I suppose the confession I am about to make will stamp me in the minds
of a great many people as an irredeemable barbarian. I care little for
that, however, and I am staunch in the opinions which I have held all my
lifetime. Perhaps my voice may find an echo here and there.
I am a lover of the noble art of self-defence, and to my way of thinking
few greater blunders have been made by those who legislate for our
well-being than was fallen into by the moral people who abolished the
Prize-Ring. It should be admitted at once that the Ring was full of
abuses at the time at which an end was made of it; but it was not beyond
mending, and a marked deterioration has been noticeable in the character
of our people since the sport of the Ring ceased to be a source of
popular amusement. British fair play was a proverb amongst the roughest.
The rules of the game were recognised even in a street fight, and the
man who broke them was likely to be roughly handled.
It matters little that the sense of honour was crude and rough. It was
there, and all bullies and blackguards were compelled to abide by it So
long as it was the fashion to fight with fists, the use of the knife,
the bludgeon, and the brickbat was far rarer than it is now. The most
ignorant crowd could be trusted to police a brace of combatants. There
is no harm in a stand-up fight with the weapons of nature. Men _will_
fight, and we English people had the least harmful way of fighting of
all the peoples of the world. No man was ever good for much with his
hands who was not chaste and temperate in life. Excellence in this
pursuit was the growth of all the more masculine virtues.
I have the kindliest memories of some of the old heroes. The very
first man who helped me on with a pair of boxing-gloves was the mighty
'Slasher'--the Tipton Slasher, William Perry, who in the days of my
nonage kept the Champion of England public-house in my native parish of
West Bromwich, in South Staffordshire. He it was who trained my youthful
hands to guard my youthful head; and I have a foolish stupid pride and
pleasure in the memory of that fact The Worcester and Birmingham Canal
divides the parishes of Smethwick and West Bromwich, and the Slasher's
house was the last on the right-hand side--a shabby, seedy place
enough, smoke-encrusted on the outside and mean within, but a temple of
splendour all the same to the young imagination. The Champion of England
dwelt there--the unconquered, the undisputed chieftain of the fighting
clan. He reigned there for years, none daring to make him afraid.
I have been soundly flogged time and time again for visiting him. I have
been put on bread and water and held in solitary confinement for the
same misdemeanour, but the man had a glamour for me and drew me with the
attraction of a magnet. I can see him now, almost as plainly as if he
stood before me. He was a Hercules of a man, with enormous shoulders,
and his rough honest mid-England features had a sort of surly welcome in
their look. But for an odd deformity he would have had the stature of a
giant; but he was hideously knock-kneed, and his shamble when he walked
was awkward to the limits of the grotesque. You have only to invert the
letter V to have an image of the Slasher's legs from foot to knee.
His feet were strangers to each other; but his knees were inseparable
friends, and hugged each other in a perpetual intimacy. In fighting
he used to await his man, propped up in this inverted V fashion, and
somehow he gained so solid a footing in that strange and clumsy attitude
that he never, in all his experience of the Ring, received a knock-down
blow until he encountered Tom Sayers in that last melancholy fight which
cost him the championship, and the snug little property in the Champion
of England public-house, and his friends and his reputation, and all he
had in the world.
I earned one of the soundest thrashings I ever got in my life by playing
truant from school in order to follow the Slasher to a wretched little
race meeting, held at a place called The Roughs, on the side of the
Birmingham Road, in the parish of Hands-worth. My hero was there in
glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am
afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and
'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your
strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to
punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to
indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny
to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but the man
stood in front of the contrivance and besought him pathetically not to
strike.
'Not you, Mr. Perry, 'he said humbly; 'oh, not you, Mr. Perry.'
The Slasher, with an 'Away, slight man' motion of the hand, said
'Gerrout!' and the fellow obeyed, seeing that there was nothing else
for it. Hercules spat upon his hand, clenched his fist, and smote. Crash
went the whole machine into ruin, the wooden upright splintered, and
the iron supports doubled into uselessness. The destroyer rolled on
rejoicing; but the crowd made a subscription, and the owner of the
machine stowed away his damaged property well pleased.
Mr. Morris Roberts was a gentleman known to local fame in those days--I
am writing of five-and-thirty years ago--and Mr. Morris Roberts had
a boxing-booth on the ground. In front of the booth he had a little
platform, and from it he addressed the congregation gathered together at
the beating of a gong.
'Walk up, gentlemen; walk up, and see the noble art of self-defence
practised by Englishmen, not like the cowardly Frenchman or Italian,
as uses sticks, knives, pistils, and other firearms, but the wepons
pervided by nature. I've got a nigger inside as won't say No to no man.
Also George Gough, as has fought fifteen knuckle fights within the
last two years, and won 'em all, one man down and the next come on.
If there's any sportsman here as cares to 'ave a turn at him, there's
half-a-crown and a glass of sperrits for the man as stands before George
Gough five minutes, no matter wheer he comes from.'
The Slasher, in the full tide of his wicked humour, stood below, and
when the oration was ended he threw his old silk hat upon the stage. Mr.
Morris Roberts was bawling that twopence did it--a first-rate sample of
the noble art was to be seen for twopence--when this unexpected action
froze him in mid-torrent.
'Come, come, Mr. Perry,' he said, when he had recovered himself a
little, 'you can't expect George to stand up again the Champion of all
England. That doesn't stand to reason, that doesn't. Now, does it, Mr.
Perry?'
The Slasher smiled. 'All right Hand down half a crown and that there
glass o' sperrits.'
'You don't mean it, Mr. Perry,' said Mr. Morris Roberts.
'Don't I?' cried the Slasher.
A sudden inspiration illumined Mr. Morris's mind. 'All right Come up,
Mr. Perry. Sixpence--sixpence--sixpence does it!'
It was no sooner known that the Champion was really resolved on business
than the entrance to the booth was besieged. I was borne in breathless,
all the wind being squeezed out of my small body by the pressure of the
crowd, and bang went sixpence, the one coin which was to see me
through the expenses of the day. It turned out that Mr. Gough had been
impertinent to the Slasher, and the offended dignitary punched him, as I
thought, a little unmercifully. At the close of the first round the man
of the booth said--truthfully enough, no doubt--that he had had enough
of it, and the entertainment came to a premature end.
That was the last I saw of the Slasher for years. He was the cynosure
of all eyes then, and observed of all observers. But there is no wolf
so strong but he may find another to make wolves' meat of him; and Tom
Sayers, who had fought his first fight--so tradition tells--on the canal
bank within a mile of the Slasher's public-house, sent in his challenge,
and poor old Tipton's colours were lowered for once and for ever. He
mortgaged the stock and goodwill of the house and backed himself for
every penny he was worth, and he was beaten. He was grey and over-fat,
and his fighting days were over. I forget now for how many years he had
held the Championship Belt, but he ought to have been left to rest upon
his laurels, surely.
He was dying when I saw him again, and his vast chest and shoulders were
shrunken and bowed, so that one wondered where the very framework of the
giant man had fallen to. He was despised and forgotten and left alone,
and he sat on the side of his bed with an aspect altogether dejected
and heartless. In his better days he had liked what he used to call 'a
stripe of white satin,' which was the poetic for a glass of Old Tom gin.
I carried a bottle of that liquor with me as a peace-offering, and a
quarter of a pound of bird's-eye. He did not know me, and there was no
speculation in his look; but after a drink he brightened. When I entered
the room he sat in he was twirling an empty clay with a weary listless
thumb and finger, and the tobacco was welcome.
'They mought ha' let me aloon,' he told me, when his wits grew clear,
'I'd held the belt for seventeen 'ear,' (I think he said seventeen, but
'Fistiana' is not at hand, and I can but make a guess at memory.) 'They
mought ha' let me aloon. Turn's a good un. I've sin 'em all, an' I've
niver sin a better. But he owed to ha' let me be. Theer was no credit to
be got in hommerin' a man at my time o' life. All the same, mind ye, I
thowt I should ha' trounced him. So I should if I could ha' got at
him; but he fled hither an' he fled thither, and he was about me like a
cooper a-walkin' round a cask. An' I was fule enough to lose temper,
an' the crowd begun to laugh an' gibe at me, an' I took to räacin'
round after him, an' my wind went, an' wheer was I then? He knocked me
down--fair an' square he did it. Th' on'y time it iver chanced to me. I
put everythin' I had o' that fight, an' here I bin.'
It will be within the memory of such as care for these things that,
after the last great battle which brought the fistic history of England
to a glorious close, Tom Sayers and the Benicia Boy, his late opponent,
enlisted with Messrs. Howes and Cushing, proprietors of a circus
in those days, and travelled the country, sparring nightly in amity
together. My father, who had naturally about as much sympathy with
the Prize-Ring as with the atrocities of the King of Dahomey, was
nevertheless fired with admiration for the hero of Farnborough, and must
needs go to see him. He astonished everybody who knew him by showing his
silver head and whiskers in the bar parlour of the hotel at which Mr.
Sayers was quartered for the night I suppose that the worshippers at
Tom's shrine were of another sort as a rule; but he was evidently and
mightily impressed by the old gentleman's interest in his career. He
told a story which, in its main lines, I remember as well as if I had
heard it yesterday, though I rack my brains in vain for the names of
the two people concerned in it.
'I suppose, sir,' said Tom, 'as you never heard how I come to
fight'--let me call him Jones.
No, my father never had heard.
'Well, it was like this. Lord ---- comes to me a week or two before the
Derby, and “Tom,” he says, “I've got a notion. You and me,” he says,
“is goin' down to the Derby together,” he says. “I've got a pair of
snow-white mokes,” he says, “and I've bought a coster's shallow. I'm
having it painted white and picked out in gold,” he says, “and it's
going to be upholstered in white satin. Now, you and me, Tom,” says his
lordship--“you and me's going to get up in white shoes, white kickseys,
white westcuts, white hats, white coats, white ties, and white gloves,”
he says. “We'll go down a reg'lar pair of bloomin' lilies!” Well,
we did, and it was agreed to be the best turn-out of the day. We was
walkin' in the ring when up comes Jones, and, without with your leave or
by your leave, he hits me on the nose. Well, I was that soft and out of
condition the clarrit was all over me in no time. I was goin' for Jones
like a shot; but his lordship he stops me and he says, “Tom,” he says,
“you shall fight him,” he says, “for two hundred pound.” I did, and you
may believe as I paid him out for that.'
We were greatly impressed with this narrative, and I have always thought
the regular pair of blooming lilies delicious. I told Tom that I
had known the poor old Slasher, and he spoke of him with respectful
sympathy.
'He was the right sort, the Tipton was, and I was sorry to take him
down. Perhaps somebody 'll come one of these days and lower my colours.
It's my turn to-day and somebody else's to-morrow.'
I vex the shades no more. Their form of valour is no longer known
amongst us; but there are some who regret. I find pathetics among them,
and quaint humours, in my memory.