The Great White Hopes (16 page)

The vehemence of his second and the disapproval of the crowd seemed to transform Wells. At the start of the third round he danced across the ring on his toes, stunned Brown with three superb left jabs and then caught his opponent on the chin with a sweeping right. Brown tottered forward, collapsed and was unconscious for twenty minutes.

After this, for a time Wells could do no wrong. He had received only eighteen shillings for one of his first professional bouts, but he was soon doing much better than that. Crowds flocked to his fights and the handsome young heavyweight with the spectacular straight left became a public idol. The seal was placed on his success when the Australian promoter Hugh D. McIntosh landed in Great Britain and began promoting tournaments in London, living up to his promise of taking boxing away from the fleapits of the East End and the cloistered aristocracy of the National Sporting Club, and making it a sport for the respectable and well-heeled middle class.

In order to do this McIntosh needed a drawing card, preferably a heavyweight White Hope. Again Eugene Corri came to Wells’s aid, judiciously recommending the young heavyweight to the Australian promoter. ‘I told him that Wells was his man, goodlooking, a real clean boxer, and becoming more popular every day as the boxing world was getting to know him.’ McIntosh signed up Wells at £100 a contest, and put him in with a series of apelike British heavyweights, emphasising the ‘beauty and the beast’ aspects of the matches. With one exception, Wells did him proud, scoring a series of knockouts and making even the most cynical fight fan wonder whether at last England might be producing a world-class heavyweight.

Then Wells blotted his copybook. He was matched with the ponderous veteran Gunner Moir. Only a year before, Wells had earned a few shillings sparring with the former champion. A packed house turned out to see the bout, as rumours were spreading that the anticipated walkover against the Gunner was a mere preamble to Wells being matched for the world championship against Jack Johnson.

For three rounds Wells gave Moir a boxing lesson. His glorious left hand was seldom out of his shorter opponent’s face. Twice his right hand tumbled Moir to the floor. The crowd cheered and marvelled at the display of a thoroughbred. Towards the end of the third round, Wells smashed Moir to the canvas once more. Groggily the Gunner stood up. Wells measured him lazily with a long left before moving in to apply the closure with his cocked right. As if acting instinctively, the dazed Moir swayed inside Wells’s extended left arm and hit the tall man hard in the stomach. The young heavyweight gasped, doubled up and fell to the floor, where he remained while the referee counted him out.

‘I felt sure that I had the Gunner beaten to the world by the end of the first round . . .’ wrote Wells ruefully in his book
Modern Boxing
. ‘He got home one rib drive, however, right at the start, and then proceeded to use his strength in the clinches.’

Dedicated fight fans seemed embarrassed rather than annoyed by Wells’s loss. It was claimed that Wells had been handicapped earlier in the fight by his apprehensive manager Jim Maloney shouting, ‘Stand back, Bill!’, whenever his heavyweight had Moir in trouble.

The Bombardier was too popular and his connections were too good to allow him to be summarily discarded. Less than two months later he was given a chance to redeem himself by being matched against the capable American journeyman Porky Flynn.

Wells rose to the occasion by outpointing the American in a rousing contest dominated by the Englishman’s left hand. In the end Flynn, for all his experience, was reduced to scuttling backwards behind a barrier of arms crossed over his head.

Immediately afterwards, referee Eugene Corri and Peggy Bettinson, manager of the National Sporting Club, took Wells to the Fulham gymnasium of professional strongman and boxing enthusiast Thomas Inch, known as the Scarborough Hercules. They asked the physical culturist to take the heavyweight under his wing and develop his physique and strength. Inch put Wells on to a successful regime of lifting light weights, increasing his stamina and punching power.

The wealthy and successful bodybuilding instructor had become a force in the British quest for a White Hope. He announced as much in the weekly
Boxing.
‘Mr Thomas Inch, the famous physical culture expert, is prepared to undertake the full cost of training, etc., any likely applicant. Mr Inch will do all he can for any really good big man who comes forward, being anxious that England should not miss the chance of a prospective world’s champion . . .’

Under the tutelage of Inch, Wells was then matched against Iron Hague at the National Sporting Club for the Yorkshireman’s British heavyweight title. Wells knocked his opponent out in the sixth round. Afterwards a rueful Hague said that the well-conditioned Wells had hit him harder than Sam Langford had.

That was enough. Wells’s backers were not going to risk their prospect getting unravelled again by matching him against some hard-punching second-rater who might connect, as Moir had done, with a lucky punch. The time was ripe to make some serious money in a really big fight. It was announced that Wells would box Jack Johnson in London for the world heavyweight title. To many it did not seem such an unlikely concept. After the Hague fight, the editor of
Boxing
stated, ‘Given the necessary strength and stamina and a little more experience of possible dangers Wells should stand a good chance.’

Another subject for the headlines of that year was the arrival in Great Britain of Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world and fugitive from American justice. He had been forced to flee from the USA after being accused of violating the Mann Act by transporting a prostitute across state lines. In effect, all that Johnson had done was travel with his mistress of the time, Belle Schreiber, but this had been enough for the authorities to arrest the champion and then release him on bail. Johnson had skipped the country and was about to embark upon a tour of the music halls, which would take in London, Marseilles, Lyons, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest and St Petersburg. His twenty-minute act consisted of some bag-punching, a training exhibition, a perfunctory display of dancing and accompanying himself on the bass viol while he sang ‘Baby’s Sock is a Bluebag Now’.

Journalist Norman Clarke visited Johnson in his dressing room at the Golders Green Hippodrome during this tour and commented on the numerous wardrobe trunks piled in his room, each filled to overflowing with patent leather boots, silk shirts and other expensive items of clothing. Clarke was particularly impressed with Johnson’s partner, on and off stage, the white Lucille Cameron. He recalled in his autobiography
All in the Game,
‘Both in figure and face I have rarely seen such a beautiful creature; she had the head and features of a Greek goddess, and when they danced together, as they did in the show, Jack certainly in no way marred the picture.’

The Times
gave a cautious and condescending welcome to the black champion. ‘He sported rather more gold teeth than are worn by gentlemen in the shires, and enough diamonds to resemble a starry night, but he was on the whole a far more pleasant person to meet in a room than any of the white champions of complicated nationality whom America exports from time to time to these unwilling shores.’

The match was promoted by a shrewd Lancashire financier called Jimmy White. Never afraid to splash out, when White had once failed to find a taxi to take him to an appointment, he had flagged down a London bus, paid its passengers to disembark and then given the driver £5 to take him straight to his destination.

The championship match was scheduled over twenty rounds. Posters were exhibited all over London, advertising the forthcoming bill at the Empress Hall, Earls Court. First, Sid Burns of Great Britain would fight Georges Carpentier of France in a final eliminator for the European welterweight title. This would be followed at ten o’clock sharp by a bout for the World Heavyweight Championship, between Jack Johnson, champion of the world, and Bombardier Billy Wells, champion of England. Seat prices ranged from five guineas at ringside to ten shillings and sixpence. Bombardier Billy Wells could be seen training on Thursdays and Saturdays at 5 p.m.

It was the fight of the century for British fans. Tickets were snapped up almost as soon as they were printed. Then disaster struck. It was announced that strong objections had been lodged against such an interracial bout and that there was a strong demand for the championship contest to be called off.

The demand was being led by the Revd Dr F.B. Meyer, recently appointed as Secretary of the Free Church Council and eagerly looking for a way of publicising himself and his office. He was also looking for a cause through which to rally the different Free Churches under his leadership. Opposition to a boxing match, particularly one with racial connotations, would ally the denominations and provide his council with a crusade. In a skilfully conducted publicity campaign in the newspapers, Meyer reminded the public of the race riots that had occurred after Jack Johnson’s victory over Jeffries in Reno, and played up the inherent brutality of boxing, which, he pointed out, still had only semi-legal status in many parts of the world.

People began to take sides in the controversy almost at once. Some participants, and these included more than a few muscular Christians among the clergy, defended the manly art of self-defence. Others were equally fervent in their belief that it was a barbaric exercise carried out, largely unsupervised, in squalid conditions.

Ammunition was given to the anti-boxing squad when no less an authority than Lord Lonsdale, doyen of the National Sporting Club, entered the lists and announced that the Johnson–Wells bout should be cancelled at once, because matching the white man against the black was tantamount to a 2-year-old being forced to fight a 3-yearold. However, critics of the noble patron pointed out coolly that he was probably only jealous because Jack Johnson had spurned the NSC and its niggardly terms.

Public meetings began to be called in London and other large cities to denounce the proposed match. The ‘colour question’ was increasingly mentioned. The Secretary of the Baptist Union wrote sternly, ‘There can be no greater disservice to the Negro race than to encourage it to see glory in physical force and in beating the white man.’ A letter to
The Times
gave the testimony of a peer, who stated that an earlier victory of Johnson over a white boxer had caused unrest against colonial rule in Fiji. A contrary opinion was expressed at a meeting of supporters of the tournament, when it was gloomily predicted that banning boxing would almost inevitably lead to an increase in the use of swords and revolvers.

A summons was issued and the principals in the affair suddenly found themselves hauled before the bench at the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, answering a writ issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The defendants were accused of threatening to commit a breach of the peace. The Solicitor-General, Sir John Simon, prosecuted, assisted by Travers Humphries and Richard Muir. Promoter Jimmy White was defended by Eustace Fulton while Wells and the other defendants were represented by Henry Curtis Brown. Jack Johnson, iconoclastic to the end, handled his own defence. His arrival at the court was greeted with cheers from a large crowd waiting outside in the street.

While the defendants were assembling, the Revd F.B. Meyer was busy. He announced to the press that he proposed to accompany the Bishop of London to Balmoral, where the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, was staying as a guest of King George V. There he would present Churchill with a petition condemning the proposed twentyround Earls Court fight, signed by the Archbishop of York and many of the land’s great and good who were opposed to the bout.

Churchill was too old a hand to be caught in a confrontation with zealots. Hastily he sent Meyer a telegram: ‘Matter is receiving close attention. Shall be very glad to receive memorial by post but do not consider it necessary to ask you and the Bishop of London to undertake such a pilgrimage.’

Discussing the forthcoming case,
The Times
commented disapprovingly on the implications should the fight be allowed to continue: ‘The effect of an encounter between champions of different colour may not have any meaning for patrons of the ‘science’ who assemble at Earl’s Court, but it will nevertheless be felt in corners of the earth of which they may never have heard.’

When the hearing started, Johnson handled himself very well in the witness box. Shrewdly he cross-examined one of the police witnesses. The officer tried to impress the court by quoting from the rules of boxing. Johnson flashed his lazy grin. ‘Officer, you’re reading from a record under the ledge of that desk,’ he chided. He then asked the superintendent how he knew that the proposed fight would cause a breach of the peace. When the man prevaricated, the champion pressed home his advantage. ‘Have you ever seen a boxing match?’ he pounced. The officer admitted that he had not. ‘You have no idea what they are?’ persisted the defendant. The superintendent agreed that he had not. Johnson turned with an air of triumph to the magistrate. ‘The witness may go,’ he said airily. ‘I’m through.’

Before the case could reach its climax the freeholders of Earls Court served an interlocutory injunction to prevent their property being used for the tournament. It was granted, effectively ending the matter. The case against Jack Johnson and his co-defendants was adjourned
sine die
.

As usual the champion had the last word. When the magistrate asked him if he had anything to say, Johnson replied with dignity, ‘Speaking for himself, Johnny Johnson wishes to say that he will not box with Mr Wells in the British Isles or anywhere else where the British Government have control.’

The Times
, which had earlier been quite welcoming, now turned on the champion, noting sternly that in the USA Johnson was regarded as a ‘flash nigger’ and that he was ‘a type not to be encouraged by those who have to keep ten millions of black men in subjection to the dominant race’.