Foreigners (10 page)

Randolph Adolphus Turpin was born in Leamington Spa
on 7 June, 1928, the youngest child of Lionel Fitzherbert
Turpin and Beatrice Whitehouse. There were already two
older brothers, Dick and Jackie, and two older sisters, Joan
and Kathy, but the cash-strapped family were struggling
financially in a cramped basement flat in Willis Road. The
new addition, who weighed in at 9 lb 7 oz, was the lightest
of all Beatrice's children at birth, but he was still, by most
standards, a heavyweight child. At a time when Beatrice
and Lionel could barely afford food to put on the table
the new baby was yet another mouth to feed and, to make
matters worse, at the time of Randolph's birth Lionel was
in hospital and ailing badly. The prognosis was not good.

Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin was born in Georgetown,
British Guiana, in February 1896. He enjoyed a traditional
British schooling in the sugar-rich colony on the northeast
coast of South America, but the young lad had a
yearning to see the world. He arrived in England as a
merchant seaman on the eve of the Great War, and by the
time Britain declared war on Germany in the summer of
1914, Lionel was ready to sign up. He was eventually sent
out with the British Expeditionary Forces to the Western
Front where he fought numerous campaigns, including the
legendary Battle of the Somme. He survived the slaughter,
but towards the end of the war he was badly wounded by
a gas shell which burnt his lungs and left a gaping wound
in his back. Lionel was shipped back to a hospital in
Coventry, where they did all they could to help him before
discharging the West Indian to a convalescent home near
Hill House in the nearby town of Warwick. Although it
was clear to the doctors that the mild-mannered coloured
soldier was never going to fully recover, Lionel Turpin was
eventually allowed to leave the convalescent home and he
attempted to find work locally.

Lionel stood out in Warwick, for there were no other
coloured people in the town, and he was regularly referred
to as 'Sam', which was an abbreviation for the more pejorative
'Sambo'. He was equally exotic in nearby Leamington
Spa, where the introverted West Indian veteran soon met
a local teenager named Beatrice Whitehouse. Beatrice came
from a rough, but tight-knit, local working-class family, her
father being well known in the area as a bare-knuckle prizefighter
who plied his trade at the local Woolpack Inn.
Lionel wasted little time in proposing to Beatrice, and
although times were hard for everybody, they settled down
and tried to raise their mixed-race family in a social atmosphere
that was not always friendly or supportive. Later in
life, Jackie Turpin remembered that 'there was a time when
nobody would cross the road to speak to the Turpins. We
was just little black kids as used to run around Wathen
Road and Parkes Street.' However, Beatrice prided herself
on having come from tough stock, so nothing was going
to deter her from protecting and supporting her children,
who were often taunted as being 'dirty' or 'khaki-coloured'.
Sadly, as the family grew, Lionel's condition began to
deteriorate, and it became increasingly difficult for him to
hold down a job. He moved back and forth between the
family's Leamington home and a hospital in nearby Coventry,
until it was clear that the coloured veteran required fulltime
care and attention. He was eventually allocated a bed
at the Ministry of Pensions Hospital in Birmingham, but
on 6 March, 1929, nine months after the birth of Randolph,
his fifth child, Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin finally passed
away due to war injuries that he had suffered over a decade
earlier. His funeral hearse was drawn by four black horses,
with six soldiers as an escort, and the thirty-three-year-old
former military man was buried in the Brunswick Street
Cemetery, Leamington Spa, in a ceremony that was paid
for by the Leamington branch of the British Legion.

At the age of twenty-five, Beatrice was left by herself
to bring up five children: Dick, Joan, Jackie, Kathy, and
Randy. She was entitled to a widow's pension of just under
thirty shillings a week, which she could supplement with
whatever she might earn cooking and cleaning for other
people, but however hard she tried Beatrice could not make
ends meet. As a result, she often sent her children to stay
with different relatives; Dick frequently went to stay with
his grandmother, while Joan spent time in Wales with her
aunt. However, when circumstances allowed, Mrs Turpin
would bring all of her children back together under one
roof, but life was never easy for Beattie, and young Randy
was particularly worrisome to her. As a three-year-old boy,
Randy had contracted double pneumonia and bronchitis,
and although he eventually recovered the diseases returned
on two further occasions. On their final appearance, the
doctor told Beattie that she should prepare herself for
Randy's death, but she chose instead to sit up all night
with her youngest child, sponging him down to keep his
temperature under control, and feeding him to keep up
his strength. Much to the doctor's surprise, and the family's
relief, little Randy survived, and this served only to make
Beattie all the more determined to keep her children
together. She once again retrieved them from the relatives
among whom they had been distributed and, having now
decided to marry a local English man, in 1931 she permanently
reunited her household.

As a child, Turpin earned the nickname 'Licker', a
moniker that he would carry with him into adulthood and
beyond. Although most people assumed that the
'Leamington Licker' was so called because of his ability
to beat, or 'lick', his opponents, according to his brother
Jackie, the name had nothing to do with his fighting
prowess. Randy, Jackie, and sister Joan were all born in
June, on the 7th, 13th, and 19th respectively, and when the
birthdays arrived young Randy used to assume that because
his birthday came first that made him the oldest.
Apparently, Joan would shake her head and insist that he
was, in fact, the littlest, to which he would shout that he
wasn't the 'lickerest' he was the oldest. Sister Joan would
mimic his pronunciation, telling him that he was just a
'licker boy' and if he didn't behave himself she would
spank his bottom. The fiery Randy would inevitably rush
at his sister with his fists flying, insisting that he wasn't a
'licker boy', and the family pet name stuck and became
eerily appropriate for a boy who would eventually grow
up to become a champion boxer.

Randy was not an easy child for his mother, his siblings,
or eventually anybody to deal with. Headstrong and capricious,
his family struggled to both protect him and avoid
his occasional outbursts of anger. With so many children
to cope with it was difficult for young Beattie to exercise
any real discipline, and it was particularly perplexing for
her to know how to handle her youngest child towards
whom she felt a special affection. To make matters worse,
while swimming in a river young Randy was trapped by
weeds and his hearing was permanently damaged. He was,
for the rest of his life, very much aware of his partial deafness,
but he did not like to dwell upon it and would
become upset if it was mentioned. However, he was a fearless
child, and was always ready to attack no matter how
big or implausible the opponent. Young Randy Turpin
was quite prepared to strike out with just his fists, but if
there happened to be a weapon to hand then he would
happily seize it. He once chased his eldest brother Dick
with an axe, threatening to 'chop his bleeding head off ',
but his weapon of choice was usually a knife. In one argument
he actually stabbed his brother Dick, and despite
Beattie's pleading with him to calm down it was clear to
everybody that this child might well be on a collision
course with trouble.

When he was five, Randy began to attend West Gate
Council School, which was both understaffed and overcrowded.
It was a school that was designed to provide
precious little in the way of academic opportunities, being
merely a place to hold working-class children until they
could be processed out at the age of fifteen and enter the
workforce. By the time Randy was twelve, the athletically
gifted 'Licker' could beat any boy in the school with his
fists, or with his feet. He paid little, if any, attention to
his schoolwork, preferring to pour his energies into developing
his well-earned reputation as both a sportsman and a
'tough nut'. He and his followers would 'persuade' boys
to hand over money or sweets, and while his friends held
their victim's arms 'Licker' would teach the poor lads
a lesson by giving them a good pummelling. At home, his
siblings were not spared his attentions. Joan remembers,
'He blackened my eyes for me twice. Once for my birthday,
and once for telling my granny tales about him.' Sister
Kathy recalls, 'If you didn't do what he wanted he'd clank
you for it. He'd squeal to my mother if you hit him back
and if you did anything he didn't like he came in and
smashed all my dolls. I had some black celluloid dolls and
he'd put his foot in them and break them.'

To some of the townsfolk of Leamington Spa, young
'Licker' Turpin was a bully whose mother clearly had no
control over him. There were those who would not dare
to make eye contact with him in the street, or even in the
semi-darkness of the cinema, and nobody wanted to be
in a shop when 'Licker' came in and demanded that you
buy him something. Any challenge to his 'authority' might
well be met with a torrent of verbal abuse, and it was also
possible that the unfortunate person would be given a good
kicking for their trouble. Many believed that being from
the only coloured family in the town obviously informed
the boy's delinquency. It did not occur to them that
being the only coloured family in town meant that the
Turpins, Randy included,
had
to be able to take care of
themselves, and sometimes get their retaliation in first. In
the thirties, most British people were unfamiliar with the
novelty of living among people of another race, but given
the evidence of the Turpin family, the novelty of living
with coloured people was something that a number of the
more narrow-minded townsfolk of Leamington Spa had
concluded that they could do without.

In fact, black people have been present in English life
since the time of the Roman occupation. There is very
strong evidence that black Roman soldiers were stationed
near Hadrian's Wall at the northern outpost of England,
but the first really visible, permanent, group of black people
in English life appeared towards the end of the sixteenth
century. These Africans were brought to England in the
wake of Sir John Hawkins' trading missions to Africa and
the Americas, and were often treated as little more than
exotic objects whose main function was to adorn the houses
and palaces of the nobility and aristocrats upon whom
the 'captives' were occasionally encouraged to serve. In 1601,
concerned by the escalating numbers of coloured people
in her kingdom, Queen Elizabeth I of England issued a
proclamation ordering the expulsion of the 'blackamoors'.
However, as the English trading mission transformed itself
into the fabulously profitable business of slavery, hundreds
of black people now began to find themselves adrift in
England. By the late eighteenth century, England had a
sizeable population of people of African origin, and these
individuals were often able to form and maintain their own
clubs and societies. In the nineteenth century, with the
abolition of the slave trade, and the steady increase of
instances of intermarriage, the black population began to
decline significantly, and it was not to grow again in size
until the late fifties and sixties with the advent of mass
migration from the Caribbean. For most of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, there were vast sections of
England where a coloured face had never been seen, and
the appearance of an African or West Indian would be a
truly alarming spectacle. This is how Lionel Fitzherbert
Turpin must have appeared to the townsfolk of Leamington
Spa in the early part of the twentieth century. After his
untimely death, Lionel left a legacy of five mixed-race children
in Leamington Spa, who not only constituted a truly
unusual sight, but who were regarded by some intolerant
locals as a social problem which they were ill-equipped to
deal with.

By the time young 'Licker' Turpin reached fourteen, he
was seldom attending school and it was clear that his life
was in danger of taking a turn towards lawlessness. At the
local Leamington Spa Boys' Club, a boxing section had
recently been formed under the guidance of a local
policeman, Inspector John 'Gerry' Gibbs, and an Italian
former amateur welterweight champion named Ron Stefani.
They both loved the physical skill and discipline of boxing,
preferring the purity and dignity of the amateur ranks to
what they perceived to be the chicanery and exploitation
of the professional world. In 1942 they persuaded the young
tearaway 'Licker' Turpin to come into the gym, and it soon
became clear that the coloured lad possessed an extraordinary
talent. He was quick, aggressive, and keen to learn,
and he was also strong and eager to develop his strength
by lifting weights. This was an unusual method of training,
for traditionally fighters worried that it made them less
lithe and supple; it was also believed that the new muscles
might 'confuse' the boxing muscles, but the stubborn
youngster continued to build up his strength with weights,
a regime that he remained loyal to throughout the full
length of his career.

The day young Randolph Turpin stepped into the
Leamington Spa gym, boxing was already in his blood.
His eldest brother Dick had turned professional as a
two-pounds-a-bout boxer when Randy was only nine, and
he was now establishing himself as a serious fighter.
Jackie was also handy with his fists, but Gibbs and Stefani
knew that the jewel in the family crown, and the kid
who had everything, was young Randy. The following
year, in 1943, when aged only fifteen, Turpin won the
British junior 112 lb championship. In 1944 he won
the British junior 133 lb championship, bringing even further
glory to the name of Leamington Spa Boys' Club. However,
with a war raging across the globe, nothing was going to
be simple, including making a career and progressing as a
boxer. His older brother Dick had joined the army and
was on active duty, while Jackie had decided to join the
Royal Navy. 'Licker' had now left school and was working
as a labourer in a local builder's yard, but he decided to
join the Royal Navy where he was assigned to duties as
an assistant cook. This gave him plenty of time to continue
to box, and in 1945 he achieved a unique double by winning
both the junior ABA 147 lb British championship and the
senior ABA title, which made him both the youngest boxer,
and the first black boxer, to win an ABA senior championship.
He also won the navy title, the Inter-Services title,
and the following year the ABA senior middleweight championship.
Those knowledgeable about the sport recognised
the 'Leamington Licker' as the outstanding amateur
oxing prospect in the country and the boy was still only
seventeen.