A PRIZE FIGHTER WITH THE HEART OF A LION AND A DOG WHO WAS CLOSE TO HIS HEART
MORE THAN 100,000 people lined the route as the funeral cortege made its way to Highgate Cemetery, led by four horses adorned with sable plumes drawing the coffin which was followed by a lone dog passenger in a pony cart.
It was the afternoon of November 8, October 15, 1922, and the Press were out in force for the funeral of one of Britain’s greatest bare-knuckle fighters, Tom Sayers, the boy from the back streets of Brighton, who achieved international fame.
Police struggled to control the crowd along the route which stretched for two miles from his home in Camden and was described by reporters as ‘rowdy’ and packed with ‘some unsavoury people, including the hardest men in London’.
Another 10,000 mourners and sightseers were in the cemetery, where a small brass band played the Death March as the cortege arrived and the gates were guarded and locked for the service around the grave.
Shops along the route were closed as a sign of respect for the man who on one occasion caused parliament to rise early, so that the Prime Minister, some of his Cabinet and MPs could go and see him fight. Cabs queued in the road taking celebrities and businessmen to the service.
Sayers’ father and two children lead the procession, but the chief mourner was the boxer’s beloved pet dog, a bull mastiff named Lion who was decked out in a black ruff for the occasion.
An Oxford Times reporter wrote: ‘On the seat reclined the dog, its collar muffled with crêpe, hanging its head in sorrow (I am not putting this in to get up sentiment, it is fact), and as the mourning animal was borne along, cries of “Poor thing!” and “Don’t it look sorry,” were everywhere expressions.’
Lion followed his master’s coffin into the Chapel of Rest for the service pricking his ears up as shouts and screams “echoed from 100 vagabonds” who broke through the gates and flooded into the cemetery.
The Oxford Mail reported: “A rush on the gates was made by 100 or more sturdy men and the tombs and crypts were crowded with people who turbulently jostled and laughed, trampled on the grass, and defiled the graves with as little reverence for the place they were in, as if it had been a prize-fighting ring.
“There were hand-to-hand combats with a crowd of roughs who had been drinking in the nearby tavern, but police quelled the situation brilliantly.
“Lion had just looked with stern composure as if to prove his superiority to the degraded wretches around.”
Boxer Tom was born on May 25, 1826, in the North Laine area of one of Brighton’s poorest slums. It was the home of fishermen, and the alleyways were strewn with the entrails of fish and the air putrid with the smell of rotting intestines from their catches.
Some of the worst housing in the town could be found there, in a small area that housed over a thousand inhabitants in little more than huts. It was not uncommon to see girls aged ten to twelve walking naked in the road because of the poverty of their families and no change of clothes.
The area was infested with rats and there were often epidemics of whooping cough, smallpox and scarlet fever. With rubbish in the streets, poor guttering, open cesspools and imperfect sewers, contagious diseases were a daily hazard.
Sayers, just under 5ft 8in tall, grew up learning to survive with his fists against the local hard men. He became a bricklayer by trade and worked on the London Road Viaduct which was completed in 1846. By then he was making extra money as a bare-knuckle prize fighter. His first fight was broken up by police for the sport was illegal and fights were secretly organised.
He was not a big man, weighing less than 11 stone he had to fight men who were much bigger. There were no formal weight divisions at the time, and it was before the Queensbury Rules, which led to gloved matches.
After turning professional in 1849, he lost only one of 16 bouts and was recognised as heavyweight champion of England when he defeated The Tipton Slasher, William Perry. Sayers often took his faithful dog Lion with him on his travels. They became closer when his wife left him for another man.
In 1860 he accepted a challenge to fight undefeated American boxer John Camel Heenan. This was big news and featured in all the nationals. The fight was widely considered to be the world’s first boxing championship and attracted 2,000 spectators. Parliament was cut short so MPs could attend the match in a field behind the Ship Inn in Farnborough. And what a match.
Neither man was going to back down easily and the fight went on for over two hours, Heenan eventually fighting with one eye and Sayers with one arm. It was declared a draw after angry spectators invaded the ring and chaos prevailed.
Sadly, for Sayers, he had given everything he had in the fight. On top of a decade of taking punches his health deteriorated, and he was forced to retire. He was still poor and his fans raised £3,000 for him, the equivalent of about £300,000 in today’s money, so he could retire in comfort. He died a few years later of diabetes and consumption in 1865 aged just 39.
After his funeral, Lion sat by the graveside and howled for days as people brought him food and water. He was taken to a country estate, and after he died, a statue of him mourning was erected in the cemetery out of public donations, so he could be reunited with his loving master. Lion still guards his tomb today.
THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM
DID YOU KNOW? In 1912, many of the richest people in the world were booked on the ill-fated Titanic but some of them had a lucky escape when they didn’t turn up, according to Press reports after the tragedy.
Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi was given a free ticket but chose the Lusitania instead; Hershey Bar billionaire Milton S. Hershey changed his mind and stayed in Europe; steel magnate Henry Clay Frick pulled out at the last minute; so too did best-selling author Theodore Dreiser.
Wall Street financier J.P Morgan called in sick; Art collector George Washington Vanderbilt II didn’t turn up and neither did Nobel Peace Prize winner and millionaire evangelist John Mott. Theatre impresario Edgar Selwyn cancelled at the last minute. And then the ship steamed to its fate.
BEATEN, ABUSED AND IN POVERTY,
A WIFE WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR
PEOPLE started to arrive in the town as daylight broke — on foot, in carts, carriages and barges, filling the prison yard, the canal banks, fields and boats; even climbing trees to get a good view of the drop — the hanging rope.
It was August 24, 1849, and a mother of 11 was about to make history … as the last woman to be hanged for killing her child.
Rebecca Smith was convicted of murdering her infant son Richard, but after she was sentenced to death, she confessed to having poisoned seven of her other children and stepped into the history books as a Victorian serial killer. Her story was syndicated by The Times worldwide.
The young girl who couldn’t cope with married life and children had attracted some sympathy. But most said: Good riddance. Her plight struck a chord in the hearts of many women in England at the time who took beatings and even sexual degradation in silence and had nowhere or no money to run. The law was mostly on the side of the husband. Life was all about his rights.
The infant mortality rate in 19th-century Britain at this time was high, particularly among the poor, and the methods for investigating murders were primitive. A person could commit crimes repeatedly with very little fear of being detected. Historians say children were an easy target.
Rebecca was born Rebecca Prior in the Wiltshire village of Bratton close to Westbury on May 17, 1807. Her father was a successful farmer, and her mother was a prominent member of the local Baptist church. A decent middle-class family.
She was a fun-loving girl who was good at school and girl sports. She loved life and her parents. Then she met and fell in love with handsome and muscular Philip Smith, a farm labourer, who locals knew was a lazy, bad-tempered drunk.
But he was charming and loving to her. She wouldn’t listen to the advice of friends that he was bad news. She knew best and anyway she could tame him. They married in May 1831, when she was 24.
After the birth of their first child, a girl Jane, things went wrong. Money was tight and Smith needed his drink. Rebecca started to go without meals to satisfy his thirst and feed Jane. The rows grew violent. He would beat her if his dinner wasn’t ready or his clothes not washed.
As time went on and more babies came, she hated her life and feared for the future of her children. The beatings turned to rough sexual tortures, and she didn’t laugh much any more. Over the years of beatings, she was to have 10 other babies but none of them lived more than a few months.
In 1846, following her mother’s death, Rebecca inherited £100 (equivalent to £12,000 today) and the family moved to Westbury. But her husband squandered her inheritance on alcohol and gambling, losing his job and forcing her to find work in the fields as a crop-picker, as well as struggling to clean the house and cook.
The family lived in “a visible state of poverty and ill health,” said neighbours. Rebecca became quiet and withdrawn. Her 11th child, Richard, was born on May 16, 1849. He was initially healthy but was taken ill and died five days later. The local registrar, George Shorland, initially recorded the cause of death as unknown but was persuaded by local rumours to order an inquest.
Richard’s body was autopsied. Traces of arsenic were discovered in his stomach. Smith’s neighbours claimed that she had had even asked them if they had any arsenic spare to clean the house with.
Arsenic was available to buy in chemists as a house cleaner. It was also known to be used by women who killed their husbands at that time. It was widely used in wallpaper, paints, and fabrics. Rebecca needed it to keep her house germ free because she said little Richard ill and wasting away.
On the morning of June 7 inquests into the deaths of two more of her children were conducted, and both their bodies were also found to contain the poison.
Rebecca was tried for Richard’s death on August 9, 1849, and the jury took 30 minutes to find her guilty but issued a recommendation of mercy; the judge ignored it and sentenced her to death. A week after the trial, she confessed to the prison chaplain that she used rat poison to kill seven of her other children.
The public were split over her execution after reading her story in newspapers like The Times despite infanticide usually being viewed as less repellent than standard murder and less deserving of capital punishment.
As an older married woman, she was viewed with less sympathy than younger women who gave birth out of wedlock and killed their babies to avoid social stigma.
On the day of her hanging at the Devizes Correctional Centre, the Times reported that she seemed composed, accepting her punishment.
“As she climbed the steps to the gallows, she did not utter a word or let a sigh escape her. Her step was firm and deliberate. When she arrived at the drop, the rope was in a moment round her neck, she clasped and raised her hands together, as if in fervent prayer, and, after a slight struggle, she was launched into eternity.” Her misery was over.
TERRY MANNERS
18 August 2025
