Foreigners (15 page)

Turpin's many relationships with different women had
for him always been problematic because, unlike some men
who are able to put domestic disputes out of their minds
and continue with their lives, Turpin smouldered internally
when things did not go
exactly
the way he wanted.
He was still preoccupied with Mary Stack, who had made
it clear that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him,
for he felt that his former wife had tried her best to poison
people's opinion of him. After the Robinson rematch,
Turpin had bought Randolph Junior an expensive gold
watch back from America, and he ran into Mary and
Randolph Junior outside the Cassino Milk Bar in
Leamington Spa. She was holding his son, but when Turpin
showed the child the watch, the child spat at his father
and Turpin's brother, Jackie, led Randy away. 'It ain't the
lad's fault,' he said. 'It's only what they've been saying to
him' – 'they' being the Stack family. Soon after this incident,
the bitter divorce proceedings between himself and
Mary reached court, with Mary alleging cruelty on the
part of her husband, who in turn claimed that his wife
had condoned his alleged cruelty. It was all an extravagant
waste of time and money, but finally, on 12 June, 1953,
Turpin was divorced by Mary, but Turpin was dismayed
to discover that the whole sorry proceedings had cost him
almost £10,000. He was granted 'reasonable access' to his
son, but the reality was that there would be virtually no
further contact at all between father and son.

The divorce settlement may well have cleared up some
of the complications of Turpin's relationship with his
former wife, but it did little to address his ongoing problems
with a number of different women. Turpin liked to
keep two or three different women as his 'girlfriends', and
most of these 'girlfriends' understood that they were
nothing more than temporary entertainment. They were
generally happy to bask in the reflected glory of a champion
prizefighter, but there were some who wished to be
more than this. A week before Turpin departed for the
United States and the Olsen fight, he was named as
the co-respondent in a divorce suit being brought by the
policeman husband of a twenty-four-year-old blonde
woman named Pamela Valentine. The woman worked at
Gwrych Castle and claimed that their relationship began
there, and then continued in London. Turpin, for his part,
insisted that he thought the woman was single, and it was
only when she asked him for money to buy a Christmas
present for her child that he realised that she was married.
He was ordered to pay the costs incurred by Mr Valentine
in bringing the suit.

On his arrival back in England after the disastrous Olsen
fight, a bruised and battered Turpin was met by a twentyseven-year-old
Welsh hill farmer's daughter, Gwyneth Price,
who was better known to him, and her friends and family,
as Gwen. She was the young woman who Adele Daniels
had spotted in the American press photograph wearing the
'I love you' nylons. A few weeks earlier Gwen had waved
a hopeful Turpin off at Southampton, having willingly
accepted his argument that it was better for them both if
she did not accompany him to New York on this particular
trip. However, as planned, she was there to welcome
him back to England after his shocking defeat, but she
was astute enough not to wait for him in plain view of
the press. The Turpin party disembarked and prepared to
head straight back to Warwickshire, Dick Turpin having
answered the journalists' somewhat probing questions about
what exactly had gone wrong in New York. Randy took
a taxi to the Royal Hotel to rendezvous with Gwen whom
he had first met the previous year, in March 1952, when
he was training at Gwrych Castle. Her sister Mona had
persuaded Gwen to come with her and get the boxer's autograph.
A grinning Turpin had charmed the girl into a date
in exchange for his signature, and throughout the course
of the subsequent year they had both tried to keep their
'friendship' reasonably discreet. Turpin's family cared little
for this fiercely loyal Welsh girl from Axton, Flintshire,
but Turpin was happy for he seemed to have finally found
somebody who he thought understood him. The following
day the young couple left Southampton and hid away from
the world in a hotel in Devizes, for Turpin was clearly in
no frame of mind to submit to the judgemental scrutiny
of the world, nor was he ready to resume his responsibilities
as a boxer. A vulnerable, and emotionally scarred,
Turpin began to increasingly lean upon Gwen for support,
and a few days later, on 15 November, the couple checked
into the Greyhound Inn in Newport, Wales, and decided
to marry without inviting any of the Turpin family to the
ceremony, or even informing them of their intentions.
Turpin's mother, in particular, was hurt, all the more so
as she had still not come to terms with the fact that her
youngest son had divorced Mary Stack and, if rumours
were to be believed, possibly mistreated her.

However, the biggest cloud hanging over Turpin's head,
and one that was potentially far more damaging than his
mother's disapproval of who he had married, was the
ongoing situation with Adele Daniels. The case was not
only proving to be prohibitively expensive in terms of legal
fees, but there was also his reputation to defend and the
fact that until this dispute was resolved he was effectively
banned from fighting in the United States. Adele Daniels'
civil case against Turpin reached the courts in late 1954,
and the serious allegation of rape was added to the assault
charges. Turpin's American lawyer led the fighter to understand
that should Turpin lose the case then the settlement
was likely to be a payment in excess of $100,000, and this
would effectively ruin Turpin for life. Eventually, in
November 1955, a somewhat worried Randolph Turpin
returned to New York City and began to tell a slightly
different tale. He conceded that, back in 1951, if it were
not for the fact that he was still married to Mary Stack,
then he would have married Adele Daniels at the time of
the Sugar Ray Robinson rematch. He admitted the existence
of a substantial number of love letters between them,
which included proposals of marriage on his part, but he
was adamant that on returning to New York for the Olsen
fight he had made it very clear to Adele Daniels that
marriage was no longer a possibility. Miss Daniels did not
dispute Turpin's claim that he said he no longer wished
to marry her, but she insisted that one moment he said
that this is what he desired, and the next he would retract
his statement. Clearly his deep ambivalence about marrying
her had served only to inflame her anger. Miss Daniels'
attorney, Mr J. Roland Sala, asserted that Turpin was clearly
unstable, angry, and out of control. He characterised the
defendant as 'a jungle beast in human form, and a dangerous
killer' and said that Miss Daniels had wondered if his
condition had been made worse by the beating that he had
taken. Miss Daniels repeated, and stood by, her claim that
she had suffered blows from Turpin's fists and boots that
had left her psychologically scarred.

On the fourth, and last, day of the trial, the case was
eventually settled after a long discussion between the two
sets of lawyers. Turpin insisted that he had paid Miss
Daniels money for food and rent, and he furiously denied
ever raping or assaulting her. Miss Daniels was adamant
that he had not only done so, but he had said that she
was like all Americans, 'trying to push me around'. She
insisted that Turpin had continued and told her in no
uncertain terms that, 'I am the master, and in England
when I say move they move.' According to Miss Daniels
he once assaulted her and then said, 'If you make one step
to call the police I'll break your neck and if I don't others
will.' When she pressed him as to what exactly he meant,
he pointed to his connections in the boxing world. The
lawyers listened to their clients' claims and counterclaims,
and sensing that these unsupported allegations could go
on being made and denied for a long period of time, the
potential six-figure settlement was reduced to $3,500 which
a frustrated Turpin quickly agreed to pay, thus accepting
culpability for some wrongdoings. Miss Daniels had
decided to settle for this lesser amount against her lawyer's
advice, but like Turpin she too was tiring of these proceedings.
Turpin's lawyer quickly attempted to seize the moral
high ground, and he issued a statement suggesting vindication
for his client. However, a relieved Turpin was by
now totally indifferent to any more legal posturing, and
he was simply happy to be able to finally put the United
States, and the memory of Miss Adele Daniels, behind
him.

But what did he have to return to in England? The truth
was, in 1955 Turpin was facing serious problems both in
the ring and out of it. Two years earlier, after he had
returned from the Olsen debacle, George Middleton had
encouraged his fighter to undergo a full medical check-up.
The doctors soon discovered that not only did Turpin
have an enlarged liver, his hearing had grown worse, and
his eyesight was deteriorating. In fact, during the voyage
to New York for the Carl 'Bobo' Olsen fight, his brother
Jackie had noticed that while they were doing their roadwork
running around the upper deck of the
Queen Mary
,
Turpin had a tendency to drift a little and sometimes even
run into him. A medical examination soon determined that
Turpin could see straight ahead, but his peripheral vision
was restricted, which could have serious consequences for
a fighter as he would not be able to see some punches
coming. On 2 January, 1954, Turpin was fined two pounds
at Abergate Magistrates' Court for being in possession of
a rifle without a firearms licence, and the gun was confiscated.
It was extensively reported in the press that during
the court proceedings the fighter's hearing appeared to be
impaired, for Turpin was often struggling to hear what
was being said in the courtroom, but the British Boxing
Board of Control, who could easily have withdrawn his
boxing licence, chose to do nothing. In late January 1954,
Turpin was charged and convicted of dangerous and careless
driving and fined fifteen guineas, but his driving licence
was not confiscated and he continued to drive recklessly.
In fact, during the two years between his return from the
loss to Olsen, and the Adele Daniels trial in New York,
Turpin experienced great difficulty holding his life in order.
His worries over his deteriorating relationship with his
family, the impending court case in the United States, and
his increasingly desperate financial situation, continued to
trouble him. But what concerned others was not only what
they considered to be his increasingly erratic behaviour,
but his declining abilities in the ring.

After the loss to Olsen, Turpin began to lose to men
who he should have comfortably beaten. In May 1954
Turpin suffered a first-round knockout in Rome and lost
his European middleweight title to a light-puncher named
Tiberio Mitri. This was a bout he should have won with
ease, and this shocking loss marked the end of any further
world title aspirations. Turpin's heart seemed to have gone
out of fighting, and on those few occasions when he did
muster the energy and focus to take a fight seriously, the
press observed that this was clearly not the same fighter
who, only a few years earlier, had fought so gallantly against
the great Sugar Ray Robinson. His brother Jackie, who
during this bleak period continued to spar with Randy,
noticed that one moment his brother could be jovial and
ready to joke around, and the next moment he could
become extremely angry. These sudden and unexpected
mood swings were now often accompanied by blinding
headaches, but Turpin refused to seek any medical help.
The defeats became embarrassing, particularly a fourthround
knockout loss to a 'nobody' named Gordon Wallace
in October 1954, a man who managed to floor Turpin four
times and embarrass him so badly that Turpin temporarily
retired. However, although Turpin's box office status began
now to rapidly decline, he needed to fight to make money.
In November 1956, Turpin did manage to defeat Alex
Buxton and retain his British light-heavyweight title, and
he was eventually able to claim a Lonsdale belt outright
when he defended his light-heavyweight title for a third
time in June 1957, winning a turgid fifteen-round decision
over the little known Arthur Howard. But even this
no-hoper managed to knock Turpin to the canvas three
times during the course of the fight. There was little further
glory in 1957, or during the first half of 1958. The halfdozen
victories that he was able to accumulate were all
achieved against woefully inadequate opposition, yet the
cost of these 'triumphs' involved Turpin taking a great
deal of physical punishment. The end came in Birmingham
on 9 September, 1958, when Turpin was pummelled by a
Trinidadian named Yolande Pompey who easily knocked
him out in two rounds. The correspondent for the
London
Evening Standard
summed things up. 'No doubts now –
Turpin is just another fighter . . . the whiplash punch and
the split-second timing that once gave him world supremacy
have gone. And Turpin must not blame us for noting their
passing – with infinite regret.'

It was clear, even to Turpin, that in order to protect
his health, and his dignity, he should hang up his gloves.
The business of boxing had begun to eat into his body,
and although he remained a handsome man who had
avoided the hammered spread of a boxer's nose, there was
no longer any point to his continuing for he had no title
to his name and there was little hope of his ever winning
one again. His eyesight was damaged, his hearing was in
danger of deteriorating even further, and he no longer
had the stomach for the rigid discipline of training and
preparing for top-class fights. His professional record of
sixty-four wins (forty-five by knockout), eight losses, and
one draw was something that he could be proud of, but
Turpin was financially destitute, and he had no idea what
had happened to all the money that he had earned in the
ring. With no other sources of income open to him, he
reluctantly accepted George Middleton's offer of employment
in his Leamington Spa scrapyard. Turpin began
working a nine-to-five shift, driving around picking up
old car engines and bits of metal, then taking them back
to the scrapyard where he would let loose on them with
a sledgehammer. His take-home pay varied between two
and four pounds a week, which was a world away from
his days of first-class travel, five-star hotels, and custommade
clothes and shoes, but it enabled him to make some
kind of a living and afford a small house and a car. But
there remained huge debts to the Inland Revenue, and
Turpin had no idea how to begin to deal with these issues.
He had survived twelve years as a top-class fighter and
all he had to show for it were arrears that day and night
weighed heavily on his mind. However, one thing he was
sure of was the fact that he was finished with boxing. A
few years earlier, while trying to forget yet another shocking
defeat at the hands of a lesser man, he had written a
poem for his manager, George Middleton, expressing his
feelings about the sport that had both made him and was
now breaking him.