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
Johnson, for we shall retain his popular name, was certainly a hero
among heroes; and if Tom was inferior to Broughton in science, he came
certainly nearest of any man that had hitherto appeared to that phœnix
of pugilistic skill. Nature had endowed him with unusual strength of
body, and he was universally admitted to possess a careful and precise
style of hitting. His courage was of the highest order, and he possessed
a constitutional coolness of disposition and temper. Johnson was born in
1750, the very year that Jack Slack defeated his prototype, the champion
Broughton, and at an early age repaired to London, where he followed the
laborious occupation of a corn-porter, on a wharf near Old Swan Stairs.
His surprising strength was paralleled by his kindness of heart; and
while in this employment an anecdote is recorded of him which deserves
preservation. Johnson’s fellow porter was taken ill, and being burdened
with a wife and a numerous family, dependent on his labour for support,
they were likely to be reduced to want, had not Johnson immediately
undertaken (unknown to them) to do his fellow porter’s work, as well as
his own. The warehouses where the corn was deposited were situated at
some distance from the wharf, at the end of a court, denominated, from
its steepness, “Labour-in-vain Court,” and to which place Tom carried
every journey two sacks of corn instead of one, and gave the money to
his family, till his fellow porter was able to return to his work. We
would recommend this anecdote for extract in the next number of the
“Evangelical Magazine;” it can be much better authenticated than most of
the “lose-nothing” benevolences of their portrait-loving “labourers in
the vineyard.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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