Tom Sjmnfs Back Parlour. 23 



of good, and that the old rough -and-tough school brought 

 to perfection a system of boxing which is not likely to die 

 out. To show how the Ring was backed fifty years ago, it is 

 recorded in the fight between Spring and Langan, on Wor- 

 cester racecourse, that the magistrates met and determined 

 to allow the fight ; and a short time since, a venerable old 

 gentleman told me that when a great fight took place at 

 the back of the " Queen Charlotte," on the London-road, 

 near Andover — a celebrated fighting country near Stock- 

 bridge, — a grand exhibition of boxing was held at the 

 Andover To^vn Hall, under the patronage of the Mayor and 

 CorjDoration, on the evening before the fight, and that the 

 Mayor, having been driven into granting a warrant for the 

 arrest of the men, lent the prompters of the fight a map of 

 the borough, so that they might fight outside the limits 

 of his jurisdiction, and went, with many of the Cor- 

 poration and the Town Clerk, in a w^aggon, with a luncheon, 

 and sat by and saw the fight out. Some few years since I 

 witnessed at St. James's Hall, on the occasion of a benefit 

 for the Soldiers' Female Orphan School, an exhibition {inter 

 alia) of boxing between soldiers of the Life Guards and the 

 Blues, which for science and pluck were unsurpassed. A 

 great many ladies were present, and at first they did not 

 know whether to be pleased or not ; but, after a round or 

 two, the waving of their handkerchiefs showed what they 

 thought of it. 



Fighting was a bad trade on the whole, as a very large 

 number who did rise were wholly uneducated, and got 

 money, and drank themselves out. Poor Tom Sayers was 

 one of the last specimens of that school. It seems but 

 yesterday that I saw a well-known county member and 

 county magistrate collecting sovereigns in a hat for him in 

 the lobby of the House of Commons in 1860, after his fight 

 with Heenan, w^hen, as the story goes, Lord Palmerston 



