There seems to be in all of us the urge to create and glorify giants, heroically enlarged extensions of ourselves, who can go forth single-handed to perform the deeds of strength and annihilation of which we ourselves, mere normals, are incapable.
Greek heroes invariably ran to size. The ancient Jews, when they sought a champion to settle affairs with the rival Philistines, pinned their hopes on Samson. From that day to this, the oversized, jumbo heavyweight has never failed to excite our curiosity, admiration and awe, even though this excitement may be a two-sided sensation that anticipates the giant’s invincibility and at the same time prepares to enjoy his defeat by a smaller adversary.
Giants getting their lumps from little guys have come to be a common occurrence. But, despite the proof presented by a sad string of fallen giants, the crowds seem to be drawn irresistibly toward any new superman who tosses his hat in the ring.
Of course, the classic example of the last century was the hapless Primo Carnera, all six feet six, two hundred and fifty-six pounds of him, who couldn’t beat a third-rater without considerable help from his owners. With fights ‘arranged’ all the way to the title, he was finally led to slaughter by Joe Louis and Max Baer.
It may be that every century must have its Carnera. For in the previous century an American giant who outweighed Carnera by 50 pounds and topped him by a half-foot was causing the same kind of furor, some of it just as manufactured, as Carnera did on his introduction to the American sports world in the early 1930s.
His name was Charles Freeman. Performing as a strong man in a circus, like Carnera, he caught the eye of the champion of England, Ben Caunt, who was making an American tour, appearing in Life in London at the Bowery Theater, and giving exhibitions of his stiff-stance, slow-moving, bear-hugging style.
In a letter to the leading London sports journal of the day, Caunt wrote:
An unexpected circumstance has brought me back to New York . . . a challenge in the papers from the Michigan Giant. I am quite prepared to fight him. This giant is seven feet three inches high, proportionately stout, and very active; he can turn twenty-five somersets in succession, can hold a large man out at arm’s length, weighs 333 pounds and has nothing but muscle on his bones . . .
By the time Freeman came to the attention of the New York journals, he had shrunk a trifle and either cast off his Midwestern background or been appropriated by Manhattan. He is described by a reporter as:
standing seven feet in his stocking feet and weighing three hundred and fifteen pounds, the tallest specimen of our city that ever came under the notice of Tall Son of York. He has arms and legs strong enough for the working beam or piston rod of a Mississippi steamboat. At Halifax recently, someone sent him a challenge, which was accepted. But upon seeing the New York Baby, the challenger waived the honor of meeting him, except with the muffles on.
The champion, Caunt, apparently saw more advantage in adding Freeman to his road company than in squaring off with him in earnest, for the article concludes with the intelligence that ‘our specimen youth shall accompany the English champion back to the Old World, where, we’ll lay a pile, they’ll be graveled to match him’.
Billed as the American Atlas and appearing in sparring exhibitions with Caunt, Freeman drew sell-out crowds at his first appearance in the Queen’s Theatre, Liverpool, and continued to turn them away everywhere he went. While the editor of Sportsman’s Magazine dismissed him with ‘Freeman has as little pretensions or inclinations to boxing as any noncombative member of the Peace Society’, Caunt’s press agents were flooding the papers with eloquent accounts of Freeman’s prowess, even asserting that no British boxer had courage enough to meet him.
Before he had engaged in a single contest, the New World Goliath, as he was sometimes billed, had become the nemesis of every British heavyweight. Numerous challenges were passed back and forth, all of which Caunt, on Freeman’s behalf, chose to ignore. It was not until Freeman’s publicity boys began referring to their client as ‘the champion of the world’ (with an impressive list of American triumphs scored exclusively over non-existent opponents) that the British boxing circle decided it was time to call this colossal bluff.
A council of war was held in what can probably be best described as the Gallagher’s of the day, ex-fighter Johnny Broome’s Rising Sun. After egging themselves to fighting pitch by reading aloud some of the more extravagant publicity, the fight crowd agreed that £100 should be posted as a challenge to the American giant to meet any suitable opponent Broome should select.
Much to the surprise of the doubting Toms, the challenge was accepted, with no less a personage than Tom Spring, England’s beloved, undefeated ex-champion appearing at the Rising Sun on behalf of Caunt and Freeman. For Freeman’s opponent, Broome nominated the Tipton Slasher, an up-and-coming pugilist later to lay a disputed claim to the championship, though never considered much more than a willing second-rater.
As was the custom of the day, the articles of agreement for their match were drawn up at Spring’s Castle Tavern, another famous sports hangout, on the understanding that £10 would be deposited each week, alternately at the tavern of Spring and Broome, until the full side bet had been posted.
The fame of the untried Freeman and the international aspect of the match, the first since the memorable battles between Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux half a century earlier, caught the public’s imagination. Enthusiastic Americans were going around town offering 2 to 1 on their countryman, though the odds eventually levelled off at 6 to 4. After a final round of exhibitions, benefits and personal appearances, Freeman finally went into serious training near a country village whose local reporter has left us this happy account of his activities:
Freeman has been assiduously attended by his friend, Ben Caunt, and has been ranging up hill and down dale like the celebrated giant Gog in his ‘seven-league boots’ with staff in hand and followed by ‘a tail’, which, from the length of his fork, generally manages to keep a respectful distance in the rear.
Although his nob has been roofed with a shallow tile to diminish the appearance of his steeple-like proportions, he still has the appearance of a walking monument, to the no-small alarm of the squirrels in Squire Byng’s Park, into whose dormitories he occasionally casts a squint of recognition.
By his good humour and playfulness of disposition he has won all hearts and has been a welcome guest on whatever premises he has cast anchor in his walks, which have seldom been less than twenty or thirty miles a day.
He has been extremely attentive to his training, and has been much reduced in flesh, while his muscular developments stand forth with additional symmetry. On his arrival, he carried some twenty-three stone [322 pounds] ‘good meat’ but we doubt whether on Tuesday he will much exceed eighteen stone [252 pounds].
The Slasher was also described as in the pink, down to his fighting weight of one hundred and eight-nine, ‘six feet high, a well proportioned, muscular fellow (always deducting the “baker-knee” which destroys the perpendicular of his pedestal)’.
In our own days of televisionary sloth, when fight fans have been heard to complain that it is too much trouble flying all the way out to Las Vegas, one can only wonder at the sacrifices of personal comfort and even safety these early devotees of the ring were willing to make. Despite the widespread publicity the Freeman–Slasher bout had received and the enthusiastic backing of the Prince of Wales and many other of The Fancy, prizefighting was still on the books as a crime. So the site of the bout, in open country some 20 miles outside of London, was to be kept a secret from all except the initiated. But with the entire London sporting world in on the plans, it hardly took Scotland Yard to pick up the scent.
With carriages already on the road toward the appointed site the night before, the law had only to tail them to be on hand for the arrival of the contestants at the rural station the following morning. So the party had to move four miles on into the next county, along muddy back roads which a majority of the would-be spectators had to travel on foot.
Most of these were London dandies, unprepared for such coarse pedestrianism, but even when these stubborn ancestors of present-day ringsiders saw their route lead them directly into a swamp, they pushed on in determination to get their guinea’s worth.
These weary, mud-bespattered diehards finally arrived at the ring site with barely time to catch their breath when, as a witness reported, ‘the Sawbridgeworth police superintendent and Mr Phillips, the magistrate, once more presented their ill-omened countenances and plainly declared their determination to prevent the fight taking place either in Essex or Hertfordshire. This was a poser.’
So back everyone tramped to the station again, ready to retreat to London for much needed refreshment at the Rising Sun and Castle Tavern. As the disappointed assembly neared the station, however, it was suddenly noticed that ‘the conservators of propriety had at last favoured us with their absence’. So, although already four o’clock and winter evening fast approaching, a ring was hastily formed and the contestants, we are told:
lost no time in removing their superfluous feathers. Both appeared in high spirits and eager for business.
Umpires and a referee having been chosen, the ring was cleared out, and the privileged dropped contentedly on the damp earth, with such preservatives to their sitting placed as circumstances would permit. It must be acknowledged that these were far from satisfactory, owing to the difficulties to which the commissary had been exposed in the various transfers of his material.
Like many an overpublicised ‘battle of giants’ in our own day, the fight itself hardly justified the ordeal its spectators had endured in order to be on hand. The Tipton Slasher failed to demonstrate how he came by so aggressive a monicker. More wily than scientific, he would beat the ponderous Freeman to the punch and then go down to end the round before the American Atlas could even the score. Like Carnera, Freeman’s size obviously impeded rather than aided his punching power, and the only damage he seemed able to inflict on the Slasher was by lifting him off the ground and squeezing him, boa-constrictor style, then throwing him bodily.
After 35 rounds of this, a round-by-round report tells us:
it became so dark that it was difficult to see what was doing in the ring, and the spectators came close to the ropes. The partisans of The Slasher were extremely uproarious, and one of them especially was constantly interfering with the umpires, called ‘time’ when it was not time and was guilty of other most offensive and unfair conduct.
In darkness and fog so thick the contestants were barely visible from ringside, the fight dragged on into its second hour. In the last few rounds ‘there was an evident attempt to draw Freeman into The Slasher’s corner, where a desperate set of ruffians had collected, who, by the most offensive vociferations, endeavoured to intimidate and alarm him’.
Finally, in the 70th round, with neither opponent showing any real sign of distress, the referee announced that he himself could no longer see the contestants and called the bout on account of darkness.
As if the fans, some of whom had been on the road for 24 hours, hadn’t already suffered enough, the night was now so black that hundreds were unable to find their way back to the station. They floundered into swamps or pitched headlong into water-filled ditches. The night was filled with anguished cries for help and the choicer curse words of the day. But at last a large part of the assembly somehow managed to drag itself back to the Rising Sun and the Castle Tavern, where hot rums somewhat restored general morale.
The Slasher and Freeman, at their respective headquarters, were greeted like victors by crowds that lingered into the early morning, fortifying themselves with rum and other manly beverages to compensate for the difficulties of the day.
The story about Freeman the following day might easily have been taken from a more recent description of Carnera in one of his disappointing exhibitions: ‘It struck us that, with immense power, he wanted judgement in its application . . . many of his hits were rather shoves or pokes instead of coming well from the shoulder.’
Despite the inconclusive nature of their first bout, feeling ran high about a rematch, perhaps because the bubble of Freeman’s formidability had been pricked and the Slasher’s backers were more confident.
Once more the participants and their indomitable followers had to play hide-and-seek with the law. Once more, after being driven back and forth across an entire county, a ring was finally established and the fighters stripped for action, only to be intercepted by a police captain who had been chasing them on horseback. Old Tom Spring helped set up another ring several miles from the last one, but a third time their nemesis, the police captain, tracked them down.
To cut down on the roadwork, for which many of the followers did their training in the back room of Castle Tavern, and to make sure that the score between Freeman and the Slasher would be settled once and for all, a steamer was hired to take the party so far up the Thames as to be beyond the conscientious reach of the ‘beaks’ and ‘trays’, the nineteenth-century equivalent of ‘fuzz’ and ‘pigs’.
The atmosphere on board was not very different from that of a special flight for a big fight, only instead of movie stars, politicos and socialites, these were scions of the peerage, including a marquis, a number of high-ranking military men, university men, doctors, barristers and sportsmen, along with the famous boxers and prominent proprietors of chophouses and taverns.
The custom of enjoying refreshments en route apparently has changed little from that day to this, except perhaps in the quality of the commissary. The facetiously named Bishop of Bond Street, who catered to the party, offered a magnificent hamper with everything from ham to pigeon pie, ‘various comestibiles for which Fortnum and Mason are renowned’ and an abundance of precious amber-coloured bottles, plus a generous supply of cognac, sherry and champagne.
Except for a sportsman or two who overestimated his capacity and fell into a champagne slumber from which not even the impending battle could rouse him, the voyage passed without incident. Unless you consider the prank of the practical joker who spread the word ‘that the swells down below had arranged with the captain for a trip to France, to make sure of no more stoppages from beaks or blues’. At this point an unidentified passenger, insisting that his wife would be done with him for good if she should hear of his unannounced trip to the Continent, leaped overboard. ‘Great was the laughter at the victim of this sell,’ a reporter for Bell’s Life in London recorded, ‘for moments later the paddles were backed, the chain cable run out and our good ship anchored for the day.’
This time the ring was formed in an ideal spot on the bank, just across a single-lane footbridge guarded by ring constables. The privileged ticket holders, newspapermen and officials were issued stools. Forming in rows behind them were the second-class spectators, who carried folding seats from the ship, trestles, bundles of straw and cushions. Soft-seat concessions had not yet been introduced, though a couple of enterprising vendors were offering beer from enormous barrels they had managed to lug across the flimsy bridge. Spreading out behind the second-class spectators sprawled a great crowd of East Enders, who, the Bell’s Life reporter tells us with obvious distaste, were conveyed for a very low tariff by tugs which had formed a flotilla behind the main steamer.
Although this second battle was fought only two weeks after the first one, the New World Goliath seemed to have expanded considerably, weighing in at 265. The Slasher, thinner and paler, was spotting his elephantine rival some 80 pounds.
The cautious, shifty, evasive style of the inaptly named Slasher and the ponderous, badly timed attack of Freeman once more produced the kind of fight today’s fight crowds would taunt with unison applause and Bronx cheers. For the bloodthirsty, however, there were rounds like this, quoted from the round-by-round account:
Round 10: The Slasher dropped a heavy smack on the Giant’s ivories with his left, which, coming in contact with his teeth, inflicted a wound on his own finger that bled profusely. He tried it again but was short, as was the Giant in his attempt to return, and the Slasher fell on his knees.
Round 15: The Slasher led off and popped his left on the Giant’s mouth. The Giant’s lips were swollen and a tinge of blood was perceptible. The Giant caught the Slasher heavily on the ear, which became seriously swollen. A rally, in which there were some heavy hits exchanged, and in the close the Slasher got down.
In the 17th round, Freeman ‘popped a heavy smack on the Slasher’s neck’ for one of the few clean knock-downs of the fight. In the 30 seconds allowed before having to come up to scratch, ‘The Slasher’s seconds were observed rubbing his neck, and there was a little of the doldrum appearance in his phiz.’
But this kind of punishment on Freeman’s part seemed largely accidental, and in the inimitable words of the round-by-round reporter, ‘there was a want of precision in Freeman’s deliveries which forbade the hope of execution’.
A typical round was the 27th:
A wild, blundering round, in which there was no precision on either side. The Slasher slipped down but was up again and renewed the round, planting a right-hand chopper on the Giant’s pimple. After a scrambling rally, the Slasher again got down and slipped completely under the Giant’s fork, at whom he looked up and grinned.
Then, somewhat as in the Carnera–Sharkey fight, the match suddenly ended controversially in Freeman’s favour. In the 37th round, after only (for those days) 40 minutes of fighting, the Slasher rushed in, struck Freeman on the shoulder and before the Giant could return the blow, fell without being hit. Freeman’s seconds promptly claimed foul. When the umpires disagreed, the referee ruled the Slasher disqualified and Freeman the winner.
The Slasher protested that he had merely fallen from the recoil after hitting the Giant’s shoulder, but the ruling was final and so, after fighting a total of one hundred and seven rounds, inciting London sports fans to a pitch where they would wade through swamps and engage in cross-country tag with the constabulary of five counties, this latter-day David-and-Goliath affair ended in fiasco.
As in the cases of Jess Willard, Carnera, Buddy Baer, Big Ben Moross and other mammoths of the ring, Freeman’s failure to live up to his overwhelming appearance proved once more the inability of giants to cope with smaller, better-coordinated men.
‘That Freeman is a game man we have no doubt,’ ran a newspaper account of the 37 inconclusive rounds, ‘but he is unwieldy, and possesses too much of “the milk of human kindness” ever to become a “star” in the ring. We recommend him to choose some more suitable occupation, although as a sparrer, from his great size, he will always be an object of curiosity.’
Apparently the harmless Giant took this reporter’s unsolicited advice, for the next year found him back in the circus, once more exhibiting himself to packed audiences. But even his feats of strength were illusory and tinged with irony, for suddenly, in his 25th year, he was struck by an attack of tuberculosis which doctors discovered he had carried since childhood.
One account of the period attributes his early death to ‘the dreadful injuries received in his terrible combat with the formidable bruiser known as the Tipton Slasher – injuries which, from the tremendous stature of the combatants, must have been beyond ordinary calculation.’
But an ardent advocate of the British prize ring lost no time in labelling this as an uncalled-for attack on Britain’s glorious sport by a ‘mere penny-a-liner’. It was sheer nonsense to blame the Giant’s untimely passing on his unsatisfactory showing in the ring, this enthusiast maintained, for it was quite clear that ‘the Giant’s end was of necessity accelerated by repeated colds, caught in the light attire of fleshings and spangles in which he exhibited in draughty canvas erections and crowded theatres and booths’.
Whether Charles Freeman, the biggest American who ever fought, died from exposure to the fists of the Tipton Slasher or to the drafts of chilly circus tents is a question that can no longer cause us concern.
But should you ever be accosted by an adversary who towers over you from six inches to a foot, you may take heart from the gigantic ineptitude of this American man-monster whose heroic proportions made it seem improbable that any man in the world could stand up to him but who was unable to overcome a second-rate English trial horse weighing less than one hundred and ninety pounds.
[1948]