If the love of Fair Play is not born in us, and has therefore to be taught, we do have ingrained in us a very real admiration for a good loser. Nothing, as we know only too well, succeeds like success—particularly material success. But somewhere or other deep down in us we have a kind of mistrust of what the world at large calls success: there may be a tinge of superstition in our feeling. At any rate we have a very warm corner in our hearts for the glorious failure: and not without good reason, for there are more failures than successes, and, having failed, it is easy enough to invent the glory.
Jem Belcher is probably the most renowned prize-fighter that ever lived. He won several splendid victories, details of some of which have come down to us. But it is not his victories that have given fame to him so much as his glorious defeats: and these not so much on account of the champions who beat him, though they were very famous too, as on account of Belcher’s personality. This, compounded as it was of qualities and especially defects, unlovely in themselves, was of exactly the kind which endears itself to the English speaking world, and to that world not only.
Jem Belcher was a roysterer, a drinker, a loose fish. He was also jealous and vindictive. But he was indomitably courageous and he was good-looking. He was a gracefully built man, and well-proportioned, but he made no great show of muscle. He stood 5 ft. 11 in., but never weighed more than 11 stone 10 lb.—only a little over the modern middle-weight limit.
Jem Belcher was born at Bristol on April 15th, 1781, being on his mother’s side a grandson of Jack Slack, the champion of 24 1750. He went to work as a butcher’s boy, and whilst quite a lad, showed amazing precocity as a boxer. His first recorded fight, when he was but seventeen, was with Britton, whom he beat in March of 1798 in half an hour or so. Then he came to London, where he was kindly treated by Bill Warr, now an elderly man, who put on the gloves with him to see what he was made of. As a result of this trial, Warr backed Jem against Paddington Jones, whom he easily beat. In the following year he fought a drawn battle with Jack Bartholomew, when quite out of condition. In 1800 he was matched with Bartholomew again and fought him for three hundred guineas a side on Finchley Common. Belcher had already shown himself as a brilliantly scientific boxer, aggressive, “never to be denied,” as they say. But with Bartholomew, a much heavier and stronger man, he showed how well he could defend himself, “milling on the retreat” when necessary. In spite of this Bartholomew dashed at him at the beginning, and, forcing down his guard, knocked Jem down. So certain were Bartholomew’s backers that he had the fight in one hand, so to say, that they immediately sent off messengers to London announcing his victory. This was a little premature, for no sooner had those messengers left the ring-side than Belcher with lightning speed hit his opponent several times in succession without a return, and finished a brilliant round by throwing him a hard cross-buttock. The effects of this handicapped Bartholomew for the rest of the encounter. He had plenty of pluck, and all of it was needed. The moral courage required to stand up and take a beating from a much lighter man, or rather a boy, is very great. The rounds were short and very fierce, seventeen being fought in twenty minutes. And at the end of that time Jem sent home a tremendous body-blow which knocked Bartholomew down and out of time. He was unable to reach the scratch after the half-minute’s rest.
After this Belcher thrashed Andrew Gamble in five rounds and nine minutes. His next battle, quite an important one in regarding the man’s record, was yet but a brawl at the ring-side of another fight. Just after the encounter between Isaac Bittoon 25 and Tom Jones in July of 1801, Joe Berks, the Shropshire butcher (who figures in somewhat similar circumstances with Boy Jim in Sir A. Conan Doyle’s Rodney Stone), somewhat elated by wine, called out, “Where’s young Jem Belcher? Where’s your champion?” So Jem went up to him and asked him what he wanted. The reply was a quick blow which Belcher, ever on the alert, stopped. They thereupon settled down to a bye-battle which lasted for nineteen minutes and which Jem Belcher decisively won.
However, it was manifest that Berks had been fighting under the handicap of considerable intoxication, and a set battle was finally arranged between these two in the following November. They met at Hurley Bottom, near Maidenhead.
Joe Berks was much the stronger man, and though early in the fight Jem laid open his nose with a vicious right and later cut his forehead so that Joe lost a lot of blood, his seconds finding it impossible to staunch it, he fought like a tiger. In the ninth round after these misfortunes and when he had been getting much the worst of it, he dashed in, through, as it were, Jem’s raining blows, seized hold of him and hurled him down with terrific force. Joe Berks was a gallant ruffian, and though utterly defeated in sixteen rounds and twenty-five minutes refused to give in. Finally his seconds threw up the sponge on his behalf. He was much cut and bruised both in face and body, while young Jem Belcher hardly had a mark to show, and seemed quite unhurt. He declared afterwards that he never felt a blow throughout the fight—which is probably untrue.
After he had beaten Joe Berks again and Fearby, the Young Ruffian, in fourteen and eleven rounds respectively, Jem Belcher was generally regarded as the Champion.
It was after these fights that a great misfortune befell him. Jem, who, like other fighters of his day, was made much of by sportsmen of all kinds, was playing racquets one afternoon with a Mr. Stewart at the court in St. Martin’s Street, when a ball struck him in the eye and literally smashed it. This was in July of 1803. The misfortune, great as it would have been to any 26 man, was not at the moment calamitous, for Belcher had made enough money to enable him to settle down as a publican; and he now took the “Jolly Butchers” in Wardour Street, Soho. It was supposed that he would never dream of fighting again, blind as he was in one eye; and no one challenged his championship. For two years he maintained the dignity of champion, until the exploits of Henry—commonly called Hen—Pearce, the “Game Chicken,” roused him from his retirement.
Though in years Pearce was just a little older than Jem, he had been his protégé, and Belcher had brought him up from his native Bristol a few years before. Pearce stood 5 ft. 9 in. and weighed 13 stone, having a figure like Tom Johnson’s. He was slow, and his knowledge of and skill in boxing was by no means equal to his master’s, but he was very strong. In 1804 he had beaten Joe Berks, and in the following year John Gulley, after a tremendous battle which lasted for fifty-nine rounds and one hour and ten minutes. After this he was generally acclaimed as Champion of England. And at that Jem Belcher’s bitter envy rose like flame. He couldn’t bear to see even his friend whom he had taught and introduced to the London Ring on his own old throne. To the great surprise of everybody he challenged Pearce, and the fight took place on December 6th, 1805, at Blyth, near Doncaster. The “Napoleon of the Ring,” as Jem was sometimes called, owing to his slight physical resemblance to our great enemy of that period, was the favourite, despite his blind eye. But directly he stripped the betting changed to 5-4 on Pearce. The landlord of the “Jolly Butchers” had not improved his physique during the two years of retirement.
Though still a young man Belcher had all the sensations of a returning veteran. Indeed it takes a young man to feel that kind of position strongly. Despite the jealousy which had prompted the challenge, there was a romantic atmosphere about all the circumstances of this battle. The half-blind hero, thin, weedy, delicate, fighting the new and sturdier champion; skill and a wonderful spirit pitted against solid bone and muscle. By the 27 time the fight had begun, Jem Belcher felt the romance of it more keenly than his unjust resentment.
We may regard Jem as the first perfect exponent of that splendid blow, the straight and simple left lead. And after the usual caution when the men first met it was with a lightning left, but fiercely hard, that he drew first blood, cutting Pearce’s eye severely. It was like old times—it was always the same way: Joe Berks was strong and so was Fearby, but they could not stop him, Jem Belcher. That left had gone in easily enough. He knew how to hit, did Jem. Strength wasn’t everything. But—what was this? There were uncomfortable abilities in strength after all. The Game Chicken took his blow and heeded not his bleeding eye-blow and then he closed, and his grip tightened and tightened, until Jem was like a helpless child in his huge brawny arms, and presently he was flung violently upon the turf. Something in sheer strength, when all’s said.
But there’s a good deal in boxing too. Belcher feinted with his left and sent home a hard body-blow with his right, repeating it in the next moment. Pearce’s streaming eye hampered him a good deal, but even yet he could see sometimes when he wiped the blood away, while Jem, from his corresponding eye, could see nothing. Swinging his weight forward, he aimed a tremendous blow with the right at Jem, who, with all his old coolness and dexterity, guarded it, and joined gladly in the fierce rally that ensued. Then in a lull out came Pearce’s long arms again to seize Jem in a bear-like hug and throw him down.
And so they fought on. Other things being equal, the boxer wins. And so far as boxing goes Jem had this battle all his own way, but he could not withstand that grim hug, which caught him round after round about his middle and hurled him, shaken and weakening, to the ground.
And yet in the fifth round, greatly daring, Jem carried the war to his opponent and threw him; though the effort of doing so was beyond all wisdom. In the next round Belcher was boxing again with cold skill and neat precision, but his old vigour was lacking. He looked a sick man, though his remaining eye was 28 bright and open. They wrestled for a fall, but the heavy Pearce was uppermost. In the seventh round both went down together after Jem had suffered some severe punishment with his head “in chancery” under the Chicken’s arm, but in the eighth he showed himself the old champion. Shaken and weakened as he had been, he gathered himself together and hit out as he had been used to do. If only he could keep this up! He knew that he had only too little reserve of strength, but surely Pearce could not endure this hammering for long. Using his right chiefly now, he hit his opponent as he liked and when he liked, and when Pearce showed signs of exhaustion, Jem wound up the round by throwing him clean out of the ring.
But when they came up again Jem was bitterly disappointed. Pearce was very strong. His shaking had done him little harm. Belcher hit him hard in the face, but he could take it all and more. They fell together, but Jem knew that unless he could beat him soon, he was done.
In the twelfth round it was plain to every one that Jem’s strength was going, and he knew it himself. He made a desperate effort, but it was of no use against this rock of a man. Pearce closed and threw him half over the ropes, so that he was at his mercy, but he stood away. “I’ll take no advantage o’ thee, Jem,” he said, “I’ll not hit thee, lest I hurt thine other eye.”
Men of Belcher’s temperament and in his position can brook no pity, and Pearce’s gallant sentiments only enraged him. His hits were growing weak, he was panting for his breath, his knees were shaking, but even so he contrived to end the thirteenth round by throwing the Chicken down.
In the next round he tried to gain time. He was bleeding severely from several deep cuts about his face, and it was increasingly hard to will himself to go on doing his hopeless best. He fought as much as possible on the retreat, trying to keep away. But the Chicken saw a chance of finishing the fight quickly and dashed in, hitting Jem with great force under his blind eye. Then he threw him.
A little later Pearce again got Jem over the ropes in a helpless 29 position and again stepped back, refusing to take advantage of him. In falling sideways it was thought that Jem had broken a rib in hard contact with a ring post. He winced as he came up for the seventeenth round. He was not merely so weak that he could hardly stand, but he was suffering great pain. His pluck was exemplary, he stood up and did his best to box, guarding a blow from time to time and trying to put in a return. But now Pearce had the battle in his hands. He hit Jem as he pleased, as Jem had only a short while ago hit him and ended the round by throwing him.
In the next round Jem came up staggering to the scratch, but once there he found that he could not even lift his left arm at all, and with a bitterness in his heart such as he had dreamed that he would never know, he gave in.
And Pearce, to show how strong he was, could not resist showing off by jumping out of the ring and back again and turning a somersault.
The fight had lasted but thirty-five minutes in all.