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 Daniel Mendoza – above left fighting Richard Humphreys and centre – gave us insight into the sport pre-Marquis of Queensbury rules. |
Saved by the bell
Popular with royalty and a way out of poverty for generations of immigrants, boxing is more than fisticuffs, a new exhibition shows. Dan Carrier reports
THE magistrate was faced with a dilemma: the meeting was illegal. But the crowd was quickly swelling to numbers beyond anything that was manageable, and when he spotted carriages with the royal crest on them, he realised the only course would be to let the boxing bout go ahead.
The Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of Clarence were confirmed fight fans and no right-minded magistrate was going to stand in the way of an afternoon’s entertainment for His Royal Highness.
An exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Albert Street, Camden Town, focuses on the role boxing has played in Britain’s immigrant communities.
The first big boxing star was the Jewish pugilist Daniel Mendoza, who rose to prominence in the 18th century. From Houndsditch, he became Heavyweight Champion of England in 1792.
Boxing was illegal, but its patrons were members of the aristocracy and this gave magistrates little motivation to break up the huge number of well-organised bouts. “You could have a crowd of 20,000 people turn up,” says exhibition curator and historian Ruti Ungar.
Although the fighters were all drawn from the labouring classes, this was not always the case with the crowds. William Windham, the Secretary of War during the Napoleonic Wars, missed a crucial debate in Parliament to go to a boxing match.
Daniel Mendoza published his memoirs and left a valuable insight into the sport before the Marquis of Queensbury instigated rules that were the beginnings of modern boxing.
“It was bare knuckle boxing and you were even allowed to use a few wrestling moves,” says Ruti. “There were no weight restrictions and no time counts. If you went down, you had 30 seconds to get back into the centre of the ring, which was known as the scratch – that’s where the saying ‘up to scratch’ comes from.”
There are reports of bouts going on for 120 rounds, and a round could go on until one boxer went down on one knee.
Even at that time there were great riches in boxing, with some fighters earning fortunes, being paid £200 for a single fight. But this was rare and.
“For the average fighter, it was a very hard existence, and their careers did not last long,” Ruti says. “They had a limited time to make money. Many drank heavily. It was common practice to drink gin between rounds.”
Jews were probably the biggest ethnic minority group in the sport – boxers from London’s East End became famous.
The exhibition tells the story of Gershon Mendeloff, the son of a Russian cabinetmaker who was known as Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis. He joined the Judean Boxing Club as a boy, but it was an incident in the street that tipped him towards boxing. He was stepping out with his girlfriend in 1914 when she was accosted by a man. The Kid duly despatched him.
He fought his first professional bout when he was aged just 14 and by 17 he won the British Featherweight title and the following year he became European champion. He won nine titles in three different weights in total, losing just 44 out of 283 fights.
“Some boxers were like footballers today,” says Ruti.“They were well known and treated like celebrities. Ted was a friend of Charlie Chaplin and some boxers were in the movies.”
But his experience was not shared by many other fighters. “Many had to fight five nights a week, or they would go hungry,” said Ruti.
Another fighter featured is Judah Bergman, known as Jack ‘The Whitechapel Windmill’ Berg. Born in Cable Street, he first learnt to fight by scrapping against anti-Semites he encountered in the streets around his home. Aged 15, he persuaded the boxing hall Premierland to let him fight. But his inexperience told the moment he stepped into the ring. “He started throwing punches immediately,” says Ruti. “He didn’t know he was meant to wait for the bell.”
He went on to win the World Welterweight Championship in 1930 and the British Lightweight title, winning 157 fights out of 192 bouts.
Boxing became an Olympic discipline in 1904 and was encouraged in schools, clubs and the army.
It was promoted as a means to toughen up, it was seen as a masculine, Christian sport – able to offer redemption through hard physical training and keep the foot soldiers of the Empire fighting fit. Throughout London small gyms sprang up.
“The Brady Street Boys Clubs became very popular, as did the Jewish Lads Brigade, which was established in the 19th century to iron out the physical frailty of living within a ghetto,” explains Ruti. “And it also gave Jewish boys the chance to assimilate into London culture.”
The advent of black boxing came for two reasons – up to 1948, there had been a colour bar, stopping black boxers from fighting professionally in Britain. The lifting of this ban coincided with the Windrush generation of immigration from the Caribbean into Britain. As Jewish immigrants had discovered 50 to 100 years earlier, boxing was a means to leave poverty behind, earn self-respect and defend oneself from racist attacks.
“And a lot of immigrants found themselves banned from other sports, such as tennis or golf,” says Ruti. “They are expensive, and there was a degree of prejudice in them.”
Nelson Mandela boxed as a young man. “When you are in the ring,” he said, “appearance, age, colour – all are irrelevant.”
The exhibition also charts recent successes: Amir Khan, the Olympic medallist from Bolton, is a British Pakistani. Ruti said: “He got into trouble as a child, so his father encouraged him to take up boxing to help channel his energy. A lot of young Asian men have taken up boxing because of his success.”
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