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.