Tom S])ri)if/s Back Parlour. 17 



its palmy days. Battles were fought under the auspices of 

 the highest in the land, who backed a sport in which many 

 of them would not have minded taking the punishment 

 themselves, as, according to reUable accounts, many " sets 

 to " in Gentleman Jackson's rooms, between amateurs who 

 stood high in the fashionable world for what was called " a 

 bellyful," were next door to a fight. And I know that 

 many of the most mincing dandies, who u?ed to be seen 

 with their lavender kid gloves and curled whiskers and 

 moustaches, sitting in their cabs, w^ere ready and willing at 

 a moment's notice, at a race meeting or elsewhere, to jump 

 off their drags and to tackle a big bully twice their size. I 

 once heard an enthusiastic patron of the ring describing a 

 fight at which he lost his money, in these words as nearly as 

 possible : " I give you my honour, that for nearly twenty 

 minutes my man's left was hardly off the Black's face for a 

 moment, and I doubled my bets, I was so sure, when, to all 

 our surprise, the Black put in an upper cut, which knocked 

 my man out of time, and the sponge was thrown up at once. 

 It was such a splendid upper cut, that, although I lost my 

 money, I could not help admiring the man who gave the 

 blow, and I was so pleased that / should like to have had it 



The low sporting (?) publicans appear to have brought 

 the Bmg to its lowest ebb, just as they have done with 

 many local metropolitan races. Matches for small stakes, 

 which the backers could not afford to lose, the cheap trips 

 by steamboats into the marsh districts on the Thames, 

 brought together a crowd of costermongers and roughs, 

 who ruled the roost, and some of the scenes enacted caused 

 much public scandal, and the whole thing became a nuisance. 

 Many years ago much sensation was caused by the accounts 

 of the fight between Gaunt and Bendigo, when the Notting- 

 ham Lambs attended en masse, and the spectators were 

 c 



