BY 1880 the amateur game was becoming increasingly popular across the country, especially in and around London. A raft of clubs had been established, many of them connected to existing clubs and societies that had an affiliation to another sport, such as the Thames Rowing Club and the German Gymnastic Society, some to the armed services, such as the London Rifle Brigade and the London Scottish Rifles, and others to more general institutions including the Civil Service.
One of these clubs, The London Athletic Club (London AC), was vociferous in its criticism of the Amateur Athletic Club (AAC) over the latter’s insistence that the championships be held each March, rather than a month or two later, when athletes would be at their fittest.
Because of this, the London AC had organised their own breakaway event in the summer of 1879, and they did not want to have to do so again in 1880. They therefore tried to reach an agreement with the AAC to move the date of that year’s championship.
J H Douglas was the driving force behind the London AC and, as a three-time winner of the AAC championship, he must have expected that he would be able to negotiate an acceptable compromise with the AAC committee.
When that was not forthcoming, he quickly forged links with other leading amateur clubs, mainly based in London, to form a rival organisation that was to be solely dedicated to the administration of amateur boxing throughout Britain.
A general meeting took place at Anderton’s Hotel, Fleet Street, in London on 17 October 1880, and from this the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) came into being. Unlike the AAC, which was administered by gentlemen from the middle and upper classes, the ABA committee was largely made up of representatives who were directly involved in the administration of the leading amateur clubs of the day, and some of them, like Douglas, had boxed themselves.
The ABA quickly set about implementing major changes to the structure and organisation of amateur boxing. They redrafted the Queensberry Rules, tweaking here and there, to produce a set of 16 that were to be used for contests to be held under their jurisdiction.
Chambers did not specifically state anywhere within his rules that a contest, should it last the distance, would be settled by the boxer who had accumulated the most points. I think it likely that he thought that this went without saying, and therefore he did not see the need to codify it. The ABA put this right with the following rules:
Two judges, a referee and a timekeeper shall be appointed (rule 4).
In all open competitions the result shall be declared by two judges with a referee (rule 10).
The manner of judging shall be as follows; the two judges and the referee shall be stationed apart. At the end of each bout each judge shall write the name of the competitor who, in his opinion, has won (rule 11).
The referee shall have power to give his casting vote when the judges disagree (rule 12).
In all competitions, the decision shall be given in favour of the competitor who displays the best style and obtains the greater number of points. The points shall be for attack; direct clean hits with the knuckles of either hand on any part of the front or sides of the head or body above the belt. For defence; guarding, slipping, ducking, counter-hitting or getting away. Where points are otherwise equal consideration to be given to the man who does most of the leading off (rule 14).
The first ABA championships, held in 1881, took place indoors and at a public hall in the centre of London, at St James’s Hall, on Regent Street. This was a significant innovation and a big step forward for the game, as until this time boxing of any sort rarely took place indoors, and certainly not within such a prestigious venue as the St James’s Hall.
The event attracted a much higher number of entrants, 25, and it included a fourth weight class, featherweight. It also attracted a far greater number of spectators than the equivalent AAC tournament, with Sporting Life reporting that the hall was crammed by the early evening.
The championships were a success right from the start. In 1884, a fifth weight class, bantamweight, was added and by 1890 there were typically between 40 and 50 entrants each year. Within five years, the ABA had complete control over amateur boxing within Britain.
While the birth of the amateur movement had largely been driven by the middle classes, the clubs that they established soon started to attract boxers from lower down the social order, and the background of some of the earliest ABA champions reveals a wide range of social standing. The first lightweight champion, Frederick Hobday, came from a wealthy family and worked at the Stock Exchange after his ring career ended.
Similarly, Thomas Bellhouse, the first middleweight champion became a successful solicitor in his native Manchester. The brothers James and Robert Hair, who won three titles between them during 1887/8 came from a family of clerks, then quite a distinguished profession, and Robert Frost Smith, the first heavyweight champion was an advertising agent. Conversely, Arthur Bettinson, who became the general manager of the National Sporting Club, where he hobnobbed with the elite, was an upholsterer when he won the ABA lightweight title in 1882.
Andrew Newton, later to become a very successful trainer, was a stone polisher and Alfred Curnick and Manning Salmon were both butchers. Henry Thomas Dursley, who won the heavyweight championship three years in a row from 1882 came from a family of fish salesmen.
Not one of these champions turned professional. Anthony Diamond, on the other hand, became a very good professional after he had won the last of his four ABA titles in 1886, and Tom Hill also turned professional after his three victories at featherweight between 1882 and 1884.
In later years, to win the ABAs was an important stepping-stone for any young boxer seeking to launch a successful professional career, but during the 1880s and 1890s, for most champions, the amateur game was enough, as most of them had a regular income derived from elsewhere.
They were amateurs in the true sense of the word. Amateur boxing had quickly become popular, and it was very well organised, making use of one set of rules that were firmly and consistently applied. Professional boxing now needed to follow this example.
The steep decline in the number of prize fights taking place by 1871 coincided with the first of the professional boxing tournaments in which the participants wore gloves and boxed under the Queensberry Rules.
It did not take long for the professionals to realise that if the authorities allowed amateurs to compete against each other, unhindered by the police and using the new rules, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to do the same?
In November 1871 three separate boxing tournaments were held in central London, all competition events in which professionals boxed each other for a silver cup, and Bartholomew ‘Bat’ Mullins (pictured above), a 22-year-old, originally from County Cork, but now very much a cockney, won the lot.
Mullins was an established prize fighter, having competed with the bare fists in six contests between 1867 and 1870 and he was yet to be defeated. He was also well-known within the sporting pubs and saloons of Central London, where he had taken part in many sparring sessions.
On Monday, 6 November 1871, Mullins won the first of his trophies by beating W Whyman, of Camden Town, on points over three-rounds at the Jolly Butchers public house on Ferdinand Street, in Camden Town. All available information points to this being the world’s first professional boxing contest.
After he had won his cups, Mullins never fought with bare knuckles again. He won a few more competition events during 1871 and 1872 and then he took part regularly in exhibition contests until 1889, when he had his last professional contest, losing in the final of a 154lbs championship competition. He is, arguably, Britain’s first professional boxer, and its first professional boxing champion.
In April 1872, the first professional outdoor tournament took place at the Running Grounds at Bow, in the east end of London. The event attracted a crowd of over 2,000, and the police were there, not to stop the event from taking place this time, but to keep order. Once again, Bat Mullins was one of the stars of the show, winning yet another competition.
For the first time, it was possible to organise an evening’s boxing entertainment, with a series of contests taking place one after the other, and with each being fought to a definite outcome. The promoter could provide guaranteed entertainment for his punters and also make a profit for himself. In much the same way as attending the music hall or the penny theatre, the working men of our large towns and cities could now be entertained by watching boxing indoors.
The two key stages in the birth of professional boxing that took place at this time are, therefore, firstly, a willingness to adopt, with some minor modification, the amateur rules and conditions, and secondly, the emergence of the promoter. Professional boxing quickly became not only a sport, but also a business, and it took off rapidly.
It was one thing to hold the sort of competitions won by Mullins in 1871, as they were almost a carbon copy of the amateur events then taking place all over London, but the acid test would come when a more serious match was made, between two men of championship standard, to be fought over a much longer distance, and the first of these took place in early 1873 when Charley Davis, from Stepney, fought for the English championship.
On 20 April 1873 the superintendent of the Grafton Hall, in Soho, was approached by a gentleman asking if the hall could be let the following evening for the purpose of a sparring match, and, naively, he gave his permission. The following evening around 400 people turned up to witness a glove contest between Davis and Ted Napper, the recognised professional lightweight champion.
This was to be no sparring match. Admission could be gained for £1 and, as this represented around one week’s wages for a typical working man at the time, those who witnessed the event were a cut above the average as far as their social status was concerned.
The Leeds Times reported that they included “a noble Marquess, two noble lords and three colonels of Her Majesty’s army”. A silver cup was provided, supposedly by the Marquess of Queensberry himself, although this was later denied. I suspect that he was the Marquess who, it was claimed, was in attendance.
The fight was a brutal one, with the younger Davis wearing down the much more experienced Napper after 25 rounds. The bout was widely reported, and the consistent impression given throughout these reports, was that the whole spectacle was a disgrace.
The contest was fought under the Queensberry Rules, and with gloves yet it resembled a prize fight far more than it did the sort of contest fought by Mullins. The organisers earned a tidy profit and the whole affair was concluded within an evening, and in a public hall in the heart of the city, with no interference from the police.
The stage was set, therefore, for professional boxing to grow alongside its amateur counterpart. Both forms of the game used the same rules, the competitors used similar gloves, and the contests took place on organised, and well-advertised, bills held within the major cities across the country.
By piggybacking onto the concessions that had been given to the amateur sport, the professionals had established a toe-hold with regard to the legitimisation of their sport and it could now begin to develop and prosper.
