Darts appears several times as a second during 1771 and the following years; notedly in a fight between Sam Peters, of Birmingham, and Rossemus Gregory, an Irishman, in which Darts seconded the Hibernian, but behaved so unfairly to save his man that Peters refused to fight on. The result will be found under PETERS. PETER CORCORAN We may as well here dispatch Peter Corcoran, to whom Pierce Egan has devoted several pages of fabrication in honour of “ould Ireland.” First he thrashed all the potato diggers in the vicinity of his father’s mud edifice; then he, and perhaps another, beat an English butcher who refused to let him and a friend have a shoulder of mutton at their own price: Pierce almost hints they had no money. It seems that Paddy not only thrashed the butcher “Master Steel” in a few minutes, but “shortly afterwards enjoyed his mutton (is the reader or the mutton roasted?) with as keen an appetite as if nothing had happened (which we suppose was the case), and next day pursued his journey to London.”[31] At Portsmouth, after a trip to sea, he performed a number of feats of strength; one among them was “_beating a whole press gang_, and breaking the lieutenant’s sword over his head.” Here’s a scene for a new “Black-eyed Susan.” The promotion of Billy Taylor’s sweetheart did not, however, fall to the lot of Peter, and “on leaving the navy, he came to London,” etc. The first authenticated notice of his name we find under the date of, “Sept. 4th (1769). A boxing match was decided between Turner, a pugilist who had beaten Bill Stevens, and Peter Corcoran, an Irishman, for £20 aside, which was won by _the former_.” The battle took place in Hyde Park, and is correctly given in “Fistiana,” though without a date. Now let us turn to “Boxiana,” p. 59, vol. i. “Peter beat one Turner, who fought him for £20, and although the latter had beaten the Nailer, yet, in the hands of Corcoran, he was soon disposed of.” Three others, “good men,” Dalton and Davis and “Smiler, the bricklayer,” were also, according to the same veracious chronicler, “beaten dreadfully.” These exploits bring us to Corcoran’s two “crosses” and his final thrashing. That with Bill Darts we have said enough about. Of this we read in a contemporary print—“After a little sparring, Corcoran gave Darts a blow on the side of the head, which drove him against the rail of the stage, when he immediately gave in. It was said that Darts had played booty, and none of the sporting men would afterwards back him; thus by one dirty action Darts lost all the fame he had been for so many years acquiring.” This reflection has a peculiar moral squint, as we have already said. “What about the Colonel who bought the poor fellow?”