days if any family had a row they went out and had a stand-up fight. Granddad used to fight like a man and my Gran wasn’t like most women, scratching and pulling hair; she could punch like a man. She used to roll up her sleeves and stand up and box. If two families had a row my Granddad would fight the other old man and my Gran would go and fight his wife. They were hard times.’
George’s stamping ground rather depended upon which aspect of his portfolio career was currently to the forefront. He would fight, or sing, anywhere, and as a middleweight, hefought in and with some good company, fighters of the quality of Ted Pritchard, middleweight champion of England, for example, as well as less well-known figures like ‘Pudney’ Sullivan (whom he actually trained) and Ben ‘Barney’ Hyams. He certainly fought Pritchard on the evening of Thursday 15 March 1888 at a benefit evening for Hyams. Held at the Equestrian Tavern Music Hall, Blackfriars, the evening also included burlesque, as well as singing and dancing, and the boxers provided interesting exhibition interludes for the obviously mixed crowd. Possibly George sang as well, although he is only mentioned as a boxer in the Sporting Life’s enthusiastic account of the evening.
It is this redefinition of gloved boxing, as a music-hall entertainment from the late 1860s onwards as a result of decisions such as Hawkins’s, as well as earlier case law, that buys the sport valuable time by effectively pulling its own teeth; nobody gets killed, perhaps a little blood flows, and much posturing is done. It is a crowd-pleaser but, thanks to the Queensberry initiative, it is now quite outside the legal definition of assault or battery. It is an entertainment, albeit a fairly bloody one. In this context, figures such as Pritchard flit in and out of the boundaries of the law as they alternate exhibition bouts with much more serious stuff, for two years later, Pritchard wins the English middleweight title – interestingly, on a referee’s decision. That match, definitely not a burlesque side-show, takes place at Robert Habbijam’s boxing rooms on Newman Street (between Goodge Street and Oxford Street), under conditions of total secrecy: only 15 high-paying observers from each side were permitted to attend. The purse was £400 – the price just over a century ago of a decent house.
Pritchard seems to have been a fairly close friend of George Cooper and, as we shall see, it is clear that George is not merely a brawler but is a fighter of some quality. Pritchard, it is said, thought that he was a fair match for his own talents, which, coming from a national champion, was high praise indeed. But it is also clear that honourable man though George is, he finds it difficult to take life seriously. He is not blessed by particularly good luck, as his grandson told me: ‘It was at the Flying Horse , near the Elephant & Castle. Apparently he saw a hunchback there, playing a barrel organ. Suddenly the hunchback turned on a girl and started belting her – well, he wasn’t having that and he tries to break it up, and the girl ups and sticks a bloody great hatpin straight through his buttocks – literally pinning them together – they said he had to eat standing for a fortnight.’
A year after Pritchard’s middleweight title fight in 1891, the National Sporting Club was established. It was this event that did more to reverse the fortunes of boxing than any other, for now the sport had an organizing body that could (and would) fight hard for its interests. Immediately, it took up the cudgels against any court that attempted to treat boxers or promoters as criminals and quite soon in its existence it started to achieve hard results. The Club, under its most active member, the wealthy Lord Lonsdale, managed to get decisions overturned and, as importantly, reversed. For the first time in its chequered history, prizefighting had a well-funded and organized lobby and was making
George’s stamping ground rather depended upon which aspect of his portfolio career was currently to the forefront. He would fight, or sing, anywhere, and as a middleweight, hefought in and with some good company, fighters of the quality of Ted Pritchard, middleweight champion of England, for example, as well as less well-known figures like ‘Pudney’ Sullivan (whom he actually trained) and Ben ‘Barney’ Hyams. He certainly fought Pritchard on the evening of Thursday 15 March 1888 at a benefit evening for Hyams. Held at the Equestrian Tavern Music Hall, Blackfriars, the evening also included burlesque, as well as singing and dancing, and the boxers provided interesting exhibition interludes for the obviously mixed crowd. Possibly George sang as well, although he is only mentioned as a boxer in the Sporting Life’s enthusiastic account of the evening.
It is this redefinition of gloved boxing, as a music-hall entertainment from the late 1860s onwards as a result of decisions such as Hawkins’s, as well as earlier case law, that buys the sport valuable time by effectively pulling its own teeth; nobody gets killed, perhaps a little blood flows, and much posturing is done. It is a crowd-pleaser but, thanks to the Queensberry initiative, it is now quite outside the legal definition of assault or battery. It is an entertainment, albeit a fairly bloody one. In this context, figures such as Pritchard flit in and out of the boundaries of the law as they alternate exhibition bouts with much more serious stuff, for two years later, Pritchard wins the English middleweight title – interestingly, on a referee’s decision. That match, definitely not a burlesque side-show, takes place at Robert Habbijam’s boxing rooms on Newman Street (between Goodge Street and Oxford Street), under conditions of total secrecy: only 15 high-paying observers from each side were permitted to attend. The purse was £400 – the price just over a century ago of a decent house.
Pritchard seems to have been a fairly close friend of George Cooper and, as we shall see, it is clear that George is not merely a brawler but is a fighter of some quality. Pritchard, it is said, thought that he was a fair match for his own talents, which, coming from a national champion, was high praise indeed. But it is also clear that honourable man though George is, he finds it difficult to take life seriously. He is not blessed by particularly good luck, as his grandson told me: ‘It was at the Flying Horse , near the Elephant & Castle. Apparently he saw a hunchback there, playing a barrel organ. Suddenly the hunchback turned on a girl and started belting her – well, he wasn’t having that and he tries to break it up, and the girl ups and sticks a bloody great hatpin straight through his buttocks – literally pinning them together – they said he had to eat standing for a fortnight.’
A year after Pritchard’s middleweight title fight in 1891, the National Sporting Club was established. It was this event that did more to reverse the fortunes of boxing than any other, for now the sport had an organizing body that could (and would) fight hard for its interests. Immediately, it took up the cudgels against any court that attempted to treat boxers or promoters as criminals and quite soon in its existence it started to achieve hard results. The Club, under its most active member, the wealthy Lord Lonsdale, managed to get decisions overturned and, as importantly, reversed. For the first time in its chequered history, prizefighting had a well-funded and organized lobby and was making
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