Thomas Sayers - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Tom Sayers was an English bare-knuckle

Bare-knuckle boxing

Bare-knuckle boxing is the original form of boxing, closely related to ancient combat sports...

prize fighter. There were no formal weight divisions at the time, and although Sayers was only five feet eight inches tall and never weighed much more than 150 pounds, he frequently fought much bigger men. In a career which lasted from 1849 until 1860, he lost only one of sixteen bouts.

His lasting fame depends exclusively on his final contest, when he faced American champion John Camel Heenan

John C. Heenan

John Camel Heenan, aka the Benicia Boy was an American bare-knuckle prize fighter. Though highly regarded, he had only three formal fights in his entire career, losing two and drawing one....

in a battle which was widely considered to be boxing’s first world championship. It ended in chaos when the spectators invaded the ring, and the referee finally declared a draw.

Regarded as a national hero, Sayers, for whom the considerable sum of £3,000 was raised by public subscription, then retired from the ring. After his death five years later at the age of 39, a huge crowd watched his cortège on its journey to London’s Highgate Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....

Early years

Tom Sayers was born in May 1826 in a slum in the Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

alley of Pimlico (now Tichborne Street) not far from the Royal Pavilion

Royal Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion is a former royal residence located in Brighton, England. It was built in three campaigns, beginning in 1787, as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, from 1811 Prince Regent. It is often referred to as the Brighton Pavilion...

. He was the youngest of the five children of William Sayers (33), a shoemaker, and his wife Maria, ten years her husband’s senior. At the age of six, Tom became a Jack in the Water, earning a few coppers performing small duties for holidaymakers and fishermen on Brighton beach. Claims that he attended school in 1836 may be unfounded, and he never learned to read or write.

At the age of thirteen, he went to London, where he stayed with his sister Eliza and her husband Robert King, a builder. Sayers became a bricklayer, and for the next seven years shuttled between his home town and the capital. He is known to have worked on the London Road viaduct

London Road viaduct

The London Road Viaduct is a brick railway viaduct in Brighton, part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England. It carries the East Coastway Line between Brighton and London Road railway stations...

outside Brighton, and may well have taken part in the construction of London’s King’s Cross Station. In 1846, he finally settled in the capital, taking up residence in the notorious slum of Agar Town

Agar Town

Agar Town was a short-lived area of St Pancras in central London. It was named after William Agar, a wealthy lawyer who lived at Elm Lodge, a villa in large grounds near to the Regent's Canal roughly where Barker Drive is now...

, just north of where St Pancras Station

St Pancras railway station

St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...

now stands.

It was around 1847 that he set up home in a more salubrious part of Camden Town

Camden Town

-Economy:In recent years, entertainment-related businesses and a Holiday Inn have moved into the area. A number of retail and food chain outlets have replaced independent shops driven out by high rents and redevelopment. Restaurants have thrived, with the variety of culinary traditions found in...

with Sarah Henderson. Only fifteen years old, Sarah was unable to marry without her father’s permission, and her son and daughter by Sayers were consequently illegitimate.

Prize ring career

Although the prize ring had long been illegal, it continued as an underground activity, and Sayers, having earned a considerable reputation from a number of informal fights, decided to try to make a living with his fists. His first contest as a professional was in March 1849, when he defeated Abe Couch (or Crouch).

In 1853, after three more victories, he challenged Nat Langham

Nat Langham

Nat Langham was an English middleweight bare-knuckle prize fighter. He had the distinction of being the only opponent ever to beat the legendary Thomas Sayers.-Early life:...

, who, despite the absence of formal weight divisions, was widely accepted as England’s middleweight champion. This was Sayers's toughest fight so far, and a combination of illness and inexperience contributed to his first and only defeat. The wily Langham gained the upper hand by temporarily blinding his opponent with frequent blows to the eyes.

Still, Sayers had fought well, and defeat did not damage his career. But his marriage that same year to Sarah Henderson, by now old enough to marry without her father’s permission, was soon in ruins as she left to live with another man. To make matters worse, on top of an expensive failure to set himself up as a publican, he had great difficulty arranging another payday in the ring: after one further victory, men of his own size considered him just too dangerous.

Finally and in desperation, he took the bold step of challenging a leading heavyweight. The convention – though it was never a formal rule – was that men fought others of their own size, and few gave him much chance against the highly-regarded Harry Paulson. Sayers, however, was undaunted, and in January 1856, a convincing victory raised him to a new level.

Thus it was that the following year he fought Bill Perry

William Perry (boxer)

William Perry was a British prize fighter of the 19th century.A statue stands in the town of Tipton, yards away from the Fountain Inn public house, which was once his headquarters...

, the Tipton Slasher, for the national championship. Although written off by most of the experts, Sayers won comfortably, and went on to defeat several more opponents before accepting in 1859 a challenge from US champion John Camel Heenan, known as the Benicia

Benicia, California

Benicia is a waterside city in Solano County, California, United States. It was the first city in California to be founded by Anglo-Americans, and served as the state capital for nearly thirteen months from 1853 to 1854. The population was 26,997 at the 2010 census. The city is located in the San...

Boy.

The big fight

By this time the prize ring was in utter disrepute – and virtually ignored by everyone outside the ranks of the Fancy, as the followers of boxing were known – yet the Sayers–Heenan fight caught the public imagination on both sides of the Atlantic. In the words of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, “this challenge has led to an amount of attention being bestowed on the prize ring which it has never received before”, while in America, the New York Clipper
New York Clipper
The New York Clipper, also known as The Clipper, was a weekly entertainment newspaper published in New York City from 1853 to 1924. It covered many topics, including circuses, dance, music, the outdoors, sports, and theatre. It had a circulation of about 25,000. The publishers also produced the...

observed that “‘Whate’er we do, where’er we be,’ fight, fight, fight is the topic that engrosses all attention”.

Efforts of a number of concerned citizens to have the illegal event prevented came to nothing, and the battle took place at Farnborough

Farnborough, Hampshire

-History:Name changes: Ferneberga ; Farnburghe, Farenberg ; Farnborowe, Fremborough, Fameborough .Tower Hill, Cove: There is substantial evidence...

in Hampshire on the morning of Tuesday, 17 April 1860. It was on the face of it an unequal contest: Sayers was conceding forty pounds in weight, five inches in height and eight years in age.

To make matters worse, his right arm was damaged early in the action, and he had to fight one-handed for most of a ferocious contest which went on for more than two hours. Heenan, however, was also handicapped, Sayers having succeeded in closing his right eye, and making of his whole face a bloody mess.

After more than forty rounds, the fight ended in chaos when the ropes were cut, the crowd invaded the ring, and police moved in to put a stop to proceedings. The referee finally declared a draw, but hostilities continued for some weeks outside the ring, with the American camp claiming that Heenan had been cheated of victory, and the British insisting that Sayers had been on top.

In fact, a careful study of newspaper reports of the fight and the subsequent controversy leaves little doubt that Heenan was on the verge of victory when the action was stopped. No American ever admitted that Sayers had been on top, but a number of British commentators broke ranks to say that Heenan had not had fair play. In the guarded words of the highly authoritative Saturday Review

Saturday Review (London)

The Saturday Review of politics, literature, science, and art was a London weekly newspaper established by A. J. B. Beresford Hope in 1855....

, “We are not without our suspicions that the ring would have been better kept, if the English Champion had been fighting a manifestly winning battle.”

Differences between the two men were finally patched up, and both were awarded a championship belt

Championship belt

A championship belt is a large, extravagantly designed belt used primarily in combat sports such as boxing, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling to signify the champions of the promotion or company, much like a cup or trophy in other sports...

. The tour of England, Ireland and Scotland which they then undertook together was, however, only a partial success.

Retirement and death

Tom Sayers never fought again. A public subscription was raised for him after the fight, and he received the sum of £3,000, enough to fund a comfortable retirement. It was fortunate for him that this money was safely invested, or he might have been ruined by his unwise decision to go into the circus business.

He had by this time begun living with another woman, but the relationship broke up in acrimony, and his final years were marred by diabetes, tuberculosis and heavy drinking. He died on 8 November 1865, and his funeral a week later attracted some 100,000 people to Camden Town.

Misfortune pursued him beyond the grave. His estranged (but not divorced) wife, who now had three sons by the man for whom she had left him, went to court to disinherit her two children by Sayers. The parents’ subsequent marriage had not changed their legal status, and a judge ruled that, while they were certainly illegitimate, it could not be proved that Sayers was not the father of his wife’s other three children. These must therefore be regarded as legitimate, and entitled to inherit his estate.

Tom Sayers is buried in Highgate Cemetery, his tomb guarded by the stone image of his dog, Lion, who was chief mourner at his funeral.

Career record

Nat Langham

Nat Langham was an English middleweight bare-knuckle prize fighter. He had the distinction of being the only opponent ever to beat the legendary Thomas Sayers.-Early life:...

| 1853-10-18
| Lakenheath, Sussex
| 2 hours 2 minutes (60 rounds)
|-
| Win
| George Sims
| 1854-02-28
| Long Reach, Kent
| 5 minutes (4 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Harry Paulson
| 1856-01-29
| Appledore, Kent
| 3 hours, 8 minutes (109 rounds)
|-
| style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw
| Aaron Jones
| 1857-01-06
| Canvey Island, Essex
| 3 hours (62 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Aaron Jones
| 1857-02-10
| Canvey Island, Essex
| 2 hours (85 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Bill Perry

William Perry (boxer)

William Perry was a British prize fighter of the 19th century.A statue stands in the town of Tipton, yards away from the Fountain Inn public house, which was once his headquarters...

| 1857-06-16
| Isle of Grain, Kent
| 1 hour 15 minutes (10 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Bill Benjamin
| 1858-01-05
| Isle of Grain, Kent
| 7 minutes (3 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Tom Paddock

Tom Paddock

Tom Paddock, born Thomas Paddock also known as the Redditch Needlepointer was a champion British bare-knuckle boxer in the early Victorian era....

| 1858-06-15
| Canvey Island, Essex
| 1 hour 20 minutes (21 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Bill Benjamin
| 1859-04-05
| Isle of Grain, Kent
| 22 minutes (11 rounds)
|-
| Win
| Bob Brettle

Bob Brettle

Robert "Bob" Brettle, born at Portobello, near Edinburgh, in January 1832, was a successful bare-knuckle boxer active in Birmingham, England, during the 1850s...

John C. Heenan

John Camel Heenan, aka the Benicia Boy was an American bare-knuckle prize fighter. Though highly regarded, he had only three formal fights in his entire career, losing two and drawing one....

| 1860-04-17
| Farnborough, Hampshire
| 2 hours 10 minutes (42 rounds)

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