Ned Savage vs. Jem Wallace fight agreement, published in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle , 1 April 1827.
Soon after the fight between Ned Savage and Jem Wallace, Wallace voiced his desire for a rematch. Ned Savage accepted the challenge and stated his willingness to put between £50 and £100 on the outcome, and also wished to stake £50 on the success of his brother, Bill, in a fight against David Hudson.215 While Ned was unsuccessful in securing a contest for his brother, Jem Wallace was eager for revenge, so articles were signed for a second Savage vs Wallace fight on Wednesday 29 March, at the Castle Tavern in Holborn, with the match to come off at the end of May for £50 a-side at Epsom Downs.216
The battleground that was finally settled upon for their second fight was Banstead Downs in Surrey, near the same spot where Daniel Mendoza had fought and lost his last fight against Tom Owen seven years previously, at the age of 55. The fight was prudently relocated from Epsom to Banstead Downs due to the interference of the authorities, and was fixed for £50 a-side to come off less than three months after their first fight, on 29 May 1827. Ned Savage decided to train at Child’s Hill, in Hampstead, once more, while Jem Wallace was stationed at Harry Lancaster’s establishment, the Bell in Hendon. On this occasion, both men were seen to be in the pink of condition on the day appointed for the fight. Ned was the heavier man, weighing in at 12st to Jem’s 10st 6lbs. The advantages of weight on Ned Savage’s side were thought to be counterbalanced by the superior fistic science of Jem Wallace, so betting was even. For the rematch, Ned secured the services of his brother, Bill Savage, as a second, along with Ned O’Neal, while Wallace was supported by Tom Oliver and Young Gas.
Ned Savage vs. Jem Wallace fight agreement, published in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle , 1 April 1827.
In spite of his commitment to training, Ned Savage had failed to hone his primitive skills and strategy to any appreciative degree in the interim. After coming up to the scratch he began flourishing his left and circling it in readiness for his favourite ‘old-style’ over-handed chop. By contrast Wallace’s stance was steady, with a solid defensive posture and his hands held up. Each attempt to land his chop brought Savage a straight blow to the nose and in his impatience Savage continually rushed his man, receiving jab after jab for his pains. Savage’s thoughts soon turned to throwing, and in this he was seen to have greater success than in landing his chopping blows. Ned paid dearly for his recklessness, having been smashed by a severe blow to the nose as early as the fifth round, which made him bleed profusely, causing a cry from Wallace’s supporters of, ‘It’s all over.’ They had not, however, reckoned on the endurance of the Welshman, who would take another tremendous blow to the nose, ‘drawing more claret’ in the following round. As the rounds wore on, Savage became ever more reckless in his wild attacks, although his persistence resulted in some success. By and large, however, his continued efforts to land his ‘chopper’ were stopped and countered by Wallace’s careful use of straight punches, Wallace showing a great deal of judgement in fighting on the retreat. Savage appeared as game and as merry as ever, even coming up to the scratch laughing in the rounds that followed, seemingly unbothered by the punishment he was receiving.
By the 17th round, Jem Wallace’s hands were puffy and trembling, and were fast failing him from the sustained punishment that he was dealing out to Savage. Ned fought on, without judgement and seemingly without strategy, landing a tremendous blow in the 22nd round. The scrambling nature of the battle continued, with nail marks appearing on Wallace’s neck as Savage’s recklessness in the falls became more apparent. They fought for one hour and 24 minutes, totalling 61 rounds, although the interest of the spectators had waned long before this time. Savage’s courage and endurance was in evidence right to the last, although finally, when ‘quite groggy, stupefied, and almost blind, his friends gave in for him’, conceding their man’s defeat, although on hearing the news, Ned still wanted to toe the scratch and fight on. Had Wallace possessed greater punching power, it seemed likely that the fight would have ended much sooner, Savage’s performance had been more than lacklustre, and it was reported that Ned’s blows were ‘… of that wild description which had no certain direction, and nothing but his powers of endurance and strength could have kept him so long on his legs’.
In conclusion, Bell’s Life would conclude that Ned was ‘decidedly a bad fighter’, and had ‘only his game to recommend him’. At the termination of the battle, Ned Savage said that the blow to the nose in the sixth round had caused him the most damage, and that he had swallowed a great deal of blood. Ned had also fractured all the small bones of his left hand as a result of his reliance on his old style left-handed chop, so his arm was placed in a sling.
The defeat did not sit easily with Ned, and he would quickly issue a challenge through the pages of Bell’s Life to Wallace on 3 June stating the willingness of his brother, Bill, to fight in his place until such time as the bones in his left hand had healed:
TO THE EDITOR OF BELL’S LIFE IN LONDON.
SIR – You will oblige me by informing Wallace, with whom I fought for the second time on Tuesday last, that I am not satisfied, and that I am anxious for another trial. We have now won a battle a piece, and I think he can have no objection, in fairness, to fight the odd one, so that our friends may judge which is really the best man. I shall be at Mr. Belcher’s, the Castle Tavern, on Tuesday evening, to sign articles to fight in three months, for 50l. or 100l.; or, if Wallace wishes not to remain idle so long, my brother William will fight him at his own time for the like sum, and he can take me after.
EDWARD SAVAGE.
Prior to a benefit event arranged for Ned Savage at the Three Compasses public houses in Holborn on 22 June, he again made his desire to secure a third and deciding match against either Jem Wallace, or his old rival, Jem Kirkman for 100 sovereigns, to finally prove his fistic superiority.217 The challenges were ignored, and neither Wallace nor Kirkman bothered to show up at the event, leaving Ned to brood on the matter. Determined to force Wallace into fighting him again, Ned was propping up the bar at the Castle Tavern the following month, after having again issued a statement of his willingness to meet Wallace.218 With bad feeling at an all-time high, an irritable Jem Kirkman appeared in the Castle Tavern the following Monday, having been considerably annoyed by the continual ‘chaffing’ of Ned Savage. While the coach driver professed that he had no desire to seek his fame with the knuckles, Kirkman felt honour-bound to meet Savage, announcing that he ‘could not suffer himself to be attacked upon all occasions with impunity’ by his Welsh cab-driving rival. Kirkman proposed fighting his truculent antagonist for £10 of his own money and a purse. The battle money was quickly covered by Ned Savage, so the match was made for the following month.219
The fractured bones of Ned Savage’s left hand had apparently healed enough in the time that had elapsed for him to fight Kirkman on 28 August 1827, at Colney Heath. Wounded pride and honour had forced the contest, and while the grudge match may have drawn interest from their fellow cab and hackney coach drivers, the Fancy were disinterested in the result. Bell’s Life wearily reported that ‘the merit of the men, if they possess any, are well-known to our readers’ and that their reputations as fighters were of ‘a very questionable description’ and that ‘their pretensions to the pugilistic art are extremely slender’.
The fight might not have come off at all as a few weeks prior to the contest, Jem Kirkman had a narrow escape when travelling to Smithfield races on an old ‘Dragoon horse’, which was to be auctioned. While Kirkman was riding the beast, a friend had jumped on to the horse’s back. Startled, the steed had raced off at full gallop in a state of alarm, and threw Jem on to the spikes of some iron railings at Euston Square. Fortunately, Kirkman escaped all injury, with the spikes having only penetrated his clothes, leaving him in need of a trip to his tailor, and not a doctor.220 Despite having secured a match against Kirkman, the loss to Jem Wallace still rankled Ned Savage, and just a couple of weeks before his match against Kirkman he attended a benefit event held in honour of his brother, Bill, at the Rising Sun public house in Windmill Street, hoping to make a match with Wallace,221 for £50 or a hundred pounds a-side, for three months time.222
As regards the match with Jem Kirkman, Ned was confident of securing the victory over his rival, boasting that he was prepared to back himself to the tune of £100. Jem Kirkman, undergoing his training at the Castle Inn at Highgate, was greatly angered by the statement, and replied that if Savage or his supporters wished to make an appearance at his training quarters, he would be more than happy to cover their money.223
On the day of the fight, while both men looked in reasonable health, their fighting condition could be said to be anything but good. When Jem Kirkman pulled off his shirt, his physique was exceedingly disappointing, being ‘as fat as Bacchus’, and he was quite as flabby and rotund as the Roman God of fertility and wine. This decline in condition was ascribed to Kirkman’s recently found love, a washerwoman who doted on Jem to the degree that he had been fed ‘fowls for breakfast, rabbits for dinner, fish with his tea, and God knows what with his supper’. Having led a life of considerable ease and gluttony for some time, the coach driver appeared in poor condition to fight Ned for the third time. On this occasion, Savage had engaged the services of Jem Burns and Ike Dodd as seconds, while Kirkman was supported by Tom Mason and Jem Landsdowne. A short delay to the start of the fight took place due to the length of the nails in Ned Savage’s fighting shoes, and a hammer was quickly procured and used to shorten them.
In keeping with Ned Savage’s contests on previous occasions, the battle would prove to be a tedious testament to his unquestionable powers of endurance, lasting some two hours and two minutes, and 93 rounds in total, with the fight swinging first one way and then the other. Both would show the marks of the punches that they had received, which was ‘pretty much upon a par; each had the bark of his conck scraped, and his claret tapped, while diver’s bumps proved that their knuckular visitations to each other’s nobs were not without effect’. Savage’s face was terribly swollen and one ear was ‘fearfully smashed’. Typically, Ned had the advantage in throwing, although he received a great deal of criticism for his habit of falling on his man with his knees when down, for which angry exclamations of ‘Foul’ were quick in coming from Jem Kirkman’s supporters.
The falls sustained by Kirkman brought him to a near standstill by the 55th round, although he showed remarkable powers of recovery and delivered heavy blows to his antagonist in the following rounds, which left Savage looking ‘foggy’ although still strong on his legs. The fight continued in this manner until the 93rd round, when Kirkman, with his strength now failing, was thrown heavily. Savage stood near him for a moment and then dropped on to Kirkman with both knees. Instantaneously, Kirkman’s supporters shouted ‘Foul’ and appealed to the umpires, who disagreed.
The referee was asked for his judgement, but he was unable to say whether Savage had fallen on Kirkman with his knees intentionally or not. In the disagreement that followed, Jem Kirkman’s followers were adamant that Ned Savage had breached the rules, and after a lengthy dispute it was agreed to draw the stakes, thus rendering all the bets void.
While it was thought that Kirkman’s failing strength meant that he was unlikely to win, Savage’s conduct was looked upon with great distaste, Bell’s Life stating that ‘Savage … from the repetition of his foul practises, scarcely deserved success; and it is to be hoped that this may operate as a lesson to him to be more cautious in his future fights’.
Once again, Ned Savage’s deficiencies in the finer points of the art had been much in evidence, and had he known how to take advantage of Jem Kirkman’s distress and shown more caution in the placement of his blows, the fight would likely have ended in his favour in a fraction of the time taken. Kirkman was carried from the battleground in poor shape, although his heart was stirred by the sight of his besotted washerwoman, who brought a pigeon pie to console her man before he was conveyed to her home and was put to bed.
Sadly, this contest would cement the reputation of Ned Savage as a dirty fighter, and it was some time before he would enter the ring again, after having fallen out of favour with the Fancy. Ned was quick to issue a statement of his willingness to fight Kirkman again, having been prepared to lay down either £50 to £40 or £25 to £20 on a fourth prize fight.224 In his eagerness to secure a fight against Kirkman, a subsequent challenge to Ned Savage from Ned Harwood to fight for £25 was ignored.225
Ned Savage continued to try to engage Kirkman in a match and was reportedly prepared to stake £30 to £25 in order to make the fight. While Kirkman’s supporters seemed willing to commit to putting an initial £10 deposit on the contest in November,226 it was Savage’s supporters that seemed unable to come up with the remainder of the stake money the following month.227 Further attempts to settle the match would appear to have faltered, and were subsequently shelved until the new year228.
In January of 1828, a new challenger stepped up to the mark, when a novice by the name of Harry Wood, better known as ‘Spring the Conjuror’,229 made his desire to fight Ned known, so a match was hastily agreed at the Norfolk Arms on Friday, 11 January.230 Spring had elected to try his luck in the London Prize Ring after having enjoyed some minor success in the Liverpool Ring. On his arrival in London, Spring had been seeking a match for some time in vain, and had utilised his skills as a magician to entertain the Fancy at the various sporting public houses to improve his public profile while seeking an opponent to do battle against in the London Prize Ring. The Conjuror had also sparred at the Fives Court and at benefit events, where his appearances had been met with a great deal of merriment due to the fact he possessed a physique unlikely to assist him in his desire to become a professional pugilist:
Like the Living Skeleton, his bones seemed to be altogether unencumbered with flesh; and from the extraordinary pliancy of his joints, he looks rather like a puppet worked by wires, than anything human.
The battle between Spring the Conjuror and Ned Savage was fixed to come off on Tuesday, 15 January at Banstead Downs for £5 a-side, following a contest between Ned Savage’s brother, Bill, and Paddy Flynn, the St Giles Irishman. With just three days between the match being made and the day of the battle, Spring’s supporters had an impossible job to get their man into optimum physical condition in such a short period of time. Jem Hood of the Norfolk Arms was charged with doing what he could, and fed the Conjuror platefuls of beef steaks to try and strengthen his constitution as much as possible in the few days prior to the fight. Outwardly, the Conjuror remained unchanged on the day of the contest, and when he stripped for battle a yokel was heard to remark that he looked as though he had come from a neighbouring churchyard rather than having been a creature of flesh and blood. Contrary to all expectations, the merriment of the crowd soon turned to admiration when Spring was seen to exhibit a degree of talent and bravery that no one could have imagined.
By comparison, Ned Savage was a picture of athleticism, weighing upwards of 12st, and drew sharp contrast to the long, stringy figure of Spring, whose weight was under 10st. The Conjuror was ill-prepared for the fight and had been forced to borrow a pair of breeches from the Chelsea Snob, which did not come to within 2in of his knees. His ludicrous appearance drew forth roars of laughter when his skeletal body toed the scratch in fighting pose. Ned Savage laughed along with them, but he was not laughing for long. In the second round, Spring landed a smashing blow to the left cheek of Savage that left him with a gaping wound. Unsurprisingly, Ned’s thoughts quickly turned to throwing and in the following round he hurled the Conjuror with brutal force, Spring making a despairing squeak as Savage fell on him.
As Ned continued to bore in, Spring jumped away like a grasshopper, trying to evade the Welshman’s swinging blows, and receiving some criticism for occasionally falling without a blow. With each fall, it seemed likely that the Conjuror was going to be severely hurt, falling like the ‘downfall of a house of cards’ with ‘every limb seeming to tumble in different directions’, but he somehow managed to renew the battle with undiminished vigour each time. Astonishingly, Spring was seen to hit out right and left with ‘uncommon severity’ as the rounds mounted, and in time both of Savage’s ears had swelled to four times their normal size, his right eye had been closed and his forehead had been cut. Many of the spectators began to feel that despite his inexperience, Spring was proving to be the better man.
The fight reached a turning point in the 117th round, when Ned Savage, resorting to the tactics that had made him notorious, fell heavily on the exhausted Conjuror with his knee as he lay on the ropes, by which time Spring was nearly insensible. While there were complaints of foul conduct, Savage’s actions were looked upon as being in the spirit of ‘give and take’, so the objections of Spring’s supporters were ignored. The Conjuror would bravely come up to the scratch for three more rounds, by which time he was almost unconscious and his seconds finally gave in for him. The contest was then awarded to Ned Savage, whose face had been dreadfully disfigured by the Conjuror’s knuckles after 120 rounds had been fought over the course of an hour and 43 minutes.
The stakes were handed over to Ned at Jack Randall’s establishment, the Hole in the Wall at Chancery Lane, the following evening. Ned’s backers apparently felt so sorry for Spring’s wounded pride that they presented him with a sovereign to cheer his spirits. Curiously, Spring was apparently eager to meet Savage a second time, with Ned replying that he was willing to meet the Conjuror for £50 a-side, although nothing came of it.231 Ned’s spirits must have been at a low ebb; although he had beaten Spring, the underhanded manner in which he had secured victory against the novice had further undermined his poor reputation in the London Prize Ring.