Tom S])rin(js Back Parlour. 1 1 



help laughing, and so did he afterwards ; for he was sobbing 

 audibly, with the tears running down his eyes, and trim- 

 ming a game-cock for Peter Craidey. 



It was about the year 1845 or 1846,1 think, that a new 

 visitor was found at the Castle, as old Tom Cribb paid Spring 

 a very long visit. It was to me like talking to a man from 

 the dead, for if Spring was to me one of the heroes of the 

 past, what was Tom Cribb ? — antediluvian at least. Cribb 

 always occupied an easy-chair near the fire, and I had from 

 his own lips the accounts of his first fights and of his two 

 fights with Molyneaux, the black. 



Cribb told me that where he first worked, when a young- 

 ster of about eighteen, he was bullied and " set upon" — I 

 think it was in a coal wharf. Anyhov,-, the oppression be- 

 came so terrible that he could stand it no longer, and he 

 picked out three of the worst bullies, and matched himself 

 to fight them one after another, and— " God forgive me," 

 said Cribb, who was about sixty -eight when I first knew 

 him, "it was on a Sunday morning; but I did a good 

 Sunday morning's work, and polished them all oft' at five 

 shillings a man." 



Cribb was Spring's second when he fought Langan, and 

 told me all about that fight, as, in the words of BeJVs Life 

 " Cribb had promised to 2^^c7c up Spring." Anyone can 

 read the account of Spring and Langan' s fights in JB ell's 

 Life for 1824, and tremendous fights they must have been ; 

 but to show how the old school stuck to one another. Spring, 

 a few days after the tAventieth anniversary of that fight, 

 gave me a liqueur glass of neat whisky from a keg which 

 Jack Langan — who became a prosperous man in the whisky 

 trade — had sent to him as a token of respect and affection, 

 and in memory of the fight. 



Tom Cribb, who had taken his farewell benefit in 1822, 

 appeared once more in the ring in 1845 or 1846, I think, 



