Maddox once more retired to his vocation as a street dealer in fish, fruit, flowers, and other commodities then generally hawked through the scattered suburbs, now solidified into the enormous mass of the mighty metropolis—in plain prose, he followed his vocation of a costermonger, and was a noted character among the Westminster fraternity. Meantime, Bill Richmond, his old antagonist, had won himself a name and position among the list of boxers, and the blot on his ’scutcheon, from his early and summary defeat by Maddox, so sorely troubled him that he longed to rub it out by another tourney. He challenged the veteran, who accepted the defiance. They met August 9, 1809. John Gully seconded the veteran, and Bill Gibbons, his Westminster “pal,” was his bottle-holder. Yet one more illustration of the soundness of Captain Godfrey’s axiom, not to “trust battle to a waning age,” was given. Maddox in his fifty-fourth year, after fifty-two rounds, reluctantly gave in to his younger, heavier, and stronger adversary. In all the numerous contests in which Maddox had been engaged, his courage was pre-eminent. As a pugilist, he was conspicuous for determined rallying and quick hitting; and, though well acquainted with the science, he relied more on his true game than strictly following the principles of the art. It is but justice to his memory to state, according to the best information upon the subject, that pugilism was never disgraced by any of his public encounters, nor his character ever stained by making a cross. A short time previous to his death a benefit was got up for “the veteran” at the One Tun Room, Jermyn Street, which was well attended, and at which the first pugilists exhibited specimens of self-defence; among whom several of his old opponents were not backward in assisting him by their efforts, as Cribb, Bittoon, O’Donnell, Richmond, etc. The death of this courageous boxer was the consequence of an accident. The pipes (in those days hollowed trunks of elm trees) which conveyed water through the Borough Market were under repair, and the dark street “for in those days we had not got to gas,” left with a yawning chasm. Into one of these, while repairing to market before dawn, poor George was precipitated; he received a compound fracture of the thigh, erysipelas supervened, and our hero, for hero he was though humble, closed his career in St. Thomas’s Hospital. George was buried, by the subscriptions of some of his brother boxers in the churchyard of St. George the Martyr. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. CALEB BALDWIN, “THE PRIDE OF WESTMINSTER.”—1786 (1792)‒1816.