It is not generally known that a Mr. William Thompson was once Champion of England. Sometimes a nickname will stick to a man much harder than the name of his father, and so it was with Thompson. He was one of a triplet, called, in and out of the family, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This last, “Thormanby” tells us, soon became “Bednego,” of which “Bendigo,”—a much easier word to say—is the natural corruption. To start with, Thompson tried to maintain the full “Abednego,” and advertised himself as a boxer under that nom de guerre in Bell’s Life. Jem Belcher left his name to a particular sort of scarf. “Jack Johnson,” a variety of heavy German shell, is at least as well-known as the negro champion, and thousands of people must know of Bendigo, a town in Australia, who never heard of Bendigo, the prize-fighter.

Bendigo was a Nottingham man, born in 1812, and his first battle took place in 1835. This was with Ben Caunt, with whom he fought in all three times. He was, as champion heavy-weights go, a middle-sized man, 5 feet 9? inches in height, and his weight was generally somewhere in the neighbourhood of twelve stone. He was an all-round athlete, a fair cricketer and an acrobat: he was also a most scientific boxer, plucky, and a terribly hard hitter: but his methods were foul. In his first fight with Caunt his dodge—to which he was ever faithful in after years—was to hit and then directly there were signs of possible retaliation to slip down, as plausibly as possible, to avoid punishment. Going down without a blow was a foul by the rules: but on the whole Bendigo was wonderfully lucky in his referees. Caunt lost his temper after a time, and dashing across the ring, hit Bendigo whilst still on his second’s knees. That was a foul that no referee 86 could by any conceivable possibility overlook, and Caunt was “deemed the loser.”

Three years later they met again, and this time Caunt won on a foul. This Ben Caunt also came from Nottingham; a huge fellow of 6 feet 2? inches, weighing well over 15 stone in condition, and much more than that out of it. He had enormous bat-like ears which stood out on his head as do the handles of a cup. In the second fight he showed himself an inferior boxer to Bendigo: but his size and strength enabled him, in a close, to seize his opponent and almost to squeeze the breath out of his body. So far as hitting went, Bendigo had the better of it, and towards the end of the fight, which lasted for seventy-five rounds, the betting on him was 3-1. In the last round, however, he fell without a blow. His supporters declared that he had slipped and that throughout he had been handicapped by not having his proper fighting shoes. Caunt’s people, however, appealed to the referee, who gave it a foul, and Caunt was, therefore, declared the winner. There were many roughs about the ringside, mostly partisans of Bendigo, and Caunt had to be mounted on a horse and ride almost for his life to escape them.

Bendigo’s next fight was with Deaf Burke, and it took place near Appleby in Warwickshire, on February 12th, 1839. Bendigo was in first-rat............