593. The Fight of the Century

0:10Way down in Merry England, the home of Johnny Ball, where the English drink their glasses, they drink them brimming full. Saying here's to merry England, likewise our Britons brave The champions we are, o 'er the land and o 'er the wave Way down in merry England, all in the bloom of spring Where English burly champions stood stripped off in the ring To fight that noble Heenan, the gallant son of Troy To try his British muscle on the bold Benicia boy Two heavy flags were hoisted that floated o 'er the ring On one there was a tiger all ready for a spring. On the other was an eagle, a gallant bird she was, for she had a bunch of thunderbolts and held them in her claws.

0:58Oh, the pennies they were tossed and their melee did begin. Their bets on Sayers and Heenan, two on one, came rushing in. They fought like noble heroes till one received a blow which caused a crimson tide from young Heenan's nose to flow. The first blood for Johnny Bull Old England shouts for joy But the following cheers arose for the bold Benicia boy The tiger rose within him Like lightning in his eye Saying, smile away, Old England But Johnny, mind your eye So that's the beginning of a lovely poem It's the beginning? Yes, it's the beginning, Tom How long does it go on for? It goes on for 42 rounds It's a poem called Heenan and Sayers and it was by Mrs.

1:46Elwood Nickerson, written in about, we don't know, about 1860, 61 in New England. And this poem is celebrating the fight of the century, the clash between Tom Sayers and John Heenan on the 17th of April, 1860. Tom, are you a great boxing aficionado? Not hugely, but as you will know, I am a fan of British muscle because I've actually just come from the gym where I've been toning my British muscle. Oh, that's a nice image. So I feel absolutely prepped and ready for this. Good. I mean, one thing I am, well, at least I used to be a fan of, was going off to fields in Hampshire to engage in illegal activities.

2:27Oh my word. Oh no. So as name checked by Jarvis Cocker in his famous song, Sorted for Ease and Whiz. Right. This is a lovely image. And reading about this fight, which takes place illegally in a field in Hampshire. I couldn't help but think about how, you know, how the traditions of Merry England run deep. So people, you know, in the 90s weren't gathering to watch boxing matches, but they were gathering to celebrate. To go to raves. Going to raves. So there's kind of deep continuities, aren't there? Cranky. Well, I didn't expect that angle to be the angle of choice. Well, I've introduced British muscle in ease and whiz.

3:05So we thought we would dig into the story behind this extraordinary clash between Tom Sayers and John Heenan. What it tells us about Britain, America, Britishness, sport. It's about sport above all, isn't it? It's about... But it's about what sport means. But also in the long run, how it comes to be tamed and codified and in a way made kind of posher, as we will see. Yes, I think that's true. And we are joined by very much a friend of The Rest is History. So listeners who heard our episode on Orwell will remember him. He is Professor robert coles emeritus professor at de montfort university and author of the brilliant book this sporting life sport and liberty in england 1760 to 1960 in which this fight plays a kind of lead role as a whole chapter about this fight rob welcome back to the rest is history thank you great to be back so what's going on uh you have let's set the scene it's very early in the morning It's the 17th of April, 1860.

4:07It's a Tuesday. It's in the middle of nowhere, a field in Hampshire. All of these people have gathered to watch these two men knock seven bells out of one another. What is the story behind all this? Yeah. If you want to know what's going on in this field in Hampshire in 1860, what you don't do is read Mrs. Nickerson's poem, because it's quite clear that she's not been within a thousand miles of this fight, which took place the year before. It's billed across the Atlantic as the first international heavyweight championship. It's been talked about for 12 months before, and it will be talked about for 40, 50 years afterwards.

4:54Generally speaking, journalists and others called it the fight of the century In many ways, it was really none of those things The Irish-American who'd come across to do his business John Camel Heenan Had only had one professional fight in his life Which he'd lost So he was a novice, really his claim to be there was he had a talent for violence. And I don't know if you've seen the wonderful Scorsese film Gangs of New York, but Heenan had operated within those gangs as a minder, as an enforcer, as a publican by day and a hard man by night. So he was just a hard case who was chancing his luck against the English champion.

5:47The English champion was a very different kettle of fish. Tom Sayers was an out-and-out professional. He'd been fighting since he was 16, born in Brighton, born in the lanes, and Brighton started fighting at 16 up on the downs, on the race courses, what the press called casual wagers, you know, five minutes done in a corner, money changes hands. In his 20s, Sayers had moved to London, where he had plied his trade as a bricklayer in Camden. Camden was new then, the railway was coming, and Tom did his work there. He also did part-time fighting and amassed enough money to become a publican. The Laurel Tree in Bayham Road, Camden, was his pub.

6:37And he got married and he had children. And in 1850, aged 24, he had his first out-and-out professional fight. By the time he's facing Heenan in that field, 7 o 'clock in the morning, April 1860, He'd had 14 fights, of which he'd lost only one. So what are they there to do? Well, what they're there to do is the most awful thing it would seem possible to imagine. They were there to inflict such injuries on each other with their bare hands that one of them was going to be incapable of standing up. or at any rate coming to the center of the ring, the scratch mark, and standing up in that position.

7:26That's what they were there to do. Behind this fight really was the New York press and the London press. In New York, we had a sporting newspaper called Porter's Spirit of the Times, and they thought in Heenan they had someone who could relieve the English of their own championship. In Tom Sayers, Bell's Life, which was the leading sporting newspaper, Bell's thought they had a man who could restore the prize ring to some kind of honor and respectability, which it had lost in the 1850s and 40s. In the event, both newspapers were wrong, as we shall see. So anyway, Heenan makes it to London December 1859, and the two men meet at Owen Swift's public house, the horseshoe in Tichborne Street.

8:22If I can just jump in, Owen Swift, he's a fighter himself who has killed people in the ring. Is that right? Yeah, Swift has killed three men in the ring. The last one being Brighton Bill. And he spent his time before magistrates and always got away with it. Rob, how does he get away with it? Well, the legal position of fighting was very unclear. Judges absolutely detested it and wanted it finished with. But magistrates found it a lot easier to turn a blind eye. And as we know, the police in the middle of the 19th century were not organised or as well informed as they might be. And are magistrates turning a blind eye to it because they are fans, because they're enthusiasts, because they think that it's an expression of British manliness or what's the reason?

9:15I don't think so, Tom. I think the reason they're turning a blind eye is although fights are, strictly speaking, a breach of the peace and they're very nervous about disorder, stopping one would probably be more disorder. Oh, I see. Right. Right. And more breach of abuse. But above all else, of course, you've got aristocratic patronage. And if you're a local country vicar who's also a magistrate, stepping in to stop a fight where there are lords and dukes and gentlemen, you wouldn't last long. So magistrates turned the blind eye. Judges pressed for it to be stopped. At law, fighting was odd. Mainly it was a breach of the peace, or it could be common assault, or it could be riot, or worse still, it could be manslaughter.

10:08And as the century wore on, more and more cases for manslaughter were brought to court. But nothing much happened. I've actually got some boring figures here, which I once spent my time counting. Out of 30 tried at the Old Bailey for manslaughter in the ring between 1856 and 75, out of the 30 men, 13 were acquitted and 17 were convicted, but all of them got less than six months in jail. Right. If you're a carter or a labourer, you tend to get convicted. If you're an old Etonian schoolboy and you've just killed a fellow student, as did happen to Lord Shaftesbury's youngest brother in the 1820s, who was killed in a 60-round fight, you get let off.

11:02So that is like the one in Tom Brown's school days with, what's it, Slugger? Slugger somebody? Slugger somebody has a fight behind the gym school? Slugger. Slugger. Slugger, that's right. Slogger Williams fights Tom Thomas Hughes who wrote it knew exactly what he was writing about when he did that Sorry we took you off feast didn't we by getting into this So they've met for the first time at Swift's pub the two contestants Heenan and Sayers and Sayers exactly and so the fight is going to happen but at this point nobody knows when and where it will happen which again is like it's like raves isn't it that people know something's going to happen, but they don't quite know how to get there and people are waiting to be texted the number and the address and places like that.

11:48So it's a bit like that. Exactly. That's a great analogy, actually, a rave. It's exactly that, Tom. It's a rave. Everyone's turning up at London Bridge at 4 a.m. on the morning of the fight and nobody knows where the fight's going to happen, but they're all buying a ticket for Farnborough. And Rob, when you say everyone, I mean, you really do mean everyone. So Dickens' friend, people say Lord Palmerston's going. Yeah, the Prince of Wales. What is the class of person who is going down on this train to this boxing match? Because it's secret, no one knows where it is. But of course, everyone does know where it is.

12:25Let's just say reports are rather mixed and confused. But generally speaking, we know there's an aristocratic element. and we know locals down in hampshire would would probably turn up just to see the the play it's a kind of festival it's a kind of fair and then we've got mainly what was called at the time the fancy or more intellectual people were called the cognoscenti that is there's a kind of following around fighting which is to do with betting it's to do with former fighters known as pugs or pugilists. It's to do with aristocrats who just will gamble on anything. These people know the odds and they'll be at all the big fights.

13:12From, of course, the word the fancy, we get the word fan. So they reckon there's about 1 ,500 passengers on two trains coming out of London Bridge, 35 carriages on each. Dickens' man, I think he's called Hollinshead, claims to be sitting in a compartment with a well-known lord, a well-known poet, and a well-known politician. But he doesn't name names. Certainly, when they got to the fight and walked half a mile across muddy fields, they were met by more security who were handing out chairs to the aristocrats who deserved them and no chairs to the rest. so basically when you got to the scene of the fight you could either watch the law being broken sitting down or you could watch the law being broken standing up and people are placing bets so betting is obviously an enormous part of this is there betting happening at in the field i mean are there bookmakers there you know shouting out the odds and stuff yes the most important thing to get a fight going, Dom, is stake money.

14:24So the two sides play stake bets with each side, and the winner will take the other side's stake. That's the real money, the formal and official money in prize fighting. So Tom's side put£500,£50 a go, at a number of London pubs, and Heenan's side did exactly the same. Of course, there would be informal and relentless betting on the fight as the fight progressed. This made it very, very dodgy business. Because the fighters were in the fight and could hear how the odds were changing ringside, they could themselves change the outcome of the fight. So I just wanted to ask you about that. I mean, what is to stop one of them throwing it?

15:10Nothing. Right. So how is that regulated? Or is it not regulated? Well, according to London rules, 1839, which they're fighting by, you're not meant to go down on one knee unless you've had a proper punch. But how do you measure a proper punch? The only person who knows a proper punch has been landed is the giver and the receiver. if the receiver wants to cheat which in the parlance is called a cross and go down and lose and is better against himself he's made a lot of money yeah so he's not going to say it wasn't a proper punch of course it was a proper punch and the giver of the punch is not going to say it wasn't the proper punch because by giving this punch he's won the fight so there's nothing to stop ringside off-course betting, shouting the odds, and it's nothing to stop a single fighter doing a cross.

16:07Would a fighter like Tom Sayersay have a reputation as a man who was unlikely to do that? He did have that reputation, and that's why Bell's life wanted him to be reincarnated as a great Englishman. But in truth, the last fight he had before Heenan was against a novice, really, and apparently Tom had been seen dancing the night away the night before and there was rumours of a cross that he was not going to be serious about it. He was going to, in the parlance, he was going to chuck it. But in the event, Tom didn't chuck it and the fight was over in five minutes. So the crowd has gathered, all of these people, and it's about seven o 'clock they come out.

16:50Now, just to give us a sense of what they look like and stuff, you might think because this is the 19th century or they don't take it very seriously. They haven't been properly training. They have been training. They've been training for months, haven't they, on the downs. Tom Sayers on the Sussex downs, Heenan in Wiltshire. And what's a training routine involved for a 19th century boxer? Well, they went into training in February. So they had two, three months training. Tom, you notice, went on the downs with the racing fraternity and then went up the new market again with the racing fraternity.

17:30There is a very old and honorable connection between riding horse being, well, jockeying and fighting. Both sides have to keep their weight down. And jockeys knew how to do that. And fighters took that seriously. Tom's methods were exactly what a jockey of the time would do to keep fat off and keep muscles a bit like Tom's really nice and brisk and shiny. I'm interested to know what they do, whether it compares to my routine. It's about starving yourself, basically. It's about weights. It's about no sex. I don't know how that goes with you. No coffee. No masturbation. Hold on, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob.

18:17I mean, how do people know this? Are they writing it down? Are there training manuals? Yes, there are. There are training manuals. How are they referring to it? Beastliness? They call it masturbation. It's a very old word. I'm amazed. I thought Victorians never talked about it. We're not talking about the Victorians quote unquote here. We're talking about the other side of Victorian life. They took a massive pill before the fight, a massive blue pill for constipation. But actually, the thing is, Tom, they weren't doing anything that jockeys weren't doing. This was all understood and known. And it wasn't unusual, actually.

18:51The greatest English jockey of the century, Fred Archer, died by just being overzealous in his training routines. Too many pills. Too many pills and not enough food. They would make themselves sick. All the old tricks, which we're only sadly too familiar with now. So they did that for a few months. Heenan couldn't settle anywhere. Everywhere he went to train, the constabulary told him to move on. So his camp was never settled. He went right through the Midlands and ended up in Derbyshire for a night in jail. And was that because the constabulary were being patriotic and trying to stop him from training?

19:30Well, the thing was, you go back to this old thing about a breach of the peace. Wherever he went, there was a crowd. And the crowd, you know, were not always charming or gentle with him and his American entourage. Anyway, he finally got arrested at his Trent Lock near Derby training camp. And he was put out on bail for more money than the actual stake he'd put down for the fight. Anyway, he kept going. And he was used to this. It was exactly the same in the United States. Fighting was such a hole in the corner affair. You had to keep moving. You had to always watch out for the Rosas. One important thing.

20:10I just have to take you one day back before the fight. On the night of the 16th of April, 1860, Heenan turned up at Nat Langham's pub in London, the Cambrian. Now, why did he go to Langham's pub, the Cambrian? Because Langham was the only man who'd ever beaten Sayers. Oh, right. Came from Hinkley in Leicestershire. He was a framework knitter. and he'd taken Sayers the full distance in 1853 and beaten him. So there's a bit of needle here that, you know, Heenan goes to the man who beat him. In the same sense, the one man to beat Heenan in his only fight, John Morrissey, he was in Sayers' corner.

20:56They've got inside information. I love the account you give of the entourages that both men have. So on the morning of the fight, they meet up, they shake hands, Heenan has the stars and stripes in his corner. And Sayer, you say, has the royal standard on a cream background, which is tremendous. And I think is something that British boxers should reintroduce. But 7.29, they come to the middle and Sayer has his two seconds behind him, who you describe as being like wicket keepers. So that's people who stand up to the bowling and cricket. Plus his manager, his professional walker, who is his trainer.

21:33And my favourite detail, someone called the Birdman making queer halloo sounds in a cape. What's going on with the Birdman? I know. What's he doing? Who is he? I know. And why do boxers not have birdmen now in capes and dwarves and things? Well, he's going halloo, halloo, halloo. Why? Well, I think it certainly beats Heenan's Corner, which is a bit boring. He's got his uncle, two friends, and a man called Billy Mulligan, who the New York Times calls a very determined-looking fellow. Personally, I'd rather be with Jimmy Holden and the Birdman. So the fight is ready to begin. Should we take a break at this point?

22:27Tension is massive, but when we come back, the bell will sound. The fight will begin and we will see who wins. Can we do one thing just before that? I've got to put in, Tom, that what they do before they actually come to the fight is they strip, which in the parlances they peel, by which I mean they take off their shirts. And that's really important before a fight because when you see a man's body, then you see how serious they are about what's going to happen. Right. And the point here is both men are in superb condition. So Tom Sayers has been daubing himself with vinegar, hasn't he? So he's described as looking like a square brick of walnuts.

23:12So he's kind of, he's dyed himself with vinegar. Is that right, Rob? It was an old belief. It was skin hardening properties of vinegar. And as for Heenan, he's incredibly pale. And of course, he's five inches taller, two and a half stones heavier, eight or nine years younger. The Times called it, as the two men stood together, as a horse to a hen. Wow, unbelievable tension. So who will win, the horse or the hen? Come back in a few minutes to find out.

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24:29Welcome back to The Rest is History. We are in a field in Hampshire on the 17th of April, 1860. The crowd has assembled. The two men have peeled, Sayers and Heenan. Rob, take us through what happens next. Well, they both walk to the centre of the ring, so-called. Of course, it's not a ring. It's actually a rectangle. They go to the centre of the ring and Heenan says, beautiful morning to the man who's about to try and kill him. And Tom says, want to bet on it? Which I loved. They go at it according to London prize ring rules. Just to be clear for listeners, these are not the rules that govern boxing in the way that they do now.

25:12So we'll come to how those laws evolve. These are London rules, which sounds like a kind of spy isn't it? So what are London rules? What are the boxers allowed to do? So the first set of printed rules, Tom, are in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and they were called Broughton's Rules, 1743. And London rules were an evolution of Broughton's Rules of 1743. Basically, there were no weight categories. So there's no heavyweights, lightweights, middleweights. They were just matches. And the match was anybody who was willing to put their money up behind a man fighting another man. So clearly Sayers was five foot eight and 11 stone.

25:59He was actually a middleweight, but he couldn't get middleweights to fight him. Or more accurately, they couldn't get people to back them to fight him. So he's fighting. It's a middleweight fighting a heavyweight because London rules have no weight categories. The second thing is there's no fixed rounds. The round ends when one man drops to one knee and he can do that at any point and get a 30 second breather. But there aren't points. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't penalize him. There's no points in London rules. You just have to really reduce a man to such a state that he can't come to scratch.

26:38And even though he's had this 30-second breather. There was less force in this because they were bare knuckle. And in addition to hitting with your bare hand, you could throw, you could wrestle. But what you couldn't do, this is where London rules civilize things a bit, you couldn't bite, you couldn't butt, you couldn't kick, you couldn't gouge, you couldn't strangle. And of course, you couldn't hit below the waist. And you say in your book that prize fighters also shave themselves. So like the Macedonians, they shave off their beards so that their opponents can't grab them by their beards. Yes.

27:20If you are in an exchange, which is part boxing and part wrestling, it doesn't help to have long hair or beard. In Mendoza's famous fight, I think it was 1795 with John Jackson, gentleman John Jackson Jackson ended the fight by swinging him round by his hair so Mendoza's long hair didn't do him proud on that occasion so you could always tell a fighter by his cropped hair and crooked nose that's the way to do it and they also have spiked boots is that right? yeah, the thing is given that the Rosas are always onto you or are liable to be onto you fights can start in one county and end in another one because the two fighters would actually be on the run so it's quite obvious that you couldn't fight indoors it was just too risky and so most fights were outside where if the police turned up you could run for it so the boots were spiked Your head was held back.

28:25Your fists were low, but up. Your feet were turned out. In other words, you were well turned out. And you would bob and weave and duck until first punch was landed. And the first punch in this fight actually went to the old pro, Sayers, who landed one square on Heenan's nose. Knobbing, it was called in the parlance. All right. Knobbing in the parlance and applause in the crowd. So a knobbing is when you hit someone on the nose. Flat on the nose, yeah. And you draw, it was never called blood, of course, it was always called ruby or claret. So you knob to draw ruby. At that point, Heenan grabbed Sayers by the neck, but Sayers punched his way out of it, and apparently both men fell to the floor laughing.

29:20round one over and there's no limit on the number of rounds is that right so if they want to fight for 10 20 30 in this case 40 plus rounds they can because looking at say it's his record he knows that this could go on for a long time because he has fought had bouts that have lasted two hours two and a half hours i mean mind-boggling how exhausting and unbelievably dangerous that must be. Well, it is dangerous, of course. They're aiming for your head, your temple, and below your ear. They're trying to blind you with jabbing. Gouging's out, but jabbing's in. Jabbing to the eyes, or peg to the stomach, as it was called.

30:14Or they want to throw you and land heavily on you. or they want a fib, which means getting your head under one arm and punching away in the face with the other. And that was called having a suit in chancery. Is that really what they call that? Yeah, suit in chancery is holding your head under my arm, let's put it that way, and I hit you with my right hand. With your British muscle. Oh, there's a cross buttock, how about that one? Where you throw a man over your buttock, in effect, and then you land on him very heavily. Right. actually dom this isn't this isn't you i don't know about you guys but this is how school boys fought when i was a kid it was all head and chancery and cross butter yeah not that much punching actually it was more about wrestling someone down and getting them to say getting them to say sorry yeah headlocks it's all about headlocks isn't it so essentially you win the match by getting someone flat on the ground but to do that you have to make his his knuckles have to be broken.

31:14His face, you know, maybe his eyes so swollen that he can't actually see. And as Dominic says, that might take, well, as it does in this case, it takes what, two hours, two and a half hours? Yeah, you have to make him incapable, basically. And he has to be able to make it to the scratch mark himself, not carried. There was a terrible case of manslaughter where a man was carried to the scratch by his seconds, where he was basically beaten to death. The thing is, though, you've got to just remember this. These fights are not as horrible and violent as they might sound because the new Queensbury rules ring was in certain ways more violent because you had the 10 second rule on a knockout.