Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
SOUTHWARK FAIR.
Vol. 1. Frontispiece
PUGILISTICA
THE HISTORY
OF
BRITISH BOXING
CONTAINING
LIVES OF THE MOST CELEBRATED PUGILISTS; FULL REPORTS OF THEIR BATTLES FROM CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPERS, WITH AUTHENTIC PORTRAITS, PERSONAL ANECDOTES, AND SKETCHES OF THE PRINCIPAL PATRONS OF THE PRIZE RING, FORMING A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE RING FROM FIG AND BROUGHTON, 1719‒40, TO THE LAST CHAMPIONSHIP BATTLE BETWEEN KING AND HEENAN, IN DECEMBER 1863
PREFACE TO THE FIRST VOLUME.
The history of “the Ring,” its rise and progress, the deeds of the men whosemanly courage illustrate its contests in the days of its prosperity andpopularity, with the story of its decline and fall, as yet remain unwritten. Theauthor proposes in the pages which follow to supply this blank in the home-recordsof the English people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thespace covered in these volumes extends over one hundred and forty-four years,from the time when James Fig (the first acknowledged champion) opened hisamphitheatre in the Oxford Road, in May, 1719, to the championship battlebetween John Camel Heenan, the American, and Tom King, the English champion,at Wadhurst, in Kent, on the 10th of December, 1863.
The author trusts he may claim, without laying himself open to a charge ofegotism, exceptional qualifications for the task he has undertaken. Hisacquaintance with the doings of the Ring, and his personal knowledge of the mosteminent professors of pugilism, extend over a retrospect of more than forty years.For a considerable portion of that period he was the reporter of its various incidentsin Bell’s Life in London, in the Morning Advertiser, and various periodicalpublications which, during the better days of its career, gave a portion of theirspace to chronicle its doings. That the misconduct of its members, the degeneracyand dishonesty of its followers led to the deserved extinction of the Ring, he isfree to admit: still, as a septuagenarian, he desires to preserve the memory ofmany brave and honourable deeds which the reader will here find recorded.
A few lines will suffice to elucidate the plan of the work.
Having decided that its most readable form would be that of a series ofbiographies