54 MR. JOHN GULLY 



one part of the design ; the other, that in doing so it 

 may tempt some and restrain others following in the 

 wake of such pernicious examples.' 



The men, some incidents of whose career I shall now 

 set forth, are examples useful in the foregoing sense, as 

 those whose practices should be rather shunned than 

 followed. Messrs. Gully, Hill, Pedley, Arnold and 

 Turner were known at one time as ' The Danebury 

 Confederacy.' Certainly the most prominent and re- 

 markable of the group was Mr. John Gully, ex-prize- 

 fighter and erstwhile legislator. Mr. Gully was a 

 Gloucestershire man. He was born at the Crown 

 Inn, Wick, midway between Bath and Bristol — 

 kept by his parents. Afterwards his father became a 

 butcher at Bath, if Gully himself did not, for some 

 time, take an active part in the same business. The 

 first public action I can remember to have heard told 

 of him, was his soundly thrashing a big bully at Bristol 

 for unfairly setting his dog at a bull they were then 

 baiting. Gully, to his great surprise and delight, 

 afterwards heard that his defeated opponent was a 

 prize-fighter, the terror of the neighbourhood. 



Not improbably this initial success gave him the 

 love for ' the Noble Art,' for shortly afterwards we 

 hear of his entering the gladiatorial arena ; although 

 in a measure he was induced to do so through the 

 force of circumstances. For certain liabilities incurred 

 and forgotten, or which could not be met, he found 

 himself in a debtors' prison, from which he was 



