The circumstances under which the black American boxer Tom Molineaux came to England remain obscure, and indeed he remains a little-known figure in history. Having somehow won his freedom in America, he arrived in England in 1810, where he was taken under the wing of another black American boxer Bill Richmond, who owned a pub and boxing academy near Leicester Square. Richmond had been narrowly beaten by the great English boxer, Tom Cribb, and was quick to see Molineaux’s potential, arranging a prize fight with Cribb in December 1810. Curiously, Cribb was nicknamed the ‘Black Diamond’, an epithet that was often to be given subsequently to black sportsmen – Cribb got it because he used to be a coalman.
It is difficult now to appreciate just how very popular prize fights were in England (think Strictly Come Dancing and Manchester United v Liverpool combined) at the time and the fight was effectively for the world championship, the best bare-knuckle boxer in England being obviously the best boxer in the world. The English cheerfully adopted their favourite boxers as symbols of national patriotism in the struggle against Napoleon, including not just blacks such as Molineaux but other non-anglos such as the great Jewish boxer (and former champion) Daniel Mendoza also, as this popular ballad shows:
Mendoza, Gully, MOLINEAUX,
Each nature’s weapon wield,
Who each at Boney would stand true,
And never to him yield.
The two men faced each other in December, 1810, in a contest that lasted 33 brutal rounds. The best description of the fight is in George MacDonald Fraser’s 1997 novel Black Ajax, which pulls the contemporary accounts into one compelling narrative. At the end of each round, the boxer had to come up ‘to scratch’, indicating readiness to continue, and after 28 rounds Cribb – sensationally – failed to come up, but was saved by completely bogus complaints from his seconds. Cribb was also helpless against the ropes on one occasion, when someone cut them. Molineaux should have won the fight, but was defeated after 33 hard-fought rounds of hard battering.
A justifiably aggrieved Molineaux obtained a rematch, but had his jaw fractured in the 9th round, and collapsed in the 11th, in front of a wildly partisan crowd desperate for the Englishman to win a clear victory.
What Happened Next
Molineaux’s fall from world-class boxer to freak show exhibit was a sad one, His formidable physique and skill wilted as he drank his way round series upon series of grim exhibition bouts, and he lost the support of the long-suffering Richmond. In 1819, in his mid-30s, the man who may have been the best heavyweight boxer ever died in Galway in the bandroom of the East Middlesex regiment, cared for by two of the regiment’s black soldiers. On a happier note, Richmond (whose nickname was ‘The Black Terror’), who should also be better known, became a much-respected figure about London (he was a fine cricketer and friend of Byron). and was a page, with Cribb, at the coronation of George IV in 1821. It was not an easy role; Cribb and Richmond had to watch out for George’s wife, Caroline, a potential gatecrasher who was barred from the ceremony. Richmond died in 1829 after an evening spent with Cribb. (Several reference sources confidently state that Richmond was the American patriot Nathan Hale’s executioner in 1776 – when Richmond would have been 13.)