On 13 March 1755 Jack Slack, a 29-year-old butcher from Thorpe, on the outskirts of Norwich knocked out Cornelius ‘King Cole’ Harris at Kingswood near Bristol. Harris is listed as a miner, but in fact was a dangerous, probably insane creature who was beyond the law. It’s fairly certain that he killed a woman, with whom he had gone for a romantic interlude in the countryside, and her former boyfriend, who had disturbed them.
The bodies were found, but nobody dared accuse him. Harris fought regularly on village greens after making challenges in public houses — and was also said to have left more than one man for dead in the coalmines where he worked.
If a man upset him, he would challenge him to a fight to the finish in the bowels of the earth. This is why they called him ‘King Cole’. He gambled 100 guineas on beating Slack and gave him a gruelling, desperate fight. But in the end Slack outlasted him and left him unconscious with a blow that landed between the eyes.
When Harris awoke to find the champion had gone away to celebrate, he was so crazed by the defeat and the loss of his money that he ranted and raged like the madman he was, threatening all kinds of retribution. No doubt those who saw the fight were pleased to see him absorb a hammering for once. And no doubt they opted not to say so?.
Slack later beat Broughton for the championship, and went on to become the new champion of England. He later ran a butcher's shop in Chandos Street, London for a while and died in 1778.
‘Big’ Ben Brain
Brain, a Bristol collier born in 1753, was a veteran of 37 with 17 years’ ring experience when he beat Tom Johnson. He had lived in Bristol until 1774, when he travelled to London to find work as a coal porter at the Adelphi Wharf. He bad boxed in his home city, and fights are recorded against Clayton of Shropshire and ‘Spaniard’ Harris from Kingswood, both of which he won.
A protege of the Duke of Hamilton, Scotland’s senior peel Brain was a straight puncher who ‘when out of his business always appeared clean and respectable, mild and sociable’, according to Egan. But nice guys rarely finish first, As we’ve been told a thousand times.
Brain had already gone through several grim battles, including a particularly tough one against John Boone, the Fighting Grenadier, in the Long Fields at Bloomsbury on 31 October 1786. His eyes were almost shut after half an hour, at which point the crowd spilled over into the ring. During the scramble, a doctor lanced the swellings and Brain went on to win ten minutes later.
He was lined up to challenge Johnson in 1789 but was ill and forfeited £500. On New Year’s Eve, 1788, Brain beat an Irishman named Corbally at Knavestock in Essex, in October 1789 he disposed of Jacombs, a Warwickshire pugilist, at Banbury in 36 minutes and in January 1790 he beat Tom Tring in 12 rounds and less than 20 minutes at Dartford. He also slugged out a three and a half hour draw with William Hooper, known as The Tinman, at Chapel Row, a few miles east of Newbury in Berkshire.
After beating Johnson, Brain retired, but he came back in 1794 and was training to fight William ‘The Coachman’ Wood, when he fell ill and died suddenly and agonisingly from a damaged liver at his rooms in Grays Inn Lane on 8 April, 1794 at the age of 41. He was buried in St Sepulchre’s churchyard on Snow Hill, London. His tombstone carried lines written by a fellow boxer:
‘Farewell, ye honours of my brow, Victorious wreaths, farewell!
One blow from Death has laid me low, By whom such brave ones fell.
‘Yet bravely I’ll dispute the prize Nor yield, though out of breath, ‘Tis not a fall, I yet shall rise And conquer even Death.’
Brain’s opponents were good men. Jacombs, for example, fought Payne of Coventry at Stoke Golding in Leicestershire on 10 March 1790. They may have been lesser fighters according to the history books, but they hammered away at each other in ‘a most severe conflict of two hours’. After 95 rounds, Payne won. Tom Tring was a gentle, polite and friendly man whose 6ft 2in, 15st frame was used by Sir Joshua Reynolds as the model for drawings of Hercules. Tring earned day-by-day money as a street porter, but like so many went on fighting for too long. In the end boxing killed him — he died as a direct result of a fight in 1815.
Pugilism was developing and spreading to an unprecedented level. Even minor prize-fights were sometimes recorded and boxing was put to extreme or eccentric uses. At Stockbridge in Hampshire on 1 March 1791, for example, a father beat his son for the purposes of paternal correction ... in 46 minutes! And at Chelmsford in August 1792, two women fought for three-quarters of an hour with their husbands as seconds. Pancratia recreates the scene: If it seems niceties like concern for the welfare of boxers was virtually nonexistent, we should remember that life itself was considered a reckless business anyway.
Disablement of one kind or another was commonly seen on the streets of any of the major cities. Nevertheless, it is part of boxing’s bloody nature that it appears to exhilarate both competitors and spectators alike. Athletes will often tell of being capable of ignoring extreme pain in the so-called ‘heat’ of battle.
Even today, boxers who retire with a painful injury are often the subject of sidelong, even scornful glances from their peers. Fighters expect to see from their fellows bravery beyond the ordinary call — a sore or broken hand, even a dislocated shoulder, is sometimes considered no reason to retire from the fray, especially when a major prize is at stake.
There was a memorable occasion when a world title fight in the 1980s ended prematurely when one fighter, the Ugandan John Mugabi, effectively stopped fighting because of an eye injury. It transpired that he had a fractured orbital socket. His agony did not impress world middleweight champion Marvin Hagler, who was working for TV as an analyst. Hagler’s attitude was simple: Mugabi had two eyes, and while he could see out of one of them, he should fight. Boxers do not ‘play’ by normal rules ... and it was even more the case in the 18th and 19th centuries.
For example, on Monday 18 November 1793 a violent battle was recorded between an ass-driver named Hall and a brewer’s servant, unnamed, in Harley Fields near Portland Place — presumably the site of what is now Harley Street. The fight ended after an hour and five minutes because the servant considered it time to give in ... he had just lost eye!
Tom Cribb is further proof that there was something in the Bristol water. He was born in Hanham, a mining village five miles outside the city, on 8 July 1781 and at 13 trod the well-worn road to London, where he worked as a docker and coal-heaver, developing his 5ft 10in frame to a peak weight of around 1961b.
Twice he had serious accidents, once falling between two barges and once slipping while hauling a 5001b crate of oranges. After the second, he was spitting blood for days. An unconfirmed story also existed that he spent some time at sea in the wars against France.
Cribb was the stuff of legend, who came at a time which Englishmen would want to remember as they sat around their tavern tables smoking and drinking before a roaring fire. These were the days of Trafalgar and Waterloo, of an old England before what historians would call the Industrial Revolution, an England of wide open spaces and tiny hamlets. Cribb was, in fact, not as good as the old-timers would have had us believe, relying on an awkward style, his strength, courage and, occasionally, foul tactics.
He was slow and cumbersome, but his spirit was capable of moving all those who saw him fight. He took 90 minutes to grind down the 5ft 6ins, 42-year-old black American, Bill Richmond, on the day Pearce beat Gully at Hailsham in 1805 and 18 months later needed 41 rounds to dispose of the one-eyed Belcher at Moulsey Hurst.
He won more quickly second time around but Belcher had broken his arm.
In between fights Cribb would blow up to about 2241b. Captain Robert Barclay, the first of the great trainers, said of him before he fought Tom Molineaux for the second time: 'From his mode of living in London and the confinement of a crowded city, he had become corpulent, big-bellied, full of gross humours and short-breathed, and it was with difficulty that he could walk ten miles'.
Nevertheless, these were pugilism's great years. In the 1850s George Borrow was to recall the days when a pugilistic encounter between two noted champions was almost considered as a national affair; when tens of thousands of individuals, high and low, meditated and brooded upon it, the first thing in the morning and the last at night, until the great event was decided.
On 3 January 1805, Cribb took 76 rounds to beat George Maddox, who was nearly 50 at the time, and although he beat Tom Blake, also known as Tom Tough, and a Jewish boxer who enjoyed the glorious ring name of Ikey Pig, he was drunk when he lost to George Nicholls of Bristol in 52 rounds in July 1805.
He was given a boxing lesson for a time by Richmond, who was middle-aged, outweighed and shorter, but eventually his youth and strength brought him through. Richmond, who was billed as The Black Terror, was the son of a Georgia slave owned by a preacher. Bill knocked out three drunken English sailors in a bar and was given a job as a footman by the British general Earl Percy before coming to England to go to school in Yorkshire.
At one time he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in York, but his inclination towards the Prize Ring overtook his other ambitions. Richmond retired from boxing in 1815 and was a respected, if underpaid, teacher until his death in December 1829 at the age of 66. His fighting apprenticeship over, Cribb fought Bob Gregson for the championship and 1,000 guineas in a 30ft ring at Moulsey Hurst on 25 October 1808, only five months after Gregson had lost for the second time to Gully.
As usual, when his duties as head of the British Army didn't interfere, the Duke of York was present, as was Lord Byron. Gregson was seconded by Jem Belcher and Bill Richmond, Cribb by John Gully and Bill Gibbons. Gentleman Jackson refereed. They brawled head-to-head for round after slow, gruelling round. Cribb was so exhausted by the start of round 21 that he only just made it to the scratch-line, yet from somewhere he found the inner resolve to press on and in round 23 he tossed Gregson to the ground. Gregson landed with his legs buckled beneath his l6st bulk and was unable to stand, let alone fight.
Gregson retired to his pub, the Castle in Holborn, otherwise to be known as Bob's Chop-House, after a benefit held at the Fives Court. In 1810 a dinner was held in his honour on the premises tickets a guinea each and Gully, Richmond, Jackson, Cribb and Tom Belcher were all among the party. It ended with an impromptu fight for a £20 purse between Cribb's younger brother George and Dan Dogherty. Cribb bled copiously and his head was much disfigured by the hits he received, and at the end of an hour, being quite exhausted, gave in.
Gregson was a bad businessman and was forced to relinquish the pub in 1814.
He attempted to start a sparring school, but that did not take off, and instead left to try his luck in Dublin, where he made a better living. In 1819 he embarked on a sparring tour of Ireland along with Dan Donnelly and George Cooper, but later was landlord of a pub named the Punch House in Moor Street, Dublin. That failed too and he was virtually penniless when he returned to live out his last days in Liverpool, where he died in November 1824.
At the end of the Cribb-Gregson fight at Moulsey Hurst, Jem Belcher spat angry words at the new champion, whose lack of skill led him to believe he could come back and regain the title, even if he did have only one eye, and even if Cribb had already beaten him once. Accordingly, the match was made and Cribb beat him again. Pierce Egan called the closing stages piteous and dreadful with Belcher, his hands bleeding and his arm broken, taking a hiding. Pugilistica records an anecdote of Cribb and Gully taking a stroll through a country village, both in ordinary smock coats, when they saw a man beating a pig. The animal was taking such a vicious hiding that the fighters asked him to stop, upon which the man and four or five of his companions gathered around them menacingly.
A free and frank exchange of views followed, and eventually the pig-beater was daft enough to have a swing at Cribb, who swatted him down. His nob was materially shook and the claret tapped in masterly style, says the source.
Cribb and Gully went on their way and it was only later that the villagers realised who had passed through. No doubt the pig-beater boasted of having been dropped by the greatest ring hero of their time for the rest of his life!
Cribb took over a sporting tavern named the Union Arms in Panton Street, London, and fought Tom Molineaux, the celebrated black American, at Copthall Common near East Grinstead on 18 December 1810. Molineaux, said to be an ancestor of the world light-heavyweight champion of the 1930s, John Henry Lewis, had been born on a plantation belonging to the Molineaux family of Georgetown, Southern Carolina.
Legend had it that he had fought for his freedom against another slave, won and travelled to England, where Bill Richmond found him, penniless and searching hopelessly for the American ambassador. This is no more than unsubstantiated anecdote, but may have been true. He was thought to have been born in 1784.
By his teens he was working in New York as a porter in the docks, and sailed for England in 1809.
Molineaux, at 5ft 9in and around 200lbs, was a fine fighter who knocked out Tom Blake, also known as Tom Tough, in eight rounds in August 1810, near Margate in Kent. Another reference to him was made in Sporting Magazine: 'On Tuesday, 24 July (1810), a bull was baited in Tot-hill Fields, and as is usual on such occasions, the amusements concluded with a boxing match ... The combatants were a Bristol man, one of the old nursery, and a strong, athletic American black of the name of Molineaux ... who had lately arrived in this country'.
Molineaux won in an hour. His match with Cribb fired the public imagination, especially after Gribb had originally refused it, only for the abrasive American to call him a coward. 18 December was a terrible winter's day. Rain turned the last five miles of the road leading to the common into ankle-deep clay, yet still a crowd of around 20,000 arrived, including old champions Belcher, Jackson and Mendoza.
They saw the unthinkable happen Cribb was outworked and outhit and seemed exhausted by the eighth round. At the end of the ninth Cribb looked in deep trouble. He was knocked down by a dreadful blow to the throat, and looked incapable of making it back to scratch, as the crowd settled into a stunned hush.
It was then his second, Joe Ward, pulled one of the most brilliant and cruellest strokes in prize-fighting history. He claimed Molineaux was holding bullets or stones in his hands and poured out insults, calling for the referee to check.
The American was confused and angry and in the freezing winter, with his fists stiff from cold, it took time to prove him innocent. As all this went on, Gully brought Cribb round and the champion used his unfairly bought time to recover his wits. Slowly the fight turned. Cribb's legendary stamina began to tell and the wind and rain bit deep into Molineaux's resolve.
Cribb also fouled shamelessly, at one time biting Molineaux's thumb to the bone.
And by round 38, exhausted, numb with cold and thoroughly discouraged, Molineaux collapsed. Cribb was too exhausted to celebrate. Cribb retired, but Molineaux claimed the championship, having issued another challenge to the champion within a week of their fight. This was more than any decent Englishman could stomach and the 30-year-old West Countryman was forced by public opinion to postpone the easy life a little longer.
He was trained by Captain Barclay, who took him off to his family seat at Ury, near Stonehaven in Kincardineshire, Scotland, where he was drilled into shape. Barclay gave him three initial doses of medicine and for two weeks allowed him to walk as he wished, hunting for magpies and pigeons in the woods on the estate. Gradually he stepped that up to regular exercise, walking between 10 and 20 miles a day. He developed that into 18-20 mile walks with top speed runs of a quarter of a mile. In five weeks Barclay worked Cribb down from 2241bs to 2051bs, and theft ground him into top shape with sparring, sweats and strenuous exercise. By fight time he weighed 1871bs. Barclay, whose reputation as the first significant trainer was sealed by this fight, was so satisfied with their work that he gambled 10,000 guineas on Cribb, who was a 1-3 favourite.
While the champion had been putting in his work, Molineaux had remained in London and enjoyed himself. This time a throng estimated at 15,000 travelled to Thistleton Gap, near Wymondham in the tiny county of Rutland, on 28 September 1811. Not a bed could be found for 20 miles around. The Marquess of Queensberry was among the scattered nobles and aristocrats. Again Molineaux, in this land of fair play and honest hearts, may have been nobbled. He wasn't endowed with too much common sense, admittedly, but someone knew of his weakness for good food and strong ale.
For breakfast on that late summer day, Molineaux was primed with a complete boiled chicken, an apple pie and, more importantly, a half-gallon of porter beer.
Even in an age when Englishmen drank ale instead of water, this was excessive.
He tucked away everything with relish. Molineaux was on top in the early stages, closing Cribb's eye, which was big as a goose's egg& until it was lanced by his second Gully.
Cribb's conditioning and Molineaux's breakfast ensured that the championship stayed in England. The black was fat and slowed under Cribb's body attacks.
Cribb then switched to the head and broke Molineaux's jaw. In the ninth Molineaux fell as if dead from a left swing and did not make itto scratch in half a minute.
Cribb, who was enjoying himself, invited him to go on, and prolonged the torture until he grew bored and ended it in the 11th. Gully and Cribb danced a Scotch Reel of victory on the 25-foot stage. The following Sunday, Cribb passed through Stamford in a baroville-and-four decorated with his colours, called on Molineaux at Grantham and passed on to London, where the roads were blocked by welcoming crowds.
Cribb retired again and England's prize-fighters agreed he should be called Champion for the rest of his life. On 11 December 1811 a silver cup worth 80 guineas was presented to Cribb at the Old Castle tavern in London, when a banquet was held in his honour. He had one last fling when, nearly 40, he defeated Jack Carter in a room fight in Oxendon Street on 1 February 1820, which he won in one minute. Insolence punished, sniffed the reporter for Bell's Life.
Eventually he declared his successor to be Tom Spring, In March 1821, the Sporting Magazine carried the notice: 'To All England. The Championship Tom Crib (sic) having been called to the bar, which now so completely occupies his time, but to be brief on the subject, he has in consequence, entirely resigned the whole of his practice in the ring to Tom Spring, his adopted boy:-, the son, therefore, wishing to tread in the steps of his father and not to lead a dull, inglorious life! anxiously seeking the path of glory informs all those heroes whom it may concern that for three months he is open to all England, for 100 to 200 guineas a side'.
Cribb's pub, the Union Arms, was apparently a boisterous but orderly house.
More than once he had to cope with an idiot who wanted to make a name for himself, but given the potential for trouble, there was little. He did find himself in court once over an incident involving a German dwarf, John Hauptman, whom he employed as a waiter, having found him penniless in the street. When Cribb was away a drunken hackney-cab driver named Beckett insulted the 3ft 4in tall Hauptman, and had his 10-year-old son thrash him.
Cribb was so angry that he took the matter before the magistrate. Beckett blamed brandy and water for his lack of respect and agreed to pay Hauptman a sovereign for his pains. Cribb also survived a terrible accident near Stockwell in December 1822 when he was thrown by a horse and knocked unconscious for half an hour when the animal fell on him.
Doctors bled him at the scene and he was carried home to recover.
This prevented him attending the funeral of Hickman The Gaslighter, another top fighter who died tragically young (at 37) when the chaise he was driving overturned on Finchley Common. Eventually Cribb had to give up the Union Arms because of debts he had lent money which had not been repaid, and also had to look after a sick relative as well as his own family.
It must have been a great sadness to him that it was necessary for his friends at the Pugilistic Club to stage a benefit on his behalf at the National Baths in Westminster Road on 12 November 1840. At the time he was living with one of his sons, a baker, in High Street, Woolwich. Nevertheless, as sorry as his circumstances became, Cribb was one of the relatively few pugilists of his generation to grow old. He was 66 when he died, after a lingering illness, on 11 May 1848.
A monument in the shape of a lion was erected in his memory in Woolwich churchyard. The plinth was inscribed simply: 'Respect The Ashes Of The Brave'.
By contrast, the ill-used Molineaux never found a peace more lasting than the bottle. He was forever the black that Cribb thrashed twice. The fact that he had outpunched the great man for most of the first fight was forgotten. A rough fighter, he was not above fouling if he had to, but then he had a good teacher in Cribb.
In 1813 he beat Stephen Carte for 100 guineas near Banbury for £25, and in May 1814 he twice fought Bill Fuller in Scotland. The first fight was interrupted after eight minutes, but the second was a tedious mill near Glasgow which lasted for 68 minutes and contained only two rounds. Molineaux was eventually declared the winner. But in March 1815, he lost in 20 minutes and 14 rounds to George Cooper at Corset Hill near Edinburgh. Cooper was a tough, experienced fighter from Stone in Staffordshire who had been taught by Paddington Jones and Richmond.
Molineaux's flaw seemed to be that he was not sufficiently endowed with either intellect or commonsense. Men like Tom Belcher and Richmond are said to have thought little of him, even though they were effectively his managers. It is likely they saw in him only the means to make money and allowed him to do what he liked before a contest. He took to drinking too many pints of stout and ale every day. Pugilistica paints a picture of a good man whose natural generosity was terribly abused:
Molineaux was illiterate and ostentatious, but good-tempered, liberal and generous to a fault. Fond of gay life, fine clothes and amorous to the extreme.
Eventually he went to Ireland, supposedly for an exhibition tour. But he was penniless and interested only in the means of finding the next drink. His once formidable frame was wasted and he was able to present no kind of imitation of the fighter he once was, even for the most imaginative and forgiving of audiences.
At the invitation of two black soldiers who had befriended him, he found a roof in the barracks of the 77th Regiment at Galway, and it was there he died of liver failure in 1818 at the age of 34.
Stan 'Billy' Williams who came from Kingswood was apt to be billed as 'The Fighting Sunday School Teacher' - In fact he was a keen worker for the local commmunity and served as a youth club leader in Kingswood - He was a popular boxer he had 14 contests as an amateur and 85 as a pro - Its true he lost in the 2nd round to George Rose but he went 15 rounds and frew with Jack Dale - No one would pick on him in the street.
