216 "Be Senectute:' 



three years ago at a benefic in Cambridge Hall, Newman 

 S!:r33t, at which it wa3 announced th3 best men in London 

 would appear, and that the non-commissioned officers in the 

 Household Brigade would contend with single-sticks and 

 broadsword and the gloves. It was a high-priced benefit, 

 and the bill was an arrant sell, and the only thing which I 

 gained was sitting next to a bright, lively, elderly man who 

 evidently had been a frequenter of the ring and a performer 

 also, as, on speaking of Crib's final benefit a short time 

 before his death, which occurred somewhat over thirty years 

 ago, he said to me, " I put on the gloves with Tom Spring 

 that night." " Then who are you ? " I asked. " Jem Ward," 

 he replied. Accident threw me in his way the other day, 

 and I spent a couple of hours with him, and it seemed hardly 

 possible that I was talking to a man who received the 

 champion belt from Spring in 1831 at the Fives' Court, and 

 who had been in the ring as early as 1816, and had fought 

 White headed Bob, Tom Cannon, and men who seem to me 

 to have lived before the Christian era. He fought over 

 twenty battles and has led a regular active life from youth 

 upwards, and there he is now, one of nature's gentlemen, 

 just as poor Tom Spring was, in manner, fit to sit at 

 anyone's table, f uU of information, with innumerable anec- 

 dotes of days and people and things long past, and as he 

 is going to put his recollections on paper shortly, he will 

 tell his own story much better than I could. He is now an 

 inmate of the Licensed Victuallers' Asylum at Peckham, a 

 most admirable home, where he has his comfortable quarters 

 and goes on with his painting, which has been the hobby 

 of his life. He leads an active life in his seventy-ninth 

 year, holding a place of trust at suburban race meetings. 

 It is needless to say that he is abstemious in living, and his 

 great delight is a good cigar of an evening. He looks much 

 more like a retired country gentleman than what people of 



