Henry Cooper (4 page)

Modern boxing had arrived. These rules effectively transferred control of the boxing match from the mob to a single nominated individual who, it was made clear, was in total command of proceedings. It was to become a tradition of the English ring, directly as a result of the work done by Chambers and his circle, that the ultimate authority in any
organized fight be the referee. In a narrow sense, the boxing ref was an extraordinarily powerful figure, particularly because the level of betting on boxing matches was huge, even if punts the size of the one which the Duke of Cumberland had lost a century before were now rare.

By 1868 the West Ham pumping station project is completed and William, Bridget and their growing family are on the move again, still in West Ham, but now to 21 Greengate Street. William continues as a general labourer and fathers twins, Maria and William, who arrive in 1869, to be followed four years later by Emily. The family is now as large, with five children, as it is going to get.

At around the time of Emily’s birth in 1873, it seems that Bridget Cooper dies, quite possibly in childbirth; she would have been 40 at the time. William remarries a local Plaistow girl, Mary, whose maiden name we cannot discover. As significant as his remarriage is the fact that William and his brood decide to relocate completely; they head south of the Thames to 19 Williams Place, near the Elephant & Castle in Newington. By that time, the relentless urbanization and gentrification of the Plaistow district had reduced the differences between the teeming anthill of humanity that characterizes the south bank of the Thames and the urban sprawl which replaces the once rural Essex borders to almost nil. It is quite likely that the Coopers have been priced out of their neighbourhood.

South of the river, it is all rather different. In nearby Bermondsey there are regular riots and marches by disaffected (and hungry) dockers and their families that regularly spill over into Westminster and the City of
London. More than once the Army is called out to disperse them. There is disease, too, which rips through the crowded tenements with blinding speed. Cholera is the most common, but despite the heroic efforts of men like Bazalguette, the state of public health is still quite dire and infant mortality is at levels that are found today in the third world. Dysentery is a particular killer.

Interestingly, all three men of working age in the Cooper family are now involved with horses, which suggests, but does not confirm, that William Cooper’s own rural origins possibly had an equestrian flavour to them before he moved to London. William, who is now 49, is by no means too old to wield a pick or shovel, but he has forsaken jobbing labouring and is now described as a ‘Horse Keeper to a bakery’. Eldest son Charles has done even better: he is described as a ‘Riding-Master’, and little George Cooper, by now only 17, is following a similar career, but without notable success yet – he is a ‘Horse Keeper out of employ’.

But George has also discovered boxing, as the echoes of ‘Donnelly and Cooper’ ring down the years. Unfortunately, the forces of law and order have it under the microscope, in a last ditch effort to stamp it out. In 1882, Mr Justice Hawkins in the case of
Regina versus Coney
(Coney is clearly a prizefighter) handed down a landmark decision:

Indeed they did. Hawkins’s pronouncement was one of a long line of negative verdicts as to the suitability of boxing as either sport or spectacle; for this reason, some subtle practices were to emerge that would attempt to redefine the aims of boxing and they would be codified as a list of do’s and don’ts of the most extraordinary priggishness.

Despite the fact that the Queensberry Rules have (except in the higher reaches of the sport) taken root, the
bare-knuckle
tradition is obstinately embedded in the noble art. Certainly, there is evidence that prizefights under the Queensberry Rules take place as early as 1872, but the sea change in the sport only comes in 1891, when the first world championship is fought under the new regime. Until then, bouts took place both with the ‘raw ‘uns’ and the ‘mauleys’ in equal measure.

Boxing and drinking also went hand in hand and with the rapid development of railways the coaching inn was becoming a thing of the past. This simple fact liberated useful spaces where clandestine fights could be held and the innkeepers became, in effect, the first promoters and matchmakers of the sport. They also established another dubious tradition: they also became the first bookmakers. In
short, the sport of illegal boxing, if we can call it that, fell into the effective control of the country’s pub landlords.

For George Cooper, this was a pity, as it seems that he was becoming something of a black sheep of the family. To say that he was a scamp would be something of an understatement. Perhaps the loss of his mother affected him; certainly he would until his death lose no opportunity to produce, at the drop of a hat, any or all of the songs and verses which stepmother Bridget had patiently taught him and it became clear that he had also inherited an extremely fine voice.

He became (like his stepbrother Charles) a fine judge of horseflesh but these passions of his – singing, fighting and horses – all served to ensure that he was never far from a pub. He seems to have been a bright and quick-witted man, as he certainly had an ability to make plenty of money as a horse-coper, and was able to earn useful sums as a fighter and minder, a furniture porter and even as a
semi-professional
singer-songwriter, but it also seems that money rather burned a hole in his pocket. After a successful deal, commission or bout he would quite often drop from sight for days on end on a series of giant benders. He was not, it must be said, much of a saver.

But he had some interesting adventures. Family tradition has it that in 1883, one of his first jobs as a horse-keeper arrived, and it was an important one, to accompany a string of thoroughbred horses on their delivery to, ultimately, St Petersburg. In the days when men of his background went abroad only on military service, it must have been quite an experience. Naturally, he managed to become involved in a fight along the way.
Fighting was part of the fabric of society in
nineteenth-century
London, as it was in most metropolitan areas. Disputes would be settled face to face, man to man, without the services of the law in any form, neither attorney nor police. The level of street violence was colossal and it had become bone-deep in the culture, but there was never any suggestion that George was anything but a law-abiding citizen, save for the fact that he boxed, which, as we have seen, was technically illegal. Certainly, he appears not to have attracted the attention of the authorities.

But he comes down to us as an interesting man. He married, at an undetermined date, but certainly by the end of the century, a formidable Walworth lady by the name of Elizabeth Lindo, who had been born in 1862 and was thus two years older. She needed to be formidable, in fact, simply to put up with him, as he did not change his bachelor habits one iota. In her way, she was as tough as he was and the pair of them would cheerfully fight shoulder to shoulder against all comers; an unorthodox way of bonding, but clearly successful, as they stayed together until George’s death. Her grandson recalled some of the family tales handed down to him: ‘In those days if any family had a row they went out and had a stand-up fight. Granddad used to fight like a man and my Gran wasn’t like most women, scratching and pulling hair; she could punch like a man. She used to roll up her sleeves and stand up and box. If two families had a row my Granddad would fight the other old man and my Gran would go and fight his wife. They were hard times.’

George’s stamping ground rather depended upon which aspect of his portfolio career was currently to the forefront. He would fight, or sing, anywhere, and as a middleweight, he
fought in and with some good company, fighters of the quality of Ted Pritchard, middleweight champion of England, for example, as well as less well-known figures like ‘Pudney’ Sullivan (whom he actually trained) and Ben ‘Barney’ Hyams. He certainly fought Pritchard on the evening of Thursday 15 March 1888 at a benefit evening for Hyams. Held at the Equestrian Tavern Music Hall, Blackfriars, the evening also included burlesque, as well as singing and dancing, and the boxers provided interesting exhibition interludes for the obviously mixed crowd. Possibly George sang as well, although he is only mentioned as a boxer in the
Sporting Life’s
enthusiastic account of the evening.

It is this redefinition of gloved boxing, as a music-hall entertainment from the late 1860s onwards as a result of decisions such as Hawkins’s, as well as earlier case law, that buys the sport valuable time by effectively pulling its own teeth; nobody gets killed, perhaps a little blood flows, and much posturing is done. It is a crowd-pleaser but, thanks to the Queensberry initiative, it is now quite outside the legal definition of assault or battery. It is an entertainment, albeit a fairly bloody one. In this context, figures such as Pritchard flit in and out of the boundaries of the law as they alternate exhibition bouts with much more serious stuff, for two years later, Pritchard wins the English middleweight title – interestingly, on a referee’s decision. That match, definitely not a burlesque side-show, takes place at Robert Habbijam’s boxing rooms on Newman Street (between Goodge Street and Oxford Street), under conditions of total secrecy: only 15 high-paying observers from each side were permitted to attend. The purse was £400 – the price just over a century ago of a decent house.

Pritchard seems to have been a fairly close friend of George Cooper and, as we shall see, it is clear that George is not merely a brawler but is a fighter of some quality. Pritchard, it is said, thought that he was a fair match for his own talents, which, coming from a national champion, was high praise indeed. But it is also clear that honourable man though George is, he finds it difficult to take life seriously. He is not blessed by particularly good luck, as his grandson told me: ‘It was at the
Flying Horse
, near the Elephant & Castle. Apparently he saw a hunchback there, playing a barrel organ. Suddenly the hunchback turned on a girl and started belting her – well, he wasn’t having that and he tries to break it up, and the girl ups and sticks a bloody great
hatpin
straight through his buttocks – literally pinning them together – they said he had to eat standing for a fortnight.’

A year after Pritchard’s middleweight title fight in 1891, the National Sporting Club was established. It was this event that did more to reverse the fortunes of boxing than any other, for now the sport had an organizing body that could (and would) fight hard for its interests. Immediately, it took up the cudgels against any court that attempted to treat boxers or promoters as criminals and quite soon in its existence it started to achieve hard results. The Club, under its most active member, the wealthy Lord Lonsdale, managed to get decisions overturned and, as importantly, reversed. For the first time in its chequered history, prizefighting had a well-funded and organized lobby and was making headway. By the end of the Century, boxing was hugely popular, partly because of some of the extraordinary characters who were appearing in it now, and
would appear in it later. There was one in particular: James Wicks. He was born in Bermondsey in 1895 and was, like George Cooper, of Anglo-Irish descent.

George and Elizabeth Cooper produced a son, Henry William, on 23 May 1901. George was 37 by then, which was relatively late to start a family. But, given what would happen within 13 years, it was a happy coincidence that the child would be spared the horrors of the Great War. By that time, George and Elizabeth were living in Elsted Street in Walworth.

Less than a mile to the north, at 39 Queen’s Buildings, Collinson Street, just off Borough High Street, on 9 October 1906, a little girl, Lily Nutkins, was born. She was to have a very hard early life. Her mother, Maria, had been born Maria Bishop, and had married Henry Harvey Nutkins, a general dealer, at some day prior to 1886. It seems that Lily was a very late arrival, as she was the second of two children, the first, Henry Harvey junior, having arrived twenty years before. Clearly this was too much for Henry Harvey senior, as, aged 50, after having fathered yet another child, he soon fled the nest and simply disappeared, leaving Maria to bring up Lily and her little brother Tom on her own. She may have had some help from her son Henry junior, but it would be unlikely to have been substantial, as Maria worked extraordinarily hard. Condemned by her illiteracy to a life of hard labour, she rose at 4 a.m. and walked to work across London Bridge to clean out the fireplaces at the Bank of England.

George Cooper was still fighting at the age of 40. His bailiwick was as extensive as ever, and his son Henry William recalled that, just before the Great War, his proud
father returned home with half a sovereign in loose change, which he had won in a brawl in a pub yard in Denmark Hill. The chances are that it had been a bare-knuckle fight, as George’s hands were so swollen and sore that the young Henry William had to extract the
specie
from his father’s pocket. That handful of change would keep the family in food and rent for over a week, but it was a hard way to earn a living.

Less stressful was singing. George had a fine voice, and clearly realized it, as he would use any excuse to demonstrate his vocal skills or, failing that, to tell stories. At the drop of a hat he would wheel out ‘Donnelly and Cooper’, irrespective of who was listening. Henry William recalled the memory of a slightly befuddled George telling stories to an empty kitchen in the small hours.