Cardiff's great featherweight boxer, Peerless Jim Driscoll died on 30 January 1925. He had won the British and Commonwealth tiles and narrowly missed the world title. Known as The Prince of Wales in Cardiff, 100,000 fans lined his funeral cortege which was led by the military band of the Welch Regiment.

Jim was born in 1880 into an Irish Catholic family on Ellen Street in Newtown, between the railway line and Bute West Dock. His father died when he was still a baby and his mother worked unloading vegetables from ships at Englands Potato Wharf. He started boxing in street fights during his teens and at seventeen he was fighting in boxing booths for a sovereign a time. For an extra crown he would fight with one hand tied behind him but to win you had to hit him on his nose within 60 seconds. He turned professional in 1901 and won 12 fights in his first year with no defeats. He won the British featherweight title in 1906 and the Commonwealth title in 1908.

In 1910 he toured the USA for four months. Although he won ten fights (In four months!) he just failed to take the world title from Abe Attell on a technicality. He refused a re-match because he was due to attend a fund-raiser for the Nazareth House Orphanage in Cardiff. "I never break a promise" he said. American boxing fans loved his fighting style and it was the American press that called him "Peerless".

He won the Lonsdale Belt in 1910 and boxed for the army during the Great War. He gave up professional boxing in 1919 and died of pneumonia just a few years later at his wife's pub, The Duke of Edinburgh on Ellen Street just a few doors down from the house he was born in. As a professional he won 58 matches of which 39 were knockouts. He lost just three. He fought more than 600 fights as an amateur.

Jim lies in Cathays Cemetery and a statue honours his memory. Sadly, the houses on Ellen Street were torn down after the War but Englands Potato Warehouse still stands as a smart apartment block.

Lots more about the life and times of Cardiff at cardiffonfoot.com