242 SPORTING STORIES 



room to fight at all. The wonder was, not that they did 

 not kill each other, but that they were not trampled to 

 death. But not a hand was raised to interfere with or 

 favour either contestant. If Morrissey ever had a square 

 deal he had it then. Still, he was doomed. With Poole 

 on him as irremovably as if he had been frozen there, 

 Morrissey did his best for a few minutes. Then his voice 

 was heard, suffocated with blood. ' I'm satisfied,' it said. 

 The crowd opened of its own accord, and Poole got on his 

 feet. Morrissey got up without assistance. He was fright- 

 fully punished. He had to wipe the blood from his eyes 

 with his white shirt, which somebody handed to him, before 

 he could see to walk, Poole had got a terrible mauling 

 too. His worst hurt was a great gash in his cheek where 

 Morrissey had bitten him. Morrissey had to keep his bed 

 for weeks after the fight." 



On another occasion, when fighting a man named 

 M'Cann, Morrissey was thrown heavily. As he fell a 

 stove was overturned, a bushel of red-hot coals rolled out, 

 and Morrissey was forced on them. M'Cafin held him 

 there until the smell of burning flesh filled the room. The 

 bystanders threw water on the coals, and the gas and 

 steam rose in M'Cann's face and choked him. Morrissey 

 then had his own way, and pounded M'Cann into in- 

 sensibility. 



Now such brutal fights as those in which Morrissey dis- 

 tinguished himself would never have been tolerated in 

 England. The Prize Ring with its rules of fair play had at 

 any rate had so much influence on Englishmen that it had 

 produced an abhorrence of weapons like the revolver and 

 the bowie-knife, and of unmanly and treacherous assaults. 

 The leading prize-fighters of America were rowdies who 

 kept gambling-hells and night-houses in which robbery 

 and murder were common occurrences. Now I do not 

 pretend that there were not in London some dens of 

 iniquity where fools with more money than sense were 

 hocussed and robbed, and occasionally put out of the way 

 altogether, nor that professional pugilists were sometimes 

 the proprietors. But such men were the scum of the 

 profession — not its leading lights, as in New York. In 



