The Great White Hopes

by Graeme Kent

  The promoter’s machinations were extremely effective. Tickets to the Pelkey–McCarty fight were priced from two to six dollars. Burns arranged for special streetcars to take spectators from the city to the arena. Three thousand people packed the stadium on the night. Before the main bout Burns, who was acting as fight announcer, deferred to the Reverend William Walker for a few words before the bell got the championship fight under way. Walker concluded his peroration by gesturing at the heavyweights waiting impatiently in their corners and saying, ‘Here are two fine young men. They are in perfect physical condition, ready for their big test. And it should remind all of us always to be ready to meet our Maker when the time comes.’

  His words were to prove eerily prophetic. The bout started with McCarty landing a left jab and then going forward into a clinch with Pelkey, which the referee Ed Smith had to disentangle. Then, as ringsider Tommy Burns put it, ‘McCarty stepped back and went down very slowly.’ Pelkey, who had not landed a punch in the 106 seconds that had elapsed since the bell, looked on in amazement.

  There were angry cries of ‘Fake!’ from the crowd. Smith, as bemused as Pelkey had been, counted McCarty out. He tried to revive McCarty but failed. He then called for a doctor. Two were present in the hall and they did their best to help the stricken heavyweight. By this time Billy McCarney had dashed across the ring and was kneeling at McCarty’s side. After another fifteen minutes, with still no response from the boxer, it was decided to carry McCarty outside, in case the fresh air might help revive him. Doctors injected morphine and tried to force brandy past his lips. It was all to no avail. Luther McCarty, aged 21, was pronounced dead.

  Pelkey and Burns were both charged with manslaughter by the Royal Northwest Mounted Police but were released on bail. To make matters even worse, the night after the contest the Manchester Arena burnt to the ground, the result, Tommy Burns was always convinced, of an arsonist at work.

  An inquest was held. Pelkey, shattered and given to bouts of uncontrollable weeping, was exonerated. The coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death. Medical testimony declared that McCarty had died from internal bleeding brought about by a broken neck. Tommy Burns gave evidence that on the morning of the bout he had spoken to McCarty, who had complained of a stiff neck that he assumed was due to sleeping in a draught the previous night.

  The bizarre death of the leading White Hope was marked in headlines across the USA. The Milwaukee Free Press of 25 May announced, ‘McCarty’s body had hardly grown cold when theatrical men from the United States began making Pelkey offers to go on stage. Within five hours after he had become world’s heavyweight champion [sic], Pelkey had received no less than five offers. He refused all, however.’

  Despite the verdict of the coroner’s court, the principals in the fight still had to be brought to trial. They appeared before Chief Justice Harvey, who told the jury that they must decide if the contest had been a prizefight, and not an exhibition, and, if so, whether Pelkey was responsible for the death of his opponent.

  Billy McCarney was always convinced that McCarty’s injury had been sustained in a fall from a horse on the ranch near Calgary which he had used as a training camp. Others pointed out that only a month before the Pelkey bout McCarty had gone ten rounds in a tough no-decision fight with hard-punching White Hope Frank Moran. It was possible that one of Moran’s fearsome right swings had started the trouble with McCarty’s neck.

  After hearing the reports of witnesses to the fight and the medical testimony, the jury decided that the bout had indeed been a prizefight, but that it was impossible to tell whether Pelkey had been responsible for the demise of McCarty. Pelkey was released. Burns was told that charges that he had organised the tournament would remain on the register, but nothing ever came of this.

  Thousands of people filed passed McCarty’s body as it was laid out before his burial in the family plot at Piqua, Ohio, where his father was now living. Some newspaper reports stated that the fighter had left $65,000, which went to his estranged wife and daughter, but it seems more likely that the widow received $10,000.

  The White Heavyweight Championship did Arthur Pelkey no good. So badly affected was he by Luther McCarty’s death in the ring with him that he never fought well again. The first time he defended his crown, against Gunboat Smith, he lost. Burns remained loyal to his man and continued to manage Pelkey for a while, but then joined the Canadian Army as a physical fitness instructor in 1914, and, apart from several inconsequential bouts and an unsuccessful one-fight comeback in England after the war, Burns, the former champion, drifted away from the game.

  Arthur Pelkey fought on until 1920, but he was merely going through the motions in order to earn a living at the only trade he knew. After the ill-fated bout with McCarty he lost a dozen fights by knockouts and departed from the White Hope scene.

  9

  THE BUSHMAN AND THE BLACKSMITH

  For a short time Australia became one of the centres of White Hope production. The sport had really taken off in the continent in 1880, when former bare-knuckle fighter and convert to the gloved game Jem Mace had paid a brief visit with his boxing booth to Australia and New Zealand.

  Not only did Mace discover and encourage a young Timaru blacksmith called Bob Fitzsimmons to leave New Zealand to develop his boxing skills in Sydney, he also taught a tough gymnasium owner called Larry Foley, who went on to develop the world-class heavyweights Peter Jackson and Frank Slavin, and middleweights of the calibre of Fitzsimmons and Jem Hall.

  Without exception, however, all these fighters had to quit Australia and make their homes in Europe, South Africa or the USA in order to further their careers. It was not until 1907 that a couple of home-grown heavyweights emerged who were to fight for the world heavyweight championship in Australia.

  The first of these was a raw-boned outback slugger known as Boshter (a local slang term for ‘magnificent’) Bill Squires. He had been born on a sheep station outside the New South Wales bush town of Narrabri. His father had been a bare-knuckle fighter and Squires developed into a useful brawler himself. He engaged in a number of bare-fist encounters while earning a living variously as a miner, shearer and railway navvy. He always claimed that he had taken up boxing with the gloves after he had been persuaded to challenge a touring booth fighter. Squires had knocked out the professional and attracted the notice of a former bantamweight boxer, who took Squires to his Newcastle home and introduced him to some of the niceties of the Marquess of Queensberry rules governing gloved fighting.

  Squires proved as adept in the ring with the gloves as he had in the ten bouts he had engaged in as a bare-knuckle fighter, but his early days were not easy. Talking about his initial bouts to a reporter from the London Free Press, he said, ‘The day after a fight I went back to work in the mines. At one time, when I was new at the game, in order to beat the champion of one of the provinces, walked 200 miles, trained for two weeks and fought for a fifty dollar purse.’ However, after Squires scored a significant victory over the black Peter Felix, a former Australian champion, he was taken up by John Wren, a well-known gambler.

  When he was 19 and working in a factory, Wren had gathered together every pound that he could muster and had bet the lot on a champion racehorse called Carbine to win the 1890 Melbourne Gold Cup. Because there were so many runners in the crowded field and the horse was heavily handicapped, Carbine had started at very reasonable odds. The horse had won, giving Wren a profit of £180.

  The youngster used the money to launch an illegal off-course bookmaking organisation known as ‘the shilling tote’. This proved very popular, as it gave ordinary people who could not get to racecourses an opportunity to back their fancies. Wren soon became rich, owning his own racecourses, boxing stadiums and a theatre.

  The entrepreneur took a great pride in his new heavyweight and promised to secure Squires a shot at the world title. For a while it looked as if Philadelphia Jack O’Brien might be persuaded to come to Australia for a championship elimination conte
st, but the American turned the bout down to fight Stanley Ketchel instead. Disappointed, Wren appointed a puppet manager to look after Squires and arranged for his man to go to the USA to challenge Tommy Burns for his championship there.

  Just as Squires was about to leave, in 1907, Jack Johnson turned up on the shores of Australia. He had heard that Tommy Burns might be coming to the continent and intended to challenge the champion when he arrived. There was much newspaper talk of Johnson meeting Squires before the Australian sailed, but it was too late to make the necessary arrangements.

  Johnson made the most of the situation, gaining a great deal of publicity by declaring that Squires had left because he was afraid to enter the ring. The black fighter implied that the same would apply to all other Australian heavyweights.

  This impelled the newspapers to take up the cause, demanding that another local big man be brought forward to uphold the honour of his country. The choice fell upon the unhappy Bill Lang, a former blacksmith. He was quite well known in the Melbourne area as an Australian Rules football player and amateur boxer, but at this time he had had only nine professional fights and was little more than a novice. His main achievement had been to hold his own in a couple of fierce training-camp spars with the recently decamped Bill Squires. At this stage in his career he was certainly no match for a man of Johnson’s experience.

  Johnson warmed up with a one-round knockout of Peter Felix and then, on 4 March 1907, met Lang in the pouring rain in the open air at Melbourne, before a crowd of 15,000. Johnson entered the ring first and then had to wait, sheltering under an umbrella. The absent Lang did not raise the spirits of his supporters when he sent a message to the ring saying that it was too wet to fight.

  Eventually Lang was persuaded to enter the ring and the bout got under way. At the end of the first round Johnson asked his seconds when his real opponent was going to put in an appearance, because the man facing him in the ring was just a joke. Johnson toyed with the novice for a few rounds, to give the crowd a show, and then started knocking the other man down. He put Lang on the canvas six times before flooring him for good in the ninth round. Then Johnson sauntered out of the ring and spent the next few months contentedly adding to his ring earnings with judicious bets at hospitable Australian racecourses.

  For the time being, Australian fight fans turned their attention away from Lang and transferred their interest to their premier heavyweight, Bill Squires, who had reached the USA. There he had started at the top by challenging Tommy Burns for his title. Believing that he was on to a good thing, the champion had accepted and both men had gone into training. Squires, with his strength, long reach and power of punch, showed up so well in his sparring sessions that many newspapermen tipped him to defeat Burns. The small, self-contained champion was neither popular nor particularly highly regarded by boxing followers. He was widely expected to lose his title to Squires, who was on a winning streak, and he entered the fight an underdog in the betting.

  Their bout took place in San Francisco on 4 July in front of a crowd of 20,000. Promoted by Jim Coffroth, it was a short-lived affair but hectic while it lasted. At the bell Squires walked boldly into the champion’s arc of fire and was dropped heavily. The Australian was up after a short count, and, as Burns sailed in to finish him off, Squires leapt forward and landed a left hook to the mouth, which made the champion stagger back. Burns said later that it was one of the hardest blows he had ever taken in the ring. Automatically the dazed Burns fell into a clinch, and, as he waited for his head to clear, he bluffed his opponent by asking whether the Australian could fight or not. This disconcerted Squires. He pushed the champion away but did not immediately follow up.

  This was all that Burns required. He hit Squires with a bludgeon of a right, felling his adversary again. Once more Squires pulled himself up, but Burns landed another right and it was all over in 2 minutes and 8 seconds of the first round. The referee, James J. Jeffries, walked over and handed the winner $10,000, a sum given to Squires by John Wren for the Australian to bet on himself to win.

  The result of the Squires–Burns fight, following upon Lang’s defeat at the hands of Jack Johnson, caused a great deal of gloom in Australia. This was deepened when Squires fought the blown-up middleweight Jack Twin Sullivan and was knocked out in the nineteenth round. The Australian was not finished, however. He followed Burns to Ireland, where the champion was defending against the local champion, the tubby Jem Roche. Squires entered the ring before the bout started and challenged Burns to a return fight. Burns, who had knocked Roche out almost before Squires had retaken his seat, expressed his willingness to let the Australian have another title tilt.

  Squires stayed on in Ireland for a match with the loser Jem Roche, but, as both men had been knocked out in the first round by Burns, their bout was not well attended. Squires won on a fourth-round knockout and followed Tommy Burns to Paris for their rematch.

  The second contest, held on 13 June 1908, was much better than their first abortive effort. However, it almost did not take place, because promoter Hugh McIntosh moved heaven and earth in a vain effort to steal the bout for Australia, where he knew it would draw a huge crowd.

  Burns won the Paris fight in eight rounds, though not before he had been sent staggering in the fourth round and then dropped for a short count in the seventh. But, after regrouping, Burns connected with a hard blow to the body and Squires was unable to get up before the count of ten.

  McIntosh hurried back to Australia, where he presented the local newspapers with an eyewitness account of the Paris bout, in which, he declared with a straight face, Burns had been most fortunate to win. The reporters fell for his account and used many inches of column space to tell their readers how close the Australian had been to gaining the world championship in France.

  When Burns arrived in Australia, he played along with the prematch publicity, declaring that Squires was a worthy opponent and a credit to his country. For his part Squires averred that the champion had hit him harder than any other man he had met. A large crowd greeted Squires at the station when he arrived in Sydney for his final training sessions, and 15,000 spectators bought tickets for the third meeting between the two, which would be the first contest for the World Heavyweight Championship to be held on Australian soil.

  Again Squires fought bravely, but the much smaller Burns was too much for him. The Australian built up a slight lead over the first few rounds and then the champion began closing him down. Burns’s style was unspectacular but effective and his body punches had Squires clinching and gasping for breath. In the thirteenth round Burns knocked Squires down three times. The towel was thrown in from the Australian’s corner, just as a police inspector at ringside was demanding that the bout be stopped.

  Less than two weeks later, Burns fought the ever-optimistic Bill Lang in Melbourne. This time 19,000 hopeful fans crowded the arena. Before the fight could get under way, the canny Burns declared that he had forgotten an essential elastic support for his injured forearm. Lang’s handlers let the champion get away with his ploy and the nervous Australian had to wait while one of Burns’s men went back to the hotel to fetch the bandage.

  When the fight finally started, the big-punching Lang caused a sensation when he floored a casual champion with a heavy left hook. This acted as a wake-up call for Burns. He boxed cautiously until his head had cleared and then dismissed all thoughts of carrying Lang for the sake of his supporters. Burns moved in viciously. He knocked his opponent down four times and, in the sixth round, Lang’s seconds threw in the towel.

  There followed a momentary pause in the Australian heavyweight scene. Both of their hopes had been beaten by Burns, while Squires had also been hammered by Jack Johnson. In fact, the only bright spot on the Australian boxing horizon in 1908 had been the success of their amateur middleweight champion Reginald (Snowy) Baker in the London Olympics. Baker had won three fights in a single day to reach the final, where he had been matched against an England cricketer, J.W.H.T. Douglas. Bak
er had lost a thrilling bout on points to win the silver medal, but back home it was regarded as a moral victory, as the referee for the contest had been Douglas’s father.

  For the two Australian heavyweights a certain amount of cautious consolidation was considered necessary before they were launched upon the world scene once again. When the furore following the Jack Johnson–Tommy Burns fight at Rushcutters Bay had died down, the rebuilding of the local big men got under way. In the following year Bill Lang was matched against former world heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons. The Englishman was brought to Australia by Hugh D. McIntosh, who took over the mantle of Fitzsimmons’s manager for the duration of his stay, while Tommy Burns was recruited as the Englishman’s chief second.

  Fitzsimmons was 47 years old. He had been boxing professionally for some twenty-eight years and had practically given up the sport to concentrate on his variety tours. Even so, Boxing optimistically gave the veteran a chance, pointing out Lang’s comparative lack of experience: ‘he has only been in the game since 1905’.

  The bout was held at the Rushcutters Bay arena on 27 December 1909. It was scheduled over twenty rounds and billed as a fight for the heavyweight championship of Australia. In front of 12,000 people, the former world champion established a slight lead over the first few rounds but then succumbed to Lang’s power of punch. By the twelfth round Fitzsimmons was reeling around the ring, cut and bleeding. A hard blow sent the Cornishman reeling back to the ropes. He dropped his guard and Lang hesitated, unwilling to strike a defenceless man, but the proud Fitzsimmons beckoned him in.

  Reluctantly, the Australian approached and hit his semi-conscious opponent with a light tap to the jaw. It was sufficient to send the English fighter to the ground, where he remained until the count had been tolled over him.