Tagged: welsh fighters

The Story Of Welsh Boxing

 
Photos: 6

AmeriCymru: Hi Lawrence and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Care to introduce your new book The Story of Welsh Boxing for our readers?

Lawrence: Hi, well my new book, 'The Story of Welsh Boxing, Prize Fighters of Wales' will be available to purchase at the start of June, 2019, and is published as a hardback by Pitch Publishing. This is the first book I have written on Welsh boxing to attempt to trace the origins of the sport of boxing in Wales, and to outline the careers of the most prominent Welsh fighters (or pugilists) recorded in the earliest days of British Boxing History.

The book introduces a number of forgotten early boxing 'champions' to have come from Wales, and features full accounts of some of the most prominent of the Welsh bare-knuckle fighters to have earned some measure of fame in the days before the advent of boxing gloves. There are some real surprises in the book and I hope that Welsh boxing fans enjoy reading about the forgotten fighters to have come from Wales.

It also introduces a full account of the career of Ned Turner, whose name might be familiar to some readers, as he is occasionally name-checked, although I don't think a full account of his career has been printed previously. Ned was a national hero in Wales in the 1820's and was thought to be the second greatest lightweight in Britain after a fighter named Jack Randall. His tale really is very engaging, Ned was a very likable and honorable man, and was greatly admired in his day. To the people of Wales it is no exaggeration to say he was a national hero. I hope that I have done him justice, and that readers enjoy his story.

AmeriCymru: What period of Welsh boxing history does the book cover? How difficult is it to research the earlier periods in the development of the sport given the dearth of written records?

Lawrence: The book covers what I would consider to be the first 'period' of Welsh boxing history, starting from the early 1700's with the most prominent Welsh fighters to have earned some measure of fame outside Wales, mostly within the 'London Prize Ring'. At this time, boxing or 'pugilism' had not yet broken away from the 'prize fighters' of the time, who were engaging in armed battles with the sword and staff, and the first chapter of the book gives background details on the types of contests that were fought with weapons, prior to fist fighting splitting away and being viewed as a separate art. It also contains details on some Welsh fighters who took part in these gladiatorial contests.

It also features those bare-knuckle fighters who were battling on native soil within Wales, right through to the fighting career of a boxer named William Charles from Newport who was deemed to be the 'Champion of Wales' by 1828, although he was not the first. The book covers a timescale of roughly 130 years, and charts the development of boxing within Wales, and the most prominent Welsh fighters that were recorded in the sporting journals and newspapers of the time.

Researching the book proved to be very difficult, in part because the first Welsh newspapers were founded at the start of the nineteenth century, and were very reluctant to print any information on boxing, or 'prize fighting' as it was known, mainly due to the influence of religious leaders and the chapel within Wales, who saw boxing as a demoralizing and brutal activity, although it was very popular, and often drew crowds of thousands to contests between prominent local 'Champions'.

Prior to the founding of the Welsh papers, what information can be found on the Welsh fighters of the eighteenth century is very hard to find, and piecing together the fragments of their fighting careers is a long and time consuming process, even after you have uncovered names of boxers who have long been forgotten. After fight accounts have been uncovered, you have to be able to review the materials critically and cross reference against other sources, which are often contradictory, in order to establish the accuracy of the material. The early history of prize fighting and boxing hasn't been explored in as great a detail as you might imagine. Most of the early works on boxing focus on the heavyweights, and the most prominent of the national champions.

AmeriCymru: What are the major differences between the bare knuckle fights of old and modern day boxing contests? Were fighters tougher back in the day?

Lawrence: One of the main differences in the bare-knuckle fights that took place in the days of prize fighting is that the contests were open ended, so there was no limit to the number of rounds. A man was expected to come up to the 'scratch' - a line in the center of the ring to fight - until such time as he was physically incapable of continuing. A round only ended when a man was sent down, rather than lasting a set time of three minutes. A fight could conceivably last hours, and often resulted in terrible injuries, particularly as a fighters supporters might well keep sending him out despite his injuries as they were naturally reluctant to lose the money they had wagered on their man.

Prize fighting was also an 'underground' activity. While there were many prominent members of the aristocracy who privately admired prize fighters, contests were always at risk of being broken up and the fighters and their supporters taken into custody and forced to defend themselves in court. Fights were therefore scheduled to take place at spots outside police jurisdiction, often on county boundaries, so the fighters and supporters could hop across the boundary in the event that they were being pursued by the constabulary of one county, and find another spot outside their reach to pitch another ring in a neighbouring one. As these contests took place outside, a portable 'ring' consisting of ropes and stakes were pitched once a suitable piece of flat turf was found, so it was a sport that took place 'on the fly'.

It seems to be one of those questions that creates a great deal of debate in boxing circles - were the old timers tougher than the fighters of today? I guess it depends on your point of view. Nowadays we have the benefit of science when it comes to physical training. Modern professional boxers are superbly conditioned athletes, but the toughness of some of the old fighters is quite phenomenal when you consider that they fought for hour after hour. They often sustained terrible injuries, with little medical assistance, without the benefits of modern methods of pain relief, and often for figures that would be unthinkably small for the professional boxers of today. Prize fighting was an incredibly dangerous sport. The book contains details of one fighter, recorded as a 'Welchman' who fought 276 rounds and was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records!

AmeriCymru: I think it's fair to say that bare knuckle fights were frowned upon by the authorities. Care to share some examples of the subterfuges fight organizers adopted to safeguard their events from interference by the local constabulary? Didn't the police face significant danger trying to break up these events?

Lawrence: The location where an important prize fight was to take place was often kept a secret until the day of the battle, usually when contests were to take place they were specified within a certain number of miles of London - which was the hub of prize fighting. This information was then circulated to fight fans of all walks of life, known as 'The Fancy' who would congregate at sporting houses, or pubs, where tips as to where the fight might come off might be heard.

At a later time, a 'special' train might even be booked to take the fighters and spectators to the scene of a battle, with the train pulling up at some quiet point on the line for the party to jump off, pitch a portable ring on a suitable spot of turf and bring off the fight before the authorities could locate the battleground.

Some prize fights drew crowds of thousands, and it might well be imagined in such circumstances it proved all but impossible for the police to exert their authority over such a vast number of people. There are accounts of people turning on the police when they attempted to break up a fight, and occasions where a posse of policemen scouring for the location of a fight were so out-manned that they had to merely watch from a distance with no ability to stop a contest.

AmeriCymru: From the book listing we learn that your "meticulous original research has uncovered many Welsh prize fighters previously unrecorded in any publication." Do you have any personal favorites? Are there any you would like to give a special mention to here?

Lawrence: Very few of the fighters within the book have been recorded at all in modern books of boxing history. As mentioned previously, Ned Turner was a symbol of bravery and honour in his day, but there are a few other fighters that appear within the book that are worth remembering. One is a particularly fierce Welsh butcher who plied his trade in Whitechapel Market, who was appropriately named 'Jack Rasher'. His fights were incredibly hard long and brutal, but he would laugh while his head was beaten 'like a rainbow, all manner of colours', and he would still spit on his fists and come out to fight. They called him 'Ironface'.

Another fighter within the book was known as the 'Wrexham Champion', he had a big reputation for thrashing everyone for miles around but died at the age of 38 after being attacked by a mob of 61 people. One of my favourites, because he sounds like a bit of a loon, is someone I know far too little about, a fighter named 'Taffy' Pritchard who challenged another fighter to eat 6lb of liver in less time than Taffy could eat 7lb of liver fried in candle wax! There are also some interesting details on the fighters that came after Ned Turner's time who claimed to be the 'Welsh Champion', whether merited or not.

Perhaps one of the most interesting accounts for Welsh boxing fans is the story of William Charles of Newport, who was genuinely held to be the 'Champion of Wales' by the general public - and was even compared to Owain Glyndwr the heroic rebel Prince of Wales. He has never been recorded in any book of Welsh boxing history before now. Charles was a smashing and powerful fighter and incredibly popular. For one of his fights in Monmouth, approximately 4,000 people traveled by horse, carriage and on foot from far and wide to a field to watch him take on one of his rivals, which seems astonishing to me, most of them trudging mile after mile for hour after hour to see their champion fight. I have tried to present as complete an account of his career as possible within the book.

AmeriCymru: Care to tell our readers a little about your earlier titles:- Mountain Fighters: Lost Tales of Welsh Boxing and Jack Scarrott's Prize Fighters.

Lawrence: The Mountain Fighters book was the first book I wrote on Welsh bare-knuckle boxing history, and it was published back in 2011. Prior to boxers wearing gloves, at the end of the nineteenth century, the bare-knuckle fighters of Wales were known as 'Mountain Fighters' because they fought on the mountains above the towns to avoid the interference of the police. I had come across references to them, but no details, who they were, who they fought, or any aspects of their lives and decided to research them. The book presented accounts of aspects of the lives of a number of the most prominent mountain fighters for the first time, including William Samuels, Robert Dunbar, Pete Burns (Dublin Tom), Sam Thomas (Sam Butcher), Dai St John, Patsy Perkins and others. Looking back it was a mammoth of a book, probably a bit too big. I wrote it in a very general style in an attempt to make it more readable to people who weren't necessarily only interested in boxing, but also in Welsh history, about a period that hadn't been previously explored.

The Jack Scarrott book finally came out in 2016 after many years of research. The name is probably most familiar to fight fans because Jack discovered the legendary Flyweight Champion of the World, Jimmy Wilde. Scarrott was a fairground boxing 'booth' owner. A boxing booth proprietor had a string of fighters who he employed to stand on the front of the booth, and he would invite members of the audience to challenge them over a few rounds. If they lasted the distance they won a cash prize. The spectators would pay an entrance fee to go into the booth, a large heavily decorated tent, to witness the contest. Virtually all the early Welsh gloved boxing champions started in the booths, and Jack handled most of them at one stage or another, the great 'Peerless' Jim Driscoll, Wilde, Tom Thomas the middleweight champion of Britain, Percy Jones, World Flyweight champion, and so many others all started out with Jack. Scarrott toured South Wales, packing up his booth and putting on contests around Wales for decades. He was a showman, a promoter, and one of the most important figures in Welsh boxing, although he had become something of a footnote in history, more of a myth than a man. His life and times were incredibly colourful, and the book shows how he took boxing from a small tent he knocked up himself in the town of Pontypridd, featuring ex-mountain fighters on his booth front, to venues where thousands watched the 96lb future wonder of the world Jimmy Wilde destroy all comers. It is an amazing story. As I learned more about Jack I admired him more and more. I hope one day that a revised edition will be published.

My new book, 'The Story of Welsh Boxing' is a bit different. It tries to present a full period of boxing history in as much detail as possible. I hope it is something that readers enjoy whether a wholehearted boxing fan, or whether they are just interested in the history of Wales generally. This is the first book that I have written that contains full footnotes, appendices, and a lot of wonderful portraiture and illustrations, and I really hope that people enjoy it. Sometimes it was hard trying to push on with writing it, and pull the various pieces together but I have tried to do credit to the courage and bravery of some of the great forgotten Welsh fighters of the past that should be remembered.

AmeriCymru: When will the book be available and where can readers buy it online

Lawrence: The book will be on general release at the start of June, 2019. I believe that Amazon are taking pre-orders. On the high street it should be available at Waterstones and WH Smiths and other bookshops.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-welsh-boxing/lawrence-davies/9781785315039

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Welsh-Boxing-Prize-Fighters/dp/178531503X

https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/the-story-of-welsh-boxing-prize-fighters-of-wales/9781785315039

AmeriCymru: What's next for Lawrence Davies? Do you have any other projects ongoing at the moment?

Really hard to say right now, I have a few other things sitting on the shelf, mostly Welsh boxing related. I am also trying to fit in research time when I can, and would like to continue charting the 'Story of Welsh Boxing' when I get time to sit down and write. Hopefully people will like the new book enough that I will be spurred on to write some more, all I ever really wanted to do when I was a kid was to write something worth reading. I used to bash away with two fingers on a dusty old Remington typewriter that my dad had, the hope is that each time I try, I get better at doing it. He used to say, keep trying, keep fighting, keep going. I think thats probably the best advice I ever had.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Lawrence: I really hope that if you read the new book, 'The Story of Welsh Boxing' that you enjoy it. If you do I would be really grateful if you might be so kind as to post a review on amazon, or share your thoughts on it with others on facebook, twitter, etc. Its always wonderful to read that someone has enjoyed something that you have written, or tried to write to the best of your ability.

If you are on twitter you can tweet about the book to Pitch Publishing @pitchpublishing using #TheStoryofWelshBoxing. If you follow Pitch on Twitter you can leave book reviews, get exclusive news and enter competitions and prize giveaways.

Alternatively, you can also find out more about the book on facebook, or give your thoughts on it by visiting :

https://www.facebook.com/PitchPublishing

I am really thankful for all the people who have supported my previous books, or have been so kind as to review them, or write forum posts on them, etc. it really helps you keep trying and keep writing when you are struggling to find the momentum to keep working on a something that you know is going to take you a very long time to put together. Some people have been incredibly generous with their support, so thank you for your kindness to date. Also want to especially thank AmeriCymru for having alerted readers to my previous books when they came out, sometimes its the interest and enthusiasm of others that keeps you going when you are flagging.

AmeriCymru: Hi Lawrence and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. When did you first become interested in boxing and in particular Welsh boxing?

Lawrence: Hi Ceri, great to hear from you, its a real pleasure to be asked. I guess like most boxing fans I have fond memories from tuning in and watching fights sitting on the rug next to my dad as a kid, who has always enjoyed the boxing. Saturdays it was always wrestling on ITV in the afternoon and a fight in the evening, maybe a bit of Fit Finlay or Kendo Nagasaki after lunch followed by some Bruno, Benn, Eubank or Tyson with a bag of Frazzles. Happy days !

I grew up in Cardiff, where everyone knows the name of Jim Driscoll, even if they arent familiar with his story. They called him Peerless Jim for his boxing skill, but it was really his kindness and charity that cemented his name in Welsh sporting history. He was the first British boxer to win the Lonsdale featherweight title belt and gave up the opportunity to fight for the championship of the world in the US as he had given his word he would fight on a fundraiser for the Nazareth House Orphanage in Cardiff and returned home. It has been estimated that up to 100,000 people lined the streets of Cardiff when he died, which would make it the largest funeral in Welsh history.

The orphans of Nazareth House made up a large number of the mourners, and there were countless famous hard men of the ring weeping among them, friends and opponents alike. It struck me as the strangest contrast, that a man who spent his life in one of the toughest professions there is had such a kind heart when it came to his own people. He gave a lot of money to the poor and needy, and boxed thousands of rounds to raise funds for those less fortunate than himself. He became a true peoples champion in Cardiff, and was one of the most admired champions in British boxing, as much for his actions outside the ring as within it. I think he must have been a remarkable man, and like all the greatest boxing stories, Jims story really transcends the sport. Inspirational and heroic in a way I think we rarely glimpse in boxing today. There is a statue to Jim and his achievements in Cardiff city centre.

(Click the image below for video footage of Peerless Jim Driscoll's funeral: Ed)

As I got older I followed the careers of local boxing stars made good like Steve Robinson and Joe Calzaghe. Steve followed in Driscolls footsteps and became featherweight champion, and obviously Joe will long be remembered after retiring undefeated. One of my fondest memories was being at ringside years ago for the Calzaghe Brewer fight. I was working in a warehouse at the time, and I was probably living off beans on toast for a month afterwards, but it was a hell of a battle and worth every last depressing baked bean.

Over the years I read quite a bit about the first boxing greats to come out of Wales. What was fascinating to me was that all of their stories are so intriguing in their own right, and I was surprised to find that so many of the early Welsh fighters had been forgotten. Even more interesting to me that their careers started at the end of an earlier fighting tradition, where the fist fighters had been known as mountain fighters, before modern boxing had really taken off in Wales. Fist-fighting or prize fighting was illegal, so most fights happened outside the reach of the law, on the mountains above the towns of the South Wales valleys and were scheduled to start at dawn to avoid the police, in areas called bloody spots or blood hollows where they did battle with the raw uns, meaning that these were all bare-knuckle battles. Although it was an underground sport, it was incredibly popular even though its brutality meant that many of the men died on the mountains due to their injuries, every town and village had its local champ. A fight continued until a man was knocked unconscious or was unable to continue. As the fights could often go on for hours and there were unlimited numbers of rounds that only stopped when a man went down, the men that fought were often left hideously disfigured. Broken teeth and smashed up faces became the badge of the mountain fighters. In a sense they were almost like unarmed gladiators of early Welsh boxing.

In a strange twist, the boxing rules on which modern boxing were based had been drafted in 1865, and were also written by a Welshman from Llanelli, named John Graham Chambers. The rules were named after his friend, the Marquess of Queensberry, in an attempt to lend a degree of respectability to the sport and also distance boxing from the horrors of the old prize-ring and showcase scientific boxing skill as opposed to a bloody mauling. The new rules didnt automatically take hold in Wales, as the knuckles were the time honoured way of settling disputes, although a few early showmen were promoting contests wearing gloves. Boxing booths, little more than travelling tents with a string of boxers demonstrated their skills on fairgrounds and accepted challenges from the audience. If they were skillful or lucky enough to last a set number of rounds they could claim the showmans cash prize.

The showman would charge a fee for entry, and some did particularly well out of the trade and became celebrities in their own right, people like William Samuels and Patsy Perkins. Many of the knuckle men were quite resentful of the booth boxers and would often turn up on the fairground to try and further their reputations by mauling and battering them.

Despite this, the booth was a very effective training school for boxers. Many would say that there hasnt been a better system for making boxing champions since. Most of them fought multiple times each showing, so by the time they might be termed professional boxers, they might have met hundreds of opponents. In Wales the booths did a roaring trade, and virtually all the old British champions came out of them. I find it astonishing that the first three Lonsdale belt winners were all Welsh, two had come via the booths, and all were competing in a sport where the modern game had developed on rules had also been drawn up by a Welshman. One of the longest running booths was Ron Taylors, which was actually still touring the country until just a few years ago.

Although I came across a couple of notorious characters of this time that had been mentioned in passing in romanticized works of historical fiction, I found very little solid documentary information about them. It seemed to be a very interesting period in Welsh history that was mostly forgotten or merely alluded to, so I decided to look into it myself.

AmeriCymru: What inspired you to write 'Mountain Fighters - Lost Tales Of Welsh Boxing'?

Lawrence: As a teenager Id occasionally drop in for a pint at the Royal Oak in Newport Road if they had a decent band on. The great guitarist Tich Gwilym used to play there back in the day. It was stuffed with photos and pictures of Jim Driscoll back then and Id have a look over them while nursing a pint. Jim was instantly recognizable, and all the others in the pictures were a mostly unnamed or unknown clump of tough looking old bruisers with squashed noses and cauliflower ears. It struck me that in boxing, the greatest part of the story is often forgotten. We remember the champion, and not necessarily the men that he beat to get there. If Driscoll and Jimmy Wilde and all the others had become champions, who did they beat? I thought there must have been some fairly established fighters knocking about to have even paved the way. I figured that some of their stories should be remembered. I didnt get round to it straight off, but the thought remained.

My family are from Merthyr and my uncle once met the immortal Jimmy Wilde, who is usually recorded as having been born in Tylorstown, but was actually born near Merthyr at Quakers Yard. He became flyweight champion of the world in 1916. Wilde fought hundreds of times, frequently giving away stones in weight. He remains one of the greatest marvels in boxing. Apparently, even Jimmy used to sit agog hearing the tales of his mountain fighting father-in-law Dai Davies of Tylorstown, who wasnt adverse to a bare knuckle fight for hours on end, probably more often than not for a jug of ale as a prize. Unbelievable. Today theres not many people outside boxing circles that even remember Jimmys name, which is something bordering on sacrilege. Sadly there is no statue to him in Wales, though I do remember he was at least languishing at a fairly low number in the 100 greatest Welshmen lists a few years back. Id have put him in the top ten. Jimmys tale is one of the most wonderful boxing stories there is.

Years ago I met a fragile old boy at a bus stop and talk got round to boxing. When we picked over some of the best, I mentioned Jimmy Wilde and he got a strange gleam in his eye and minutes later he was shuffling about telling me of how his grandfather had seen him fight in his youth, magic, boy, pure bloody magic he said, remembering his grandfathers story, and started demonstrating a few shaky punches. It was like hed dropped sixty years and was a boy again. There really is something special about boxing that ignites a fire in Welshmen that I dont think you see in any other sport, not even rugby.

I studied English and Anglo Saxon heroic literature at the University of Wales, which really made me think about boxing again a few years later. The emergence of a hero who rises against all odds is a central re-occurring theme in most folk literature. As a child I was fascinated with the stories of Greek mythology. Strength and courage are almost universally admired and usually form the main defining characteristics of a hero. It seemed to me that many of these early fighters became symbols of triumph to their countrymen for having found a way to rise above the fate that most were forced to endure.

Personally, I have always admired fighters over most athletes and sportsmen because to fight requires absolute mastery of the will. The training would be enough to level most of us. Strength and courage are not enough, while you need physical strength and stamina on a level beyond what is required in virtually any other sport, you also need an impossibly fast brain. To deal with evading blows, while trying to plant them on an opponent inside fractions of seconds is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach while jogging backwards. That a boxer walks into a ring knowing that he is facing an opponent completely alone takes unbelievable self belief. Its not something that just anyone can do, let alone do well.

AmeriCymru: You have resurrected a colourful and fascinating cast of characters for a modern audience. People like William Samuels and Redmond Coleman were both working class heroes (and villains) in their day. Do you have a personal favourite?

Lawrence: Thats a really hard question, because hunting down information on some of them has been such a long and involved process. Some have grown from little more than a list of names. The characters and stories of some fighters only emerged over quite a long period of time, while many of the lesser names are more like blank canvases. Even now I have a list of fighters which I never really discovered any more about other than a name. Some still gnaw at me a little bit, one was called the Lasher which I think is a superb ring name; I just wish I knew how the Lasher earned it.

William Samuels of Swansea would probably win by a nose because you couldnt invent a character like him, and Im glad to have had the pleasure of uncovering and recording some part of his remarkable career. He was an acrobat, a strongman, and a circus performer before starting his boxing booth, and claimed the bare knuckle heavyweight championship of Wales for donkeys years. He once beat down a man who was thought to be one of the best fighters in South Wales when he was past fifty years old with one arm, after having broken the other on his opponents body. Samuels knocked them down in fairground boxing booths where hed take on all comers in towns and villages all over South Wales for twenty years and more. One of his stunts was to take on six challengers at a time, one after another. He also had the temerity to walk into a circus cage full of lions and shoot starting pistols in their faces and somehow emerged unscratched, and had enough courage to square up to John L Sullivan, the bare-knuckle champion of the world.

Samuels had a terrible temper, and fell out with almost every other Welsh boxer of his time, and became something of a celebrity in old Swansea town. I was researching him for a long time before I actually turned up a photograph of him, which was a very exciting moment, and I was pleased to see he looked just as proud and haughty as I hoped he would be. William Samuels was the first real boxing showman of any real note in South Wales. I admire his grit, and get a kick out of his contradictory nature. They say he was always laughing, good spirited, always had a penny or a peppermint to give to a child, yet he could easily blow his stack in the blink of an eye and be rolling up his sleeves moments later. He sounds like a handful, but was a man who I dont think youd forget too easily. The stories of Samuels time read quite like the film Gangs of New York, just with bare fists or gloves rather than shillelaghs or stilettos. There should really be a pub named after him in Swansea.

Redmond Coleman has always been a fascination of mine, partly because he inspired admiration and terror in almost equal measure. Redmond was locked up by the police over 120 times; hed fight anyone, anywhere, and seems to have earned his nickname of the Ironman through his willingness to fight outside the ring as well as within it. They say the only people that could keep him in line were his sister (with the aid of an iron bar she carried to beat him into line) and the local priest, who carried a stick to threaten him with one. Still, for all that he was a very hard man. Some people had suggested to me that a man like Redmond shouldnt be remembered at all, which I think is completely wrong. He was a product of the hardness of his time, where the majority slaved for a pittance and lived in abject poverty with a gloomy future stretching out before them. Redmond might have started battling on the mountainsides bare-knuckle, and with the Merthyr police force, but he also fought with gloves before Lords at the National Sporting Club in London. He was also one of the first to put his hometown of Merthyr on the map as a fighting town.

I think that being known as one of the toughest fighters around, he was targeted by a fair collection of local toughs eager to claim they had beaten the famous Ironman. He also suffers from having been recorded in works of fiction as having been the Emperor of China which was a notorious slum area of Merthyr, which is historically incorrect. Amongst the thugs, thieves, prostitutes and career criminals of China, the toughest man in the district was given the title of Emperor which would put Redmond at the top of the tree of a whole community of undesirables. In reality, China had been in decline even before Redmonds time, and he never was the Emperor of China. I think his notoriety led to his story being rolled into that of an earlier Merthyr hardman, John Jones, better known as Shoni Sguborfawr, who became notorious for his role in the Rebecca Riots, and was a much earlier Emperor of China. Redmond did serve in WW1 and appeared on a number of benefit events for Nazareth House, so he cant have been all bad.

One of the most likeable fighters in the book is probably Morgan Crowther of Newport, who I knew virtually nothing about when I began writing. He started fighting almost before he had grown out of short trousers. Although he was a small guy and didnt really have much of a telling punch, he was phenomenally durable. Morgan Crowther would think nothing of a forty round match and come up smiling. He is recorded as being a very likable and affable sort of chap, so won a lot of friends that didnt even realize he was a boxer as he didnt seem to fit the profile of a knuckle fighter. He travelled extensively to fight throughout Wales and England, and fought everywhere from a churchyard in the dead of night in Wales, through to meadows in England, racecourses, and fairgrounds as well as high end gentlemans clubs. He was an absolute pain in the neck for police forces throughout the land, who hid behind railway station walls and hedges everywhere hoping to capture him. He even got a mention in the House of Commons he became so notorious. Morgan was something of a lovable scoundrel, and was the toast of Wales among the public, probably all the more so for being hauled before the courts on a regular basis and carrying on regardless.

Having spent so much time puzzling over so many records, and trying to find pieces of information to build the story of each fighter for so long, I have to say I have a great deal of affection for all of them even some of the undesirables. Some continue to niggle away at me, because I really want to find out more about them. One of these is Robert Dunbar, who claimed the lightweight championship of Wales as well as running his own boxing booth and was a committed enemy of William Samuels. He blew out one of his eyes in a firearm accident, yet continued to fight on with just one eye for many years. I still havent found a picture or a photograph of him. Another old timer which I am very interested in is Dan Pontypridd who turned his back on prize fighting and became a preacher fighting for God rather than prize money. He even burned a belt made of gold that was given to him by his supporters after his conversion. A fascinating character and one of the earliest Welsh prize fighters to be acclaimed nationally outside Wales. I also have a great deal of respect for Ivor Thomas, who was a great fighter and was already approaching the end of his career when Jim Driscoll was the next big thing on his way up. They were friends, but Ivor had been asking him to fight for a long time before, and would always ask Jim, when be us going to have a go?. One of these days, Ivor was the usual answer. Eventually it came to pass and inevitably Driscoll was victorious. Ivors brother, Sam was also very well known, but he preferred to fight on the mountains bare fisted and was a very famous knuckle fighter in the Rhondda.

AmeriCymru: An enormous amount of research must have gone into this. What were your primary sources? Is the information presented in the book (particularly the blow by blow accounts of the many gruelling and brutal encounters between contestants) readily available to the researcher?

Lawrence: At first the book could easily have been a pamphlet. When I began researching I thought I would be able to find enough detail to just write short profiles of each fighter with a potted history of their fights. I had little hope of being able to discover much more, but it seemed pretty dry and boring. Part of the problem is that the Welsh newspapers of the time were heavily influenced by the anti-boxing nonconformist chapel folk. For this reason boxing coverage is pretty sparse in a lot of the Welsh newspapers before the turn of the century. Sometimes youre lucky just to pull up the odd paragraph, hopefully over time they stack up.

Most of the research process is hunting and cross referencing, finding contests, names, or mentions of fights and checking them against other newspapers to try and build more detail. A lot of it is list making, finding names, then trying to find dates of birth and deaths, which make for a good start, and just adding entries as you find them until you have something with a bit of meat on it. It is very time intensive, as sometimes the only thing you can do is work out when someone was active and try and trawl the newspapers. As much as anything it can be a question of working out their movements, and trying to find the various aliases they fought under, as many had pseudonyms to avoid being targeted or captured by the police. Usually you find that a bunch of them might crop up, if there was a fatality or the police captured a gang of them in the act, otherwise coverage can be extremely patchy. Some, like Morgan Crowther and Patsy Perkins got around a lot, so its a case of checking places against last known movements. Its a bit of a rabbit hole; each question you answer usually prompts ten more.

As my entries grew, and characters emerged it gave me enough hope that I might be able to write something that gave more of a flavour of their lives and times. I hadnt even considered that this might be possible when I began.

It is made more difficult because there is no central place where you can go and look at all the regional Welsh newspapers. I ended up going through microfilm in the libraries at Cardiff, Swansea, Pontypridd, Merthyr, and other places to trawl for references. Its pretty hard on the eyes, some older newspapers are in fairly rough shape, and others are only readily available on microfilm. I also travelled to London to look through the nationwide newspapers held by the British Library to follow up on those fighters that were also active outside Wales, such as Dan Pontypridd and Morgan Crowther. Some if not most of the records are far from complete, and only based on which reports could be found. I hope that in time, more information might come to light on some of them.

They do say that the National Library at Aberystwyth is currently engaged in trying to digitize every one of the Welsh 19 ^th century regional newspapers over the next few years, so that they are word searchable online. I think this is an amazing project, and only wish that it had been available to me when writing the book; it would have made a lot of the slog a great deal easier. I am hopeful that it will be a goldmine for any researchers engaged in Welsh history and will unearth a massive amount of information about all aspects of our history that was previously only accessible through long time consuming trawling.

I hope that I might also be able to tick off some of the many unanswered questions and more information on some of the boxers that I have researched, and some of those that have eluded me. Published boxing ring records did not really come into being until a bit later, to find the records of the earlier men you have to keep digging. I have thought it might be an idea to try and gather all the information I can find and compile a sort of mountain fighter ring record book, but I think it would probably be a fairly tough job, so maybe in the future.

It took a solid couple of years to try and find the material and then organize it so that I could fold it into coherent tales. The book probably wouldnt have happened without the enthusiasm of a large number of people; librarians throughout Wales helped me with searches and enquiries along the way, as did the Resolven Historical Society with the story of the Resolven Giant, Dai St. John. A gentleman and boxing historian by the name of Clay Moyle was also kind enough to find a number of documents and fight accounts that I would have struggled to gain access to without his help. Ivor Rees Thomas, the grandson of Ivor Thomas was also very kind in giving me further details and photographs of his grandfather for use in the book.

Really more than anyone I must thank a boxing historian named Harold Alderman from Aylesham in Kent, who received an M.B.E. for services to boxing a few years ago. We wouldnt know a fraction of what we know about many 19 ^th century British boxers if it wasnt for him. For years he has studied and transcribed boxing records by hand, compiling records, and adding to them and redrafting them until they become important historical records in their own right. I have never met anyone that has such an encyclopedic knowledge of any subject to the degree that Harold understands boxing, he is astonishing. I would think over the years he has worked almost round the clock to uncover the records of thousands of fighters and given his records to the descendents of old-time boxers, often without receiving a penny in return for his labour. His work has contributed the backbone of the work for a large number of boxing writers and historians for many years.

In fact, it was Mr. Alderman who compiled the record of Redmond Coleman, which made writing Redmonds tale a great deal easier. One of the great things to come out of the book was that I also tracked down Redmonds unmarked grave in Merthyr. Along with Harold and a number of the Welsh Ex-Boxers Association, we finally put up a marker, which I think was eighty years overdue.

AmeriCymru: Many of these fighters were coalminers or iron-workers. How important was their industrial background in preparing them for prize fighting?

Lawrence: I think it played a massive part in the lives of the early men of the Welsh ring, at the top end there were men who made a fair amount of money out of fighting and spent it just as easily. The majority fought for pennies, so there were very few men who could make enough money to support themselves as full-time fighters. The bulk of the population was employed in the coal and iron industries. There was always an overabundance of work, and so labour was cheap. Workers rights were non-existent, as any one that was deemed a troublemaker was easily sacked and replaced.

Coalminers started their working lives at the age of fourteen after having received a rudimentary education. There were few other opportunities on offer, so the coalmine loomed in their future even before the average pupil left school. Life was tough, hard, and in their working lives, fatalities were an inevitable part of life. It must have hardened the attitudes of the men to death and injury, and I expect most accepted the possibility of their own lives coming to an abrupt end through industrial accidents as a feature of everyday life. As the coal and iron industries grew, it brought men from all over the country and caused some tensions between natives and newcomers. Most of these disagreements were settled in the simplest way, with a fistfight. Many fights occurred in the coalmines themselves, or by an agreement to meet on the mountain.

It really is quite hard to imagine just how much frustration and anger must have built up in the men working at the coalface like beasts of burden, spending most of their lives in the dark. By the time they left the pit, I think it is fairly understandable that for many this daily frustration found an outlet in fist-fighting, drinking or both. As the popularity of the boxing booths grew, it also made financial sense for a man that was handy with his fists to seek an opportunity on the boxing booths. The better fighters might earn more in a few fights through collections and side stakes than they could earn in a number of weeks in the coalmines. For most it was probably a toss-up, spend your days working and possibly dying in the dark of the pit, or fight on the booths above ground and potentially risk the same outcome for more money.

AmeriCymru: The book, at least in part, presents a social history of an important sport that played a key role in the lives of many Welshmen in this period. Would you agree? How important was prize fighting in the lives of the ordinary collier or ironworker ?

Lawrence: That it was so widespread gives some indication of the importance to the Welshmen of the period, literally every town and village appears to have had a local champion. Some fought hundreds of times. Although it was a very brutal sport, against the backdrop of the age, fist fighting was really no worse than many other pastimes. At one time cockpits for cock fighting were a hub of activity in many villages, which is why the word survived after the cockpit disappeared, and is still in use today. Badger baiting and rat killing were common pursuits. Some of the earlier forms of combat led to horrific injuries. Shin-kicking and Lancashire wrestling often left men crippled or worse. Rightly or wrongly, in the eyes of the average collier or ironworker, a fist fight at least represented a fair stand up fight and a means of settling a problem without involving the police.

As an entertainment on the fairground, it was incredibly popular. In the days before the cinematograph and moving pictures, a boxing booth would draw vast crowds. The booths were often beautifully decorated with paintings of famous fighters doing battle, and many showmen incorporated other elements into their shows. Some featured strongmen, musical organs, beautiful girls and snake handlers. Many people saved up every penny they had for the fair, and was one of the most important social events of the calendar. Annual boxing exhibitions were one of the principal ways that Nazareth House raised money to care for the sick and the orphans in Cardiff, but it also raised funds for hospitals, Childrens Welfare Committees, and other charities. During WW1 some of the most famous boxing champions also boxed to raise funds for injured servicemen and the widows of Welsh soldiers killed in the war. Later on, into the 1930s, boxing became even more important in raising money for the soup kitchens, and feeding hungry mouths throughout periods of bitter striking.

AmeriCymru: Where can one purchase 'Mountain Fighters' online?

Lawrence: The best place to get a copy would be gwales.com , which is the website of the Welsh Book Council, who are the main distributors of the book. Some branches of Waterstones bookshops also have copies available or can order them on demand from the Welsh Book Council and there are a few other great independent Welsh bookshops that are also stocking it, including Palas Print in Caernafon ( palasprint.com ) and Browning books ( browningbooks.co.uk ) in Blaenavon. Hopefully, there should be a website in place in the not too distant future to sell the book directly alongside other titles.

AmeriCymru: What are you working on currently? What's next for Lawrence Davies?

Lawrence: Right now Im working on bringing another book into print written by Jimmy Wilde, entitled Hitting and Stopping which is very exciting. In the future I might work on a few extra projects relating to Welsh boxing, Id like to put together a website, maybe showcase a few old fighters, and pull together a few sources, try and develop a bit of interest and make the job of hunting some of this stuff down a little easier. Id quite like to do something on a bunch of the later booth boxers, like Driscoll, Welsh and Wilde and some of the many lesser known ones.

Next year the World Boxing Council Convention is being held in Wales, in Cardiff, and will bring boxing superstars from all over the world to Wales. The WBC were attracted to the capital mainly due to the work of Cardiff Councillor Neil McEvoy in promoting the colourful boxing history of Wales. I think that Welsh boxing history is a really great selling point for tourism, and hope that it will tempt boxing fans round the world to come and visit. Ideally Id love to see all the strands of boxing history and knowledge pulled under one roof in a Welsh Boxing Hall of Fame. Jim Driscoll, Freddie Welsh, Jimmy Wilde and even John Graham Chambers are all inductees of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, which is visited by thousands every year. I think a Welsh version would raise the profile of Wales and definitely help highlight our rich history in the sport. Id like to see an exhibition that includes some of the old back-timers and collect together what we know of them and display their achievements alongside some of the more famous fighters that came afterwards.

Additionally there was some talk a few years back of creating a Freddie Welsh statue at Pontypridd, which was suggested by his biographer Gareth Harris who also lives in the town. Although it received a great deal of verbal support, it never happened. As Welsh was the first boxer who really flew the flag for Wales and Pontypridd in the US, and was the first recognized World lightweight champion to have come from Wales, Id really like to see that happen. But then, if Freddie got a statue, Jimmy Wilde would have to have one too. Given that Merthyr is the only town on the globe with three boxing statues, I think it would be fantastic to build on its heritage and attract even more visitors. Two more statues wouldnt break the bank. It would be far more fitting than half the modern art rubbish that seems to get funding and has sprouted up in some towns in recent years.

I will probably start work on a new book next year which will require a fair bit of legwork, so I will be doing some head scratching over that. I have also had a few enquiries from descendents of some forgotten fighters, and am trying to assist them with uncovering more about their ancestors when I can. I might try and turn my hand to some article writing too.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Lawrence: Yes, buy my book, and if you keep it tidy, you can always re-gift it!

Its a decent size, good value for the money and itll keep a partner who is interested in boxing out of trouble for a fair while.

If you have heard that you were related to an old-time Welsh boxer or have any clippings, photographs or any other information about any of the boxers mentioned above or in the book, please get in touch via Americymru, I would be very glad to hear from you. If anyone has any information about any other mountain fighters or booth boxers not included, or that come from a later time period, I would also be interested in finding out more, in the hope of assisting with ongoing research. Thank you very much, Ceri. Cymru am byth.

A selection of related videos from the author:-

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-noble-art-of-self-defence - jimmy wilde clip

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/9028282.stm - boxer remembers mountain fighting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/9028172.stm - boxing booths

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/9034673.stm - billy eynon (sparring partner of Driscoll)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/1901448.stm - jimmy wilde audio interview

Interview by Ceri Shaw

Jack Scarrott’s Prize Fighters – Memoirs of a Welsh Boxing Booth Showman

by Lawrence Davies

ISBN : 978-0-9570342-3-5
Price £14.99
Published : 31/8/2016

451 Pages, 56 black and white photos and illustrations

This book, a continuation of the previously unrecorded Welsh boxing history covered in the book Mountain Fighters, Lost Tales of Welsh Boxing , by Lawrence Davies (Peerless Press, 2011) and explores the world of the mountain fighters and early glove fighters of South Wales in the form of an expanded commentary on the memoirs of John ('Jack') Scarrott (1870-1947) the famous boxing booth proprietor and boxing promoter who assisted such well known Welsh boxers as Jim Driscoll, Tom Thomas and Jimmy Wilde on the road to boxing glory.  Many of the first of the most famous fighting men to have emerged from South Wales are profiled within this book including:

Martin Fury and Jack Hearn- two of the most famous bare-knuckle fighters to have emerged from the gypsy camps of South Wales, and the forgotten story of their great battle.

Shoni Engineer - the one-time claimant of the Welsh middleweight title, with full accounts of his battles against 'Dublin Tom', Tom 'Books' Davies, Jem Guidrell of Bristol, John O'Brien and William Samuels.

William Samuels - the flamboyant heavyweight champion of Wales, with an expanded accounts of his rivalries with Bob Dunbar, Toff Wall, Tom Vincent, and Shoni Engineer, as well as an in-depth look at his later career and his remarkable impact on the history of Welsh boxing.

Dai St. John - The towering miner from Resolven, who whipped 'man after man' with bare knuckles as a teenager before his great rivalry with John O'Brien the Cardiff born Welsh middleweight champion, and his dramatic rise to the status of national hero in the Boer War.

Bob Dunbar - the fearsome bare-knuckle fighter and booth boxer, who went on to claim the lightweight championship of Wales, his great defeat of William Samuels in 1882, and the tragic untold story of the events following his retirement from the ring.

Dai Dollings - the bare knuckle fighter and booth boxer from Swansea who would become one of the most famous and influential boxing trainers of the early 20th century after emigrating to New York and becoming the chief trainer at the world famous Grupp's gym - where he seconded some of the most famous fighters of the squared circle, and tutored the renowned boxing trainer, Ray Arcel.

Numerous fighters who featured on Jack Scarrott's boxing booth are also fully explored within the book, along with tales of their early fights on Scarrott's 'Pavilion' including such luminaries of Welsh gloved boxing as:

Tom Thomas - The gentle farmer's son from Penygraig who would become British middleweight Champion after many battles on the travelling boxing booth of Jack Scarrott, and the tale of how the cruel lick of a gypsy's whip made him pull on the boxing gloves.

Jim Driscoll - The Cardiff boxer known as 'Peerless' Jim who was crowned British featherweight champion, and became the toast of Great Britain following his defeat of Abe Attell, the world featherweight champion.

Jimmy Wilde - the astonishing tale of Wilde's rise to fame as world flyweight champion and arguably the greatest boxer of all  time, his many knockout victories on the boxing booth, and the legendary day when he knocked out 23 seperate challengers.

Pedlar McMahon - a 'pocket Hercules' and boxing booth champion, his rise to fame on the boxing booth of William Samuels, his great rivalry with booth boxer Frank Lowry and tales from his time as a champion of Jack Scarrott's booth. 

Joe White - A Swiss-Canadian middleweight who became one of the favourites on Scarrott's boxing booth, his early contests on the boxing booths of South Wales through to his challenge to a young Freddie Welsh as a battle hardened veteran.

'Dangerous Jack' - one of Scarrott's early champions, a ferocious black fighter, known for his slashing style who put down mountain fighter after mountain fighter, and the hilarious story of his discovery by Jack Scarrott himself. 

'Yuko Sako' - The 'Japanese Strangler from Yokohama' - the strange but true story of one of Jack Scarrott's booth boxers - a compact Welshman disguised as a mysterious Japanese fighter to draw the interest of the fairground crowds. 

Details of the early careers of many Welsh champions and notable booth boxers of the period are explored within the book, including Percy Jones of Porth - the first Welsh world champion, Frank Moody of Pontypridd - British & Empire Middleweight Champion, Johny Basham of Newport - British & European Welterweight Champion, Jack Davis of Pontypridd - who once challenged for the British heavyweight title, Freddie Welsh of Pontypridd - lightweight champion of the world, Patsy Perkins - lightweight champion of Wales, Jimmy Dean - the famous 'Cast Iron Man' of Pontypridd, 'Darkey' Thomas, Frank Reed, William 'Mother' Lee, Dai 'Rush', Thomas 'Bungy' Lambert, Arthur and William Butcher of Talywain, 'Twm' Edwards of Aberdare, and 'Bullo' Rees of Aberavon.

Prior to the publication of this book, many of these men have never been recorded in any other book of Welsh boxing history, and along with Mountain Fighters, Lost Tales of Welsh Boxing by the same author, they comprise the most complete recorded history of the origins of Welsh boxing and the early Welsh glove fighters ever published.  Both books represent over fifteen years of intensive Welsh boxing research on the part of the author, and have a combined length of nearly 1,000 pages covering a century of Welsh boxing history.  Illustrated with over 50 mostly unpublished photographs and illustrations, 'Jack Scarrott’s Prize Fighters - Memoirs of a Welsh Boxing Booth Showman' is a must buy for any boxing fan who wishes to re-discover the origins of Welsh boxing, and read the astonishing story of Jack Scarrott, the acclaimed showman and boxing pioneer, who until now had been consigned to little more than a footnote in the careers of the great Welsh boxing champions. 

From the Back Cover :

‘Fifty years I’ve been in the game, mister, and all that time I’ve been right here in the mining valleys.  I know every town and village in South Wales, and I knew every boxer worth calling a fighting man they ever turned out. Dai St. John, Tom Thomas, Jim Driscoll, Freddy Welsh, Johnny Basham, Jimmy Wilde, Percy Jones, and many more that were before their time. I knew them all, and a good few started with me in my booth.  I was scrapping for a living in a boxing booth before I started a booth on my own, and I was only about twenty one when I started on my own. Believe me, the life of a booth boxer in those days was tough.  Mountain fighters! That’s what they called the miners who used to fight bare-knuckle on the mountains…’ 

Jack Scarrott was born into a family of travelling people in 1870, and travelled throughout South Wales in his youth, coming into contact with many of the bareknuckle fighters of his time before starting his own fairground boxing booth where spectators were invited to ‘step up’ and stand against his own boxing champions for a number of rounds in order to claim a cash prize.  Travelling throughout South Wales in the years that followed, Scarrott’s travelling ‘Pavilion’ would become famous for the number of boxers that it would start on the way to national acclaim.   In addition to the more familiar names of gloved boxing champions that Jack Scarrott recalls, there are also numerous tales of the early knuckle fighters of South Wales, including such notable fighters as William Samuels, Martin Fury, Shoni Engineer, Robert Dunbar, Dai St John, and John O’Brien.  Jack Scarrott’s memoirs, first printed in serialised form in 1936 have never been published in book form until now, and benefit from an expanded in-depth look at the events that comprise his recollections of nearly fifty years of boxing history, from the days of the forgotten bare-knuckle men of the mountains to the boxing champions that would start their careers under the flapping canvas of his boxing booth.  Illustrated with over 50 rare photographs and illustrations,  Jack Scarrott’s Prize Fighters- Memoirs of a Welsh Boxing Booth Showman, stands as one of very few accounts of a time long forgotten when bare-knuckle battlers and fledgling glove fighters fought for supremacy on the  fairgrounds of South Wales.