But first of all he came from Nottingham to London and practised with the gloves for a time. He then challenged Tass Parker for £200 a side. A match was arranged, but on the eve of it Bendigo was arrested and clapped into jail, and the forfeit money was paid to Parker. The evidence with regard to this arrest is somewhat conflicting. There is no doubt at all but that it was made at the instance of Bendigo’s elder brother, John Thompson: the reason generally given being that he was afraid lest Bendigo should injure his knee again. “Thormanby,” however, assures us that John’s motive was his abhorrence of the Ring. The Thompsons were a family of quite marked respectability: one of their uncles had been a dissenting minister.... Brother John was a well-to-do manufacturer, of the most unctuous rectitude, and there were two great troubles in his comfortable life. One was his prize-fighting and disreputable brother William and the second, sad to tell, was his mother. Mrs. Thompson was not at all the sort of person that you would anticipate in such a family. How she came to be the mother of John (and of other respectable children) passes comprehension. And Bendigo loved her dearly, and she was intensely proud of him. But she was so “coarse,” so violent--a big, jolly, generous creature. On the days when he was fighting Ben Caunt she would sit in her kitchen and listen to the clock ticking, and she would declare that it always ticked “Ben-dy Ben-dy.” “By Gosh,” she said, “if it’d ticked ‘Ben Caunt,’ I’d have oop and smashed its blasted face for it.” And we can see her, sitting there, comfortable, with her hair loose and untidy, her face red, big-mouthed, gap-toothed, with dark, small eyes, immoderately buxom--a jewel of a woman. After some negotiation (which in the ‘forties of last century were almost as long drawn out and as exasperating as the corresponding negotiations of to-day) a third battle between Bendigo and Ben Caunt was finally arranged for £200 a side and the belt. This encounter was fought out, after principals and expectant onlookers had been hounded by the police from two different places, at Sutfield Green in Oxfordshire. Now this battle with Ben Caunt has been branded as the most disgraceful affair in all the annals of the Ring, but it is representative of its period, and as such must be described.