1. Pietro Torrigiano’s history has an English interest. He was certainly a “fighting man.” While serving as a volunteer in the army of Pope Alexander VI. he modelled some bronze figures for some Florentine merchants, who invited him to go with them to England. Here he was a favourite with “bluff King Hal,” who employed Torrigiano to execute the tomb of his father, Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey, for which he received the then large sum of £1,000. Employed to execute a sarcophagus for Cardinal Wolsey—the Ipswich butcher’s son—his work (once intended to enclose the coffin of Henry VIII. at Windsor) by the “irony of fate” was destined to enshrine the remains of a greater English hero. Nelson lies beneath the dome of St Paul’s in the sarcophagus sculptured by Torrigiano for Wolsey, his inner coffin being made from a piece of the French flagship L’Orient, blown up at the battle of the Nile. Torrigiano died in Spain in the prisons of the Inquisition, having been condemned as a sacrilegious heretic for demolishing a “statue of the Virgin,” which having been paid inadequately for by a niggardly nobleman, the Duke of Arcoss, he broke in pieces with his mallet. The incensed grandee had him arrested, and Torrigiano, to avoid being roasted at an auto da fé, refused food and so perished, A.D. 1522.
2. See Apollon., Argonaut.; Theocritus, Idyll. 22; Apollodorus, b. i., c. 9.
3. Statius, Thebais, vi., v. 893; Lucan, Pharsalia, iv., 598; Juvenal, Sat. iii., 88.
4. The inquiring reader will find the sex of “the Trojan horse” settled in some humorous scholia to Pope’s “Dunciad,” book i., line 212, quizzically attributed to Richard Bentley, the famous critic, under the alias of Martinus Scriblerus. And at this present time of writing we may note that the axe-wielding ex-premier, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, in his great speech on introducing the Reform Bill (March 19, 1866), borrowed a metaphor from this ancient fable with eloquent propriety—
5. Forsyth’s “Remarks during an Excursion in Italy,” p. 117.
6. In Blaine’s “Cyclopædia of Rural Sports,” art. British Boxing, p. 1219. Longmans 1860.
7. An intelligent correspondent of The Sporting Life newspaper, in a series of letters from Germany, written in July, 1863, gives a graphic and blood-tinted picture of “How the Students fight at Heidelberg,” which we would commend to the perusal of the pedagogues of our public schools. We have space for no more than a few fragmentary sentences, but the whole is worth serious thought on the part of those who “teach the ingenuous youth of modern nations.” The writer says:—“I will now describe to you three duels, out of many I have witnessed. The first with the sabre, the other two with schlagers. The first was between the præses, or head man of one of the principal corps, and an officer in the German army. It appears that the officer was at one time a student in the University of Heidelberg, which he quitted to enter the German service. Being quartered at Mannheim, which is close to Heidelberg, he determined to revisit the place, when, for some reason or other unknown to me, he was at once drawn into a duel by the præses of the corps. Allow me to remark, en passant, that an unfortunate student was killed here in a sabre-duel some three or four months ago. A court of inquiry was held, and it was proved by the medical men that the deceased had a remarkably thin skull, which would easily have been fractured by the slightest blow, a fall, or anything of that sort. The result was that all parties were acquitted. But I must return to my sabre-duel. While I was passing through Heidelberg, Old “Puggy” came and told me there would be a sabre-duel early the next morning in the Ingle Suisse, or “Angels’ Meadow,” a small meadow up in the mountains, surrounded by trees, and where all the sabre and pistol duels came off. The “Angels’ Meadow” is about ten minutes walk from the Hirsch Gasse. I suppose it has derived its name from its extreme beauty, but I think the “Devil’s Meadow” would be a more appropriate name, for during the last twenty years no end of fatal duels have taken place there. I took care to be on the ground early, in order to get a view, which I did by mounting a tree. The attendance was very small, as only a limited number are allowed to be present at a duel which is likely to be attended with loss of life. Each man arrived on the ground in a carriage, the student being accompanied by the University doctor, while the officer had a medical friend. While the seconds and umpires were arranging preliminaries, the men were prepared by their respective doctors. The combatants in this case were prepared as follows:—A leather pad to protect the stomach, and a woollen one guarded the lower parts. The sword arm was covered as usual, and a leather apron put on. The whole upper part of the body was left open to attack. The ring was made, the seconds, umpire, and referee took up their respective positions, and the two doctors undoing their cases of instruments, laid them on the ground ready for any emergency. The terms were that the men, if able to scratch, were to fight fifteen minutes, not including rests and stoppages. The umpire of the student (the student being the challenger) now prepared to give the word. Previous to this, a sabre, with schlager handles, was handed to each man. At the word Silentium, you might have heard a pin drop. Gebunden, or the order to bind them, was then given, and a silk handkerchief was tied round the wrist, and fastened to the handle. Gebunden ist was the reply, which means, “bound it is.” Auf de mensur, “go into position and scratch,” Faretz, “ready,” and Los, “go at it,” were called, and at it they went with a will, the guard used being the schlager-guard, and not the English sword exercise. Two or three rounds were fought, when the officer got a fearful wound on the side of the head. The round was of course over, and after a few restoratives had been administered, silence was again called. I may as well state here, once and for all, that this was the only wound the officer got; not so with the student, the wounds he received about the head were of a fearful character, and round after round he came up. The time having expired, the student was carried to his carriage; and, owing to the injuries received, he could not leave his room for several months. When he left his room, he went to the seaside. It is needless for me to say that both of them will carry the marks of this contest to the grave.
“It was on April 10, during vacation, and while there were scarcely any students in Heidelberg, I was sitting at my window, and saw four or five students go towards the Hirsch Gasse; I followed them, and when I arrived there the men were stripping. All being in readiness, they were led out of the house, each arm being carefully supported by the seconds. One of these gentlemen was a student from Munich, the other was a Heidelberger, and the men were placed opposite to each other. Silence was called, and the fight began. The first round occupied considerably less than half a minute, and was finished by the seconds springing in and terminating the round, because one of the schlagers was bent. The second round followed without any result. The combatants are never allowed to be in mensur more than three-quarters of a minute—scarcely ever half a minute: these short rounds are done to rest the arm. In the third round, the Munich man got a cut on the cheek, a Bluticher, or “a blood,” was the cry. The seconds cried “halt!” and “a blood” was scored to the Heidelberg student. The fourth round was a teazer for the Munich man, for he got his nose divided clean in two. No surgeon could have done it better: you could have laid one half back on one cheek, and the other half on the other. After this, the Munich man lost his nerve, and every round he only came up to be receiver-general. At last he got a fearful cut behind the head, dividing an artery. Seeing this, the surgeon immediately stopped the duel, after they had been at it seven minutes (fifteen minutes was the time they had to fight). The wounded man was taken inside the inn, where every necessary attention was paid him which his condition required. I never saw the man again.
“The second schlager duel which I saw was between a Prussian and a Schwabian: both fine men. The morning was a wet one, so they fought in a cart-shed. Having gone into a detailed account of two other duels, it will not be necessary for me to do so in this one; suffice it to say, the surgeon made them fight out the full time (fifteen minutes), and the Prussian got no less than six ugly cuts about the head; fearful gashes they were. He had to keep his bed; and, like most of these duellists, will carry the marks to the grave. As he was led out of the shed, he presented a piteous spectacle; and I only wish some of the detractors of the P.R. could have seen him as I did. These two schlager duels are good average samples.”
The writer adds, after some sensible remarks on these sickening and murderous savageries, “I write thus strongly, because I cannot and will not believe that any one who has the good of his country at heart can decry a well-conducted P.R., as it might be if legalised, or at the least winked at and tolerated.” As to the fatal encounters with knife, rifle, and revolver in the Transatlantic States, they stain almost every sheet of their journalism.
8. As it would overload the page with notes to give authorities for these remarks, we may observe that the opinions upon pugilism of the celebrated Mr. Windham, Mr. Harvey Combe, Sir Henry Smith, the Duke of Hamilton, Francis Duke of Bedford, Lord Yarmouth, Mr. Barber Beaumont, Sir John Sinclair, the first Lord Lowther, and other legislators of both Houses, will be found under the periods with which they were contemporary, together with the dicta of justices and judges as occasion called them forth. Anecdotes and extracts from the writings or speeches of Dr. Johnson, Dr. Parr, Dr. Drury, Adam Smith, Sir Walter Scott (in Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk), Professor Wilson, Lord Byron, Tom Moore, Sir Robert Peel (the late), and other admirers of the pugilate, are scattered in the places where they appropriately occur.
9. On this point the Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M.P. for Gloucester, has expressed himself with outspoken candour in “A Letter on the Sports of the People, and their Moral Effects,” which is invaluable as the testimony of one who has shared in the sports and studied the customs of his countrymen. He says:—“Looking at a mere prize-fight got up by the backers and friends of each party, it seems, in its abstract position, to be an useless brutality for two men, having no personal cause of quarrel, to bruise each other for the possession of gold; but, regarding it in another light, as the necessary display of a fair standard of combat, by the rights and regulations of which, throughout the country, all quarrels determined by personal conflict are to be settled, in this light it assumes a character of safe and wholesome public example, which its most strenuous opposers cannot with justice deny. In my mind, then, the prize fight and fair boxing-match are the means of teaching the people to become advocates for honest and gallant decisions in all cases of quarrel, and that the encouragement of the use of the fist is the greatest antidote that can be offered to the revengeful and dastardly resort to the assassin’s knife.
“In freedom from war, in the retirement and blessings of the country, there are no gallant deeds to keep alive the emulation and courage of the English peasant; then I hold that any amusement which tends to the display of personal gallantry, is calculated to be beneficial to the human mind. In spite of all the outcry raised by self-dubbed humane societies, and the abuse to which they often stretch the power vested in them for better purposes; in spite of the sickly preachings of diseased and over-sensitive minds, there is no set of people more angry with the fact of two armies being in presence of each other without fighting, than those whose health or inclinations confine them to the tea-table and fireside, and who would faint at the mere sight of their own blood.
“It is the man who cannot leave home, that cries out for war; it is the man who has no chance of bleeding, that calls for blood. A paper on the breakfast-table, which brings a return of thousands slain, is, to the appetite of those sickly sophists, an agreeable stimulant. ‘Humanity’ makes a capital banner for a cavilist, ignorant of the matter of the subject he condemns, to march under; and ‘no cruelty’ is a cry like the ‘no popery’ cry, which gathers together hosts of unthinking people ready to arraign and pull down they know not what.
“The shrivelled penman, whether clerk or layman, whose thews and sinews have wasted through inactivity, sits at his desk and condemns recreations, pastimes, and pleasures, the value of which he has never known, and the loss of which, in consequence, is immaterial to him; while hosts of others, conscious of their own more secret mental deformities, are zealous to hang charges of immorality on any superficially available corner of the characters of their neighbours, for the sole purpose of sustaining one reputation on the ruins of another.”
10. Vide Mr. Henry Mayhew’s admirable pen and pencil sketches of “London Labour and the London Poor.”
11. It is a curious statistical fact that of twenty murders, accompanied with brutal violence, committed in 1862–3–4, the writer traced no less than eleven to inhabitants of England not native born. A more recent atrocity, the railway murder of Mr. Briggs, we owe to a German immigrant; the five preceding ones (out of eleven) to Irishmen, who bear a proportion to Englishmen as 5 to 150, or 1 in 30 of the population. Then comes in close sequence, the brutal assassination and mutilation of a German (Fuhrup) by his countryman Karl Kohl; and later we find recorded a knife and shillalah fight between Italians (Gregorio Mogni and Serafino Pelizzioni), who among them stabbed several persons and killed an Irishman, one Michael Harrington, the initiatory feud being the merits of Garibaldi on the Italian side, and his Holiness Pio Nono on the Irish.
12. This shows that the professors of gymnastics were numerous at the time.
13.
And in Bramstone’s Man of Taste we read:—
14. The “Ring” in Hyde Park (not the drive so called) was formed in 1723, by “order of his Majesty,” and encircled by a fence. It was situated about 300 yards from Grosvenor Gate. The area is still visible—a circle of very old trees belted by a plantation of younger ones. It was the scene of many impromptu conflicts, especially among the “chairmen” and “linkmen” of the two first Georges’ reigns, and the early part of the third. Fights were stopped here by the “Bow-street myrmidons” towards the close of the last century, and the ring itself obliterated in 1820.
15. This assertion is found in contemporary writers, and in Pancratia, p. 34. The ponderous Doctor himself was not only an advocate, but a practitioner of the fistic art. His strength and personal courage were undoubted, as well as his humanity. We have the authority of his biographers for his knock-down of Davies, the bookseller, in King-street, Covent Garden, and among the anecdotes of the day current and printed, is one of his successfully “instructing” a bullying drayman who was beating a cripple; as for his humanity and strength, we have the well-known and oft-repeated fact of his carrying pick-a-back (despite his prejudice against Scotchmen,) a disabled Scottish beggar to the hospital in Crane-court, Fleet-street.
16. “Boxiana” in two or three places says 1740. That was the period when George Taylor, the proprietor of the Tottenham Court booth, was beaten by the renowned Broughton.
17. The residence of George the Third, wherein he received the address of the Corporation of London on his accession (June 16, 1727); and also the mansion of his son Frederick, Prince of Wales, above-mentioned, who died in his father’s lifetime. Here were held the glove matches above alluded to. Here, too (afterwards called Saville House), George the Third was proclaimed, on the 26th October, 1760, and received the great bodies of the State. Its subsequent history—as Miss Linwood’s Gallery of Needlework, rooms for sparring and fencing exhibitions, conjuring, etc., cafe chantant, casino, and restaurant—brings us to its fate by fire in the month of March, 1865, and its proposed resuscitation in 1879, as “The Alcazar” theatre, concert-room, and hotel. Sic transit, etc.
18. This was written in 1747. It had been well had the Captain’s friendly caution been remembered.
19. Richard Humphries, “the gentleman boxer,” who beat Mendoza in 1788, is here alluded to. He was five feet nine inches. We suspect Broughton was an inch or two taller (Slack was five feet eight and a half inches); but his bulk, in old age, took off his height.
20. “Pancratia,” p. 46, edit. 1811.
21. This clumsy, inefficient, and easily stopped blow has later claimants to the honour of its invention. It is simply the most dangerous to the boxer who tries it, and the most awkward delivery of the fist.
22. A provincialism for crushing and rubbing.
23. This conduct would, of course, have lost the Frenchman the fight in modern times. There are some odd points of resemblance in Pettit’s fighting and that of Heenan in his Wadhurst fight with Tom King, although one was fought on turf the other on a stage. Heenan did not, however, “rogue” it like the Frenchman, and walk off, but “took his gruel” till beaten out of time.
24. George Meggs, the collier, was from the pugilistic nursery of Bristol. After this surreptitious seizure of the championship, he returned to his native place, we presume, for in July, 1762, we find him fighting “a pitched battle for a considerable sum (“Fistiana” says £100) with one Millsom, a baker, of the rival city of Bath.” This came off at Calne in Wiltshire, when, after a fierce battle of forty minutes, Millsom was acknowledged the conqueror. In the next month (August, 1762), Meggs, having challenged Millsom to a second combat, was a second time beaten.
Parfitt Meggs, noticed hereafter, a noted west country boxer, also surrendered to Millsom. Parfitt afterwards beat a namesake of the retired champion Slack (whose Christian name was John, not Jem), in the year 1765, at Lansdown, near Bath, which has made a mess in more than one “history.” In “Fistiana” (1864 edit.), under Meggs (Parfitt) are several fights, including two defeats by Tom Tyne (1787) and a victory over Joe Ward in 1790, about all which history is silent, while under Tom Tyne we are told he was twice beaten by Mendoza; when and where we know not. He was, however, beaten by Bill Darts (afterwards champion) at Shepton Mallett, in 1764, which does not appear under Meggs’ name.
25. Pierce Egan alters this to eight stone and a half, to agree with his statement that he fought men double his weight.
26. The reporter’s statement shows that, according to the modern practice, Taylor had lost the fight.—He was merely fighting for an off-chance, a foul blow, or a wrangle. Ed.
27. Pancratia, pp. 52, 53.
28. “Tom Juchau, the paviour,” once bid fair to seize the championship—on June 20th, 1764. His name in pugilistic circles was “Disher;” how derived, we might in vain inquire. His first fight of importance was with Charles Cohant (or Coant), a butcher, who had fought several severely-contested battles. Cohant, being the best known man, was the favourite, and the contemporary account says, “During the first twenty-five minutes ‘Disher’ was scarcely able to give him a single blow, but was knocked down several times. At thirty-five minutes odds were so high that money was offered at any rate. At this time Disher (Tom Juchau) changed his mode of fighting, and giving Cohant a most tremendous blow, by which he fell; the odds immediately changed in his favour. After this they fought but four rounds, when Disher, having played in several dreadful blows, Cohant yielded, acknowledging himself to be vanquished. The fight lasted forty-seven minutes.” There is a Spartan brevity, an heroic simplicity, and a simple trust in the reports of these olden fights, which is truly “refreshing” (we believe that is the tabernacle phrase) in these days of prose-showering and persiflage.
The next report is equally commendable for its brevity. “On August the 27th (1765), Millsom, who had defeated the two Meggs (see ante), fought a battle with Thomas Juchau, the paviour, at Colney, near St. Alban’s, in which he failed to enjoy his usual triumph, Juchau proving his conqueror.” After half a page of undated rigmarole, headed “Tom Juchau,” Pierce Egan says, vol. i., p. 74, “The paviour was now considered a first-rate man, and soon matched himself against some of the most distinguished pugilists.” We cannot find that he ever fought again.
29. Lyons (champion, 1769) has no mention of his exploits, except his conquest of the heroic Bill Darts, June 27, 1769, for the championship. For twenty-five minutes Darts had it all his own way, and ten to one was laid upon him, when Lyons recovered second wind, and in forty-five minutes wrested the championship from him. The battle took place at Kingston-upon-Thames. No other notable fight is credited to Lyons.
30. Daily Advertiser, May 17, 1771, and Monthly Register for May of the same year.
31. “Boxiana,” vol. i., p. 83.
33. “Historical Sketches and Recollections of Pugilism.” 1 vol. London, 1803.
34. Elisha Crabbe, though a professor of some notoriety, does not take much rank by this conquest over a boxer of upwards of fifty years of age. His next fight was with Bob Watson, of Bristol, June 9, 1788 (see Appendix to Period II., in the memoir of Watson), wherein he was beaten, but not disgraced. His last fight was with Tom Tyne (see Tyne), wherein he was also defeated. Elisha, who was in height 5 feet 8 inches, was a man of great muscular power. For many years he filled the responsible position of a peace officer at the Mansion House of the City of London. He resigned this and became a licensed victualler in Duke’s Place. He was a civil, obliging man, and always an object of popular attraction among the people of his own persuasion. He died suddenly on board the Gravesend packet, June 9, 1809, on his return to London, and was buried with Jewish tokens of respect.
35. The following shows that police interference was occasional, even in these early times. “May 11, 1773, a boxing match took place at the Riding School, Three Hats, Islington, between John Pearce and John White, both shoemakers, for £10 a-side. At the commencement of the combat White seemed to have somewhat the advantage, but Pearce having recovered his wind, and given White several severe falls, was on the point of winning, when the high constable and his attendants mounted the stage, and put an end to the contest.”—Daily Advertiser, May 13th.
36. “Pancratia,” p. 63.
37. Bath’s name appears as Booth in “Fistiana,” under Hood, but his battles are omitted in their alphabetical place. The most important were—beat William Allen, 40 min., Barnet, Aug. 20, 1776; beat Joe Hood, £50, 20 min., Maidenhead, Sept. 8, 1778.
38. Life of Johnson in “Historical Recollections of Boxing, etc.” 8vo., 1804; copied in “Pancratia,” (1811), pp. 65, 66.
39. As even an opponent of so good a boxer, Love’s name deserves a line or two. On January 14, 1788, after the fights of Johnson and Ryan and Mendoza and Humphries had brought back to pugilism the highest patronage, Bill Love and Denis Ketcher, an Irish boxer, fought for 20 guineas. Love was seconded by W. Savage, and Ketcher by his brother. “There were not less than 10,000 spectators of this fight, who were highly surprised and gratified by the dexterity of Ketcher. In size and strength Love was superior, but in forty-five minutes he was obliged to yield the laurel to the superior adroitness of his opponent.” (“Pancratia,” p. 77.) Love’s next appearance was more successful. On January 22, only eight days after his defeat by Ketcher, Love fought George Ring (generally misprinted King), the Bath baker, a well-known pugilist, whose defeat of Edwards, on his first arrival in London, had made him much talked about. Love beat him cleverly in thirty-seven minutes, in “the Hay Fields, Bloomsbury.”
40. Called Bill Ward in “Recollections” and in “Pancratia.” His name is correctly given in “Fistiana.” Warr beat Wood (Captain Robinson’s coachman) at Navestock, Essex, December 31, 1788; was twice beaten by Mendoza (see Mendoza); beat Stanyard, “a pugilist of celebrity from Birmingham,” for 100 guineas, in ten rounds, thirteen minutes, at Colnbrook, October 26, 1792.
41. It would be injustice to omit a short sketch of what our Yankee friends would call so “tall” a boxer as Isaac Perrins. His immense strength was “yoked with a lamb-like disposition.” In Birmingham, where he had long followed his occupation as foreman of a large manufactory, he was respected by his employers, and beloved by the workmen under him. Perrins was far from an illiterate man. In his general conversation he was intelligent, cheerful, and communicative, and possessed of a considerable share of discernment, which, after he quitted his calling as a coppersmith at Birmingham, and became a publican at Manchester, was of great service to him in business. His house was well attended by customers of a superior class. Isaac, too, had a natural taste for music, and, at one period of his life, was the leader of a country choir in psalmody. In company, Perrins was facetious, full of anecdote, and never tardy in giving his song; and was a strong instance in his own person, among many others which might be cited, if necessary, that it does not follow as a matter of course that all pugilists are blackguards! The following anecdote from a work entitled “The Itinerant,” not only places the good temper and amazing strength of Perrins in a conspicuous point of view, but exhibits one of the peculiar traits of an erratic histrionic genius, whose reckless riot ruined and extinguished his higher gifts. “It happened that Perrins, the noted pugilist, made one of the company this evening. He was a remarkably strong man, and possessed of great modesty and good nature; the last scene took such an effect on his imagination, that he laughed immoderately. Cooke’s attention was attracted, and turning towards him with his most bitter look, ‘What do you laugh at, Mr. Swabson, hey? Why, you great lubber-headed thief, Johnson would have beat two of you! laugh at me! at George Cooke! come out, you scoundrel!’ The coat was soon pulled off, and, putting himself in an attitude, he exclaimed, ‘This is the arm that shall sacrifice you.’ Perrins was of a mild disposition, and, knowing Cooke’s character, made every allowance, and answered him only by a smile, till aggravated by language and action the most gross, he very calmly took him in his arms as though he had been a child, set him down in the street, and bolted the door. The evening was wet, and our hero without coat or hat, unprepared to cope with it; but entreaty for admission was vain, and his application at the window unattended to. At length, grown desperate, he broke several panes, and, inserting his head through the fracture, bore down all opposition by the following witticism: ‘Gentlemen, I have taken some panes to gain admission, pray let me in, for I see through my error.’ The door was opened, dry clothes procured, and about one o’clock in the morning we sent him home in a coach.” Despite the second-hand wit, the credit remains with the pugilist.
In the “Annual Register,” under date of December 10, 1800, we read, “Died at Manchester, aged 50, Mr. Isaac Perrins, engine-worker. This pugilistic hero will ever be remembered for the well-contested battle he fought with the celebrated Johnson, in the month of October, 1789. Perrins possessed most astonishing muscular power, which rendered him well calculated for a bruiser, to which was united a disposition the most placid and amiable. His death was occasioned by too violently exerting himself in assisting to save life and property at a fire in Manchester. He was sincerely lamented by all who knew him.” Perrins needs no further epitaph than this tribute of one who knew him.
42. The account does not say whether blows had been exchanged, but we presume there had.—Ed.
43. Those who witnessed the memorable third fight between Caunt and Bendigo (at Sutfield Green, Oxfordshire, Sept. 19, 1845), so unfairly reported at the time, may think they are perusing an account of it. So does pugilism, like history, under like circumstances, “reproduce itself.”—Ed.
44. This seems to have been such a hit as that with which the Tipton closed accounts with Tass Parker in their last fight, or Tom King gave Mace at the conclusion of their second meeting. Those hits, when a man is “shaky,” are receipts in full.—Ed.
45. Jacombs, whose provincial triumphs are unrecorded, was a strong rough, with an Englishman’s heirdom, unyielding pluck. We find only one other notice in the journals of the time. “March 10 (1790). A desperate contest was fought at Stoke Golding, near Coventry, between Jacombs, the Warwickshire boxer, and Payne, of Coventry. At setting-to Jacombs was the favourite, but after a most severe conflict of two hours, in which the combatants contested ninety-five rounds, and during which both the combatants were several times thrown from the stage, Payne was declared victorious. The conduct of Payne was cool, but admirably courageous, whilst that of Jacombs seemed brutally passionate. He seemed to depend more upon driving and bruising his opponent against the railings than fair and open fighting with the fists.” We regret to say that Jacombs has had too many successors in this unmanly art, even with the less dangerous ropes and stakes of the modern ring.
46. Tom Tring in person, but not in physiognomy, resembled the late burly and clumsy boxer Ben Caunt. He was, however, a civil, inoffensive, and mild looking giant. He was the original of several Academicians’ drawings and paintings of Hercules. “He challenged all England” (except his friend Tom Johnson—a judicious exception), “for one thousand guineas;” so do the advertising hair-dressers: but when Pierce asks us to believe that poor Tring’s “qualities as a pugilist were of a most tremendous nature, and few men appeared who were capable of resisting his mighty prowess,” and of his being “clad in the rich paraphernalia (which of the princesses married him?) of royalty,” we begin to ask ourselves whether we are reading the history of Tom Thumb. To support this magniloquent introduction, we are told he beat Tom Pratt, “a very formidable man,” in 1787, a guinea to four shillings, “Pratt ran away, leaving Tom in possession of the ring.” We find, instead of this, under date of August 19th, 1787, that “a boxing match was contested on Kennington Common, between Jacob Doyle, the Irish boxer, and Tom Tring, which the latter won with ease. Tring is said to be the finest made man in England, and the talents of several of the first artists have been employed to delineate the symmetry of his person. As a boxer he possessed little science, but good courage.” (Quoted in “Pancratia,” p. 72). A terrible “street fight” with one Norfolk, a bricklayer, is here improvised, to introduce his thrashing by Big Ben. Poor Tring was another of the victims of the heartless dandy and unprincipled egotist miscalled “the first gentleman of Europe,” without a particle of the gentleman in his whole composition. Tring obtained a precarious living as a model to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hooper, Sir William Beechey, and others, and earned a crust as a street porter. He was a civil inoffensive fellow; in height six feet two inches, and weighing fifteen stone in prime condition. He died in the pursuit of his humble calling in the year 1815.
47. “Fighting for darkness,” a few years since, became a sort of calculated “off-chance,” to save bets among the “down the river” second-class pugilists of the London ring.—Ed.
48. Rather too small for big men.—Ed.
49. The distribution of duties of seconds, and a third party in care of the water, etc., in modern times, is noted elsewhere.—Ed.
50. Daily Advertiser, January 22, 1790.
51. Mendoza’s last ring battle may be considered as that with John Jackson in 1795. His return to the ring to fight out a quarrel with Harry Lee, in 1806, and the foolish exhibition in 1820 with old Tom Owen, are solecisms, and do not disturb the arrangement by Periods.
52. A contemporary writer, in 1790, says of him: “Mendoza is a pugilist better initiated in the theory of boxing than perhaps any of his cotemporaries, and has produced some exceedingly expert pupils. In his manner there is more neatness than strength, and it has been said, more show than service; his blows are in general deficient in force, but given with astonishing quickness, and he is allowed to strike oftener, and stop more dexterously, than any other man; he is extremely well formed in the breast and arms, but his loins are very weak; his wind is good, and he possesses excellent bottom.”
53. This would have lost Mister Packer the battle by the modern rules.—Ed.
54. See notice of Warr in Appendix to Period II.
55.
Such is the list; see “Boxiana” (Vol. iii. p. 489). There is “a curious felicity” in the selection, as, with the exception of Tom Tyne (Nos. 18, 19), whose two defeats by Mendoza are unrecorded, and those with an asterisk, not one name ever figures as fighting anybody else on any discoverable occasion.
56. Mendoza was at that period fifty-seven years of age, while Owen was nearly six years younger; an important difference—supposing all other circumstances equal—at such an advanced (we had almost said absurd) time of life for a fistic exhibition.
57. Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.—Virgil.
58. Sam Martin, known as the Bath Butcher, fought many good battles in “the West Countrie.” On his coming to London, however, he was unlucky in being pitted against such masters of the art as Humphries and Dan Mendoza. To Sam’s battle with Humphries, the author of “Pancratia” (p. 68), attributes “the revival of pugilism, and its high patronage.” The result is related in the text.
Martin was next matched against Mendoza. His defeat, April 17, 1787, will be found in that boxer’s biography. His last battle of importance was with Bligh, “the Coventry Champion,” a riband weaver of that town. It came off at Evesham, in Oxfordshire, on the 7th of April, 1791, for 50 guineas a side. George Ring, the Bath Baker, seconded Martin; a local boxer (Brooks), picked up Bligh. Martin’s two defeats, and Bligh’s local fame, made the latter the favourite, at six and seven to four. After a severe contest, Martin was hailed as conqueror.