Prizefighting in the old bare-knuckle days was a basic, brutal business, highly unlike the stuff you see being dispensed on your television sets today. Fighters then didn’t rely on the critical judgement of boxing ‘experts’ with intricate scorecards. They fought round after round, sometimes hour after hour, until one or the other was unable to come off his second’s knee and stagger back to the line of scratch. It was not twelve three-minute rounds to a decision but as many rounds and as much time as it required for one man to knock another man completely senseless.
And yet even rules as decisive as these could lead to controversy when the stakes were high and feelings even higher. There have been disputed title fights in the US – was the Johnson–Willard fight on the level and did Dempsey really knock Tunney out in that ‘long count’ affair in Chicago? But a bare-knuckle fight for the heavyweight championship of the world in 1810 is probably the most controversial fight in the history of the division. It was certainly one of the most thrilling.
The rivals were Tom Cribb, the celebrated champion of England, and Tom Molineaux, an underrated ex-slave from Virginia. Molineaux was the first of a gallant line of African American boxers to win worldwide acclaim. And his fight with Cribb was the first international match for the heavyweight championship. Today their names come alive only for historians of the old prize ring who treasure the pages of Pierce Egan’s eyewitness accounts in that ebullient if sometimes inaccurate masterpiece, Boxiana. But in the nineteenth century, when fight fans by the thousands cheerfully waded through muddy lanes and across miles of open fields to wager and cheer on their favourite bruisers, Tom Molineaux’s threat to English boxing supremacy provoked a national crisis and an international incident. The first Napoleon might have been more feared throughout England than this American challenger, but to read the sports pages of that day you would not think so. A victory for the ex-slave from Virginia over the mighty Cribb was widely considered a no less tragic prospect than a successful Napoleonic invasion.
In these days when press agents are as essential to prizefighters as to movie stars, Tom Molineaux surely would have been tagged the first ‘Cinderella man’. He came from a fighting family on the Molineaux plantation in Virginia. Boxing was not yet an organised sport in America, but plantation owners used to pit their slaves against each other for side bets, and Tom’s father Zachariah was a local champion. Tom grew to bull-like proportions. Although his full height was only five feet eight, he weighed two hundred pounds. He succeeded his father as the plantation’s best bare-knuckle man and is said to have won his freedom as a reward for knocking out a rival plantation champion. Tom worked his way to New York, earned a living as a dock-walloper and a reputation for walloping his fellow men as well. These waterfront battles are unrecorded, but he seems to have won enough of them to style himself Champion of America, a title apparently deserved.
American pugilism was a scorned and lowly activity in 1810. But its English counterpart was at the height of its glory and popularity. An English sailor who saw Molineaux fight on the docks thought he should try his luck on the other side of the Atlantic. But not even an overenthusiastic jack-tar could have predicted that this powerful but untrained dockhand would soon be whipping to a standstill one of the great bare-knuckle champions of all time. Or that Molineaux, working his way across the Atlantic on a clipper ship, was to come within a disputed hair of snatching the championship of England from its Anglo-Saxon foundation.
Penniless and unknown, Tom landed in Liverpool and somehow found his way to the only place in London where he had some hope of finding hospitality – to the Horse and Dolphin Tavern operated by a fellow American black already celebrated in England for his fighting ability. Although only a middleweight, Bill Richmond had squared off with Tom Cribb himself, and his public house was a gathering place for the fancy and the sports. Lord Byron was one of Richmond’s friends and boxing pupils. Richmond welcomed Molineaux and was soon seconding him against a promising novice from Bristol who was handled by Cribb. The burly youth beat Cribb’s man so badly that he was reported as ‘not having a single distinguishable feature left on his face’. Molineaux next was given a more formidable test in the person of Tom Blake, who had earned the fighting nom de boxe Tom Tough, as durable a trial horse as England had in those days.
The day he met Molineaux, Tom Tough arrived at the scene of the contest in a baronet’s carriage, accompanied by Cribb. A large crowd was on hand, for Pierce Egan tells us, ‘There was considerable curiosity among the swell division to see the new specimen in ebony, on whose merits Massa Richmond was so eloquent to all visitors to the Horse and Dolphin.’ Richmond had not oversold his man. Tom Tough hardly lived up to his name and crumbled under Molineaux’s vicious pummelling. Not only was Tough unable to come to scratch within the allotted 30 seconds, but he lay unconscious for several minutes. The American was ready for Cribb.
The ease of Molineaux’s victory convinced Bill Richmond that he had a coming champion on his hands. Cribb had won the title from the great Jem Belcher a year before but was in virtual retirement because his superiority had been so convincingly established that no one dared challenge him. But now a challenge was made that shook the complacency of a British sporting scene patriotically confident that its fighting men, like its fighting ships, were masters of the world. It was no accident that Molineaux’s startling challenge to Cribb drove sportswriters of the day to these lines of Shakespearean defiance:
England that never did nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.
In the sporting taverns of London this challenge from a lowly American, and one of African ancestry at that, was considered rank impudence, unparalleled effrontery. Gentlemen of rank who never before had concerned themselves with the crude goings-on of the pugilists admitted, in the privacy of their clubs, their anxiety lest Molineaux take the measure of England’s pride. National feelings and racial presumptions brought the match to the attention of countless thousands who would have scorned the ordinary prize ring brawl.
Additional excitement came from Molineaux himself, who held forth at the Horse and Dolphin with tall prophecies about the destruction he would vent on the champion. Cribb, on the other hand, though he had seconded the fighters Molineaux had clubbed into submission, could not believe that this swarthy newcomer could stand up to him for more than a few minutes. While the betting was brisker than it had been for many years, the most popular wager was whether or not the American challenger could absorb his punishment for more than 15 minutes.
Amply fortified with spirits to shorten the arduous journey over rocky road and muddy dale, let us climb into a coach with our loquacious guide Pierce Egan, who has given us the fullest eyewitness account of one of the memorable prize ring battles of all time:
The day selected for this grand milling exhibition was 10 December, at Copthall Common, in the neighbourhood of East Grimstead, Sussex, within 30 miles of the Metropolis . . . The ring was formed at the foot of a hill (24 foot roped) surrounded by the numerous carriages which had conveyed the spectators thither, to ward off the chilling breezes and rain which came keenly from the eastward. Immediately . . . Molineaux came forward, bowed, threw up his hat in defiance, and retired to strip; Cribb immediately followed, and they were soon brought forward by their seconds; Gully (another former champion) and Joe Ward for the Champion, and Richmond and Jones for Molineaux.
The crowd gave a great hand to Cribb and then fell intently silent as these rugged antagonists waited for the referee to cry ‘Time’. Cribb looked solid if slightly fleshy at five feet ten and a half and two hundred pounds. Molineaux’s weight equalled Cribb’s, though he was two inches shorter. But any height deficiency was more than overcome by his long arms and powerful muscles.
Molineaux lost no time in showing the oddsmakers that they had held him too cheap. Staggered by a hard punch over the right eye and rushed to the ropes by the confident champion in the second round, Molineaux rallied fiercely, and Cribb ‘received a dreadful blow on the mouth that made his teeth chatter, and exhibited the first sign of claret’. ‘First blood’ was hotly wagered in those days, and the long-shot bettors had won on Molineaux.
Round after round the men fought toe to toe, Cribb with some show of science and planning, Molineaux with terrible strength, ferocity and ‘gluttony’, as the ability to take a punch was described by fight reporters, vintage 1810. In the eighth, according to the round-by-round account:
Cribb found out that his notion of beating Molineaux off-hand was truly fallacious, as he really was an ugly customer, and he also became sensible that if Molineaux could so reduce him as to make his sledgehammer hits tell, he should not willingly lay his head for the anvil. He therefore now brought forward his science, and began to adopt his usual famous retreating system. The men rallied desperately; success was alternate. At length Molineaux fell; but Cribb from his violent exertion appeared weaker than his opponent.
Somehow this scene never loses its intensity for me: the white champion and the black champion fighting each other to exhaustion while the incessant rain washed the blood from their wounded eyes and mouths and cheeks. On the soggy hillside some 5,000 panicky spectators, the high born in the outer ring, the rabble sprawled out behind them, ignored the downpour as they began to realise with mounting amazement and anxiety that their ‘unbeatable’ Cribb was losing ground to the ‘American man of colour’.
After 30 minutes of furious brawling Molineaux was not only on his feet but carrying the fight to the weary champion. The fight had gone into the nineteenth round when the first of two ‘rhubarbs’ running counter to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of fair play checked Molineaux’s effort to become the first non-British champion.
At this stage the faces of both fighters were so dreadfully battered that it was impossible to distinguish them by their features. Onlookers reported that only their difference in colour made identification possible. Cribb was on the defensive and retreating now. Molineaux pinned him against the ropes and held him so tightly that he could neither throw a punch nor go down. This provoked the first important hassle. The seconds said the men should be separated. The umpires ruled, according to eighteenth-century rules of Broughton, that the contestants could not be parted until one went down. The tension in the audience was unbearable. Finally 200 persons rushed to the ring and attempted to loosen Molineaux’s hold on the ropes. One of his fingers was broken or seriously injured in the melee. When order was restored, the enraged Molineaux chased the champion to one corner of the ring, caught Cribb’s head under his left arm and clobbered him unmercifully, Cribb finally falling from the severe punishment.
Despite the injury to his hand, Molineaux pressed his advantage. His left eye was closed and he was arm-weary and close to exhaustion. But Cribb was even more battered, and it was with greater and greater difficulty that he came off his second’s knee at the end of each 30-second rest period. Odds rose as high as 4 to 1 on Molineaux. The twenty-eighth round ended with Cribb ‘receiving a leveller’. At the end of the rest period he lay back in his second’s arms, unable to rise. According to Fred Henning’s Fight for the Championship:
Tom Cribb could not come to time, and Sir Thomas Apreeee [an umpire] allowed the half-minute to elapse and summoned the men three times. Still Cribb could not come and the Black awaited the award of victory, his just due, in the centre of the ring. But during the excitement Joe Ward pushed across the ring to Bill Richmond, and accused him of having placed two bullets in the Black’s fists. This was, of course, indignantly denied, and Molineaux was requested to open his hands, proving that nothing was there.
This has been a favourite ruse of cagey managers from Cribb’s day to our own. While Molineaux was on his feet, involved in the dispute, the fallen champion was gaining an invaluable three- or four-minute rest. When ‘Time!’ was called again, Cribb was able to come up to the mark.
Molineaux rushed in to stop his man in the 29th but the undeserved rest seemed to have restored Cribb’s spirit and confidence. A desperate blow on Molineaux’s right eye closed that ‘peeper’ – as these early day boxing writers put it – and brought the gallant Negro down. He was up again for the 30th, nearly sightless.
But the desperate trick in the 28th and the closing of Molineaux’s one good eye in the 29th were the turning points. In the 31st he was levelled again by a hard blow in the throat. In the 32nd ‘they were staggering against each other like inebriated men’. Somehow they went on this way until the 39th round when Molineaux at last had to acknowledge, ‘I can fight no more.’ Cribb himself was near collapse, and Richmond persuaded his deadbeat protégé to try one more round in the hope that Cribb could not come to scratch. But Cribb made it, if barely, and poor Molineaux fell in a heap. After 55 minutes of vicious, bloody and somewhat senseless battling, the ‘most ferocious and sanguinary’ battle in the history of the English prize ring came to an end. Tom Cribb was acclaimed the victor. He had ‘protected the honour of his country and the reputation of English Boxing’, Pierce Egan assures us. But even Egan, an Irish Anglophile, putting the best possible face on it, had to admit that in the disputed and crucial 28th round, ‘[Cribb’s] seconds, by a little manoeuvring, occupied the attention of the Black’s seconds, and so managed to prolong the period sufficiently to enable the champion to recover a little, and thus assist him to pull through.’
Molineaux’s questionable loss brought him overnight fame. And his threat to British boxing supremacy was reemphasised just three days later when the following notice in the London papers rocked the English sporting world anew:
To Mr Thomas Cribb, St Martin’s Street,
Leicester Square:
Sir, – My friends think that had the weather on last Tuesday, the day on which I contended with you, not been so unfavourable, I should have won the battle; I therefore challenge you to a second meeting, at any time within two months, for such sum as those gentlemen who place confidence in me may be pleased to arrange.
As it is possible this letter may meet the public eye, I cannot omit the opportunity of expressing a confident hope, that the circumstance of my being of a different colour to that of a people amongst whom I have sought protection, will not in any way operate to my prejudice.
I am, sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,
T. MOLINEAUX
Cribb promptly accepted the challenge, for his sense of honour had been offended. Molineaux had alluded to the ‘unfavourable weather’, but the champion and his friends, their consciences not entirely clear, knew the dangerous foreigner was not referring to the elements alone. Molineaux had to wait longer than two months for his rematch with Cribb, for a young heavyweight named Rimmer decided to make it a three-way rivalry by challenging the challenger. Rimmer was a protégé of an ex-fighter, Bob Gregson, boniface of Castle Tavern, the pugilistic headquarters of the day. He was close to Cribb, and Richmond saw the challenge as a means of giving the champion more time to prepare for his rematch with this overpowering challenger. Rimmer’s friends had been calling him a second Jem Belcher, but he proved no match for Molineaux, who beat him into insensibility in 15 rounds. Oddly enough, the Rimmer fight was the only Molineaux bout ever to be reported in an American paper. The Savannah Republican of 23 July 1811, had this to say:
Civilisation! – A boxing match took place at Mously Hart, in the neighbourhood of London, on 21 May, for one hundred guineas. The champions were Molineaux (the famous black man from New York) and a young Englishman named Rimmer. In the course of fifteen rounds, the black pounded his antagonist most tremendously; when lords, nobles, sweeps, ploughmen, fighting men and assistants, from pique or sympathy, crowded into the ring and fought promiscuously about twenty minutes. There were at this brutal exhibition about fifteen thousand spectators of all ranks.
Englishmen, it would seem, despite their traditions, had difficulty accepting the sight of one of their countrymen stretched out at the feet of this dark intruder. The dreadful possibility that this might happen to their idol, Tom Cribb, made the second Cribb–Molineaux battle the most widely discussed in British ring history, even more eagerly awaited than the bitter Richard Humphries–Mendoza ‘The Jew’ title bouts a generation earlier. The issue was nothing less than ‘Whether Old England should still retain her proud characteristic of conquering; or that an American, and, a man of colour, should win the honour, wear it, and carry it away from the shores of Britain.’
Conscious of his patriotic responsibilities, Cribb went into training three months before the fight. He seems to have been the first pugilist to attempt anything like a modern training programme. His training camp was on the estate of Captain Barclay, an aristocratic health enthusiast and champion walker who had astonished his countrymen with a series of 100-mile strolls. Cribb came to Barclay badly out of shape. A life of ease in London had blown him up to 16 stone (224 pounds). In Barclay’s own words, ‘He had become corpulent, big-bellied, full of gross humours and short breathed; it was with difficulty he could walk 10 miles.’ Barclay soon had him doing 20 miles a day, and then 30, including a half-mile run each day at top speed. His diet was rigorous, he sparred with amateurs to improve his timing, was put through a severe course of calisthenics, and in 11 weeks he weighed in at 192, which Barclay had established as his ideal fighting weight.
Molineaux, on the other hand, lacking a patron, had to pick up his eating money where he could find it. There was plenty to be found, for his near-victory over Cribb made him an object of great curiosity wherever he went. But the money he earned from exhibitions around the country was squandered in self-indulgence. Richmond and Tom Belcher were accused of using Molineaux as a meal ticket instead of seriously preparing him for this crucial fight, and of keeping him ‘pliable to their wishes by allowing him to drink stout and ale by gallons’. Molineaux was open-handed and easygoing. Self-control was not one of his virtues. His contemporaries describe him as ‘amorous in the extreme’. If he was not already sufficiently intoxicated, this sudden fame for an illiterate ex-slave was heady brew. In addition he seems to have had a childish faith in his physical prowess. Tom Molineaux would not believe that any excess could tap his native strength. On the morning of the fight his breakfast consisted of a whole boiled fowl, an apple pie and a tankard of ale.
There were no million-dollar gates in those days, but all the other familiar trappings of a ‘Battle of the Century’ make that 28 September 1811 sound like a big-time TV pay-for-view at one of the Vegas casino palaces. On the eve of the fight there wasn’t a bed to be found for 20 miles in all directions. Twenty thousand fans were on hand at Wymondham, an incredible number considering the total population and the means of transportation of those days. Although the fight was scheduled for noon, hundreds of spectators were on the grounds as early as six in the morning, hoping to get a better view of the battle. Peers were there in their four-in-hands, and watermen, butchers, cobblers, ‘rustics in their clouted shoes’. Among the ‘Corinthian of the highest rank’ were lords, knights and generals, including the Marquis of Queensberry. Had there been a Don King in those days, the fight would have grossed a $100 million and made wealthy men of both contestants. As it was, both were to die in poverty, the traditional fate of great fighters over the centuries. Not only was there no Don King to maximise the price of the seats, there were no seats. The innovation of seats for spectators at prizefights was nearly a century away. Instead the first row stretched out on the turf, the second row kneeled, and the rest stood behind them. And behind them were the horsemen, ‘some seated, while others more eager stood, circus-like, upon their saddle: these were intermixed with every description of carriage, gig, barouche, buggy, cart and waggon.’
For the first five rounds Cribb took another painful drubbing. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth, his right eye was an ugly slit, and his left eye was closing rapidly. But Molineaux could not draw on the superhuman endurance that had carried him so far nine months earlier. Too much ale and too much chicken, winged and otherwise, had him ‘heaving fearfully’ as early as the fourth round.
The sixth round was the convincer. Here it is, blow by blow, as recorded in Pugilistica:
Molineaux, distressed for wind and exhausted, lunged right and left. Cribb avoided his blows, and then put in a good hit with his right which Molineaux stopped exceedingly well. Cribb now got in a destructive blow at his ‘mark’, which doubled up Molineaux. He appeared almost frantic, and no dancing master could have performed a pirouette more gratifying to Cribb’s friends. Molineaux hit short and capered about. Cribb followed him round the ring, and after some astonishing execution, floored him by a tremendous hit at full arm’s length.
Molineaux was out of gas. But for a few more rounds he kept charging in, borne on a momentum of terrible courage and futile rage. In the ninth round his jaw was broken, and he fell like a slaughtered steer. While the fallen challenger lay senseless, the crowd screamed its pleasure and Cribb danced a crazy hornpipe around the ring. At the end of the allotted half-minute, Molineaux was still out, but Cribb was not satisfied. He waived the time limit so that Molineaux could come again. In a brutal tableau of superiority, a kind of human bullfight with the total destruction of Molineaux the only possible finale, Cribb knocked Molineaux down again, and then again. In a gallant, foolhardy stupor, Molineaux managed to get off his second’s knee once more, and again he was levelled. Still not satisfied, Cribb waived the time limit so as to have one more crack at the tottering Molineaux. Molineaux pitched to the stage floor and lay still. Cribb and former champion Gully danced a Scottish reel around the ring. And 20,000 triumphant sons of Britain went wild with joy.
The fight had lasted only twenty minutes, just a third as long as the first great contest. When Molineaux was carried unconscious from the ring it was learned that not only his jaw but two of his ribs had been broken. Cribb’s earnings (on a winner-take-all basis) were £400. As a tribute to his gameness, a collection of £50 was raised for Molineaux. Impressive sums had changed hands on the outcome. Captain Barclay was said to have won a fortune of £10,000. A baker who had gambled his house, his shop and all his personal property was £1,700 ahead. For several days following the fight there were public demonstrations celebrating the British victory. When the champion called on Molineaux to inquire as to his condition, he sported a barouche and four, the horses decorated with blue ribbons signifiying Cribb’s colours. When he reached London the public ovation was so great that the streets he approached were impassable. Crowds gathered to applaud him wherever he appeared.
In the tradition of fistic heroes over the centuries, Cribb settled down as a host to the sporting fraternity, and for many years his tavern prospered and legends of generosity and gallantry gathered around him. But true to the same tradition, his luck finally ran out: a few years before he died he was hauled into the courts on a charge of bad debts. In his home town of Woolwich a monument was erected in his honour shortly after his death in 1848.
After the second meeting with Cribb, Tom Molineaux toured and fought on for five more years with declining success. In the extravagant language of his day we learn that he worshipped more ardently in the temples of Bacchus and Venus than in that of Mars. In 1818 we find him in Northern Ireland, teaching the stick-fighting natives how to fight with their fists, a course of instruction that appears to have left its mark. Fast living had made a gaunt ruin of his powerful physique. His fortunes had sunk so low that he was living on the handouts of two fellow blacks serving in an Irish regiment. Unable to afford the cheapest lodging, and rapidly wasting away from disease and neglect, he muttered his final ‘I can fight no more’ in the regimental bandroom at Galway on 4 August 1818, at the age of 33.
He had come a long way up and a long way down, and a long, long way from the slave quarters of Virginia. But for one glorious hour he had given blow for blow with a great champion of England, he had proved that manly skills and fighting hearts were not exclusive qualities of the English, nor of any race, and for sixty trembling seconds while English sportsmanship wavered and bowed to national expediency, he was indeed champion of England, supreme among men as tough and prideful and resolute as ever assembled, the bare-knuckle fighters-to-a-finish of centuries past.
[1953]