily Telegraph as follows:—“In answer to your correspondent, I beg to state that neither bishop nor peer was present at the late encounter. It is from a pure sense of justice that I write you this. I scarcely think it reasonable that such repeated onslaughts should be made on me and my friend, Heenan. Trusting you will insert this in your widely-circulated and well-regulated journal, allow me to remain, yours faithfully, Thomas Sayers, Cambrian Stores, Castle Street, Leicester Square, April 21, 1860.” The Stock Exchange had given him a purse of a hundred guineas that afternoon, so you need scarcely wonder at the urbanity of his language. In the House of Commons, meanwhile, the Home Secretary had been calling forth cheerful expressions of hilarity by reminding those members who had witnessed the battle that they might be indicted for misdemeanour, though he was pleased to add that fighting with fists was in his opinion better than the use of the bowie-knife, the stiletto, or the shillelagh.

I can remember Mr. Lynch’s boxing for his University, and the severe discomfort he occasioned his Cambridge adversary; and when I recall the many excellent books (on different subjects) which he has previously given us, I see in him an author who has not only the knowledge but the skill to produce that requisite blend of literature and experience which can alone commend the subject of his volume to the English-speaking public. I wish I could claim as much myself. But I suffered from the educational advantage of having a younger brother who knocked me down (and often “out”) with the greatest kindliness and persistence whenever we put on the gloves together; and being overmuch puffed up with pride at finding I could stand so much of it, I rashly took on a guardsman so considerably my superior that after three rounds I was never allowed to box again, and had to quench my thirst for personal combat in ensuing years with foil and duelling-sword. My brother died suddenly of a fever when he was in training under Bat Mullens for the Amateur Championship, and only twenty-one. He was six feet three and thirteen stone stripped, and I never saw an amateur I thought his better until Hopley came into the ring for Cambridge; and no one ever knew how good Hopley was, for no one ever stood in the ring with him for more than two minutes, and he retired, like St. Simon (I mean, of course, the Duke of Portland’s thoroughbred) as undefeated as he was unextended.

Another very good fight in Mr. Lynch’s book (and I have never read a better analysis of the technical “knock-out” than the one he gives on page 126) is that between Peter Jackson and Frank Slavin. I saw it, so I can correct a slight verbal error (foreseen in his own footnote) in Mr. Lynch’s pages. Mr. Angle (I have his letter before me) did not say “Fight on” at that dreadful moment when the packed house could scarcely breathe; when Slavin was tottering blindly to and fro, refusing to give in; when Peter looked out at us appealingly, with the native chivalry that shone through his black skin, and evidently hated to continue. The referee’s quiet syllables, “Box on,” sounded like a minute-gun at sea, and in a few moments it was all over. When Slavin was brought round in his dressing-room, and told he had been knocked out, he muttered, “They’ll never believe that in Melbourne.”

There must have been something about the old prize-ring which we have lost to-day, or it would never have inspired such good literature or attracted such brilliant men in its support. Byron’s screen in Mr. John Murray’s drawing-room is far from the only testimony to that dazzling poet’s love of fighting. Hazlitt was almost equally attracted. Perhaps the most grisly passage even in the pages of De Quincy is that episode in the first part of “Murder as One of the Fine Arts,” where the fight between the amateur and the baker of Mannheim (with its result) is vividly described. The best pages of Borrow, too, gain their best inspiration from the same source. I often seem to recall that pair of dark eyes flashing in a fair face shaded by hair that was prematurely touched with grey; lips full and mobile, as quick with Castilian phrases to a Spanish landlord as with Romany to Jasper Petulengro, or with English to the fruit-woman on London Bridge; the queer, fascinating, mystical, honest mixture of a man, with something of the Wandering Jew, a good deal of Don Quixote, a touch of Melmoth, a sound flavouring of Cribb and Belcher, who was George Borrow. Under his magic guidance you step into the air which fanned the elf-locks of the Flaming Tinman. He loved the heroes of the Ring like brothers. “He strikes his foe on the forehead, and the report of the blow is like the sound of a hammer against a rock.” The sentence stands unmatched in all the annals of pugilism. The battle of his father with Big Ben Brain in Hyde Park was an abiding memory to him; and, apart from the famous encounter in the Dingle, the son did almost as well; and all his life nothing moved him to such instant eloquence as boxing, except horses.

Mr. Lynch, with all his knowledge of the art, and all his sympathy with the best qualities in the men whose combats he portrays, cannot conceal from us that on the whole the old prize-ring was brutal and the modern “pugilistic contest” between professionals has very little that is attractive. Yet he is right both to put them on record and to tell the truth about them without fear or favour. For at the very heart of their foundations is an ineradicable and a noble instinct of the human race. Even a Dempsey, earning several thousand pounds a minute, may be dimly conscious that he is building better than he knows. Professionals in any game who attain a height of skill which gives them a practically unlimited market for what they have to sell, can scarcely be blamed by stockbrokers who gamble on a falling market, or by profiteers who battened on the war. Even the modern professional boxer cannot do permanent harm to the true atmosphere of the great game in which he shines briefly like a passing meteor. It is pages like these from Mr. Lynch that should inspire the professional to give us his best and leave aside the worst in what is, after all, only an epitome of life, a show in which the blows are seen instead of hidden, in which rewards or losses are known to all the world instead of silently concealed. There is a spirit in Boxing which nothing can destroy, and while we cherish it among amateurs, the professional will never be able to defile it.

Mr. E. B. Michell, an old pupil of my father’s, and the only boxer who ever held three of the amateur championships at different weights, is still with us; and I should still do my best to prevent any friend from wantonly attacking him. Like all real fighters, he has always been the kindliest of men, the most difficult to provoke to extremes. But any one who has managed to extract from his diffidence those few occasions when he had to use his fists, because no other course was possible, will realise that boxing is not merely a splendid form of recreation, but one of the finest systems of self-defence ever developed by persistent effort.

Julian Grenfell’s famous poem, “Into Battle,” was written in the Trenches the day after he had fought the champion of his division in France; and there were few who read it who did not recall that previous victory of his over Tye, the fireman, which will never be forgotten in Johannesburg. Three times he was laid on his back. In the third round he knocked the fireman out, “and he never moved for twenty seconds.... I was 11 st. 4 lb., and he was 11 st. 3 lb. I think it was the best fight I shall ever have.” He found a better in the Ypres Salient, and again he wrote:—“I cannot tell you how wonderful our men were, going straight for the first time into a fierce fire. They surpassed my utmost expectations. I have never been so fit or nearly so happy in my life before.” For such men it is impossible to sorrow. These brothers and their comrades were taken from us in the full noon of their splendid sunlight; and on its fiercest throb of high endeavour the brave heart of each one of them stopped beating. Their memories stand, to me, for all that may be meant, achieved, or promised in such courage, such endurance, aye, such instantaneous cataclysm as Mr. Bohun Lynch’s chapters at their best recall. His tale has obviously a sordid side, yet more evidently a brutal one. But the red thread of honourable resolution runs through the warp and woof of it; and these are not days when we may dare to minimise the value of the pluck that conquers pain.

THEODORE A. COOK.

June, 1922.

NOTE

Certain passages in this book, notably in the Introduction, and in the second part, dealing with recent contests, are substantially based, and in some instances literally culled, from articles which I wrote for The Daily Chronicle, The Field, Land and Water, The Outlook, and The London Mercury, and to the editors of these journals I owe my best thanks for much kindness and consideration.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Sports and games may be classified as natural and artificial. Running, jumping, and swimming, for example, are natural sports, though, to be sure, much artifice is required to assure in them especial excellence. In these simple instances it is merely directed to avoid waste of energy. Boxing is one of the artificial sports, and has never been, like wrestling, anything else. In the far distant past the primitive man, with no weapon handy, no doubt clutched and hugged and clawed at his immediate enemies, just as children, who are invariably primitive until they are taught “better,” clutch and claw to-day. That natural and instinctive grasping and hugging was the forefather of subtle and tricky wrestling, whether Greek, Roman, or North-country English, but as far as we can discover the earliest use of fisticuffs was for sport alone. It may seem natural to hit a man you hate, but it is only second nature, and any one but a trained boxer is apt to seize him by the throat. The employment of fists as weapons of offence and of arms for shields developed from the sport. As such, too, it is very effectual, especially when combined with a knowledge of wrestling, but only when the enemy is of similar mind. I am informed by a former Honorary Secretary of the Oxford University Boxing Club, who from this point of view ruthlessly criticised a former book of mine on the subject, and who has spent many years in close contact with uncivilisation, that boxing is of extremely little value against a man with a broken bottle or a spanner—let alone an armed cannibal.

The praises of boxing as a practical means of self-defence have been, perhaps, too loudly sung. A boy at school may earn for himself a certain reputation, may establish a funk amongst his fellows owing to his quickness and agility with or without the gloves; but in practice he seldom has a chance of employing his skill against his enemies. On the other hand, a small boy who comes in contact for the first time with another’s skill (or even brutality) receiving a blow in the face, invariably cries, “Beastly cad!” because a blow in the face hurts him.

You have to accept this convention of sportsmanlike warfare, like others, before you can make it work. And the Love of Fair Play of which we have heard so much in the past is quite artificial too. It is not really inherent in human nature. Like other moralities it has to be taught, and it is very seldom taught with success. Let us say, not unreasonably, that you begin to take an interest in boxing as a boy. You hear about various fights—at least you do nowadays, and you want to imitate the fighters, just as in the same way but at a different moment you want to be an engine-driver, or an airman, or the Principal Boy in Robinson Crusoe, when your young attention is drawn to such occupations. When I was a small boy (if, in order to illustrate a point, a short excursion into autobiography may be forgiven me), the last flicker of the Prize-Ring had, so to put it, just expired, and glove-fighting was not then perhaps a pretty business. A curiosity which, not being skilled in the science and practice of psycho-analysis, I can only ascribe to spontaneous generation, and the fact that Tom Sayers once invested my mother, then a little girl, with his champion’s belt at a village fair—this curiosity impelled me to desire, from a railway bookstall, the purchase on my behalf of a shilling book called The Art of Self-Defence, by one Ned Donelly. It was, I believe, the very first work of its peculiar and spurious kind—that is, a handbook with or without merit (this one had several, notably that of brevity), written by a sporting reporter and inscribed by the pugilist. I had some difficulty in getting that gift, but when I did I devoured the book from gray paper cover to cover. I knew it almost all by heart once. I remember now that Ned Donelly said he had fought under the auspices of Nat Langham, and I wondered what auspices meant, and I wonder now if Ned Donelly knew. Later, in the mid-nineties, Rodney Stone appeared in the pages of “The Strand Magazine,” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whilst admitting that rascality was known in connection with the Prize-Ring, yet showed how the Great Tradition of the British Love of Fair Play in the face of the most reprehensible practices maintained itself. All literature which touched the subject, all conversation with elder persons led me to believe that this desire of Fair Play was inseparable from the British composition (though seldom found outside these islands), and that if one had a quarrel at school an adjournment was immediately made to some secret trysting-place, where boys formed a ring, a timekeeper and referee were appointed, and you and your opponent nobly contended until one—the one who was in the wrong, of course—gave in.

It wasn’t until I wished to have a fair, stand-up fight with another boy—with a succession of other boys—that I found a somewhat serious flaw in the great Tradition, and that at one of the “recognised” public schools. The other boy might or might not stand up straight in front, but half a dozen other boys would invariably hang on behind—me. In the end I managed to bring off two fair fights, one with another boy of like mind who, cold-blooded and conversational, walked with me to a secluded field; the other by means of a ruse. I had challenged this adversary again and again. With derision, he refused to fight me. Once I attacked him in public, but was very soon made to see sense, as well as stars, for he hit me at his own convenience whilst his partisans held my arms. The merits of the quarrel I entirely forget. You may be sure that they were trivial. I will readily admit that both of us were horrible little beasts (though I admit it the more readily of him) in the certain knowledge that boys of our age, excepting those who happen to read this, almost always are. So I waited my opportunity, and one evening I caught my enemy alone reading a paper on a notice-board. I came behind him with stealth, and I kicked him hard, and I then ran away. And he did exactly what I had, rather confidently, expected him to do. He thought me an arrant coward, and he followed fast. I led him to a safe and secluded passage, well lit, at the top of some stairs where there was just room for a close encounter. We should not be interrupted by any one. I waited for him to get on a level with me. I have seldom enjoyed anything so much as the next two minutes or so. I hated that boy very much. The score against him was a long one. Moralists (who are always dishonest in their methods of propaganda) tell us that revenge turns to gall and bitterness.... Oh, does it? The sheer physical delight in thrashing some one I hated, some one rather bigger and heavier than myself, too, which made it all the better, has lived on in sweet retrospect. There was no “hearty handshake” or anything pretty of that sort. It was simple, downright bashing, and it was delicious. And, not to please the moralist but to record a fact, the air really was cleared. We did shake hands afterwards, and all rancour was gone—at least from me: and for ever after we were quite, though perhaps coldly, civil to each other, and my late adversary is now a Lieutenant-Colonel, D.S.O., and I think (but am not sure) C.M.G.

The Love of Fair Play, then, where hate is involved, needs a great deal of teaching. I am not trying, in the instance quoted above, to make a case for myself as a lover of fair play in those days. The difference between my enemy and me was chiefly a difference in vanity. He was content to annoy me without risk of hurt or chance of glory. I was ready to stake a bit in order that my victory should be complete for my own smug self-satisfaction. He was the practical fellow: I was the sentimentalist.

Boxing of a kind is the earliest artificial sport of which we have any record, and the earliest record, and from the literary point of view, the best of all time is, though we are not concerned with it here, Greek.

As far as can be discovered there is no tale of any boxing between the gradually debased sport of the ancients and the institution of the British Prize-Ring early in the eighteenth century. And it was not until a hundred years or more later that boxing began to take its place as a topic in polite letters. Under that head it is difficult to include Boxiana, or Sketches of Antient and Modern Pugilism, from the days of the renowned Broughton and Slack to the championship of Crib. This was written by Pierce Egan, the inventor of “Tom and Jerry,” and dedicated to Captain Barclay, the famous trainer of pugilists. The first volume was published in 1818. Egan, like many later writers, was often upon the defensive, and was ever upon the alert to find excuses for the noble art. He constantly drew attention to the fact that, whilst Italians used stilettos and Frenchmen engaged in duels à la mort, the Briton has the good sense to settle a dispute with his fists. Egan frankly disliked refinement, but he does recognise in boxing something better than refinement.

The same point of view is implicit in M. Mæterlinck’s discussion of modern boxing.[1]

“... synthetic, irresistible, unimprovable blows. As soon as one of them touches the adversary, the fight is ended, to the complete satisfaction of the conqueror, who triumphs so incontestably, and with no dangerous hurt to the conquered, who is simply reduced to impotence and unconsciousness during the time needed for all ill-will to evaporate.”

To return to Pierce Egan, Blackwood’s Magazine for March, 1820, goes in (if the prevalent metaphor of precisely a hundred years later may be allowed) off the deep end in reviewing Boxiana:—

“It is sufficient justification of Pugilism to say—Mr. Egan is its historian.... He has all the eloquence and feeling of a Percy—all the classical grace and inventive ingenuity of a Warton—all the enthusiasm and zeal of a Headley—all the acuteness and vigour of a Ritson—all the learning and wit of an Ellis—all the delicacy and discernment of a Campbell; and, at the same time, his style is perfectly his own, and likely to remain so, for it is as inimitable as it is excellent. The man who has not read Boxiana is ignorant of the power of the English language.”

If ever responsible overstatement reached the border-line of sheer dementia it is here. But for the sake of politeness, let us content ourselves with saying, further, that the reviewer’s enthusiasm got the better of his judgment. What matters to us now is that Pierce Egan made a record of the old Prize Ring which is invaluable. So that we are not concerned so much with his literary distinction as with his accuracy as a chronicler, and, as other records of contemporary events are either scarce, or, as in some cases, totally lacking, it is not easy to check his accounts.

From internal evidence, we know at the first glance at Boxiana that we must be careful; for Egan shouts his praises of almost all pugilists upon the same note. And all of them cannot have been as good as all that! This author was a passionate admirer of the noble art and of the men who followed it, and it is his joyous zeal (apart from the matters of fact which he tells us) that make him worth reading. For the rest we must regard him as we are, nowadays, prone to regard most historians, and make such allowance as we see fit for inevitable exaggerations. That, on one occasion at least, he was deliberately inaccurate, we shall see later on.

There was a delightful simplicity about the old boxing matches. The men fought to a finish; that is, until one or other of them failed to come up to the scratch, chalked in the mid-ring, or until the seconds or backers gave in for them, which last does not appear to have happened very often. A round ended with a knock-down or a fall from wrestling, and half a minute only was allowed for rest and recovery.

One of the illustrations in this book is taken from a print of the original Rules governing Prize-Fights, “as agreed by several gentlemen at Broughton’s Amphitheatre, Tottenham Court Road, August, 16th, 1743.”

These Rules were as follows:—

I.—That a square of a Yard be chalked in the middle of the Stage; and on each fresh set-to after a fall, or being from the rails, each Second is to bring his Man to the side of the Square, and place him opposite to the other, and until they are fairly set-to at the Lines, it shall not be lawful for one to strike at the other.

THE RING

RULES

TO BE OBSERVED IN ALL BATTLES ON THE STAGE

I. That a square of a Yard be chalked in the middle of the Stage; and on every fresh set-to after a fall, or being parted from the rails, each Second is to bring his Man to the side of the square, and place him opposite to the other, and till they are fairly set-to at the Lines, it shall not be lawful for one to strike at the other.

II. That, in order to prevent any Disputes, the time a Man lies after a fall, if the Second does not bring his Man to the side of the square, within the space of half a minute, he shall be deemed a beaten Man.

III. That in every main Battle, no person whatever shall be upon the Stage, except the Principals and their Seconds; the same rule to be observed in bye-battles, except that in the latter, Mr. Broughton is allowed to be upon the Stage to keep decorum, and to assist Gentlemen in getting to their places, provided always he does not interfere in the Battle; and whoever pretends to infringe these Rules to be turned immediately out of the house. Every body is to quit the Stage as soon as the Champions are stripped, before the set-to.

IV. That no Champion be deemed beaten, unless he fails coming up to the line in the limited time, or that his own Second declares him beaten. No Second is to be allowed to ask his man’s Adversary any questions, or advise him to give out.

V. That in bye-battles, the winning man to have two-thirds of the Money given, which shall be publicly divided upon the Stage, notwithstanding any private agreements to the contrary.

VI. That to prevent Disputes, in every main Battle the Principals shall, on coming on the Stage, choose from among the gentlemen present two Umpires, who shall absolutely decide all Disputes that may arise about the Battle; and if the two Umpires cannot agree, the said Umpires to choose a third, who is to determine it.

VII. That no person is to hit his Adversary when he is down, or seize him by the ham, the breeches, or any part below the waist: a man on his knees to be reckoned down.

As agreed by several Gentlemen at Broughton’s Amphitheatre, Tottenham Court Road, August 16, 1743.

Reproduced by permission of “The Field.”

II.—That, in order to prevent any Disputes, the time a Man lies after a fall, if the Second does not bring his Man to the side of the square, within the space of half a minute, he shall be deemed a beaten Man.

III.—That in every Main Battle, no person whatever shall be upon the Stage, except the Principals and their Seconds; the same rule to be observed in bye-battles, except that in the latter Mr. Broughton is allowed to be upon the Stage to keep decorum, and to assist Gentlemen in getting to their places, provided always he does not interfere in the Battle; and whoever pretends to infringe these Rules to be turned immediately out of the house. Everybody is to quit the Stage as soon as the Champions are stripped, before the set-to.

IV.—That no Champion be deemed beaten, unless he fails coming up to the line in the limited time, or that his own Second declares him beaten. No Second is to be allowed to ask his Man’s adversary any questions, or advise him to give out.

V.—That in Bye-battles, the winning man have two-thirds of the Money given, which shall be publicly divided upon the Stage, notwithstanding private agreements to the contrary.

VI.—That to prevent Disputes, in every Main Battle the Principals shall, on coming to the Stage, choose from among the gentlemen present two Umpires, who shall absolutely decide all Disputes that may arise about the Battle; and if the two Umpires cannot agree, the said Umpires to choose a third, who is to determine it.

VII.—That no person is to hit his Adversary when he is down, or seize him by the ham, the breeches, or any part below the waist; a man on his knees to be reckoned down.

It will be seen that all contingencies are by no means covered by these regulations, but in those days far more was left to the judgment and discretion of the Umpires and the Referee. Spectators, even “interested” onlookers who had plunged on the event, were usually willing to abide by their decisions; and, as a general thing, though there was more elbow-room for rascality than in later times, the men fought fairly. Anyhow, Egan says that they did.

Whether the death of bare-knuckle fighting is to be mourned is not a question to be dealt with in the first chapter. As George Borrow observed very many years ago, “These are not the days of pugilism,” and without attempting any discussion of the rights and wrongs of the general problem, we may yet read the annals of the Ring and draw our own conclusions from particular instances. The “days of pugilism” are unlikely to return.

It is not, indeed, until we come to George Borrow that we find the praises of boxing sung as a sport, as an outlet for energy, as pure good fun. It is true that, being Borrow, he tells us in Romany Rye of a character who regarded it “as a great defence against Popery.” But Borrow, when he left Popery alone, had a splendid, “Elizabethan” and full-blooded view of life, whether he was concerned with the pleasures of milling or the “genial and gladdening power of good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen.”

“Can you box?” asks the old magistrate in Lavengro. “I tell you what, my boy: I honour you.... Boxing is, as you say, a noble art—a truly English art; may I never see the day when Englishmen shall feel ashamed of it, or blacklegs and blackguards bring it into disgrace! I am a magistrate, and, of course, cannot patronise the thing very openly, yet I sometimes see a prize-fight.”

“All I have to say,” Borrow continues later on in Lavengro, “is, that the French still live on the other side of the water, and are still casting their eyes hitherward—and that in the days of pugilism it was no vain boast to say, that one Englishman was a match for two of t’other race.”

What would he have said had he lived to see a French champion? The two words, “boxing” and “Frenchman,” within half a mile of each other, so to put it, made a stock joke in those days and for long after, even to within recent memory.

Borrow had the true boxer’s joy in a fight for its own sake, the violent exercise, the sense of personal contest which is more manifest in fisticuffs than in any other sport.

“Dosta,” says Jasper Petulengro, “we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!”

The following is his account of the crowd at a prize-fight, the encounter itself being dismissed in a few lines:—

“I think I now see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it last only for a day. There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man in England: there he is with his huge, massive figure, and a face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger ... the most scientific pugilist who ever entered a ring.... Crosses him, what a contrast! Grim, savage Skelton, who has a civil word for nobody and a hard blow for anybody—hard! one blow, given with the proper play of his athletic arm, will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about with his hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and also looks anything but what he is, is the King of the Lightweights, so-called—Randall! the terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in his veins: not the better for that, nor the worse; not far from him is his last antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was a near thing; and a better ‘shentleman,’ in which he is quite right, for he is a Welshman.... There was—what! shall I name the last? Ay, why not? I believe that thou art the last of all that strong family still above the sod, where may’st thou long continue—true species of English stuff, Tom of Bedford—sharp as Winter, kind as Spring.

“Hail to thee, Tom of Bedford.... Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown eye, worthy to have carried a six-foot bow at Flodden, where England’s yeomen triumphed over Scotland’s king, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee, last of England’s bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast achieved—true English victories, unbought by yellow gold....”

Borrow wrote of the Prize-Ring in its decline and of its best days from a greater distance than did Egan, and his perspective is therefore truer. Still we do learn a great deal from Boxiana of the old giants; whilst contemporary engravings, some of which will be found here, give us, more or less faithfully, the attitudes of the fighters. Whether the artists observed the same fidelity in regard to the muscular development of the principals we must decide from our own experience. It is often said that if men were to train themselves to this herculean scale they would be so muscle-bound as to be almost immobile.

At the beginning of Volume III. of Boxiana, Egan tells us of the extraordinary physique of the fighter.

“The frames, in general, of the boxers are materially different, in point of appearance, from most other men; and they are also formed to endure punishment in a very severe degree.... The eyes of the pugilists are always small; but their necks are very fine and large; their arms are also muscular and athletic, with strong, well-turned shoulders. In general, the chests of the Boxers are expanded; and some of their backs and loins not only exhibit an unusual degree of strength, but a great portion of anatomical beauty. The hips, thighs, and legs of a few of the pugilists are very much to be admired for their symmetry, and there is likewise a peculiar ‘sort of a something’ about the head of a boxer, which tends to give him character.”

And he adds a footnote: “The old Fanciers, or ‘good judges,’ prefer those of a snipe appearance.”—(An appearance which obviously could not long have been maintained!)

Of scientific boxing, as we understand it, there was comparatively little; though in the hey-day of the Prize-Ring (roughly speaking, the first quarter of the nineteenth century) the foundations of the exact science were well laid. However, the chief qualifications for a good pugilist were strength and courage, even as they are to-day. But, besides hitting, the fighters might close and wrestle, and many a hard battle was lost by a good boxer whose strength was worn out by repeated falls, falls made the more damaging when a hulking opponent threw himself, as at one time he was allowed to do, on top of him.

The other principal differences between old and modern boxing were these: it was one of a man’s first considerations to hit his antagonist hard about the eyes, so that they swelled up and he could not see. Men strong and otherwise unhurt were often beaten like that. Secondly, bare knuckles, in hard repeated contact with hard heads, were apt to be “knocked up” after a time. The use of gloves, though it probably makes a knock-out easier and quicker, obviates these two difficulties. However, even with the heavy “pudden” of an eight-ounce glove, the danger to the striker, though much lessened, is not entirely avoided, and I once put out two knuckles of my left, at the same time breaking a bone at the back of my hand in contact with an opponent’s elbow with which he guarded his ribs. This sort of accident is very rare.

The chief interest in the fights described by Pierce Egan and by others lies in their records of magnificent courage, for—there is really no way out of it—the old Prize-Ring was, by the prevalent standards of to-day, a somewhat brutal institution. Horrible cruelty was seen and enjoyed, not as a rule the cruelty of the two men engaged, fair or foul as may have been their methods, but of their backers and seconds, who, with their money on the issue, allowed a beaten man, sorely hurt, to go on fighting on the off-chance of his winning by a lucky blow. Sometimes their optimism was, within the limits of its intention, justified, and an all but beaten man did win. Really, that sort of thing happens more often in modern boxing, especially amateur boxing, to-day, than it did in the Prize-Ring, and this is due, not to the callousness of referees, but to their perspicacity. A thoroughly experienced referee understands exactly how much a man can endure, particularly when he has seen the individual in question box before. He knows that he is not nearly so much hurt and “done” as he looks, or rather as the average spectator thinks he looks; and he gives him his chance. And, suddenly, to the wild surprise of every one, except, perhaps, the referee, he puts in a “lucky” blow and knocks out an opponent who had hitherto been “all over” him.

On the other hand, a backer sometimes did withdraw his man in the most humane fashion when he had been badly punished, and very often to the deep resentment of the boxer himself, who, left to his own devices, would have fought on so long as his weakening legs would obey his iron will.

One more word upon the subject of “brutality” may be forgiven me. Again and again has it been said, but never too emphatically, how seldom it is that the men themselves were to blame. It is the hangers-on, the parasites, the vermin of sport, outside the ring, the field, the racecourse, who never risked nor meant to risk a broken nose or a thick ear, who are out for money and for money alone, by fair means for choice (as being on the whole the better policy), but by foul means readily enough rather than not at all—these are the men who bring every institution upon which they batten into bad repute. Certainly the broken ranks of this army were occasionally recruited from the less successful or the more dissipated but quite genuine fighters, just as the hired bully is not unknown amongst the boxers of to-day. But the real villain, the man who gets the money out of rascality, does so, if possible, with a whole skin.

The Prize-Ring served its turn. For nearly a hundred years—that is, roughly, from 1740 to 1840—it was a genuine expression of English life. Right or wrong as may have been the methods used, it was spontaneous. After that, if we except individual encounters, it was forced, laboured, and in vain. The spontaneity was gone. In his Preface to Cashel Byron’s Profession, Mr. Shaw tells us that pugilism was supposed to have died of its own blackguardism: whereas “it lived by its blackguardism and died of its intolerable tediousness.”

That is very true, but it must be remembered that the tediousness sprang very largely from the blackguardism—that is to say, towards the end of the bare-knuckle era the men used to stand off from each other, doing as little damage as possible and earning their money as easily as might be. Moreover, men who fought a “cross” were, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, seldom good enough actors to appear beaten with any degree of plausibility, when they could, in fact, have continued fighting: and the result was that they stood about the ring, sparring in a tentative fashion, wrestling now and again, and wasting time, waiting for an opportunity to fall with some show of reality.

Thackeray, however, who, according to Mr. Shaw, loved a prize-fight as he loved a fool, appeared to think that the sport died of hypocritical respectability. There is, of course, plenty to be said upon both sides; and Thackeray’s opinions will be more closely discussed in the chapter dealing with the fight between Sayers and Heenan.

Of one disease or another, or of several complications, the Prize-Ring died, and from its dust arose the gradually improving sport of glove-fighting, the boxing of to-day.

The aim of this book is to cover the ground of bare-knuckle fighting and of modern professional boxing from the inception of the Ring to the present day, by making notes upon a number of representative battles in their chronological order.

PART I
KNUCKLES

CHAPTER I
JOHN BROUGHTON AND JACK SLACK

The first Boxing Champion of England of whom any record has been handed down to us was Figg. Fistiana or The Oracle of the Ring gives his date as 1719. Strictly, however, his title to fame rests more securely on his excellence with the cudgel and small-sword than on fisticuffs, and the real father of the ring was John Broughton, who was Champion from 1738 to 1750.

Broughton had a famous place of entertainment known as the Amphitheatre, in Hanway Yard, Oxford Road, near the site of a like establishment that had been kept by Figg. Here, with pit and gallery and boxes arranged about a high stage, displays of boxing were given from time to time, and here it was that sportsmen first learned to enjoy desperate struggles between man and man.

As has already been shown, Broughton formulated the rules which for many years to come were to govern fighting, and which, much as they leave to the imagination as well as to the discretion of officials, tell us with the utmost simplicity the conditions under which men fought.

For eighteen years John Broughton was undisputed Champion of England. That probably meant very little, for boxing had not yet become popular and its science was in its extremest infancy. I would gladly make the foolish and unprofitable bet that if Broughton, in his prime and with his bare fists, could be transplanted to these latter days, he would not stand for one minute before Joe Beckett with the gloves on. (That is less of a handicap than it sounds to any boxer who has never used his bare knuckles.)

Broughton’s fight with Slack can by no standard be called great, but it has its peculiar importance in showing us how a certain degree of skill hampered by over-confidence and lack of training may be at the mercy of courage, strength, and enterprise. Broughton’s knowledge of boxing, compared with the science of Jem Belcher and Tom Spring, must have been negligible; but years of practice must have taught him something. As far as we can gather, Slack knew less than a small boy in his first term at school. He was a butcher by trade, and one day at Hounslow Races he had “words” with the champion, who laid about him with a horse-whip. Thereupon Slack challenged Broughton, and the fight took place at the Amphitheatre on April 10th, 1750.

There was nothing elegant about Jack Slack. His attitude was ugly and awkward, he was strong and healthy but quite untrained in our meaning of the word. He only stood 5 feet 8½ inches but weighed close upon 14 stone—nearly as much as his antagonist, who was a taller man. Broughton was eager for the fight or for the money to be derived from it. He regarded Slack with the utmost contempt and made no sort of preparation. So afraid was he that the butcher might not turn up at the last minute that he gave him ten guineas to make sure of him! The betting was 10-1 on Broughton when the men appeared in the ring. After all, as boxing went in these days, he did know something about defence, and he was master of two famous blows, one for the body and one under the ear, which were said to terrify his opponents.

Slack stood upright, facing his man, with his right rigidly guarding his stomach and his left in front of his mouth. But that was only at the beginning. Directly he got into action Slack speedily forgot his guard. The art of self-defence was unknown to him, his was the art of bashing. He was a rushing slogger against whom a cool man’s remedy is obvious. But he was also a glutton for punishment, and almost boundless courage and staying power, or “bottom,” as they used to call it in those days. Regardless of the plain danger of doing so, he charged across the ring at Broughton, raising his hands like flails. Slack was noted for downward chopping blows and for back-handers, neither of which are or ever have been really successful. Broughton met this wild charge in the orthodox manner with straight left and right, propping off his man in such a way that the attacker’s own weight was added to the power of the blows. For two minutes or so Slack was badly knocked about. Then they closed for a fall and Broughton’s great strength gave him the advantage. But he was getting on in years and was untrained and in flesh. The effort of wrestling with a man of his own ponderous weight made his breath come short, and when next they faced each other across their extended fists the first dullness of fatigue already weighed on the old champion. He was a slow man, and had been used to win his fights by the slow and steady method of wearing down his antagonists. Slack was harder and stronger than he had supposed, but of course he would beat him—this ungainly slogger who didn’t know enough to avoid the simplest blow. But Slack, the rusher, was a natural fighter which, when all’s said, is a very good sort of fighter indeed. He liked the game—the fun of it, the sport of it. In spite of his bulk he was pretty hard. Standing square to his man with the right foot a little forward, he had no fear of his great reputation, he was quite untroubled by the stories of that terrible blow beneath the ear. He went for Broughton with a will. He would give him no time to remember his ring-craft. He would take cheerfully all that was coming on the way, and sooner or later he would get past the champion’s guard.

And presently Slack jumped in and landed a tremendous blow between Broughton’s eyes. And the champion’s face was soft from good living. He had not been hit like that for many a year. Both his eyes swelled up at once.

The spectators saw that Broughton was dazed. He seemed stupid and slow—not himself at all. And—they could not understand this—he hesitated and flinched before his man. The Duke of Cumberland, who was his chief patron, could hardly believe his eyes. Broughton afraid? Broughton, from whom all others flinched away, who stood so boldly and straight before his man, who, though slow and heavy, was so sure and never gave ground? Slack stood away for a moment and Broughton came forward with his hands before him, feeling his way. Then the people saw that his eyes were entirely swollen up and closed. The man was blind.

The Duke was slower than the others.

“What are you about, Broughton?” he shouted to him. “You can’t fight. You’re beat.”

To which Broughton replied, vaguely turning his head about as though uncertain from which quarter his backer’s voice had come,—

“I can’t see my man, your Highness. I am blind—not beat. Only put me in front of him and he’ll not win yet.”

But Slack dashed in again and Broughton could not ward off a blow. Still strong, quite unbeaten in the literal sense of the word, he had to give in. It was an accident in the game and yet it was a part of the game. The whole fight was over in fourteen minutes.

In order to compare those days with these, it is interesting to know that tickets for the Amphitheatre on this occasion cost a guinea and a half, whilst the money taken at the door besides fetched £150. Slack, as winner, was given the “produce of the house,” which in all amounted to £600. When we have in mind the difference in the value of money then and now, we must realise that even in the early days of the Prize-Ring a successful boxer stood to win a considerable sum. The chief difference in his earning capacity lay in the fact that bare-knuckle fights were necessarily less frequent than the softer encounters of to-day. Nor was the sport widely popular at that time, the patrons and spectators being chiefly confined to publicans and other good sinners.

CHAPTER II
TOM JOHNSON AND ISAAC PERRINS

It is character and knowledge of character, which, together with strength and skill, makes boxing champions to-day. And we are inclined to think that the psychological element in fighting came in only within the day of gloves, and rather late in that day. Certainly the old records of the early Prize-Ring are of brawn and stamina, skill and courage rather than of forethought and acutely reasoned generalship, but there are exceptions, and one of the most noteworthy is that of Tom Johnson.

Johnson (whose real name was Jackling) was a Derby man, who came to London as a lad, and worked as a corn porter at Old Swan Stairs. For a heavyweight champion he was very small—short, rather: for he stood but 5 feet 9 inches. He must, however, have been made like a barrel, for he weighed 14 stone, and the girth of his chest was enormous. A story is told of how Johnson when his mate fell sick carried two sacks of corn at each journey up the steep ascent from the riverside and paid the man his money, so that the boxer’s amazing strength earned the double wage.

The best known and probably the fiercest of Johnson’s battles was with Isaac Perrins, who stood 6 feet 2 inches and weighed 17 stone. It is not probable that boxers trained very vigorously in those early days, so that the weights may be misleading. Contemporary prints, however, certainly give the impression of men in hard condition. Perrins, a Birmingham man, is said to have lifted 8 cwt. of iron into a wagon without effort.

The fight took place at Banbury in Oxfordshire on October 22, 1789. The men fought (it is interesting to know when we think of the prizes of the present day) for 250 guineas. Two-thirds of the door money went to the winner, one-third to the loser. The men fought on a turfed stage raised five feet above the ground.

Johnson’s method had always been to play a waiting game, to try to understand his opponent’s temperament, to take no avoidable risks. He knew that he was a good stayer, so he was accustomed to use his feet and to keep out of distance until he had sized up his man. He would always make rather a long but certain job of a fight than a quick but hazardous one.

Johnson’s greatest trouble was his passionate temper, which was largely the cause of his downfall two years later in his fight with Big Ben Brain. Isaac Perrins, who had the name of a good-natured giant, was the first to lead. He ... “made a blow,” Pierce Egan tells us, “which, in all probability, had he not have missed his aim, must have decided the contest, and Johnson been killed, from its dreadful force.” But Johnson dodged the blow and countered with a terrific right-hander which knocked Perrins down. At that time prize-fighters stood square to each other with their hands level, ready to lead off with either. And in that position a man naturally fell over much easier than from the solid attitude of a few years later till the present time.

The next three rounds were Johnson’s, for Perrins was shaken by his first fall. Then Perrins gathered himself together, and by sheer weight forced himself, regardless of the blows that rained on him, through the smaller man’s guard and knocked him down. And for several rounds in his turn Perrins was the better. He cut Johnson’s lip very badly, so that he lost blood, and the betting for some time remained in his favour.

Tom Johnson by this time had the measure of his man. The usual waiting game would not serve now. He must not only wait, but he must keep away, and in order to keep away, he must run away. This may not have been wholly admirable from a purely sporting point of view, but we must forgive Johnson a good deal (and as we shall see there really was a good deal to forgive) on account of his inches. “He had recourse,” says Egan, “to shifting”—that is, he kept out of the way for as long as possible, and then, as by the rules of the Prize-Ring a round only ended when one of the men went down, probably closed and let Perrins throw him.

But the spectators approved of this method no better than they would to-day, and there was a good deal of murmuring against Johnson. At last Perrins, unable to reach his nimble-footed antagonist, began to mock at him. “Why!” he exclaimed to the company at large, “what have you brought me here? This is not the valiant Johnson, the Champion of England: you have imposed upon me with a mere boy!”

At this Johnson was stung to retort, for he was no coward and was but fighting in the only way which his size allowed. Moreover, Perrins’s observation roused his dander, and he blurted out, “By God, you shall know that Tom Johnson is here!” and immediately flew at his man in a passion of rage and planted a terrific blow over his left eye, so that it closed almost at once.

This incident nearly decides for us that Perrins was not much of a boxer. A wild charge of that sort, particularly by a much smaller man, is seldom difficult to frustrate. And the opinion of the crowd began to veer round. Those who had put their money on Perrins began to hedge.

Undaunted by his closed eye, Perrins pulled himself together in the next round and returned as good as he had got, closing Johnson’s right eye. And so for a while the fight remained level. Many rounds and very short ones. A half-minute’s rest between. Much hard punishment given and got, but a great deal of it not of a kind obvious to the inexpert spectator. Quite apart from short-arm body-blows which are sometimes apt to elude observation, there was wrestling for a fall with which far more rounds ended than with falls from a blow. The effort to throw is exhausting enough, but to be thrown and for a heavy man to fall on top of you is terribly wearing. And though the strength of these two men was prodigious, yet Johnson was the closer knit of the two, from a boxer’s point of view the better made.

Now when they had fought forty rounds, Johnson was confident and happy, but he knew that he was pitted against a lion-hearted man who was by no means yet worn out. Suddenly he got an opening for a clean straight blow with all his weight behind it. This was a right-hander, which struck Perrins on the bridge of his nose and slit it down as though it had been cut with a knife.

The odds were now 100-10 on Johnson, but he had by no means won the fight. Perrins was boxing desperately, striving with his great superiority in reach to close Johnson’s remaining eye. He knew very well that many a fight had been won like that, an otherwise unhurt man being forced to throw up the sponge because he was totally blinded by the swelling of his eyes. In the forty-first round Johnson either slipped down or deliberately fell without a blow and Perrins and his backers claimed the victory. If Johnson did actually play this very dirty trick to gain time and have a rest, he deserved to lose. We don’t know what actually happened. The records merely state that he fell without being hit. But the umpires allowed it because that contingency had not been covered in the articles of agreement made before the fight.

Perrins now changed his method, attacking his man with chopping blows presumably on the back of the neck and head, and back-handed blows which are seldom efficacious. These puzzled Johnson at first, and he took some of them without a return until he learned the knack and guarded himself. And Perrins’s strength now began to go: while Johnson, who for a few rounds had seemed tired, began to improve again. But yet he never began the attack. He left that always to the giant. In fact, Johnson did everything to save himself and to make his man do most of the work. Then Perrins, who had lunged forward with a terrific blow, fell forward, partly from his own impetus, and partly from weakness. Johnson, who had stepped aside from the blow, watched him and as he fell hit him in the face with all his might, at the same time tumbling over him. After that Perrins was done. Every round ended by his falling either from a blow or from sheer weakness. Johnson hit him as he pleased, with the consequence that Perrins’s face was fearfully damaged, “with scarce the traces left of a human being.” But he refused to give in, and round after round his seconds brought him to the scratch, when he swayed and staggered and struggled for breath and tried to fight on. His pluck in this battle was the inspiration of the Prize-Ring for ever afterwards. More than once Johnson, still strong, sent in tremendous blows which would utterly have finished lesser men, but Isaac Perrins held on until his friends and seconds gave in and refused to let the good fellow fight any more. The match had lasted for an hour and a quarter, during which sixty-two rounds had been fought.

In many ways it was an unsatisfactory fight, but for cunning (if rather low cunning) on one side and magnificent courage and determination on the other, it must be counted one of the greatest combats of the old days.

CHAPTER III
RICHARD HUMPHRIES, DANIEL MENDOZA, AND JOHN JACKSON

The Jews in this country have taken very kindly to boxing, both as spectators and as principals, throughout the annals of the Ring, both in the days of bare knuckles and in later times down to the present day, there has generally been a sprinkling of good fighting Israelites. And the first Jew of any note as a boxer became Champion of England.

The battles for which Daniel Mendoza was most famous were the succession, four in number, in which he engaged Richard Humphries. The first of these was negligible, being but a “turn-up” or pot-house quarrel at the Cock, Epping. This took place in September of 1787, but it led to a pitched fight between these men for a purse of 150 guineas at Odiham, in Hampshire, in the following January.

Like many prominent fighters, Mendoza was finely developed from the waist upwards, with a big chest and a show of muscle in the arms, but his legs were weaker. He was five-foot seven in height. Humphries was an inch taller and rather better built. He was known as the “Gentleman Boxer” because of his pleasant manners and sporting behaviour generally. Both were men of proved courage. As may be imagined from the Epping incident, there was no love lost between them.

They fought on a twenty-four foot stage erected in a field, but, since the day was wet, the boarded ring from the first proved to be a hindrance to good boxing.

At first the men were both very cautious. Mendoza, always a little inclined to attitudinise and to pose for effect, swaggered about the ring until he saw an opening when, lunging forward with a mighty blow he slipped and fell. On coming up again Mendoza got a little nearer to his man and hit him twice, the second blow knocking Humphries down. In the next round they closed and Humphries was heavily thrown. Already it seemed certain that Mendoza was the better boxer, though Humphries was very strong and full of pluck. And for a quarter of an hour of hard fighting his pluck was fully needed. Mendoza throughout that time attacked him with the utmost violence, knocking him down or throwing him with consummate skill, so that the betting was strongly in the Jew’s favour. Then happened one of those curious and unsatisfactory incidents for which Broughton’s Rules, at all events, had no remedy. Mendoza had driven his antagonist, blow following blow, right after left, across the ring to the side, which appears on this occasion to have been railed and not roped. A smashing right had all but lifted Humphries off the stage, and for a moment he hung over the rail quite helpless and at Mendoza’s mercy. Instantly taking advantage of his position, the Jew sent in a terrific right-hander at Humphries’s ribs which, had it landed, would almost certainly have knocked him out of time and so finished the fight. But Tom Johnson, who was acting as Humphries’s second, leapt forward and caught Mendoza’s fist in his own hand.

The Jew’s followers immediately sent up a shout of “Foul!” which was reasonable enough. Indeed, by modern rules there would be no question at all. Humphries would have been immediately disqualified for his second’s interference. But the old rules were elastic and the umpires on this occasion decided that Johnson was justified, as his man should be considered “down.” Whether they had any ulterior motive, such as the desire to see the fight run its natural length, one cannot say. But we do know that human nature has altered remarkably little in a hundred and fifty years, and to-day a referee, not of the first rank, will often stretch a debatable point in order “not to spoil sport,” or because it would be a pity if the public failed to get their money’s worth out of the moving pictures taken of the fight.

Hitherto, owing to the wet and slippery boards, Humphries had been severely handicapped. He now took off his shoes and fought in his silk stockings. But with these, too, he found it difficult to keep his footing and after a round or two his seconds provided him with a pair of thick worsted stockings to put over them. In these he could stand firm, and shortly afterwards his great courage began to be rewarded, for Mendoza flagged a little, and Humphries picked him clean off his feet and threw him with terrible force to the ground. The Jew came down on his face, cutting his forehead severely and bruising his nose. Coming up for the next round, Mendoza was plainly hurt and shaken, and thenceforward his antagonist showed himself the better man. Mendoza went down before a terrific body-blow, while in the next round he fell from a left-hander on the neck which nearly knocked the senses out of him. Then, coming up again, he dashed at Humphries and hit him with all his flagging power in the face, but he slipped and toppled over from the impetus of his own rush and fell down on the boards with his leg awkwardly twisted under him. In doing this he sprained a tendon, and knowing that further effort was quite useless, he gave in. A moment later he fainted in the ring and was carried away. So Humphries’s victory on this occasion was due, finally, to an accident. The whole battle was finished in half an hour, and “never was more skill and science displayed in any boxing match in this kingdom,” wrote the chronicler, Pierce Egan, with his customary exaggeration.

Prone as human nature ever is, now as then, to judge by net results, Mendoza’s reputation nevertheless suffered little from this defeat. On the contrary, he had boxed so well and had shown so much courage that he had, if anything, enhanced it. It was seen that he was a much quicker man than Humphries and that he was far better at close quarters. On the other hand, Mendoza was not a really hard hitter.

After this battle the winner wrote a note to his backer and patron, Mr. Bradyl, which delightfully summed up the situation:—

“Sir,—I have done the Jew, and am in good health.

“Richard Humphries.”

But a number of sportsmen were by no means satisfied that Humphries had “done” the Jew on his own merits. They fully realised that accident had materially helped in that “doing,” and accordingly were ready to back the Jew again. The two men being quite willing, a match was arranged and was eventually fought in Mr. Thornton’s park, near Stilton, in Huntingdonshire, on May 6th, 1789. For this encounter, popular excitement being very great, a sort of amphitheatre was built with seats piled tier on tier around the ring. It held nearly 3000 people. This, too, was an unsatisfactory fight, but has to be chronicled because it illustrates very vividly some of the causes which nearly a hundred years later finally brought the Prize-Ring to ignominy, and because, also, it shows how mixed are human motives and emotions during severe physical strain.

The men squared up to each other, and Humphries made the first attack, but Mendoza stopped the blow neatly and sent in a hard counter which knocked his antagonist down. The second and third rounds ended in exactly the same way. The Jew’s confidence was complete, his speed remarkable. He had learned to hit no harder, but he certainly hit more often than Humphries. For about forty minutes Mendoza had much the best of it, taking his adversary’s blows on his forearm, instantly replying with his quick, straight left, or closing and throwing Humphries.

The feeling of impotency, of long effort continuously baffled, finds the breaking point of a boxer’s pluck much sooner than severe punishment relieved by a successful counter from time to time. Humphries was tired, but not seriously hurt. In the twenty-second round Mendoza struck at him, but he avoided the blow and dropped. He did not slip. As the Jew’s fist came towards him he made the almost automatic movement which should ensure its harmlessness, but at the same moment he deliberately made up his mind to take the half minute’s rest then and there. Or perhaps that was instinctive too. The human mind flits quickly through the processes or stages of intention and comes to a certain conclusion. Humphries wanted to gain time and fell without a blow. Now the articles of agreement expressly stated that if either man fell without a blow he should lose the fight. And the cries of “Foul!” from the crowd and especially from Mendoza’s corner were natural enough. But Humphries and his backers claimed the fall a fair one because Mendoza had struck a blow, though it had not, as a matter of fact, landed. The partisans on either side wrangled and argued, and finally a general fight seemed almost inevitable. Above the yelling and cursing of the crowd and in the general confusion, the umpires could scarcely be heard. Sir Thomas Apreece, Mendoza’s umpire, naturally shouted that it was a foul and that Humphries was beaten. Mr. Combe, the other umpire, held his tongue, refusing to give an opinion. That should have been sufficient. But Mendoza’s second lost his temper and shouted across the ring to Tom Johnson, who was once again seconding Humphries, that he was a liar and a scoundrel. This observation may not have been strictly to the point, but the point (save that of the jaw) is the last consideration when feeling runs high on notable public occasions. Johnson said nothing and began to cross the ring in his slow, heavy way, looking very dangerous. But a diversion interrupted a promising bye-battle, for Humphries stood up and called on Mendoza to continue fighting, carrying the war, as it were, into the enemy’s country by taunting him with cowardice. Mendoza was willing enough, but his backers held him back. Humphries then threw up his hat and challenged the Jew to a fresh battle, and at last they fell to again. And yet again Mendoza showed himself the better man, knocking Humphries down twice in succession. For half an hour the second act of this drama continued indecisive, though Mendoza was evidently the better and more skilful man. He now punished Humphries severely, closing one of his eyes, severely cutting his forehead and lip. He had little in return, though Humphries had put in some heavy body-blows at close quarters which had made the Jew wince. But throughout the second half of the fight Humphries fought with perfect courage and even confidence. Then at last he again fell without a blow, and Mendoza was declared the winner.

Broughton and Slack.

In the memorable battle at the Amphitheatre, on Tuesday April 10, 1750.

Copied by Permission from the Original Painting in the possession of Mr. Thomas Belcher.

Published Sept. 23, 1879 by G. Smooten, 150 St. Martins Lane.

What was to be thought of such a man?

Even now, neither Humphries nor his friends were fully satisfied. His tremendous hitting power, especially when directed against Mendoza’s body, was reckoned as not having yet been fully tested. Once let him send home but one smashing right on the Jew’s lower ribs, and he would certainly win.

Accordingly, yet another match was arranged in September of the following year at Doncaster, during (as Pierce Egan phonetically spells it) the Sellinger Cup week. The place chosen was confined on three sides by houses, whilst the fourth was closed by high railings behind which flowed the river Don. Public excitement was very high. Upwards of five hundred tickets of admission to the ground were sold at half a guinea each, whilst a ferryman made a small fortune by taking many hundreds of people over the river to the back of the railings at sixpence a head. These presently smashed down the railings and so gained an unauthorised entry. Having gained their point, however, the crowd behaved well, and settled down to watch the renewed trial of the two fighters in silent expectation.

Again a twenty-four-foot stage had been built at a height of four feet so that all the spectators could get a clear view. At half-past ten in the morning the men appeared, Mendoza immediately following Humphries. Both of them seemed cheerful, confident, and well. Johnson, who had hitherto been Humphries’s second, had deserted and gone over to the opposite camp, his place being taken by John Jackson, who, a few years later, himself became Champion of England. Colonel Hamilton and Sir Thomas Apreece were the umpires, and they mutually agreed upon Mr. Harvey Aston as referee. Odds of 5 to 4 were laid on Mendoza.

Humphries led off with perfect confidence and all his strength, but was met by stout resistance. In a moment they were in each other’s arms, struggling for a fall, and presently they both went over together. Their eagerness was quite undiminished when they came up again, Humphries doing most of the leading and landing from time to time, without, however, giving Mendoza serious trouble. After a time they grew more cautious, blows were fewer but harder, and Mendoza knocked his man down. In the fifth round Humphries made a desperate effort to get in one of his rib-bending body-blows, but failed, and in the rally that followed over-reached himself and fell. And then it was seen that, round by round, Mendoza was improving, scoring more heavily, boxing much better. The odds rose to 10-1 in his favour. Round after round ended by Humphries going down, sometimes from a blow, but more often “from a policy often used in boxing, which perhaps may be considered fair; several times he sank without a blow, which conduct, though contrary to the articles of agreement, was passed unnoticed.”

Judging that conduct on its open merits, we should say that Humphries was a simple coward. But we often too easily and too quickly call people cowards, and even in this instance we have, so to speak, to look again.

The spectators, even in that age of quickly cut and dried opinions, still had a certain degree of confidence in this strange man, for whilst he was actually fighting, though round by round he got the worst of it, there was the same old vigour in his movements, the same readiness to seize an opportunity. The man of poor spirit in the ring is not so much one who cannot stand punishment as one who fails in aggression. Almost he hopes to be knocked out; he can stand up and defend himself, but on his very life he cannot force himself to take chances and attack his opponent.

Again he must have experienced the impotency of inaction. He tried to hit Mendoza, but seldom succeeded. Again, one eye was completely closed so that he could not see from it. His friends, seeing that he had no chance of winning now, begged him to give in. But he refused. And yet he kept falling without a blow. One moment he would make up his mind to be brave, to endure whatever punishment was coming to him, and the next he would fail, and seek respite on the ground. Then again he would stand up and try to fight. For a little while after his friends’ solicitations, he was spurred on to his best endeavours, but it was useless. Mendoza won every round, and at last, dreadfully cut about the head and face, with a mutilated ear and a severe cut over the ribs, Humphries had to give in.

Much battered, he was carried through the crowd on the shoulders of his friends.

It was not until five years later that Mendoza’s championship was wrested from him by John Jackson, a man whose title to fame arose rather from his general behaviour than from his performances as a professional athlete.

Jackson was born in 1768, and was the son of a builder. His forebears had come of a good yeoman race. He was a man of great solidity of character, astute commercial instincts and a sonorous pomposity of manner which passed very well for dignity. He was five-feet eleven in height, and he weighed fourteen stone. He was massively built, and he “took care of himself,” as the saying goes: in other words, he lived a reasonable life—the last sort of life usually lived by the pugilists of that day.

Jackson and Mendoza met at Hornchurch, in Essex, on April 15th, 1795, for 200 guineas aside. The twenty-four-foot stage was built at the bottom of a hollow which formed a natural amphitheatre and accommodated about 3000 people.

Jackson had fought only twice before, having beaten Fewterel of Birmingham, a good man with twenty victories to his credit, and having lost, through falling and dislocating an ankle, to George Ingleston. His fine appearance and his portentous respectability no doubt brought more public interest to his fight with Mendoza than his record: but the Jew was a fully tried man of a great and deserved reputation, and the betting was 5-4 on him.

When the men had shaken hands a whole minute went by as they manœuvred about each other before a blow was struck. Then in the slow manner of that day, Jackson gathered himself together and sent in a tremendously hard left-hander which struck Mendoza full in the face and sent him down.

In the second round the Jew was more careful, and when Jackson went for him he stopped or avoided blow after blow, using his feet with neatness and dexterity, and returning, if not blow for blow, at least a fair proportion of them. A little later there was a fierce rally in which Mendoza was knocked down, but the betting nevertheless rose to 2-1 on him.

They fought at an ever increasing speed as time went on. In the fourth round, Jackson paid no heed at all to his opponent’s blows, but battered his way in, taking much punishment to give the greater. Finally he sent home a terrible left on the right eye which completely slit open the brow and bled profusely besides causing Mendoza to fall. Jackson was evidently doing the better as the betting changed in his favour.

It was in the next, the fifth round, that our model of gentlemanly conduct sought his own advantage by means of one of the foulest tricks that have been handed down to us. There was a fierce exchange of blows during which the Jew’s head was lowered as he lunged forward with his right to the body. Jackson stepped aside to avoid the blow and caught Mendoza by his somewhat long hair, twisting his fingers in it, whilst with his free hand he upper-cut him again and again.

Mendoza’s friends instantly appealed to the umpires, but, Egan tells us, “they deemed it perfectly consistent with the rules of fighting.” Mendoza fell and 2-1 was betted on Jackson.

During the next three rounds the old champion was evidently growing weak, and fought only on the defensive. But Jackson beat down his guard and hit him severely. The ninth round was the last. Jackson walked in and planted several hard blows in quick succession on face and body. Mendoza struggled on for a little while and at last fell utterly exhausted. He knew that he stood no chance now. It was folly to go on. He gave in.

It was one of the shortest main battles ever fought, lasting in all but ten minutes and a half; and for its time quite the hardest ever fought at all. Mendoza was badly cut up; the new champion was hardly hurt.

This was not by any means the Jew’s last appearance in the Prize-Ring, for he fought Harry Lee for seventy minutes and beat him in fifty-three rounds eleven years later: and he actually fought Tom Owen in 1820, when he was fifty-seven years old. “Youth will be served,” we know, and Owen, who was at the time only just over fifty, beat him. Mendoza lived to a good old age, and in comfortable circumstances, dying in 1836.

Seven years after the encounter recorded above a letter appeared in the Daily Oracle and Advertiser which purported to be a challenge from Mendoza to Jackson for a return match. As a fact, the letter was a practical joke; but a part of Jackson’s reply is worth quoting, as it is so characteristic of all we hear of the man.

“... for some years,” he wrote, “I have entirely withdrawn from a public life, and am more and more convinced of the propriety of my conduct by the happiness which I enjoy in private among many friends of great respectability, with whom it is my pride to be received on terms of familiarity and friendship....”

Jackson never fought again, and one of the greatest reputations in the annals of the championship that have come to us is based upon a pugilist who only entered the ring thrice! One other champion was in precisely the same case, and that was John Gulley, whom we shall come to in due course.

No doubt Jackson attracted to himself a good deal of attention apart from the eccentricity of his good behaviour. He was a man of prodigious strength and is said to have written his name whilst an 84 lb. weight was suspended from his little finger.

After his retirement he took rooms at 13 Old Bond Street, a regular and fashionable house of call for the young bloods of the day. It became the correct thing to take a course of boxing lessons from John Jackson. Byron, who was a keen boxer despite his infirmity, used to go there to keep down the fat of which he ever lived in terror. In his diary for March 17th, 1814, he says: “I have been sparring with Jackson for exercise this morning, and mean to continue and renew my acquaintance with my mufflers. My chest, and arms, and wind are in very good plight, and I am not in flesh. I used to be a hard hitter and my arms are very long for my height.”—which was 5 ft 8¼ inches—“At any rate, exercise is good, and this the severest of all; fencing and broadsword never fatigued me half so much.”

Byron regarded John Jackson as a friend whom he greatly admired. He wrote letters to him on several occasions.

Jackson had innumerable pupils and was about the first real instructor of boxing for amateurs. He went to his grave in Brompton Cemetery old and honoured in 1845.

CHAPTER IV
JEM BELCHER

If the love of Fair Play is not born in us, and has therefore to be taught, we do have ingrained in us a very real admiration for a good loser. Nothing, as we know only too well, succeeds like success—particularly material success. But somewhere or other deep down in us we have a kind of mistrust of what the world at large calls success: there may be a tinge of superstition in our feeling. At any rate we have a very warm corner in our hearts for the glorious failure: and not without good reason, for there are more failures than successes, and, having failed, it is easy enough to invent the glory.

Jem Belcher is probably the most renowned prize-fighter that ever lived. He won several splendid victories, details of some of which have come down to us. But it is not his victories that have given fame to him so much as his glorious defeats: and these not so much on account of the champions who beat him, though they were very famous too, as on account of Belcher’s personality. This, compounded as it was of qualities and especially defects, unlovely in themselves, was of exactly the kind which endears itself to the English speaking world, and to that world not only.

Jem Belcher was a roysterer, a drinker, a loose fish. He was also jealous and vindictive. But he was indomitably courageous and he was good-looking. He was a gracefully built man, and well-proportioned, but he made no great show of muscle. He stood 5 ft. 11 in., but never weighed more than 11 stone 10 lb.—only a little over the modern middle-weight limit.

Jem Belcher was born at Bristol on April 15th, 1781, being on his mother’s side a grandson of Jack Slack, the champion of 1750. He went to work as a butcher’s boy, and whilst quite a lad, showed amazing precocity as a boxer. His first recorded fight, when he was but seventeen, was with Britton, whom he beat in March of 1798 in half an hour or so. Then he came to London, where he was kindly treated by Bill Warr, now an elderly man, who put on the gloves with him to see what he was made of. As a result of this trial, Warr backed Jem against Paddington Jones, whom he easily beat. In the following year he fought a drawn battle with Jack Bartholomew, when quite out of condition. In 1800 he was matched with Bartholomew again and fought him for three hundred guineas a side on Finchley Common. Belcher had already shown himself as a brilliantly scientific boxer, aggressive, “never to be denied,” as they say. But with Bartholomew, a much heavier and stronger man, he showed how well he could defend himself, “milling on the retreat” when necessary. In spite of this Bartholomew dashed at him at the beginning, and, forcing down his guard, knocked Jem down. So certain were Bartholomew’s backers that he had the fight in one hand, so to say, that they immediately sent off messengers to London announcing his victory. This was a little premature, for no sooner had those messengers left the ring-side than Belcher with lightning speed hit his opponent several times in succession without a return, and finished a brilliant round by throwing him a hard cross-buttock. The effects of this handicapped Bartholomew for the rest of the encounter. He had plenty of pluck, and all of it was needed. The moral courage required to stand up and take a beating from a much lighter man, or rather a boy, is very great. The rounds were short and very fierce, seventeen being fought in twenty minutes. And at the end of that time Jem sent home a tremendous body-blow which knocked Bartholomew down and out of time. He was unable to reach the scratch after the half-minute’s rest.

After this Belcher thrashed Andrew Gamble in five rounds and nine minutes. His next battle, quite an important one in regarding the man’s record, was yet but a brawl at the ring-side of another fight. Just after the encounter between Isaac Bittoon and Tom Jones in July of 1801, Joe Berks, the Shropshire butcher (who figures in somewhat similar circumstances with Boy Jim in Sir A. Conan Doyle’s Rodney Stone), somewhat elated by wine, called out, “Where’s young Jem Belcher? Where’s your champion?” So Jem went up to him and asked him what he wanted. The reply was a quick blow which Belcher, ever on the alert, stopped. They thereupon settled down to a bye-battle which lasted for nineteen minutes and which Jem Belcher decisively won.

However, it was manifest that Berks had been fighting under the handicap of considerable intoxication, and a set battle was finally arranged between these two in the following November. They met at Hurley Bottom, near Maidenhead.

Joe Berks was much the stronger man, and though early in the fight Jem laid open his nose with a vicious right and later cut his forehead so that Joe lost a lot of blood, his seconds finding it impossible to staunch it, he fought like a tiger. In the ninth round after these misfortunes and when he had been getting much the worst of it, he dashed in, through, as it were, Jem’s raining blows, seized hold of him and hurled him down with terrific force. Joe Berks was a gallant ruffian, and though utterly defeated in sixteen rounds and twenty-five minutes refused to give in. Finally his seconds threw up the sponge on his behalf. He was much cut and bruised both in face and body, while young Jem Belcher hardly had a mark to show, and seemed quite unhurt. He declared afterwards that he never felt a blow throughout the fight—which is probably untrue.

After he had beaten Joe Berks again and Fearby, the Young Ruffian, in fourteen and eleven rounds respectively, Jem Belcher was generally regarded as the Champion.

It was after these fights that a great misfortune befell him. Jem, who, like other fighters of his day, was made much of by sportsmen of all kinds, was playing racquets one afternoon with a Mr. Stewart at the court in St. Martin’s Street, when a ball struck him in the eye and literally smashed it. This was in July of 1803. The misfortune, great as it would have been to any man, was not at the moment calamitous, for Belcher had made enough money to enable him to settle down as a publican; and he now took the “Jolly Butchers” in Wardour Street, Soho. It was supposed that he would never dream of fighting again, blind as he was in one eye; and no one challenged his championship. For two years he maintained the dignity of champion, until the exploits of Henry—commonly called Hen—Pearce, the “Game Chicken,” roused him from his retirement.

Though in years Pearce was just a little older than Jem, he had been his protégé, and Belcher had brought him up from his native Bristol a few years before. Pearce stood 5 ft. 9 in. and weighed 13 stone, having a figure like Tom Johnson’s. He was slow, and his knowledge of and skill in boxing was by no means equal to his master’s, but he was very strong. In 1804 he had beaten Joe Berks, and in the following year John Gulley, after a tremendous battle which lasted for fifty-nine rounds and one hour and ten minutes. After this he was generally acclaimed as Champion of England. And at that Jem Belcher’s bitter envy rose like flame. He couldn’t bear to see even his friend whom he had taught and introduced to the London Ring on his own old throne. To the great surprise of everybody he challenged Pearce, and the fight took place on December 6th, 1805, at Blyth, near Doncaster. The “Napoleon of the Ring,” as Jem was sometimes called, owing to his slight physical resemblance to our great enemy of that period, was the favourite, despite his blind eye. But directly he stripped the betting changed to 5-4 on Pearce. The landlord of the “Jolly Butchers” had not improved his physique during the two years of retirement.

Though still a young man Belcher had all the sensations of a returning veteran. Indeed it takes a young man to feel that kind of position strongly. Despite the jealousy which had prompted the challenge, there was a romantic atmosphere about all the circumstances of this battle. The half-blind hero, thin, weedy, delicate, fighting the new and sturdier champion; skill and a wonderful spirit pitted against solid bone and muscle. By the time the fight had begun, Jem Belcher felt the romance of it more keenly than his unjust resentment.

We may regard Jem as the first perfect exponent of that splendid blow, the straight and simple left lead. And after the usual caution when the men first met it was with a lightning left, but fiercely hard, that he drew first blood, cutting Pearce’s eye severely. It was like old times—it was always the same way: Joe Berks was strong and so was Fearby, but they could not stop him, Jem Belcher. That left had gone in easily enough. He knew how to hit, did Jem. Strength wasn’t everything. But—what was this? There were uncomfortable abilities in strength after all. The Game Chicken took his blow and heeded not his bleeding eye-blow and then he closed, and his grip tightened and tightened, until Jem was like a helpless child in his huge brawny arms, and presently he was flung violently upon the turf. Something in sheer strength, when all’s said.

But there’s a good deal in boxing too. Belcher feinted with his left and sent home a hard body-blow with his right, repeating it in the next moment. Pearce’s streaming eye hampered him a good deal, but even yet he could see sometimes when he wiped the blood away, while Jem, from his corresponding eye, could see nothing. Swinging his weight forward, he aimed a tremendous blow with the right at Jem, who, with all his old coolness and dexterity, guarded it, and joined gladly in the fierce rally that ensued. Then in a lull out came Pearce’s long arms again to seize Jem in a bear-like hug and throw him down.

And so they fought on. Other things being equal, the boxer wins. And so far as boxing goes Jem had this battle all his own way, but he could not withstand that grim hug, which caught him round after round about his middle and hurled him, shaken and weakening, to the ground.

And yet in the fifth round, greatly daring, Jem carried the war to his opponent and threw him; though the effort of doing so was beyond all wisdom. In the next round Belcher was boxing again with cold skill and neat precision, but his old vigour was lacking. He looked a sick man, though his remaining eye was bright and open. They wrestled for a fall, but the heavy Pearce was uppermost. In the seventh round both went down together after Jem had suffered some severe punishment with his head “in chancery” under the Chicken’s arm, but in the eighth he showed himself the old champion. Shaken and weakened as he had been, he gathered himself together and hit out as he had been used to do. If only he could keep this up! He knew that he had only too little reserve of strength, but surely Pearce could not endure this hammering for long. Using his right chiefly now, he hit his opponent as he liked and when he liked, and when Pearce showed signs of exhaustion, Jem wound up the round by throwing him clean out of the ring.

But when they came up again Jem was bitterly disappointed. Pearce was very strong. His shaking had done him little harm. Belcher hit him hard in the face, but he could take it all and more. They fell together, but Jem knew that unless he could beat him soon, he was done.

In the twelfth round it was plain to every one that Jem’s strength was going, and he knew it himself. He made a desperate effort, but it was of no use against this rock of a man. Pearce closed and threw him half over the ropes, so that he was at his mercy, but he stood away. “I’ll take no advantage o’ thee, Jem,” he said, “I’ll not hit thee, lest I hurt thine other eye.”

Men of Belcher’s temperament and in his position can brook no pity, and Pearce’s gallant sentiments only enraged him. His hits were growing weak, he was panting for his breath, his knees were shaking, but even so he contrived to end the thirteenth round by throwing the Chicken down.

In the next round he tried to gain time. He was bleeding severely from several deep cuts about his face, and it was increasingly hard to will himself to go on doing his hopeless best. He fought as much as possible on the retreat, trying to keep away. But the Chicken saw a chance of finishing the fight quickly and dashed in, hitting Jem with great force under his blind eye. Then he threw him.

A little later Pearce again got Jem over the ropes in a helpless position and again stepped back, refusing to take advantage of him. In falling sideways it was thought that Jem had broken a rib in hard contact with a ring post. He winced as he came up for the seventeenth round. He was not merely so weak that he could hardly stand, but he was suffering great pain. His pluck was exemplary, he stood up and did his best to box, guarding a blow from time to time and trying to put in a return. But now Pearce had the battle in his hands. He hit Jem as he pleased, as Jem had only a short while ago hit him and ended the round by throwing him.

In the next round Jem came up staggering to the scratch, but once there he found that he could not even lift his left arm at all, and with a bitterness in his heart such as he had dreamed that he would never know, he gave in.

And Pearce, to show how strong he was, could not resist showing off by jumping out of the ring and back again and turning a somersault.

The fight had lasted but thirty-five minutes in all.

CHAPTER V
JEM BELCHER AND TOM CRIBB

After Jem Belcher’s signal defeat at the huge hands of Pearce, the “Game Chicken,” two years passed by before the temptation once again to risk the chances of the ring overpowered the old champion. During that time his life as a publican had by no means improved his already enfeebled physique. And those two years had seen the rise to fame (and that fame steadily growing) of one Tom Cribb, a Gloucestershire man like Pearce and Belcher himself, a heavy, slow, ponderous fellow, who had beaten good men, the best of whom was Bill Richmond, the black, and who had been beaten but once, when quite out of condition, by George Nichols.

Once again Belcher’s jealousy blazed up, and he challenged Cribb. The challenge was accepted. At that stage of Cribb’s career it could in no wise be avoided, but his backers were not at all easy. They knew what Jem Belcher could do, they knew that their own man was dead slow. They were afraid that, despite the old champion’s unathletic life, Tom Cribb would never be able to touch him.

The fight took place on April 8th, 1807, for £200 a side. The place chosen was Moulsey Hurst, on the Thames, almost opposite to Hampton Court, the scene of innumerable prizefights. The battle attracted all the foremost sportsmen of the day, and the gutteral exclamations of the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., were heard amongst the chatter at the ring-side. John Jackson kept “time.”

In spite of his pasty face and weedy appearance Jem was still the favourite. His arms, never remarkable for muscular development, looked thin and meagre, his whole body poor. But the lion-hearted courage of the man had so firm a hold upon the imagination of his friends that they believed him still invincible. It was easy enough to invent excuses for his defeat by Pearce.

Cribb was a shorter man, but fully two stone heavier. He was built on the heroic scale, with huge chest and shoulders and the arms of an inelegant Hercules. To the more dismal of his friends, who warned him of Jem’s speed, he replied, grinning. “You’ll see, he’ll break his hands on my head.” Cribb’s was a very tough nut, and with considerable experience behind him he knew it.

The fight began with the usual caution. Then Jem darted in with a couple of spanking blows at his adversary’s face, and almost before Cribb knew where he was, he had jumped away again out of reach. Again Jem did this and yet again. All the stories he had heard of Cribb’s great strength were comfortably balanced by the discovered truth of the stories about his slowness. But the next time Jem leapt in upon his man Cribb was ready with a heavy right-hand counter on the ribs; and then before he could get away Jem found himself whirled off his feet and flung hard upon the ground.

In the next round Jem backed away, tempting Cribb to try for another fall, and as the big fellow lumbered after him, Jem stopped abruptly and sent in lightning blows with left and right, a bang under the chin and again and again on the face and nose, so that the blood ran fast. Then like the vainglorious fool that he was, he closed with Cribb, and exerting all his strength, flung him on the ground.

It was an idiotic thing to do, for to throw a man two stone heavier than yourself is more exhausting than to be thrown by him. And Jem Belcher knew it, but seeing the opportunity could not resist it, well knowing as he must have done, that Cribb could endure any amount of such treatment. Thereafter for a little while, it is true, Jem was all over Cribb. He was infinitely the better and the faster boxer. Lord Saye and Sele, Jem’s principal backer, watched him with satisfaction. “He’ll have Tom blinded in half an hour,” he said: for again and again Jem’s sharp knuckles had landed on his opponent’s shaggy eyebrows. But the amateur had not thoroughly studied the anatomy of Cribb. He had not noticed, for example, that his eyes were unusually deep set, so that though his brows were badly bruised and constant sharp blows had fallen on the cheekbones as well, the subsequent swelling had not closed Tom’s eyes as it would have other men’s. Moreover, when blow on blow upon the hard bone of his brows had lacerated the swollen flesh, the flow of blood partly relieved the swelling. But for some rounds Jem Belcher hammered him unmercifully. Left and right, quickly following up advantages, he drove Cribb before him round and across the ring. Thrice in succession he exerted his strength and, closing, threw his antagonist heavily upon the grass.

But Tom Cribb was hard and healthy and strong. He might be a poor boxer at this time, but he knew how to play a waiting game, and he had the moral courage to bide his time and the physical courage to endure the inevitable punishment, and now at last he saw that Jem’s rushes were slower. The grim-faced, battered fighter looked across the ring at the slim and delicate fellow, so light a burden upon his second’s knee, whose face showed not a mark, and he nodded to his own attendants. “You watch,” he said.

When they came up again, the spectators noticed that there were bruises about Jem’s ribs, and that when Tom’s infrequent body blows did land, he winced with obvious pain. But he continued to take care of his head. For a round or two Jem had been slowing down, then once again he pulled himself together and went for Cribb with the fury of despair. He understood now what it was to fight a man so vastly his better in sheer strength. And under the rain of his punches Tom Cribb retreated and at length fell prostrate in his own corner. Many folk at the ringside thought that the fight was over. Half a minute to go—could Cribb recover? His seconds sluiced him with cold water, rubbed his limbs, dragged him up. There he was, staggering at the scratch, a pitiful sight, broken, bleeding, but upright, and, as the moments passed, steadier, with left foot out, hands up and head erect. And again Jem went for him and landed a couple of blows, right and left, upon his head. Then he backed away towards his own corner, glancing at his fists as he did so. Tom Cribb grinned, and turned for an instant towards his own corner, nodding, as much as to say, “Told you so.” Jem came forward again and made a hesitating attempt at a blow. Tom guarded it easily and went after him, pressing him towards the ropes and finally sending him down with a heavy right on the ribs. In the next round Jem came up again, clearly afraid to hit, and this time with a terrific-body blow Cribb sent him clear through the ropes.

JOHNSON & PERRINS

Published August 27 1812 by A. Smerton St. Martins Lane.

The turn of fortune had been amazingly sudden. Not three minutes before every one save Cribb and a few of his supporters had thought the end had come and in Jem’s favour. Now Tom knocked him down again without anything like resistance. And at the end of forty-one rounds and thirty-five minutes, Jem Belcher had perforce to give in. Immediately afterwards he walked, weak but not dead-beat, round the ring, showing his hands to the spectators. They were quite useless. Tom had been right: his hard head had driven up the knuckles so that the lightest hit was to Jem exquisitely painful.

It was an honourable defeat, though a bitter disappointment to Jem Belcher. Well he knew that in all but strength and hardness he was the better man. And he knew, too, that few, save Cribb, could endure the amount of punishment that he had given before his hands went, and that in the days before he lost his eye and before he had weakened his constitution by drinking, Cribb could never have stood a chance with him.

CHAPTER VI
JOHN GULLEY

Before continuing the history of Tom Cribb and finally disposing of the unlucky Belcher, it is necessary to turn aside and examine the brief pugilistic career of John Gulley, who, like Jackson, fought but thrice and like him depended for fame more upon his respectability than upon the drive of his fist. To get the worst over at once I may record the notorious fact that Gulley, after leaving the Ring, made money and flattered his self-esteem by entering Parliament, sitting for Pontefract. Nowadays champion boxers are a cut above that sort of thing.

Despite the shortness of his fighting life and his monumental respectability, John Gulley was a very fine pugilist. How he gained the necessary reputation before being matched with the Game Chicken it is impossible to say. We know that he found willing backers, so we may safely assume that he had shown more than usual skill with the “mufflers,” as boxing gloves were called in those days. The fight, which took place on July 20th, 1805, at Hailsham, in Sussex, lasted for an hour and ten minutes, and was finished in fifty-nine rounds. Gulley was beaten, nearly every round ending by his downfall, but he boxed well and showed remarkable endurance and pluck.

On the retirement of Pearce, chiefly owing to ill-health—indeed, the poor fellow died not long afterwards of consumption—Gulley became virtual champion. But he can hardly be described by that title with full justice, for the reason that he declined the office and showed no desire to act as a champion in the true meaning of the word, for he did not stand to accept challenges. He honourably retired from the ring, kept the Plough Inn, Carey Street, and realised a large fortune as a bookmaker. But his two victories over Bob Gregson are certainly worth mention. One of them is the subject of an illustration in this book.

Though these battles were between two big men, the hugeness of Gregson made them appear unevenly matched. Gulley weighed about 13½ stone, and stood just under 6 feet. Gregson, a Lancashire man by birth, weighed 15 stone and was 6 ft. 2 inches. They fought at Six Mile Bottom, near Newmarket, on October 14th, 1807. Gulley had Tom Cribb in his corner and Gregson Bill Richmond.

For the first six rounds there was little to choose between them. But Gregson was somewhat daunted by a very severe knock down in the second round. Gulley hit him full in the face with such force that the blood literally flew from him. In the seventh, however, the bigger man fought through his opponent’s guard and gave Gulley such a blow under the eye as knocked the senses out of him for a few seconds, and his eye swelled up so that he was completely blinded in it. In the next round Gregson, using his tremendous strength, lifted his man up and hurled him to the ground as though he had been a piece of timber. But he refrained from falling on him, which, by the rules then in force, he was entitled to do, and whereby with his great weight he might have done severe damage—and so earned the cheers of the onlookers. The ninth round immediately following, found Gulley still quite cool and using all his skill. He knocked his man down, though not severely. Then onward till the sixteenth round, however, Gregson’s strength made itself felt, and he gave John Gulley a very bad time. Gulley seemed to be weakening, and round after round ended in his downfall. Then he “got his second wind,” and in a fierce rally knocked Gregson clean off his feet.

It must be remembered that for some time past Gulley could see with but one eye, and though he was the better boxer, his opponent’s extra weight was a severe added handicap when it came to a fall. Gulley would have much the better of the exchanges round after round, and yet many of these rounds ended by his being desperately thrown.

By the twenty-third round, however, it was seen that Gregson’s strength was ebbing, whilst Gulley somehow gave the impression of maintaining the same condition as he had shown after the first ten rounds. That is to say, he appeared to be weak, but again and again gathered himself up for some prodigious effort by sheer will-power. Up to the twenty-fifth round it was, as the saying goes, anybody’s fight. Both men were badly damaged: the strength of both was fast ebbing. You might say that if either had known exactly how bad the other felt he could have won then and there. In all personal combats it is each man’s business to hide his feelings from his opponent. He must be hurt without showing that he is hurt, and however much hurt he must persist in wanting to win. There comes a time in a hard fight, with gloves or without them, when one man or other wants less to win than to be done with the whole agonising, wearying business on any terms. And that man is beaten. So it was now with Gregson. Hurt and fatigued, he lost heart at last. His will had been stubborn, but not so stubborn as John Gulley’s. They fought on till the thirty-sixth round, till both were almost at a standstill. Then Gulley made the last supreme effort and knocked Bob Gregson down, so that he could not rise to the call of time. Gulley himself came staggering to the scratch.

This was regarded at the time as one of the severest battles ever seen in the Prize-Ring. It was a good sporting encounter throughout, with good will and even magnanimity on either side. Gulley had greatly improved in the science of boxing since his encounter with the Chicken, and he needed all that science in order to balance Gregson’s extra height, weight, and reach.

For his part Gregson and his backers believed that he could yet beat Gulley, and he accordingly challenged him to fight for £200 a side. The day fixed was May 10th, 1808, and the scene of action on the borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The magistrates, however, made difficulties, as they occasionally did even in those days, and the Dunstable volunteers were called out to “keep the peace” and to deal with “the proposed riotous assembly.” Eventually the principals, seconds, backers, and huge “riotously assembled” crowd moved off to Sir John Seabright’s Park in the friendlier county of Hertford. And there the fight took place in a huge ring, forty feet square.

Men on horseback and on foot, in barouches, coaches, carriages, donkey-carts, men walking, men running, went across country for several miles out of the jurisdiction of the enemies of pugilism. Much rain had fallen during the day, with the consequence that the fighters had some difficulty in keeping their feet. Gregson, in anticipation of this, had spiked shoes, but Captain Barclay, as referee, justly regarded these as dangerous and unfair, and ruled that the men should fight without shoes, which accordingly they did.

The men circled about each other in the dog-like fashion in which the majority of fights opened, and Gulley retreated towards his own corner. His seconds, Bill Gibbons and Joe Ward, fearing lest Gregson with his great weight should fall upon their man whilst his back was against one of the stakes, put their hands over the top of it to prevent serious injury. But Gulley knew what he was about; feinting with his left he brought his right over with a great swing of his shoulders and caught his man fairly upon the temple and knocked him down. So excited were the onlookers at the second great trial between these men that they were quite silent, and not one cheer was raised. Only the light shuffling of stockinged feet was heard, hard breathing, and the spank of Gulley’s prodigious blow. The second round ended in the same way, though Gregson had first put in a resounding thump upon his opponent’s chest, which was, however, unlikely to have damaged him much. They were still very cautious, and for five minutes sparred for an opening, neither taking any grave risk. Then, with all his might, Gregson let fly with his left. Gulley took the blow on his arm, but felt the effects of it for long afterwards. It is probable that such a blow set up an inflammation of the muscles which, aided perhaps by rheumatism, would render it useless for several months.

The next three rounds ended by Gulley going down: in the sixth Gregson fell upon him so that he gasped long for breath. He had previously committed a foul by seizing Gulley’s thighs. The seventh round was Gulley’s, for with blow on blow he drove his opponent through the ropes. He knocked Gregson down again and it was evident that he not only knew more boxing, but by agility and strength made up for the disparity in their weights. The tenth round found Gregson’s head pulped with savage blows and his left eye nearly closed. Egan tells us that Gregson was now “fighting rather after the Lancashire method, without any pretensions to science.”

Gregson showed plenty of ordinary pluck, for though he was knocked down again and again and severely punished, he stood up like a man. But the extraordinary pluck or will-power exerted in adverse circumstances deserted him sooner in this encounter than it had in the previous one. He had been very badly hammered then; and the moral effect of that thrashing told upon him now.

In the twelfth round Gulley landed a smashing hit from which Gregson was in the act of falling when his antagonist hit him again. There were cries of “Foul,” but the blow was a fair one. Such an incident happens not infrequently. It happened in January, 1922, at the end of the fight between Carpentier and Cook.

After this Gregson was all but blinded, and staggered about the ring half dazed, he could not reach Gulley, who hit him thrice in quick succession as it pleased him, and knocked him down.

In the seventeenth round Gregson lost his temper and his head. That is fatal. It is, of course, all nonsense to suppose that an angry man cannot put up a good fight. He can; a touch of cold rage lends power to a man: thinking clearly he hits to hurt. But wild, tempestuous rage is another matter altogether. The man becomes blind, inasmuch as what he sees conveys no message to his brain. For a moment or two it is, perhaps, impossible to hurt him, for his passion consumes his other senses. But sooner or later some stunning blow will cool its victim’s fiery temper: there will be a brief moment of realisation, and—it will be too late. The wild, unthinking attack will have been checked, but the power to guard against reprisal will be numbed.

Gregson charged at his antagonist like a great bull, head down, arms working like flails. Gulley stood still, coolly taking his opportunity. Left and right he sent his bony fists crashing into Gregson’s face, brought, by his attitude, into easy reach. Left and right, and then, giving way a little, left and right again. He hit him as he liked, driving his weight behind each blow, guarding himself from or merely avoiding the ponderous windmill attack of the infuriated giant. When Gregson’s moment of realisation came, his temper having passed, he fled towards the side of the ring, actually turning his back upon Gulley as he did so. But Gulley was after him and never left him alone, bringing short-arm blows to bear upon face and body until, utterly exhausted, Gregson fell.

From the eighteenth to the twenty-fourth and last round Gulley had the fight, as it were, in one hand. He punished Gregson terribly, but the giant’s pluck was even greater than his rage had been. He would not give in, but came, at each call of time, staggering to the scratch. At last Gulley got the chance of an absolutely clear, free blow, into which he could put every ounce of his weight. It caught Gregson behind the ear and knocked him out; that is to say, he had not recovered at the end of half a minute, and was unable to stand at the next call of time.

Bob Gregson was certainly a great pugilist, and besides, like Gulley and Jackson, a man of presence and social charm. Indeed, he was offered and accepted a commission in the army, but Pierce Egan tells us that his means would not support the privilege for more than a very short while. It is Egan, too, who tells us that Bob Gregson, “although not possessing the terseness and originality of Dryden, or the musical cadence and correctness of Pope, yet still ... entered into a peculiar subject with a characteristic energy and apposite spirit.” In other words, Gregson wrote verse. That there may be no misunderstanding, the following stanza, the first of three in honour of Tom Cribb, is quoted below:—

“You gentlemen of fortune attend unto my ditty,
A few lines I have penn’d upon this great fight,
In the centre of England the noble place is pitch’d on,
For the valour of this country, or America’s delight;
The sturdy Black doth swear,
The moment he gets there,
The planks the stage is built on, he’ll make them blaze and smoke;
Then Cribb, with smiling face,
Says, these boards I’ll ne’er disgrace,
They’re relations of mine, they’re old English Oak.”

This refers to one of the battles, shortly to be described, between Tom Cribb and Molineux, the black.

CHAPTER VII
JEM BELCHER’S LAST FIGHT

As already said, John Gulley retired from the ring after his second fight with Bob Gregson, and Tom Cribb, having himself beaten Gregson a few months later—that is, on October 25th, 1808, was declared Champion of England. And once again Jem Belcher’s unreasoning ambition (or insensate jealousy—whichever way you like to put it) caused him to challenge Tom for the title. This time, though Jem found backing, as an old favourite somehow always will, his friends frankly dreaded the issue. In the two years or so that had gone by since their last encounter, Jem had taken no greater care of himself than previously. His all too easy, self-indulgent life in conjunction with a naturally delicate body, had made a poor creature of him. Before his second fight with Cribb he entered the ring, as you might say, a beaten man.

The place chosen on this occasion was the racecourse at Epsom, the day was the first of February, 1809. The betting was 7-4 and 2-1 on Cribb, who had been trained by Captain Barclay, himself a good amateur boxer, though chiefly known in those days as the man who, for a wager, had walked a thousand miles in as many hours.

And yet the first round was Jem’s. Tom Cribb, though in much better condition than formerly, had not yet reached his highest form and was still ponderous and slow, relying upon his strength, playing a waiting game. Jem dashed in with all his old eagerness and gusto, and spanked away at the champion merrily. Tom retreated, and Jem’s wonderful speed confused and hustled him, so that he could not guard himself effectually, and Jem would send home sharp, stinging lefts followed by heavier rights, half a dozen to Cribb’s one. But though he might be momentarily bothered and confused, the champion was quite content. He could stand all the punishment that Jem could give him—that he knew already. He had only to wait. It was worth a few knocks. Jem would beat himself.

The second round was rather different. Jem still did all the leading and Tom fought on the retreat, but this time he kept his head and stopped most of the quick blows that Jem aimed at him. His guard had greatly improved, he used both his head and his feet with coolness and sound judgment. It is true that he was somewhat staggered by one very hard hit that Jem drove home over his guard, but that led the weaker man to an act of foolishness such as had helped towards his downfall in their previous fight. Jem dashed in and instead of raining blows to complete his man’s discomfiture, he closed and wrestled with him and finally threw him, which, as we have seen, did more to exhaust the temporary victor than his opponent. Not even the betting by unintelligent spectators was affected. Indeed Captain Barclay promptly tried to lay 4-1 on Cribb, but found no takers even at that price.

And yet for many rounds Belcher boxed with great skill, though quite early in the fight it was noticed that his wind was poor, and in any sharp rally he had to fight for his breath. Time after time Cribb found himself able to get close and throw him. But it was Cribb once more who showed the severer signs of punishment: his face was already swollen and he bled profusely from several cuts made by Jem’s sharp knuckles. Again and again Cribb was out-boxed, but what was science against a man whose mighty strength could ignore blows? Belcher was indeed and once again beating himself. His wind was gone, his breath came in feverish gasps, he grew slower and more feeble. In the eighth round he tried to get away from his man to the side of the ring in order to get his breath, but Cribb followed him quickly to the ropes, and Jem had to fight again. True, he hit Cribb several times, but the sting was gone from him, and presently the champion closed and they both fell.

And now Cribb refused to retreat any more. He stood up and walked into Jem, planting terrible blows, chiefly upon his body, guarding the counters, closing and hurling the lighter man upon the ground. He was confident and happy now. By the eleventh round he knew that he could not lose. And yet Belcher fought on with that amazing persistence, that flickering hope against hope, that glorious courage which in like case to-day, as then, you will often hear called folly. Jem Belcher was beaten then, but he went on till the thirty-first round with a gallantry that endures as an example to this day. Once again his knuckles were driven up and the skin upon them was all torn away. There is no possible doubt but that if Jem had been his old self Cribb could not have beaten him. But that is an unprofitable line of argument.

Belcher never entered the ring again. This battle, though it had lasted only forty minutes, still further reduced his strength. And immediately afterwards he was sentenced to a month in jail for this “breach of the peace.” There he caught a severe chill from which he never recovered. His lungs had always been delicate, and he died eighteen months later at the age of thirty, one of the greatest athletic heroes this country has ever known.

CHAPTER VIII
TOM CRIBB AND MOLINEUX

With those whose charity begins—and ends—at the farthest possible point from home, with those who, to be more particular, born of British blood, cannot speak of the British Lion without referring to mange, who never refer to British traditions or institutions without a sneer, the present writer has little patience. It is necessary to say that at some point in this chronicle in order to avoid misunderstanding. Tutored by Pierce Egan, Borrow, and other and later writers, we are apt to lose all sense of perspective in regarding that one-time wholly British institution, the Prize-Ring. Further, other sources of enlightenment, and especially our schoolmasters, have blinded us to any flaw in the tradition of British Fair Play, the love of which, as already said, is an acquired and not an inherent virtue. And if in this and other chapters some account is given of events where the love of fair play was conspicuously lacking, and which perhaps tend to show that a great tradition can be, after all, but a great superstition, that will not, I trust, be taken as evidence of the writer’s anti-English proclivities. At this time of day, the truth, so far as one can discover it, can do no harm—if indeed it ever can. And with that much by way of explanation and warning, we proceed to some account of the two immortal battles between Cribb and Molineux, the black.

The history of the Nigger in Boxing has yet to be fully explored. From the time of Bill Richmond and Molineux (the first black boxers whose names have come down to us) till the time of Jack Johnson, negroes in this country have fought, with certain exceptions, under the severe handicap of unpopularity. Without entering too deeply into the Colour question, we may say that this unpopularity comes also from tradition. The vast majority of negro boxers had been slaves or the descendants of slaves. In early days and in the popular imagination they were savages, or almost savages. Also it was recognised from the first that the African negro and his descendants in the West Indies and America were harder-headed than white men, less sensitive about the face and jaw; most black boxers can take without pain or trouble a smashing which would cause the collapse of a white man. Occasionally this is balanced by the nigger’s weakness in the stomach—but, one thing with another, the white man is at a disadvantage. But physical inequality is not the only point of difference. Niggers are usually children in temperament, with the children’s bad points as well as their good ones. The black man’s head is easily turned, and when his personal and physical success over a white man is manifest he generally behaves like the worst kind of spoiled child. In extreme cases his overwhelming sense of triumph knows no bounds at all, and he turns from a primitive man into a fiend. His insolence is appalling. When the black is in this condition ignorant white men lose their heads, their betters are coldly disgusted. There have been exceptions, the most notable of whom was Peter Jackson, whose exploits will be found in the second part of this book. Peter Jackson was a thoroughly good fellow. As a rule, however, it is far better that negroes, if fight they must, should fight amongst themselves. No crowd is ever big-hearted enough, or “sporting” enough, to regard an encounter between white and black with a purely sporting interest.

Thomas Molineux was born of slave parents in the State of Virginia. He himself had been legally freed, and he came over to England, without friends, with the idea of earning a living with his fists. “Thormanby” (the pen name of the late W. Wilmott Dixon) tells us that he had been in the service, in America, of Mr. Pinckney, subsequently United States Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s; and he was a good friend to the lonely black on his arrival in London. Molineux put himself in the hands of Bill Richmond, a fellow negro who had been taken into the service of the Duke of Northumberland when that nobleman was campaigning in America, and, later, educated at his expense and by him set up as a carpenter. Richmond appears to have been a very well-behaved fellow, and at the time of Molineux’s arrival was keeping an inn in the West End of London.

By all that is fair, even in love and war, Molineux should have won the first of the two battles he fought with Tom Cribb. He was aiming high, for his conquests, previous to his challenging the champion, were few and insignificant. However, Tom could do no less than accept, though he underrated the black: and a match was made for £200 a side. The place chosen was Copthall Common, near East Grinstead, in Sussex, and the day December 10th, 1810. Vast numbers of people came down from London to see the fight, travelling through a downpour of rain which made the ring into a mere pool of mud. Cribb was seconded by John Gulley and Joe Ward, and Molineux by Bill Richmond and Paddington Jones. “Time” was kept by Sir Thomas Apreece.

Bets were made that Molineux would not last for half an hour—and, as the event proved, lost.

The men were splendidly matched. Cribb stood 5 feet 10½ inches and weighed 14 stone 2 lb.: Molineux was two inches shorter and almost exactly the same weight. Neither man was in absolutely first-rate condition. Cribb was always inclined to be “beefy” and the Moor (as Egan calls him) was a somewhat dissipated customer. Indeed the majority of fighters in those days were plucky enough in battle, but lacked the higher and more enduring courage to go through a long period of arduous training.

Owing to Gentleman Jackson’s perspicacity, the ring had been formed at the bottom of a hill, so that the great crowd of spectators could get an excellent view of the proceedings.

Nothing of any importance occurred in the first four rounds. Molineux was thrown in the first and drew first blood from the champion in the second. The wet ground made foothold precarious, and on that account a comparatively light blow knocked a man down. Even so it was Cribb who did the most knocking. The fifth round was very fierce. Each in turn had some little advantage. The round was a long series of rallies, quick leads neatly stopped, hot counters, one of which landed on Cribb’s left eye. There was no betting at the end of this round. In the eighth the champion had a good deal the worst of it, but stood and took his gruel like the man he always was. Egan’s description of the ninth round may be quoted in full as being typical of that author, with his numerous exaggerations and underlinings.

“The battle had now arrived at that doubtful state, and things seemed not to prove so easy and tractable as was anticipated, that the betters were rather puzzled to know how they should proceed with success. Molineux gave such proofs of gluttony, that four to one now made many tremble who had sported it; but still there was a ray of hope remaining from the senseless state in which the Moor appeared at the conclusion of the last round. Both the combatants appeared dreadfully punished; and Cribb’s head was terribly swelled on the left side; Molineux’s nob was also much the worse for the fight. On Cribb’s displaying weakness, the flash side were full of palpitation—it was not looked for, and operated more severe upon their minds upon that account. Molineux rallied with a spirit unexpected, bored in upon Cribb, and by a strong blow through the Champion’s guard, which he planted in his face, brought him down. It would be futile here to attempt to pourtray the countenances of the interested part of the spectators, who appeared, as it were, panic-struck, and those who were not thoroughly acquainted with the game of the Champion began hastily to hedge-off; while others, better informed, still placed their confidence on Cribb, from what they had seen him hitherto take.”

By the thirteenth round the betting had changed to 6-4 on the Moor. But the fight remained extraordinarily level until the end of the eighteenth round, when both appeared to be exhausted. They were both heavily punished, and on the whole fight perhaps Cribb had been the more severely handled. Both were unrecognisable, and their colour only distinguished them.

In the nineteenth round, during which the half-hour from the beginning was up, Cribb, who for some time past had been “milling on the retreat,” tried to land a desperate blow at the moment when Molineux had him up against the ropes. These were in three rows, the top one being five feet from the ground. The black dodged the blow, and, seizing the top rope on either side of Cribb with his two hands, pressed upon the champion with all his might. Cribb could neither hit, nor fall. The seconds on either side argued the propriety of separating the men: but the umpires decided that no such interference was allowable. One of the combatants must fall before a second touched either. At that moment about two hundred of the onlookers, infuriated at the black man’s behaviour, rushed the outer ropes and pressed upon the ring-side. Several men snatched at Molineux’s fingers, which still clung to the top rope, and tried to dislodge them. Some say that one or more of the black’s fingers were broken, others that they were at least injured. But all the time Molineux was resting and getting his wind, his head down on Cribb’s chest, his weight thrown forward upon his body. At last, what with his own efforts and the people plucking at his opponent’s hands, Cribb got free and retreated towards the nearest corner. A less courageous man would have contrived to slip down. As it was, Molineux caught him, and, avoiding a hard left with which Cribb lunged at his body, seized the champion’s head under his arm and proceeded to punish him with short, jolting blows, from which presently Cribb fell exhausted to the ground. He brought Cribb down again the next round as well. The twenty-second round, Egan tells us, was “of no importance,” and he leaves it at that, whilst we sadly reflect how many rounds of nowadays, tediously described in detail, deserve the same fate.

It was at the end of the next round that Molineux should have won, though Pierce Egan entirely omits the incident from his full account, merely observing, in another volume of Boxiana (where he makes a note upon the negro’s death in Ireland):—

The Boxing Match between Richard Humphreys and Daniel Mendoza on the 9th of January, 1788.

“It was decided on an oak stage of twenty-four feet square. On the combatant mounting the stage, the odds were two to one on Humphreys. In the first round Mendoza obtained the advantage, and kept it for near twenty minutes. Humphreys then got the lead, and retained it about eight minutes; when, after a well contested fight, it terminated in his favour. The print represents Johnson as second to Humphreys, and Ryan to Mendoza. Of the figures surrounding the stage sixteen are portraits of amateurs.”

“His first contest with Cribb will long be remembered by the Sporting World. It will also not be forgotten, if Justice holds the scales, that his colour alone prevented him from becoming the hero of that fight.”

The following is Egan’s exact account of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth rounds:—

“Twenty-third.—The wind of both the combatants appearing somewhat damaged, they sparred some time to recruit it, when Cribb put in a blow on the left eye of Molineux, which hitherto had escaped milling. The Moor ran in, gave Cribb a severe hit on the body, and threw him heavily.

“Twenty-fourth.—Molineux began this round with considerable spirit, and some hits were exchanged, when Cribb was thrown. The betting tolerably even.”

Now at the end of the twenty-second round Molineux was doing better than the champion, and the betting was 4-1 on him. The crowd at the ring side shouted: “Now, Tom, now! Don’t be beat by the nigger.” But all the same Cribb went down at the end of the twenty-third round utterly done. What followed throws no shadow upon the character of Tom Cribb himself. From all we can gather he was a perfectly straight and honest bruiser. But he had been badly knocked about, and Joe Ward, one of his seconds, was desperately afraid that he would never get him up to the scratch by the call of time. There seems to be, indeed, no doubt that Cribb was, but for the squeezing against the ropes, fairly beaten. Ward was a clever rascal, and he ran across the ring to Molineux’s corner and accused Bill Richmond of putting bullets into his principal’s hands.[2] He must have known perfectly well that this was false, just as he must have known, incidentally, that such foul play would do far more harm to the striker than to his opponent. But the altercation achieved its purpose, and Cribb got a good deal more than his due thirty seconds in which to recover.

Immediately after this the black got a fit of shivering, as by now, despite the pace at which they had been fighting, the chill of the December day had got into his bones, fresh as he was from a warm climate. Molineux weakened rapidly, though, urged by his seconds, he fought on till the fortieth round. Of the end of this battle Egan says:—

“This (the 34th) was the last round of what might be termed fighting, in which Molineux had materially the worst of it; but the battle was continued to the 39th, when Cribb evidently appeared the best man, and at its conclusion, the Moor for the first time complained, that ‘he could fight no more!’ but his seconds, who viewed the nicety of the point, persuaded him to try the chance of another round, to which request he acquiesced, when he fell from weakness, reflecting additional credit on the manhood of his brave conqueror, Tom Cribb.”

What additional credit is reflected by knocking down an exhausted man, I find it a little difficult to perceive. Whether we like the fact or not, Molineux should have been Champion of England that day, a day which is indeed black for the fair name of good sport. No possible good can come of trying, as Pierce Egan did, to disguise it. The referee was grossly unfair in not stopping Joe Ward’s trick, which he can hardly have failed to see. It should also be added that the crowd hooted and jeered at Molineux throughout the fight—but then, crowds are like that. Crowds are seldom genuinely sporting in the finest sense. It should be said, however, that the Stock Exchange gave the black a warm reception after the fight, and sent him away with a present of £45.

We may be sure, however, that Tom Cribb himself treated his antagonist with chivalry. This is manifest in the fact that Molineux in after years did his utmost in support of the champion, sparring at his benefit performance, and, unasked, selling tickets for it.

At the time the black man was anxious for another trial; and the following letter appeared in The Times for Christmas Day, 1810:—

“St. Martin’s Street,
“Leicester Square,
“Dec. 21st, 1810.”

“To Mr. Thomas Cribb.

“Sir,—My friends think, that had the weather on last Tuesday, the day upon which I contended with you, not been so unfavourable, I should have won the battle: I, therefore, challenge you to a second meeting, at any time within two months, for such sum as those gentlemen who place confidence in me may be pleased to arrange.

“As it is possible this letter may meet the public eye, I cannot omit the opportunity of expressing a confident hope, that the circumstance of my being of a different colour to that of a people amongst whom I have sought protection will not in any way operate to my prejudice.

“I am, sir,
“Your most obedient, humble servant,
“T. Molineux.”

“Witness, J. Scholfield.”

The announcement of Cribb’s acceptance of the challenge was given in The Times for December 29th, and the match was made for a purse of 600 guineas.

It took place at Thistleton Gap, in the county of Rutland, on September 28th, 1811, and though a much shorter affair, the second battle is hardly less famous than the other. The final blow of this encounter is depicted in a print published less than a week afterwards, a reproduction of which will be found in this book.

This time Captain Barclay trained Cribb to a hair, so that all his beef was gone. His system was a savage one and must have killed some men, would certainly kill many boxers of the present day. But it agreed with Cribb, much though he is said to have disliked the process at the time. Cribb’s preparation lasted for eleven weeks, and his weight was brought down from 16 stone to 13 stone 6 lb. He was probably the first really trained man that ever stepped into a ring.

If the truth is to be known, Barclay had a special reason for making a good job of the champion’s training. He was a good amateur boxer himself, and was used to put the gloves on with the pros at Jackson’s rooms in Bond Street. But, “Thormanby” informs us, he kept a special pair of gloves there for his own use. Whether they were harder than the ordinary we do not know, but they were probably much lighter! The day on which he had arranged to spar with Molineux he arrived after the black, who was already wearing his special mufflers. He could not very well say: “Here, those are my particular gloves,” and so had to be content with the regulation puddings. The result was that Molineux broke one of his ribs; and now he wanted to be even with him, though by proxy.