Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): 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 1863Miles, Henry Downes
History
Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): 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
Miles, Henry Downes
Boxing
Pierce Egan tells us of a second fight (Hooper not being satisfied) for
100 guineas, at the same place (Harrow), a few weeks afterwards, which
“Owen won in equally good style.” We fail to find it in contemporary
records, though Pierce adds, “the stakeholder had his pocket picked of
the 100 guineas, and Owen never got a single farthing afterwards,” vol.
ii., p. 194.
The fame of Owen now spread, and a match for 25 guineas a-side was made
between Jack Bartholomew and Tom, which took place at Moulsey Hurst,
August 22, 1797. George Maddox and Goff seconded Owen upon this
occasion. It was a desperate battle, and highly spoken of at the time,
for the courage displayed on both sides; but here Tom was forced to
succumb; Bartholomew overfought him, both at close quarters and
out-fighting, and the contest was finished by Owen being hit out of
time.
On September 2, 1799, Tom entered the lists with one Houssa, a Jew, for
10 guineas a-side, on the race-ground at Enfield. Joe Ward was second to
Owen. But here again Owen was so desperately beaten, that, after a
struggle of forty minutes, he was incapable of coming to the scratch,
and the Jew was the conqueror.
Davis, of Deptford, an excavator, weighing fourteen stone, was beaten by
Owen in one hour, at Deptford, in December, 1799.
At a benefit which took place at the Horse-shoe and Hoop, Tower Hill,
Owen and Jack Bartholomew had some words about their fight at Moulsey.
The result was an exchange of blows. Pierce Egan tells us, “the smiles
of victory crowned the exertions of Owen in a quarter of an hour.”
Perhaps so—but old Tom was his own reporter.
At the Surrey Sessions, in January, 1805, Owen was indicted for a riot
and conspiracy, on Putney Common, in aiding and abetting Joe Berks and
Pearce to fight a pitched battle. The jury found Owen guilty, and he was
sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane.
From this period Tom figured as a trainer and second, and his judgment
was generally considered good in all matters pugilistic; he also
flourishes immensely in the benefit-taking line, and was, as the
“Historian” terms him, “fly to every movement on the board.”
We shall decline transferring the trash of the Apocrypha of Boxing
respecting the exploits of Owen, as no traces of them are to be found in
the “canonical books,”—which, we take to be the journals of the time.
Leaving him, therefore, as a blind guide, we proceed to the contest with
Mendoza. This, although a very foolish affair on the part of the Jew, as
the follies of great men, even in pugilism, outweigh in interest the
wiser doings of lesser ones, is our chief reason for giving Owen a
separate chapter in the history of pugilism—despite the immense,
intense, and absurd gaggery of his injudicious friend and biographer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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