THE CRIMES OF PRIZE-FIGHTERS,

ADDRESSED TO VISCOUNT DUNCANNON.

Ir is, we trust, with a justifiable pride, and even laudable satisfaction, that we are able to congratulate the public upon the extensive benefits which the peace of the country has derived from our late exposures of that complication of all private robberies and public crimes which, to the disgrace of our magistracy, has been allowed to exist under the at once fraudulent and ridiculous term of stage or prize fighting. The Ring, as it is absurdly called, has been lately so prolific of manslaughter, of robberies, and of crimes which outrage nature, that great strength has been given to even those parts of our late articles which appeared to the uninitiated to be exaggerations beyond the verge of even possibility. The subject has been brought before Parliament by several eminent Members; it has engaged the attention of the Judges, and of the executive government; and in the next session an Act will be passed that will effectually suppress a system of crime and of violations of the laws which has led foreigners to consider us as an anomaly to all civilized nations.

It is at present our intention to illustrate our original exposure of this great nursery and school of felonies and offences of all sorts, by what has occurred in the Prize Ring since our number of the "New Monthly" for the month of May last; and the reader will see that the manner in which this corps of great and small criminals has set the laws at defiance often exposes the magistracy of the country in a most ridiculous, and often, we are sorry to say, in a by far worse than a ridiculous, point of view to the people.

Our readers may recollect that we exposed the fact, that what are pretended to be brutal exhibitions of savage and sanguinary combats between hired ruffians are, in reality, nothing more nor less, in almost every instance, than mock fights, got up by black legs, flash-house keepers, and the swell mob, for the sake of plunder; and that the fighters in general are comprised of felons and criminals of every description, who either expiate their crimes by sentences of courts of law, or who, if more successful, terminate their career by keeping brothels, or houses for the resort of thieves-the highest point of a fighter's ambition. Finally, we added, that so far from prize-fighting engendering manly feelings, the pugilists, even the very best of them, were often men convicted of those crimes, and notorious for those habits which are peculiarly designated unmanly. Let us briefly show how far all these views have been lately confirmed in our criminal courts.

Let us commence with one of the very highest and best of our pugilists -Abraham Belasco-who beat Cribb's redoubtable coalheaver; then beat the formidable Jos. Hudson; then Jack the butcher;-was then defeated, after a most bloody battle, by the celebrated Tom Reynolds-(a cross, or sham fight) was again beaten by the famous Jack Randall. He successively defeated a Gloucester champion, then Joe Townsend of Coventry; then the famous Phil. Sampson—and, in short, more of the ring succumbed to his science, strength, and brute courage, than we have space to record. Here we have one of the very greatest and best of the greatest, and the best of the heroes of the ring. This hero's brother, a pugilist, after an extensive career of crime, was at length convicted and transported for a robbery, and is now in New South Wales-par nobile fratrum. But this hero, Mr. Abraham, had had many warnings and hair-breadth escapes; no man had been had up before the magistrates so often as Abraham for assaults, extortions, and offences of a very heinous nature; for to his heroic and manly profession of a prize-fighter, he added the correlative vocations of a hired bully at brothels, a hired bully at hells and low

gambling-houses, and, lastly, he kept hells himself, and conjointly with his wife, he kept a brothel, both of the latter being of a far more atrocious or unmanly character than has often been heard of in this country.* The details of the trial and conviction of this cowardly ruffian and his wife have been so fully before the public, that it is unnecessary for us to repeat them here.

If in this case only one thing were proved, the compatibility of the most atrocious, cowardly, and unnatural offences and habits with great pugilistic skill, and all the finer qualities of the prize-ring, we should not have dwelt upon it, even to show that prize-fighting does not necessarily encourage manly feelings. The case might have been an exception to a general rule; but brothel-keepers among the fancy are numerous, and Belasco's habits were as notorious to the ring as the drop at Newgatehe associated with the pugilists, sparred at their benefits, appeared at their flash-houses, and was such a favourite amongst these manly characters, that, after his conviction, a gang of fighters actually had the impudence and audacity to attempt his rescue from the hands of justice.

Of a similar character with this, is the fact, that when a contemporary periodical (the United Service Journal' for January last) first exposed the character of the prize-ring, two actions were brought against it for a libel-the one by Spring, alias Winter, the ex-champion-(more of ex-champions presently)-and the other by Belasco's brother, for a mistake in his Christian name. We do not say par nobile fratrum, even with respect to one common trade between them-prize-fighting-for this would be unjust; but suffice it to say, that Belasco, the Jew, dropped his action for the Journal's making a mistake in his Christian name; and with

* A dreadful case of an old man's being rescued from murder, by a rush of the police and of the neighbours into the gambling-house from whence the cries proceeded, exposed in the newspapers the fact, that the house or hell was the property of Mr. Belasco, and that the ruffian, who had beaten the old man, was Belasco's hired bully.

+ Some of the facts elicited at this horrible trial were truly heart-rending. It is the worst trial of the sort, perhaps, that ever took place in this country. How this horrible traffic was discovered was through a most affecting circumstance. One of the children had, for being drunk and disorderly, been committed to the House of Correction for three weeks, at the expiration of which period her sister went to the prison-gate to take her away. She found herself anticipated by Mrs. Belasco, who was in waiting there with a cab. The girl came out, and both parties claimed her. Words led to a quarrel-a scuffle ensued, the parties had to appear at Bow-street, where Mrs. Belasco was fined five pounds for the assault, the heaviest punishment the Magistrate could inflict.

Again :-They (the children) were residents under the paternal roof. What was the history of the fall of one of them? She was walking through Leg-alley, returning from an errand, when she was dragged by force into this house, and her person

; that was the disgusting fact. Even prize-fighting was an honourable pursuit compared to his filthy occupation. He had only one word more to add to this miserable detail:-The father of one of these children, on hearing of his daughter's infamy, wrought on by misery and pain, was seized with a brain fever, and his sufferings only ceased with his death.

There is something dreadfully demoniac in the following scene, described at the trial. "Here were kept children of the most tender years: the wages of their sin-the money thus horribly obtained, these little girls were obliged to hand over to Mrs. Belasco-he gloried and boasted of this odious traffic. When Mrs. Gill, the unhappy mother of a child thus seduced, entered the brothel, and saw Belasco seated at the table with divers of these children, before whom a tankard of gin was placed, and when this woman, in the fulness of proper womanly feeling, vented her indignation at such a sight, he (Belasco) replied, Why we make our living out of them!" We know not, in the annals of crime, dreadful as they are, any such a complication of the fiend, with the cruel, mean, cowardly, and unnatural essence of the miscreant. And this is one of the most eminent of the prize-ring!

Spring, or Winter the Christian, the United Service Journal' is still pendente lite.

Since our last article on this subject (1st of May last) there has not actually passed one single week, without legal proceedings having been taken, in England, upon from one to five cases of death by fighting. These cases exhibit circumstances of the most horrible cruelty, in which mere boys have been killed in unequal fights with men; feeble old men have been killed by pugilists of youth and vigour; women have often been mixed in these at once cowardly and atrocious scenes; and fathers have been convicted of stimulating to the murder of their children, and wives to the sacrifice of their husbands. Wherever the actual ring or avowed boxing professors have been concerned, the burglaries, the highway robberies, and petty larcenies have been innumerable. We will give a few proofs of these facts.

We have now before us a frightful list of inquests and indictments upon the loss of life, from prize-fighting, since the 1st of May last. About twenty cases are of disgusting atrocity, and from a few, we will give three or four features, as many as our space will afford-ex uno disce omnes -and having shown the cowardly, unnatural spirit engendered by the system, with its nucleus of all breaches of the law, we will conclude, by showing the monstrous laxity of our magisterial system and of our police; even now that the government, the judges-actually the judges-the legislature, the clergy, private societies, and great public bodies have determined to suppress the system, and to expunge, if possible, the stigma of its infamy from this enlightened age.

In a fight, at Manchester, in August last, a young man was killed, in a horribly cowardly manner; and Lord Lyndhurst, in sentencing three of the pugilists to transportation for life, said, "That in the whole course of his experience, he had never met with a case of more savage brutality." The chief instigator to this unnatural combat was the father of one of them. In another case, tried at Bury, an athletic pugilist, aged twentyfour, killed an old man of sixty, who had wished " to give in" but who had been compelled to fight until he was killed. The Judge of assize said"It is necessary to make a severe example, in order to put an end to these brutal scenes. I wish it to be understood, that all persons who take any part in these criminal encounters, whether as principals, seconds, or otherwise, are equally guilty," &c., &c. At another fatal fight. in which a man named Hingley was killed, it appeared, in evidence, that the chief instigator of the fighters was the wife of one of them, At Warrington, we find two brothers fighting-one of them was killed, and the agent and manager of the fight was the father, whilst the wife of the deceased gave evidence of the fractured skull of her murdered husband, and was in favour of its being considered a fair manly fight. In one week in May last there were three deaths by fighting. A poor sweep, at a game of skittles, was cheated, and his antagonist, upon his remonstrance, procured, to argue with him, "a notorious pugilist," who, says the evidence, "without any ceremony, knocked the deceased down twice; when he got up a second time, he entreated him not to strike him again, but the pugilist struck him a third time a most violent blow under the ear, which knocked him down, and he never rose again. Two or three persons carried him to a stable, and left him, whilst they went to witness another fight in a neighbouring field. In about an hour one of the parties who had carried him into the stable, went to look at him, and found him dead. The jury found a verdict of wilful murder.* Can human nature be more harrowed-does it want more to convince the most callous mind and unfeeling heart, that

* A similar case occurred at Tewkesbury. A man, most horribly mangled in a prize-fight, was suffered to remain all night upon some hay in a field, and the next morning was found dead.

this pugilistic profession is a complication of errant cowardice, of treachery, ferocity, and fraud? Enough of this part of our subject. Let us now advert to the astounding mal-administration of the laws.

Among, literally, very many scores of such occurrences as the following -all since 1st of May last-we find, at Middleton, a prize-fight, at which, say the papers, "As a matter of course, the country people had their pockets picked, and every shop and public-house, at which the fancy coves gained admittance, was plundered; much damage was done to the pastures and fences," &c. &c. On 9th September last, a prize-fight, for 257. a side, took place, near Uxbridge, and a newspaper says-" There was hardly a decent person on the ground; and the amateurs consisted of the vilest dregs of the gaols, flash-houses, and workhouses. Nothing of a portable nature was safe on the line of road-ducks and fowls, the ragged linen of poor cottagers, hung on the hedges, or in the little gardens of the hard-working poor, was made prizes of. At a little road-side public-house, kept by a man well known to the fancy, a general row took place between the winners and losers; upwards of a dozen battles were fought opposite his house, and the chairs and tables of the unfortunate landlord went to wreck in every direction, and the fragments were borne off in triumph," &c. In succeeding papers we find the celebrated pugilist, Jack January, sentenced by the magistrate for an assault in rescuing a gang of thieves who had been caught robbing a garden; but the matchless impudence of the case was in the police. The police inspector told the magistrate "that January was one of the fighting men, and had, therefore, been for a great length of time under the surveillance of the police,"—and yet, to our positive knowledge, the police allows the utmost licence to these fighters, even in those dens of infamy called flash public-houses, kept by expugilists, and licensed by the magistrates. We are next told that Tit Shields, aged seventy-three, who had been, for fifty years, an inmate of almost every prison in the metropolis, was committed for robbing a gentleman of his watch (9th September.) "Tit," says the report, 66 was one of the REGULAR FANCY PRIGS; he was never absent from a fight, except when in quod, and at the Tennis Court he had eased (robbed) hundreds of stupid starers." Let us first observe, that the police gave countenance to this Tennis Court, until the inhabitants around it petitioned for its suppression, on the ground of the excessive multiplicity of robberies and outrages; let us state, that as soon as the nuisance was suppressed, the daily exhibitions at the Tennis Court became nightly exhibitions at the flash sporting-houses, licensed by the magistrates.

Let us now reflect upon the folly of our talking of an intelligent police, or upright magistracy. In the very next paper we find a police charge of a daring robbery, at what the papers call" the Den"-" a well-known rendezvous of cullys and sharpers." This den, be it known, is kept by a notorious patron of the ring, one of the fancy,-is the resort of the fighters, -and is licensed by the magistrates. The sitting magistrate, on this occasion, told the keeper that his license would be in danger, if he again allowed as many as fifty of such characters to be in his house, so late as five in the morning. What a truly barbarous notion of police is this! If, we suppose, this man of the fancy had fewer than fifty such persons at five, or more than fifty an hour or two before five, his license would not be in jeopardy! In the very next newspaper, we find two inquests upon deaths by fighting (in London). The succeeding paragraph tells us that "THE WELCH CHAMPION,-this pugilistic hero was again committed to the tread-mill" for an assault and attempted robbery;-then we find J. Hart, the swellmob and fighting hero, before the Lord Mayor for robbery ;-then follows a respite of Belasco's horrible case ;-then a disgraceful action, in which the pugilist, was worsted;-then two cases of daring robbery, the last of which was committed by a well-known member of the swell-mob gang of prize-ring thieves." We have next a whole posse

of boxers hired for the Stroud election; then a case of keeping the ring with naked swords, by which one man was killed, and for which the inquest has found a verdict of wilful murder;-then a fight at Northfleet, attended by several robberies, and scandalous outrages on board the steamer, that brought the fighters and swell-mob from the place of combat to London. The list is interminable *..

Let us now come to more curious illustrations of our incredibly ridiculous and culpable notions of police and magistracy. First, the police make charges against a keeper of a public-house for suffering bad characters to resort to it; and one main proof is a police inspector's oath, that he had seen a certain celebrated fighter at the house, who had been tried at the Old Bailey for felony. This fighter had, likewise, long been known to the police as the leader of one of our principal gang of pickpockets. Since this police case, will it be believed-is it possible that any man can credit the fact, than this prize-fighter has actually been licensed to keep a public-house himself, and this after he had just been second in a prize fight in which a man was killed? Thus a man whose very presence in a public-house endangers the keeper's license may be a very proper character to keep a public

*Can the public believe it possible that the prize-ring has its organ in the press? and of such a character that this sporting-paper could publicly advise the "United Service Journal" to pay hush-money, in the shape of a compensation, to this Belasco, for an injury to his character? Such is the fact.

In defending the prize-fighters, the boxers' journal urges that Thurtell, a gambling, black-leg crosser of fights, a getter-up of fights, a second of the fighters, an inseparable friend of the gang, was only an amateur, and the son of a most respectable man; next, that Bishop and Williams, the Burkers, only witnessed fights LIKE many of the most elevated men in the country; that, though Harris the boxer was hanged for murder, there is the fullest persuasion on the minds of those conversant with the case (alias the boxers) that he was hanged innocently; and, it is added, by way of compliment to the boxers, we suppose, that a friend whose honest testimony would have proved his innocence, got out of the way, and suffered him to be hanged out of pique at an affront. Then a great boxer, convicted of robbing a poor girl of a shawl, we are told, took it by way of JOKE; and of the ex-champion, Carter, who was transported for a robbery for seven years, this boxing journal observes, "it is generally believed that Carter was innocent of the crime." Unfortunately for this general belief, this ex-champion of England has since been tried again, and received a second sentence for stealing a shirt. The clean stolen shirt was found on his body, under his own dirty shirt, and yet it may be again generally believed that he was innocent, although he pleaded guilty. Of Parish, transported for stealing a watch, the apologist of the fighters says, that "he never dishonoured the ring ;" and "in his hardships was tempted to commit the offence." Of the celebrated pugilist, Perkins, this champion of these characters says" He was highly respected by all classes at Oxford; it is true he was transported for stealing a watch, but it is well known he was not the thief," &c. Some persons may, perhaps, imagine that the excessive stupidity, the blundering absurdity, of such a mode of defence, amounts to irony, and becomes a laughable exposure and severe attack upon all whom it means to serve; we must yet, however, put it to them, whether, amongst the lower classes, the pouring out of such apparently flagitious indiscrimination between crime and legal conduct, must not materially tend to feed the gallows, and to fill the hulks and prisons with such Thurtells who were only amateurs? murderers, who were hanged from the pique of boxing friends? ex-champion robbers, who were transported on a general belief of innocence? highway robbers, who were tempted by hardship, and never dishonoured the ring? watch-stealers, who were respected by all Oxford? and child-burkers, who only attended fights, LIKE the most elevated men in the country? Does it not behove the magistracy to reflect on the pugilists and the swell mobs pouring forth such matter amongst the needy and desperate characters of London, whenever those magistrates are sentencing to punishment the unhappy wretches that have been seduced to crime by a system which the magistrates tolerate, in spite of the very laws which they have been sworn to execute, and are paid for executing?

This Carter was likewise advised to bring an action against the United Service Journal' for libel.