The Rest Is History - 593. The Fight of the Century

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Why did two men - John Heenan and and Tom Sayers - illegally meet in a field in Hampshire, in 1860, to brutally fight one another, captivating Britain in the process? What can the fight tell us about the nature of Britishness in the 19th century? Was this the birth of boxing? Who won the infamous boxing match? And, how did the fight change the course of British sport, forever? In this week’s episode, Tom and Dominic are joined by Professor Robert Coles, to discuss one of the most legendary clashes in English history… Visit ⁠https://www.store.steampowered.com⁠ and search for ‘Total War Rome’ to buy now. Go to fuseenergy.com/history to switch your energy to Fuse and get £20 credit. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at therestishistory.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get tickets now. Way down in Merry England, the home of Johnny Bulls. Where the English drink their glasses, they drink them brimming full, saying here's to Merry England, likewise our Britain's brave, the champions we are, o'er the land and o'er the wave. Way down in Merry England, all in the bloom of spring, where English burly champions stood stripped off in the ring to fight that noble Heenan, the gallant son of Troy, to try his British muscle on the bold Benicia boy. Two heavy flags were hoisted, that floated her the ring. On one there was a tiger already for a spring. On the other was an eagle, a gallant bird she was, for she had a bunch of thunderbolts and held them in her claws.

Oh, the pennies they were tossed and their melee did begin. Their bets on Sayers and Heenan, two-on-one, came rushing in. They fought like noble heroes till one received a blow, which caused a crimson tide from young young young. Hennon's nose to flow. The first blood for Johnny Bull, Old England shouts for joy. But the following cheers arose for the bold Benicia boy. The tiger rose within him, like lightning in his eye, saying, smile away, old England,

but Johnny, mind your eye. So that's the beginning of a lovely poem. It's the beginning. Yes, it's the beginning song. How long does it go on for? It goes on for much, it goes on for 42 rounds. It's a poem called Heenan and Sayers, and it was by Mrs. Elwood Nickerson, written in about, we don't know, about 1860, 61, in New England. And this poem is celebrating the fight of the century, the clash between Tom Sayers and John Heenan on the 17th of April 1860.

Tom, are you a great boxing aficionado? Not hugely, but as you will know, I am a fan of British muscle, because I've actually just come from the gym where I've, been toning my British muscle. Oh, that's a nice image. So I feel absolutely prepped and ready for this. Good. I mean, one thing I am, well, at least I used to be a fan of, was going off to fields in Hampshire.

Right. To engage in illegal activities. Oh, my word. Oh, no. So as name checked by Jarvis Cocker in his famous song, Sorted for Ease and Whiz. Right. This is a lovely image. And reading about this fight, which takes place illegally in a field in Hampshire, I, I

I couldn't help but think about how, you know, how the traditions of Mary England run deep. So people, you know, in the 90s weren't gathering to watch boxing matches, but they were gathering to celebrate. To go to raves. Going to raves. So there's kind of deep continuities, aren't there? Frankie. Well, I didn't expect that to, that angle to be the angle of choice.

Well, I've introduced British muscle in ease and whiz. So we thought we would dig into the story behind this extraordinary clash between Tom Sayers and John Heenan. what it tells us about Britain, America, Britishness, sport. It's about sport above all, isn't it? It's about... But it's about what sport means. But also in the long run, how it comes to be tamed and codified and in a way made kind of posher, as we will see.

Yes, I think that's true. And we are joined by very much a friend of the rest is history. So listeners who heard our episode on Orwell will remember him. He is Professor Robert Coles, Emeritus Professor at Dumfutonford University, and author of the brilliant book, This Sporting Life, Sport and Liberty in England, 1760 to 1960, in which this fight plays a kind of lead role as a whole chapter about this fight. Rob, welcome back to the rest of his history. Thank you. Great to be back.

So what's going on? You have, to set the scene, it's very early in the morning. It's the 17th of April, 1860. It's a Tuesday. It's in the middle of nowhere, a field in Hampshire. All of these people have gathered to watch these two men knock seven bells out of one another. What is the story behind all this? Yeah, if you want to know what's going on in this field in Hampshire in 1860,

what you don't do is read Mrs. Nickerson's poem because it's quite clear that she's not been within a thousand miles of this fight, which took place the year before. It's billed across the Atlantic is the first international heavyweight championship. It's been talked about for 12 months before, and it will be talked about for 40, 50 years afterwards. Generally speaking, journalists and others called it the fight of the century. In many ways, it was really none of those things. and the American, the Irish American who'd come across to do his business, John Camel Heenan, had only had one professional fight in his life, which he'd lost.

So he was a novice, really. His claim to be there was he had a talent for violence. And, right. I don't know if you've seen the wonderful Scorsese film Gangs of New York, but Heenan had operated within those gangs as a minder, as an enforcer, as a publican by day, and a hard man by night. So he was just a hard case, who was chancing his look against the English champion.

The English champion was a very different kettle of fish. Tom Sayers was an out-and-out professional. He'd been fighting since he was 16, born in Brighton, born in the Lanes, and Brighton started fighting at 16 up on the day. downs on the race courses, what the press called casual wages, you know, five minutes done in a corner, money changes hands. In his 20s, Sayers had moved to London, where he had plied his trade as a bricklayer in Camden. Camden was new then, the railway was coming, and Tom did his work

there. He also did part-time fighting and amassed enough money to become a publican. The laurel tree in Bayham Road, Camden, was his pub. And he got married and he had children. And in 1850, aged 24, he had his first out-and-out professional fight. By the time he's facing Heenan in that field, 7 o'clock in the morning, April 1860, he'd had 14 fights, of which he'd lost only one. So what are they there to do? Well, what they're there to do is the most awful thing it would seem possible to imagine.

They were there to inflict such injuries on each other with their bare hands that one of them was going to be incapable of standing up. Or at any rate, coming to the centre of the ring, the scratch mark, and standing up in that position. That's what they were there to do. Behind this fight really was the New York press and the London press. In New York, we had a sporting newspaper called Porter's Spirit of the Times, and they thought in Heenan they had someone who could relieve the English of their own championship. In Tom Sayers, Bell's life, which was the leading sporting newspaper, Bells thought they had a man who could restore the prize ring to some kind of,

honor and respectability, which it had lost in the 1850s and 40s. In the event, both newspapers were wrong, as we shall see. So anyway, Heenan makes it to London, December 1859, and the two men meet at Owen Swift's public house, the horseshoe in Titchbourne Street. If I can just jump in, Owen Swift, he's a fighter himself who has killed people the ring. Is that right? Yeah. Swift has killed three men in the ring. And the last one being Brighton Bill. And he spent his time before magistrates and always got away with it. Rob, how does he get away with it? Well, the legal position of fighting was very unclear. Judges absolutely detested it

and wanted it finished with. But magistrates found it a lot easier to turn a blind eye. And as we know the police in the middle of the 19th century were not organized or as well informed as they might be. And our magistrates turning a blind eye to it because they are fans, because they're enthusiasts, because they think that it's an expression of British manliness or what's the reason? I don't think so, Tom. I think the reason they're turning a blind eye is, although fights are strictly speaking a breach of the peace and they're very nervous about disorder, stopping one would probably be more dissold at it. Oh, I see. Right.

And more breach of a piece. But above all else, of course, you've got aristocratic patronage. And if you're a, you know, if you're a local country vicar who's also a magistrate, stepping in to stop a fight where there are lords and dukes and gentlemen, you wouldn't last long. So magistrates turned the blind eye, judges pressed for it to be stopped. At law, fighting was odd, mainly it was a breach of the peace, or it could be common assault, or it could be riot, or worse still, it could be manslaughter.

And as the century wore on, more and more cases for manslaughter were brought to court. But nothing much happened. I've actually got some boring figures here, which I once spent my time counting. out of 30 tried at the old Bailey for manslaughter in the ring between 1856 and 75. Out of the 30 men, 13 were acquitted and 17 were convicted, but all of them got less than six months in jail. Right. If you're a Carter or a laborer, you tend to get convicted. If you're an old Etonian schoolboy and you've just killed a fellow student, as did happen to Lord Shaftesbury's youngest brother in the 1820s, who was killed in a 60 round fight, you get let off.

So that is like the one in Tom Brown School Days with, what's it, slugger, slugger somebody, slugger somebody has a fight behind the gym school? Slugger. Slugger. Slugger, that's right. Slugger Williams fights Tom. Thomas Hughes, who wrote it, knew exactly what he was writing about when he did that. Sorry, we took you off feast, didn't we, by getting into this. So they've met for the first time at Swift's Pub, the two contestants, Heenan and Sayers. And Sayers, exactly. And so the fight is going to happen. But at this point, nobody knows when and where it will happen.

Which, again, it's like raves, isn't it? That people know something's going to happen, but they don't quite know how to get there. And people are waiting to be texted the number and the address. places like that. So it's a bit like that. Exactly. That's a great analogy, actually, a rave. It's exactly that, Tom. It's a rave. Everyone's turning up at London Bridge at 4 a.m. on the morning of the fight. And nobody knows where the fight's going to happen, but they're all buying a ticket for Farmbra. And Rob, when you say everyone, I mean, you really do mean everyone. So Dickens's friend, people say Lord Palmerston's going. Yeah, the Prince Wales. What is the class of person who is who is

going down on this train to this boxing match? Because it's secret, no one knows where it is. But, of course, everyone does know where it is. Let's just say reports are rather mixed and confused. But generally speaking, we know there's an aristocratic element. We know locals down in Hampshire would probably turn up just to see the play. It's a kind of festival. It's a kind of fair.

And then we've got mainly what was called at the time, the fancy or more intellectual people were called the cognoscenti that is there's a kind of following around fighting which is to do with betting it's to do with former fighters known as pugs or pugilists it's to do with aristocrats

who just will gamble on anything these people know the odds and they'll be at all the big fights from of course the word the fancy we get the word fan So they reckon there's about 1,500 passengers on two trains coming out of London Bridge, 35 carriages on each. Dickensman, I think he's called Holland's Head, claims to be sitting in a compartment with a well-known lord, a well-known poet, and a well-known politician. But he doesn't name names.

Certainly, when they got to the fight and walked half a mile across muddy fields, and they were met by more security who were handing out chairs to the aristocrats who deserved them and no chairs to the rest. So basically, when you got to the scene of the fight, you could either watch the law being broken sitting down or you could watch the law being broken standing up. And people are placing bets. So betting is obviously an enormous part of this. Is there betting happening in the field? I mean, are there bookmakers there, you know, show, cutting out the odds and stuff. Yes.

The most important thing to get a fight going, Dom, is steak money. So the two sides place steak bets with each side. And the winner will take the other side's steak. That's the real money in the formal and official money in prize fighting. So Tom's side put £500, £50 pound ago, at a number of London pubs. and Heenan's side did exactly the same. Of course, there would be informal and relentless betting on the fight as the fight progressed. This made it very, very dodgy business. Because the fighters were in the fight and could hear how the odds were changing, ringside, they could themselves change

the outcome of the fight. So I just wanted to ask you about that. I mean, what is to stop one of them throwing it? Nothing. Right. So how is that regulated or is it not regulated? Well, according to London Rules, 1839, which they're fighting by, you're not meant to go down in one knee unless you've had a proper punch. But how do you measure a proper punch? The only person who knows a proper punch has been landed is the giver and the receiver. If the receiver wants to cheat, which in the parlance is called a cross and go down and lose and is bet against himself, he's made a lot of money. Yeah. So he's not going to say it wasn't a proper punch. Of course, it was a proper punch. And the giver of the punch is not going to say it wasn't the proper punch because by giving this punch, he's won the fight. So there's nothing to stop ringside, of course, betting, shouting the odds. And it's nothing to stop a single fighter doing a cross.

Would a fighter like Tom Sayer, say, have a reputation as a man who was unlikely to do that? He did have that reputation, and that's why Bell's life wanted him to be reincarnated as a great, a great Englishman. But in truth, the last fight he had before Heenan was against them a novice, really. And apparently Tom had been seen dancing the night away the night before, and there was rumors of a cross that he was not going to be serious about it. He was going to, in the parlance, he was going to chuck it. But in the event, Tom didn't chuck it. fight was over in five minutes. So the crowd has gathered, all of these people, and it's about seven o'clock they come out.

Now, just to give us a sense of, you know, what they look like and stuff, you might think, because this is the 19th century or they don't take it very seriously, they haven't been properly training. They have been training. They've been training for months, haven't they, on the downs, Tom Sayers on the Sussex Downs, Heenan in Wiltshire. And what does a training routine involve for a 19th century boxer? Well, they went into training in February, so they had two, three months training.

Tom, you notice, went on the downs with the racing fraternity and then went up the new market, again with the racing fraternity. There is a very old and honorable connection between riding, horse being, well, jockeying and fighting. Both sides have to keep their weight down, and jockeys knew how to do that in, fighters took that seriously. Tom's methods were exactly what a jocky of the time would do to keep fat off and keep muscles a bit like Tom's really nice and brisk and shiny. I'm interested to know what they do, whether it compares to my routine. It's about starving yourself, basically. It's about weights. It's about no sex.

I don't know how that goes with you. No coffee No masturbation Hold on Rob Rob Rob I mean how do people know this Are they writing it down Are they training manuals

Yes there are There are training manuals How are they referring to it? Beastliness They call it masturbation It's a very old word I'm amazed I thought Victorians never talked about it

We're not talking about Victorians quote unquote here We're talking about the other side of Victorian life They took a massive pill before the fight a massive blue pill for constipation. But actually,

the thing is, Tom, they weren't doing anything that jockeys weren't doing. This was all understood and known and it wasn't unusual, actually. You know, the greatest ingest jockey of the century, Fred Archer, died

by just being overzealous in his training routines. Too many pills. Too many pills. Not enough food. They would make themselves sick. I mean, all the old tricks, which were only sadly,

familiar with now. So they did that from a few months. Heenan couldn't settle anywhere. Everywhere he went to train, the constabulary told him to move on. So his camp was never settled. He went right through the Midlands and ended up in Derbyshire for a night in jail. And was that because the constabulary were being patriotic and trying to stop him from training? Well, the thing was you go back to this old thing about a breach of the peace.

Wherever he went, there was a crowd. And the crowd, you know, were not always charming or gentle with him and his American entourage. Anyway, he finally got arrested at his Trent Locke near Derby training camp. And he was put out on bail for more money than the actual steak he'd put down for the fight. Anyway, he kept going. And he was used to this. It was exactly the same in the United States. Fighting was such a hole in a corner affair.

You had to keep moving. You had to always be on, watch out for the Rosas. One important thing, I just have to take you one day back before the fight. On the night of the 16th of April, 1860, Heenan turned up at Nat Langham's pub in London, the Cambrian. Now, why did he go to Langham's pub, the Cambrian? Because Langham was the only man who'd ever beaten Sayers. Oh, right.

It came from Hinkley in Leicestershire. He was a framework nidder, and he'd taken Sears the full distance in 1853 and beaten him. So there's a bit of needle here that, you know, Heenan goes to the man who beat him. In the same sense, the one man to beat Heenan in his only fight, John Morrissey, he was in Sayers' corner. They've got inside information. I love the account you give of the entourages that both men have. So on the morning of the fight, they meet up, they shake hands. Hennon has the stars and stripes in his corner.

And Sayer, you say, has the royal standard on a cream background, which is tremendous. And I think is something that British boxers should reintroduce. But 729, they come to the middle. And Sayer has his two seconds behind him, who you describe as being like wicket keepers. So that's people who stand up to the bowling and cricket. Plus his manager, his professional walker, who is his trainer. And my favorite detail, someone called the bird man making queer halloo sounds in a cape. What's going on with the bird man?

I know. What's he doing? Who is he? I know. And why do boxers not have bird men now in capes and dwarfs and things? Well, he's going, hello, hello, hello. Why? Well, I think it certainly beats Heenan's corner, which is a bit boring.

He's got his uncle, two friends, and a man called Billy Mulligan, who the New York Times calls a very determined-looking fellow. Personally, I'd rather be with Jimmy Holden and the Birdman. So the fight is ready to begin. Should we take a break at this point? Tension is massive, but when we come back, the bell will sound. The fight will begin, and we will see who wins. Can we do one thing just before that?

I've got to put in, Tom, that it's what they do before they actually come to the fight is they strip, which in the parlance is they peel, by which I mean they take off their shirts. And that's really important before a fight, because when you see a man's body, then you see how serious they are about what's going to happen. Right. And the point here is both men are in superb condition. So Tom Sayers has been daubing himself with vinegar, hasn't he? So he's described us looking like a square brick of walnut. So he's kind of, he's dyed himself with vinegar. Is that right, Rob?

It was an old believer, skin-hardening properties of vinegar. And as for Heenan, he's incredibly pale. And of course, he's five inches taller, two and a half stones heavier, eight or nine years younger. The Times called it as the two men stood together as a horse to a hen. Wow. Unbelievable tension. So who will win?

The horse or the hen? Come back in a few minutes to find out. This episode is brought to you by Sega and Creative Assembly. To celebrate 25 years of creating award-winning video games, Total War, Rome 2 and Total War Rome Remastered will be on sale on Steam. Get Rome remastered at 75% off and get Total War Rome 2 for 80% off from the 21st of August to the 4th of September. Visit Steam and search for Total War Rome to buy now. The discount is valid for a limited time only.

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Welcome back to the rest is history. We are in a field in Hampshire on the 17th of April 1860. The crowd has assembled. the two men have peeled Sayers and Heenan. Rob, take us through what happens next. Well, they both walk to the center of the ring, so called. Of course, it's not a ring. It's actually a rectangle.

They go to the center of the ring, and Heenan says, Beautiful Morning to the man is about to try and kill him. And Tom says, want to bear on it? Which I loved. They go at it according to London Prize Ring rules. Just to be clear for listeners, these are not the rules that govern boxing in the way that they do now. So we'll come to how those laws evolve. These are London rules, which sounds like a kind of spy thriller, but it's a particular kind of fighting, isn't it?

So what are London rules? What are the boxers allowed to do? So the first set of printed rules, Tom, are in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and they were called Broughton's Rules, 1743. And London rules were in the evolution of Broughton's rules of 1743. Basically, there were no weight categories. So there was no heavyweights, lightweights, middle weights. They were just matches. And the match was anybody who was willing to put their money up behind a man,

fighting another man. So clearly, Sayas was 5'8 and 11 stone. He was actually a middleweight. But he couldn't get middleweights to fight him. Or more accurately, they couldn't get. people to back them to fight him. So he's fighting, it's a middleweight fighting a heavyweight because London rules have no weight categories. The second thing is there's no fixed rounds. The round ends when one man drops to one knee and he can do that at any point and get a 30 second

breather. But there aren't points. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't penalise him. There's no points in London rules. You just have to really reduce a man to such a state that he can't come to scratch, even though he's had his 30-second breather. There was less force in this because they were bare knuckle. And in addition to hitting with your bare hand, you could throw, you could wrestle. But what you couldn't do, this is where London rules civilized things a bit, you couldn't bite, you couldn't butt, you couldn't kick, you couldn't gouge, you couldn't strangle, and, of course, you couldn't hit below the waist.

And you say in your book that prize fighters also shave themselves. So like the Macedonians, they shave off their beards so that their opponents can't grab them by their beards. Yes, if you are in an exchange, which is part boxing and part wrestling, it doesn't help to have long hair or beard. In Mendoza's famous fight, I think it was 1795 with John Jackson, gentleman John Jackson, Jackson ended the fight by swinging him round by his hair. So Mendoza's long hair didn't do him proud on that occasion. So you could always tell a fighter by his cropped hair and Krugert knows. That's the way to do it.

And they also have spiked boots, is that right? Yeah. The thing is, it's really, given that the rosas are always onto you or are liable to be onto you, fights can start in one county. end in another one because the two fighters would actually be on the run. So it's quite obvious that you couldn't fight indoors. It was just too risky. So most fights were outside where if the police turned up, you could run for it. So the boots were spiked. Your head was held back. Your fists were low, but up. Your feet were turned out. In other words, you were well turned out. And you would

Bob and Weave and Duck until first punch was landed. And the first punch in this fight actually went to the old pro, Sayers, who landed one square on Heenan's nose. Knobbing, it was called, in the parlance. Knobbing in the parlance and applause in the crowd. So a knobbing, knobbing is when you hit someone on the nose? Flat on the nose, yeah. and you draw, it was never called blood, of course, it was always called Ruby or Clarit.

So you knob to draw Ruby. At that point, Heenan grabbed Sayers by the neck, but Sayers punched his way out of it, and apparently both men felt at the floor laughing, round one over. And there's no limit on the number of rounds, is that right? So if they want to fight for 10, 20, 30, this case, 40 plus rounds, they can because looking at Sayers' record, he knows that this could go on for a long time because he has had bouts that have lasted two hours, two and a half hours, I mean, mind-boggling, how exhausting and unbelievably dangerous, that must be.

Well, it is dangerous, of course. They're aiming for your head, your temple, below your ear. they're trying to blind you with hits, jabbing. I mean, gouging's out, but jabbing's in, jabbing to the eyes, or peg to the stomach, as it was called, or they want to throw you and land heavily on you, or they want to fib, which means getting your head under one arm and punching away in the face with the other. And that was called having a suit enchancery. Is that really what they call that? Yeah, suit and chancery is holding your head under my arm, let's put it that way, and I hit you with my right hand. With your British muscle.

Oh, there's a cross buttock, how about that one, where you throw a man over your buttock in effect, and then you land on him very heavily. Right. Actually, Dom, this isn't, this isn't you. I don't know about you guys, but this is how schoolboys fought when I was a kid. It was all head and chancery and crossbuttock. Yeah. Not that much punching, actually. It was more about wrestling someone down and getting them to say, getting them to say sorry. Yeah. Headlocks. It's all about headlocks, isn't it?

So essentially, you win the match by getting someone flat on the ground. But to do that, you have to make his knuckles have to be broken. His face, you know, maybe his eyes so swollen that he can't actually see. And as Dominic says, that might take, well, as it does, in this case, it takes what, two hours, two and a half hours? Yeah, you have to make him incapable. basically and he has to be able to make it to the scratch mark himself not carried there was a terrible case of manslaughter where a man was carried to the scratch by his seconds where he was basically beaten to death the thing is though you've got to just remember this these fights are not as horrible and violent as they might sound because the new queensbury

rules ring was in certain ways more violent because because you had the 10th second rule on a knockout. So fighters were looking to hit your head so hard that your brain would hit your skull and cause concussion. That's what a CO is. And all the great fighters who followed Heenan and Sayers were CO specialists. And in a 10 second count over a three-minute round,

there was nowhere to hide. I think it was Ali who said, you know, you can run, but you can't hide. In the old ring, if you were getting tired or you were hurt, you would just go down on a knee, pretend you'd been hit. But in the modern ring, you just had to keep going until such time as the three minutes were up. You also make the point, don't you, the difference between this fight, let's say, the Sayas Heenan fight and a modern fight. Because they're not wearing gloves, they are hurting their hands every time they land. a punch, which counterintuitively, to me, because I think of bare-knuckle boxing with kind of, with horror, but actually the punches are much, they're not exactly pulling their

punches, where you are, if your knuckles are bleeding. Well, this is the point, that your punch is perhaps not carrying the force. I mean, you've already made this point, rather that it's not carrying the force that it would in the modern ring, is that right? Yeah, that's what, I've never seen a bare-knuckle fight, and I don't want to, but I've read, I've read about this. Apparently, the old PR prize ring punch was very direct and very straight. It couldn't hit you from the side because then you would probably break some fingers.

So it was a fib, it was short and sharp and in the face or in the eyes. A jab, it was a jab rather than a knockout swing. The swing really could break your hand. So I'm sure that by this point, listeners will be dying to know who wins. Well, it's not clear. That's the problem. We go 42 rounds, more or less in the manner we've been discussing. There's two big things happen in the 42 rounds.

The first thing is Sayers loses the use of his right arm. He thinks it's broken. The crowd thinks it's broken. It turns out not to be broken, but it's certainly out of action. So we've got to imagine Sayers now holding the arm across his chest and basically keeping out of Hennon's grab and trying to jab him in the eye. By around 37, the second thing happens,

Heenan by now is pretty much blinded by the jabbing, and he grabs, say as he grabs him, and pulls him to the ropes where he wraps his rope around his neck and basically 195 pounds leans on the rope, which is on the neck. Now, believe it or not, this is actually unlawful according to London rules.

I was wondering. You're not allowed to murder your opponent in the ring. And it's at this point that the crowd surge into the ring and basically the fight stops. There are rumours that

also at this point, Morrissey, who you remember is the man who stopped Heenan in New York, Morrissey jumps in and cuts the ropes. So that's not going to happen again. There's chaos in the ring.

The police finally move in to stop murder. And both fighters basically leg it across the field. But it's amazing, they're in a condition to leg it. I was about to say, one man's got no arm. The other man is blind. The other one's just been strangled by a rope. They're presumably dripping with Ruby and exhausted. Yes, Ruby everywhere.

Well, Heenan has to be led by the hand as he legs it across the field because he can't really see. And Sayers is, actually Sayers in a decent condition apart from his arm, which is swelling alarmingly. They hopped back to London. Heenan is put to bed for two days. But not our Tom. Our Tom's up the next morning at Owen Swift asking for his money because he thinks he's won it. On what basis does he think he's won it?

Because he's just been strangled with by a rope. Disqualification. disqualification for the American, surely, Tom. It's a difficult one, isn't it? I mean, you're fighting someone who's just wandering around the ring like a zombie, can't see, and you're peppering him until he finally grabs you. I mean, the whole thing is a tortured farce. And in real terms, it's effectively the end of the prize ring.

Am I not right in saying that for the press on both sides of the Atlantic, they say, well, like, and I'm quoting from your chapter, Sportswriters on both sides of the Atlantic were already busy turning a nasty case of common assault into a heroic draw between two great sporting nations. So there's obviously been a lot of national pride riding on this. And basically, both papers on both sides of the Atlantic are happy to say, what a tremendous occasion this was reflects greatly to, you know, redounds to the credit of both great Anglo-Saxon nations. Hurrah for Britain and America. And they're both equally, they're both champions. Is that basically the long and short of it?

Yeah, absolutely, that's right. They started the fight, the press started the fight. It's in the London and New York Press once a week for a whole year before it takes place. And then it's never out of the press afterwards. And the whole point is both men get a replica belt, both men get a reception at the Alhambra Theatre in London, where they walk around the stage arm and arm. Hennon having to stoop a little for his diminutive opponent with his white cane. And these awful sickly speeches are made on behalf of two proud fighting nations.

And what about the bettors? I mean, how does that divvied out? Well, we don't know about the betting, Tom, because it's so unofficial. But the point about boxing, because there's only two men, the odds are all. was short. So you're not going to get massive returns. It was two to one when they started. It was seven to four the day before. It was two to one on the day. We don't know about that. They might have even bet against themselves. We never know these things. Right. The stake money was what they were both wanting. And I have to confess, I don't actually know what happened to that.

Before we talk about what it all means, the two men themselves, they are forever, I mean, neither of them live very long after the fight, do they? They are both. They are both. Both celebrities, and they're linked in the popular imagination, aren't they? They're sort of seen as brothers in arms. Tom has a succession of kind of benefits and basically pantomime clown appearances at which Heenan will sometimes put in a kind of, you know, he'll turn up as a sort of special guest star. That's a long tradition, isn't it? Frank Bruno as Widow Twanky or whatever he was playing in the 90s.

All these men knew about tights and makeup. but there's no doubt about it. And the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton was London's biggest and Dickens' favourite. Dickens says, going to the Britannia's like going to an Italian opera. Nothing interesting happening on the stage. It's all off the stage where it's happening. And Tom becomes a fixture at the Britannia with his two mules,

Barney and Pete. He's in loads of pantomimes. I mean, his opponent, Heenan, married the great star, American, star, a kind of 19th century Barbara Streisland, Ada Mencken. He married her. She was a real big theatre star, whereas Tom comes from a much different tradition. The nearest he ever got to a woman and the theatre was when his wife hit him in the face outside the Britannia. So the two very different men, but they both are theatrical stars, they're ornaments to the theatre. Tom goes on the stage and Heenan has two more fights, which he loses.

The fight with Tom is considered a draw. So poor old Heenan never actually manages to win one. They both die aged 38, 39 of TB. I don't think their lifestyles were particularly wonderful. Tom got £3,000 actually raised by Lloyds, and the Houses of Parliament. So as a true English hero is going to be all right for money. But he took all that money and put it into a travelling circus in the US.

But he took a very bad year to do it. He did in 1862. So he couldn't travel around by a civil war was raging. He's in Hennon's Corner in 1863, in Hennon's fight with Tom King, which was probably a cross. By 1864, he's a diabetic. and an alcoholic, living with his sister in Camden. And he dies in November, 1865, and Camden High Street of TB.

And is he remembered? I mean, is his death greeted with mourning and parades? There's a massive funeral. Massive funeral, isn't there, Rob? Yes, I mean, the fight of the century was in 1860. 1865 was called the funeral of the year. Something between, they reckon about 10,000 people followed the casket. Is his dog there?

Lion? Yes, Lion, the dog. I am Tom Sayer's dog. Who's dog are you? It's an invitation to fight, really, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. His dog is there, and his pony, and his phaeton. And what about his mules?

You just threw that out. Where are these mules come from? And what about the bird man? I think they put the bird man in a box. The mules were not at the funeral, although he did have 16 horses, but they were all sold at auction after the funeral. So Lyon went for 30 pounds to a North London publican. Tom Cribb's belt, which had been presented to Tom at his...

So Tom Cribb is the great... I mean, he's the archetype of a British boxer, isn't he? We could do a whole programme on Cribb. Cribb is John Bull, and John Bull is William Cobbert, and William Cobbit is Tom Crib. I mean, they are the great figures of the Napoleonic period. Well, Tom's got his belt, his silver belt. They sell that for 55 pound, 10 shillings. Tom's mule goes for 13 pounds, and his mayor, a Duncob, for 23 pounds.

That's after the funeral. There's a fight at Highgate Cemetery Gates when it seemed that the 10,000 people weren't all going to be allowed in it once. But apparently, once the fight was over, it was very, very seemly and quite respectable. Apparently, his wife went. Nat Langham, his Victor of 1853. He was there dressed in a red Garibaldi shirt. And of course, wonderfully, the spectator called the whole thing disgusting. This is the sport of harpies and capitalists.

Oh, my word. Well, I mean, you could say it's maybe not wrong. And what about Heenan? Heenan died 1873 in Wyoming. Yeah. And again, presumably there's been a lot of hard drinking, a lot of brawling. He hasn't led the healthiest, most slubriest of lives. Mind you, a lot of people die of TP in the 19th century. It's the great killer, particularly, I mean, you know, of writers,

poets, and it seems fighters. So I guess the question is, what does it mean? So what does all this, as a historian, you've written lots about working class life and about Englishness and all these kinds of things? What does this tell us? Because the chapter in which you, in the book, in which you discuss it. It's called simply bottom. Englishmen had bottom and par excellence had bottom. So what do you mean by that? Well, what they meant by it was the ability to give and take, particularly take punishment. So you compare it to the square that the British army forms when being attacked by cavalry. So famously it happens at the Battle of Waterloo. And the boxer, you say, is often compared to the British soldier in a square.

I think what it means, Tom, boxing, like all sports, goes very deep into our consciousness, into our imagination, into the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. And this might be described as the plebeian version of national history. It's the plebeian version of honour, the honour fight that when it comes, comes to it, the English can give an account of themselves. And it spreads everywhere, obviously,

and not surprisingly, it seeps into the army and its sense of itself. Not the cavalry, note, which is a very different kind of fighting, but the regiments of the line. I don't know how much military history you know, but the regiments of the line had only one job, really, and that was to walk forward into hell, really. And when they decided to stop, and unfurled their colours and fire, all they could show really was stoicism or bottom. Bottoms are really a plebeian form of stoicism. And the square was an example of that.

The British Wellington considered it a marvellous tactic to form a square where you could fire continuously at those around you. Unfortunately, enemies loved the British square because they just had a red square to pour everything they could into it. There's one meaning for you, Dom, one meaning. But what I also found fascinating reading your chapter was that even as the boxer is being equated

with John Bull, with the British Square, with a particular idea of Englishness, there are also figures who are more ambivalent, who are also being enshrined as gentlemen. So you mentioned Daniel Mendoza with his long hair who gets tossed around. he's Jewish and there's a former slave, a black American, Bill Richmond, who likewise is hailed as a gentleman for his feats in the ring. I mean, does being a great boxer give you a kind

of honorary status as a British gentleman if you are not a kind of English yeoman? Is that what's going on? Something like that. I think boxing is a fraternity. I think it is now and it was then. I think there's a respect at pride and each other's strength. I mean, boxers, of course, talk each other down before a fight, but very rarely after one. So as with this one? As with this one. You know, Wellington referred to his troops as morbid in taciturn. And it was famous that the British infantry were quiet. They would stay quiet. whereas the French would go in with all that elan and they were famous for shouting and screaming in their attack,

no less brave. But they were completely different styles and it would seem that Mendoza and Richmond and Molineer, who was a former black American slave, hugely popular in this country for what they were. Richmond was a page boy at George IV's coronation. Him and crib were minders on the door, they were bouncers on the door of a coronation dressed as page boys. There was a kind

of fraternity. Now, of course, I'm not saying there wasn't racism. Of course, there was racism, which was directed at them, but never to their face for obvious reasons. Now, I know we're going to run out of time, and Tom wants to ask about, Tom mentioned the Marcus of Queenspeer, but just one quick last thing before we get onto that. The political meaning of all this, because your book is about sport and liberty, and you have a line in this chapter, only Tories could be true sportsmen. Only Tories had bottom. Is this a kind of Tory England, kind of traditional, resistant to being improved, resistant to reform? You know, boxing has been criticised by what you might call do-gooders, and there's a sort of sense of it. People who like it seem to have this sense of

it, as you said, being a kind of an underground continuity of history, a sense of tradition, all that kind of stuff. What this has reminded me of is Jacko McCako. The Fighting Monkey. The Fighting Monkey, who likewise was covered in Ruby. And that also, people were upset about the idea of animals pulverizing each other to death. But again, the same thing about do good as trying to clean it up. Humanity Dick, Tom, as you may remember, trying to stamp it out. So, Rob, that line that you have about this being kind of Toryism, is that a serious point? Yeah, it is a serious point.

The trouble with the point, although it was serious, is we never really know what Toryism is. because it's by definition, non-ideological, not up for definition, and endlessly adapting to the status quo. Only in that sense do we know what it is at any one time. But given what happened after, let's say after Cribb, there was a huge movement in England to civilize the people. And that movement was broadly speaking liberal, broadly speaking metropolitan, broadly speaking condescending to people who were considered rough, stupid and moronic. Now, Toryism took a position against that as time went by. It decided it wasn't that kind of politics.

It was another kind of politics. So, as you know, from the book, we get examples of this civilization process all through the century, particularly it do with popular affairs, customs, hunting. and so on. But boxing, in particular, managed to wriggle its way through these things, whereas other sports, like bull running or bull baiting, didn't. Torreism took these things up retrospectively. It always works retrospectively about belonging,

about what the things that matter to you are the things that are personal, the things that count are the things that are around the corner and easy to hand. And one thing you can say about prize fighting was it was very, easy to hand. Well, very easy to two hands. Very good. Everybody did it. So on the topic of kind of taming boxing, yes. Famously, London rules is supplanted by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

And the Marcus of Queensbury, as his name suggests, is an aristocrat. This is the same Marcus of Queensbury, who we have already mentioned in our episodes on Oscar Wilde, who Harry's Wilde through the courts and ultimately gets him into prison. But he introduces essentially the form of boxing that nowadays governs the sport. How does that happen? And again, is there a kind of a broader lesson to learn from that? Because there is a process, isn't there, throughout the Victorian period of the aristocracy, drawing up rules and codifying what had previously been,

kind of plebeian ways of entertaining themselves? What happens? The new rules, the Queensbury rules, emanate out of Cambridge University, where young gentlemen spar. And there's a kind of fashion for sparring. So Byron does it, doesn't he? Byron does it. Haslett does it.

All kinds of chaps do this. And so does the Marcus of Greensbury. And the point about sparring is, as Haslitt said, it's not boxing. It's a representation of boxing. And what's happening at Cambridge is that they swap Babe Knuckles for gloves. they introduce fixed rounds, weights, they introduce in the end medical and health controls.

It's boxing, they believe, is going to be safer and better. But of course, in a sense, it is in the hands of young Cambridge undergraduate, but not in the hands of the kind of fast, heavy professional fighters that emerge in the 20th century. So, Queensby Rules is civilizing, but, in a funny way, it's even more violent in what I've called the modern American era of people like John L. Sullivan, Jack Dempsey, and others. Okay. Well, Rob, this has been absolutely fascinating.

I mean, we could talk about this for ages. You've got so many great characters, Mendoza, obviously, the Jewish boxer, Molyneux, Tom Cribb. There's actually so much to unpick here. And for people who are really interested in this, your book is This Sporting Life, Sport and Liberty, in England, 1762, 9. 1960, and I cannot recommend it too highly. It is a wonderful, wonderful read. So thank you so much, Rob, for joining us on The Rest is History. I know you listen to the podcast, don't you?

So that is, for us, that is a great honour to have you not just appearing on it, but listening to it voluntarily. We all love it in our family. You actually tell me things. It's quite alarming, really, every time. Right. Well, that's very good news. So, Tom, on that bombshell, we will... Ding, ding.

Yeah, ding ding, ding. Bye, everybody. See you, guys. Thanks so much, Rob. And bye, everybody. Hi, again. It's David from the rest is classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier.

Victory over drugs is our call. a just cause. And with your help, we are going to win. Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medelline drug cartel. The world's 14th, which is man. He was, in many ways, a terrorist. This is an economic power concentrated in a few hands and in criminal minds. What they cannot obtain by blackmail, they get by murder. And I don't think he expressed any regret at all. He tries to portray himself as a man of the people, this kind of

like leftist revolutionary outlaw. Nearly everyone in Medellin supports the traffickers. Those who don't are either dead or targets. If you declare war, you've got to expect the state to respond. This is the moment where he goes too far. 13 bombs are gone off to Medellin since the weekend. By the end of 87, Bogota is essentially a war zone. US spending for international anti-drug efforts is going to grow from less than $300 million in 1989.

to more than 700 million by 1991. It is the certain knowledge that no one is really safe in Colombia from drug cartel assassins. It's a conflict where the goal wasn't even to stop, the flow of cocaine. It was to bring down this narco-terrorist. Everything has turned against him after this point. The whole thing he was building is collapsing. To hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.