As the fight moved into the tenth round, the bout remained even on the referee's scorecard with four rounds for each man, and one round drawn, but the partisan crowd were now beginning to show signs of worry for it was clear that this Limey's victory had been no fluke. Turpin was a hell of a fighter, and the crowd soon received further proof of this fact when midway through the tenth round a swinging right from Turpin caused a cut over Robinson's left eye that began to gush blood at such a rate that it seemed inevitable that the fight would soon be stopped and Turpin would retain his title. Sensing his chance of regaining the world crown slipping away, Robinson cut loose into Turpin's body with hard punches and then followed up with right and left hooks to the head. Instead of backing away and defending himself, Turpin unwisely tried to meet fire with fire and was caught by a swinging right cross which sent him spinning to the canvas. The crowd roared and the referee began a count which Turpin could clearly hear. He rose at seven and shook his head as he tried to regain his senses, but he was immediately pinned back against the ropes by another ferocious assault by Robinson, who slashed at a sagging opponent who was suddenly proving to be an easy target. Normally a referee might have allowed the fight to continue to the bell, thereby giving the champion time to have a breather and come out fresh for another round, but on this occasion – Robinson having hit Turpin thirty-one times in just twenty-five seconds – Goldstein waved his hands in the air and stopped the fight with a mere seven seconds of the round remaining. The ferocious baying of the Polo Grounds crowd, and the referee's awareness of the recent death in the ring of a fighter named Jose Flores, probably encouraged Goldstein to draw proceedings to a halt. Randolph Turpin's reign as world middleweight champion was over; it had lasted just sixty-four days.
After the fight an unhappy Turpin claimed, 'He should not have stopped it. With only seven seconds to go I was perfectly keen.' It is certainly possible that a revived Turpin might have emerged for the eleventh round and opened up more damage on Robinson's badly cut eye, forcing the referee to stop the fight, but the referee had made his decision. Randolph Turpin was no longer champion of the world, and Jack Solomons began to immediately negotiate for a deciding fight, insisting that this was something that both fighters would welcome. However, most fight fans knew that Sugar Ray Robinson would be in no hurry to once again risk either his reputation or his title against a warrior like Turpin, at least not in the foreseeable future. Back at the Hotel Edison the Turpin party licked their collective wounds, while in the streets of Harlem thousands of revellers celebrated long into the night. A few days later, as Turpin, with newly straightened hair, made ready to board the ship that would take him back across the Atlantic Ocean, those in Turpin's party noticed that a beaming Adele Daniels was standing at dockside eagerly waving off the former world champion boxer. Nobody said anything to Turpin about the woman's presence, although it was clear that not one among them either approved of, or trusted, this coloured American woman who may well have disrupted Turpin's preparations more than they had initially realised.
Before Turpin had left Britain for the rematch with Robinson, George Middleton had already arranged for his fighter to undertake a nationwide tour of music halls and theatres on his return home. There was no provision in Turpin's lucrative contract for the tour to be curtailed, or the money altered, in the event of Turpin losing his world title, so this was a piece of shrewd business on Middleton's part. When the defeated champion returned home, he was relieved to discover that his popularity had by no means been adversely affected by his recent setback. In fact, there was considerable excitement when both George Middleton and Jack Solomons announced that not only were they still trying to negotiate for a third Robinson bout, but there was the distinct possibility that in the meantime Turpin would challenge the American Rocky Graziano for a huge sum of money. American bouts aside, Turpin remained British and European middleweight champion and the British public were clearly still willing to spend money to see their sporting hero defend these titles.
Soon after their arrival, Turpin made it clear to George Middleton that he was not altogether keen on the theatrical tour, but he could not argue with a weekly income in excess of £1,000 for barely breaking sweat. The main staple of the 'performances' were exhibition bouts with either his brother Dick or Jackie, and perhaps a little work on the punchbag and a display of his prowess on the speedball. In each city an appeal was made to promising fighters to come out and spar a few rounds with the champion, but after a near-tragedy in Birmingham few took Turpin up on his offer. During the second performance on a midweek night at the Birmingham Hippodrome, a local lad went two rounds with Turpin, but on leaving the ring he suddenly collapsed. In the end the young man recovered, but members of the public were now very cautious about risking their health against Randolph Turpin. Moving from town to town, doing little more than shadow-boxing alongside singing and dancing acts, clowns, and even pet acts, the novelty of this way of making money soon wore off. Luckily, by the time December rolled around the tour was over, for most of the theatres needed their stages for pantomime season, and Turpin was once again free to turn his mind to the more pressing business of his boxing career. In June 1952, having decided to temporarily step up a division, Turpin won the British and Empire light-heavyweight title, stopping a gallant Don Cockell in the eleventh round despite the fact that his opponent outweighed him by 12 lb. However, by this stage, it was becoming evident to those close to Turpin that the fighter was experiencing serious difficulties managing his finances.
Although Turpin had recently made plenty of money by appearing on stage, in addition to the large sums that he was earning from boxing, the fighter was spending his income at a reckless rate. After the Robinson defeat in New York, Turpin had informed a surprised George Middleton that in future he wished to take total responsibility for his own financial affairs. Up until this stage in Turpin's professional life as a fighter, George Middleton had countersigned all of Turpin's cheques and made sure that the boxer's accounts were kept in order. When Turpin informed him of his intentions, Middleton was alarmed, but he knew that he was dealing with a grown man and the last thing that he wanted to be accused of was being overly interfering or, even worse, stealing from his fighter. George Middleton knew that he had done his best to instil in his charge the idea that a boxing career is relatively short, and that it can all be over with just one punch, therefore Turpin should be prudent with his money. And Turpin had listened, but Middleton was unconvinced that his words had done little more than pass in through one ear and out through the other. George Middleton agreed to Turpin's demands, but he once again suggested to Turpin that he save his money in the bank, or invest it properly, but he chose to say nothing further and simply made the arrangements for his fighter to take charge of his own financial affairs.
After the Robinson rematch Turpin suddenly realised that he was a rich man. Unfortunately, with his new-found wealth came friends and hangers-on who fed Turpin's ego and whom he, in turn, was able to help out by allowing them to share in his fortune. If a virtual stranger needed a car, or a 'loan' to escape from pressing debt, or money to buy a pub or a business, Turpin was able to put his hand in his pocket and oblige. His own family were given houses and cars, and he bought himself a pair of pet monkeys and a big house in Warwick. If he felt like a break in the south of France or Spain, he would take family and friends, paying for their flights and accommodation, and picking up the bill for everything. His sister Joan, who was a frequent recipient of his generosity, often warned her younger brother to be less extravagant and to remember that it was his money and not anybody else's. However, casually tossing handfuls of banknotes into the air, 'Licker' would remind her that yes, he knew that it was his cash, which was why he would do with it exactly what he pleased.
Turpin did make one investment with his money, but it was hardly one which made George Middleton feel any sense of comfort. In the autumn of 1952, Turpin went into partnership with Leslie Salts, and the two men paid �
�7,500 each and together purchased a nine-bedroom hotel set on fifteen acres of land situated on a windswept, and somewhat isolated, headland just outside of the town of Llandudno in North Wales. Originally constructed as the Telegraph Inn, from where messages were relayed to Holyhead and Liverpool announcing the impending arrival of ships, it had later been rebuilt as the Summit Hotel and had served as the bar for those who used the Great Orme Golf Club. The golf course had closed in 1939 and become a sheep farm, while the hotel had been allowed to languish and fall into disrepair. The two men had the idea of transforming the hotel, which during the war had been requisitioned by the RAF and utilised as a temporary radar station, into an international sporting centre and tourist attraction and cashing in on the seaside trade. Neither man could have been thinking too clearly, for not only was there little in the way of public transport to the venue, known locally as the Great Orme complex, there was just one, woefully inadequate, telephone line. The view from the summit was undoubtedly panoramic, and the steep slopes flowed down from the hotel on all sides like an attractive green cape. But, in truth, the place offered the visitor little more than a laborious climb on foot, or an ascent in a lumbering tram, to the view. The hotel still sprouted a dense forest of aerials and antennas from its signalling days, and the building appeared to be permanently in transition. Visitors quickly surveyed the rolling hills, wide open sea, and the sumptuous scenery, before realising that it was time to return to Llandudno and, of course, the only way to leave the Great Orme was to descend on foot or by the same inelegant tram. George Middleton had little faith in Turpin's investment, and he had, by this time, conducted a private investigation into Leslie Salts and his business practices, and uncovered a whole series of wrongdoings. Once again he had made clear his reservations to Turpin, but Turpin's mind was made up.
The Great Orme complex opened on Easter Monday 1953 in a blaze of publicity, with telegrams of good luck and congratulations from British sporting heroes such as Dennis Compton and the boxer Freddie Mills; even Sugar Ray Robinson sent a telegram to his old adversary. Turpin's sister Joan and her bricklayer husband, John Beston, were put in charge of the complex, but they had no experience of running such an enterprise and the place was soon leaking money. The situation was not helped by Turpin's habit of turning up with friends from London or the Midlands and insisting that nobody should pay any bills. The Welsh boxing champion Jimmy Wilde, who between 1916 and 1923 held the world flyweight title, and who was popularly known as 'the ghost with a hammer in his hand', opened Randy's Bar at the centre. However, despite Turpin announcing that he would be spending a good deal of his time at the centre training for his next fight, in the hope that the fee-paying British public might therefore be persuaded to put their hands into their pockets and pay to see him going through his paces, money continued to flow out of, as opposed to into, the venture. An advertisement for the Great Orme Holiday Centre in a 1953 programme for one of Turpin's fights suggests the scale of Salts' and Turpin's ambition. 'Visit Randy's Bar. Fully Licensed. The most unusual bar in Britain! Snack bar, Music, Sports, Exhibitions, Miniature Railway, Little Theatre. See the British Crown Jewels in replica.' The bottom of the advertisement proudly reads 'Owned by Leslie T. Salts and Randolph Turpin (the famous boxer)', and just in case one is still unsure, there are two large headshots of both men smiling intently. However, Turpin was soon asking George Middleton for a loan, and then he turned to Jack Solomons, and although both men were alarmed by Turpin's spending they agreed to help him out knowing full well that there was little point in talking further to the boxer about his cavalier attitude to money.
In the early summer of 1953, the two biggest British news stories were the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and the triumphant ascent of Mount Everest by a British expedition led by a New Zealand mountaineer, Edmund Hillary, and his Nepalese guide, Sherpa Tensing Norkay. Most people were also excited because television, or the 'goggle-box', had become the latest status symbol and the new invention was beginning to change family and social life. However, the vast majority of the British public still got their 'visual' news from the cinema, and the third story that would have gripped British audiences at cinemas up and down the country during the summer of 1953 was the news of Randolph Turpin's triumph over the Frenchman Charles Humez before a sell-out crowd of 54,000 at White City Stadium, London, in the final elimination bout for the now vacant world middleweight crown. Despite having trouble making the weight, Turpin comprehensively outpointed Humez, but not before disappointing a huge number of his own fans with his lacklustre performance. Everybody in Britain knew that Turpin carried a potential knockout punch in both hands, yet for much of the fight he had done little more than flick out timid left jabs, much to the audible dismay of the crowd. Nevertheless, he had beaten Humez, and Turpin would now be returning to New York City, this time to fight the Hawaiian American Carl 'Bobo' Olsen for the undisputed world title in a bout that most boxing cognoscenti confidently expected Turpin to win. Two years after his close rematch with Robinson, Turpin and his party once again found themselves sailing across the Atlantic Ocean towards a New York City that Turpin claimed he was eager to revisit. He told his brothers that he missed the twenty-four-hour excitement of the city, and the attention that he had been paid, but he did not confess to them his ambivalence about having to rekindle his association with Miss Adele Daniels.
Shortly after Turpin's arrival in New York City in October 1953, it soon became clear that, unlike his previous visit in the summer of 1951, when Turpin at least maintained the appearance of being eager to train for the Robinson rematch, this time he was preoccupied and disinterested in applying himself to the task at hand. Frequently absent from the training camp that George Middleton had established in the Catskill Mountains, and distant and sometimes abrasive to those who tried to talk with him, Turpin alienated the press, his camp, and particularly his brothers. It was obvious that Turpin had no desire to fight Carl 'Bobo' Olsen, nor did he wish to be in the United States and away from 'home', and his sulking and temper tantrums quickly wore on everybody's nerves. On the night of the world title fight the inevitable ensued, and what should have been a night of glory for Randolph Turpin and British boxing ended ignominiously with a humiliating defeat at Madison Square Garden. Untrained and out of condition, Turpin nevertheless began strongly enough, taking the first three rounds against Olsen, but in the fourth he suffered a bad cut under his eye. For the remainder of the fight he was off-balance and he constantly soaked up punishment, and in both the ninth and tenth rounds an ordinary-looking Olsen pummelled him to the canvas. Clearly Turpin's mind was elsewhere, and the sell-out crowd witnessed the British middleweight take a terrible pounding before losing a unanimous points decision.
So badly was Turpin beaten that, back at his hotel, his seconds covered him in ice cubes and wrapped him in a bed sheet in order to reduce the multiple swellings. Turpin knew that he had let himself and others down, but he was acting as though he could not care less. 'If I had been in my natural mental state,' said Turpin, 'I could have stopped him about the eighth round.' Nobody said anything in reply. Boxing News summed up the mood of the times: 'If ever a fighter went into the ring mentally unprepared it was Turpin. The undeniable fact is that Turpin has gone back a long way. He has things on his mind more important than boxing and when that happens a fighter has "had it", to use a wellunderstood expression.' Britain's Daily Sketch, under a headline that blared 'He's let us down!', seemed to be clear about what had gone wrong. 'Now it has been exposed – the myth of the boxer who can train himself. Randolph Turpin made a pathetically heroic effort to justify his unorthodoxy in the Madison Square Garden ring last night.' Turpin's fans on both sides of the Atlantic were clearly dismayed by the fighter's behaviour both before, and during, the fight. But things were about to deteriorate even further.
On the morning of 2 November, 1953, the day before Turpin was due to board the Queen Mary for the return journey to England, the 'Leamington Licker' was arrested by Ne
w York City police officers in a milk bar opposite the Hotel Edison on West 47th Street. He was listening to the jukebox when the police stormed in and handcuffed him and then took him to the Seventh Precinct for processing. Shortly thereafter, Turpin appeared at the Upper Manhattan Magistrates' Court to answer a serious charge which had been brought against him by a Miss Adele Daniels, who was described in the court papers as a 'Negro Clerk in the State Department of Labor'. Miss Daniels testified that her relationship with Randolph Turpin had begun two years earlier when the fighter was in New York for his rematch with Sugar Ray Robinson, and she insisted that the boxer had promised to marry her. In the two-year interim she asserted that the couple had exchanged many love letters and were planning a shared future, and that when Turpin had recently returned to New York for the fight with Olsen their relationship had picked up again from where it had left off. However, she claimed that Turpin had changed, and that even before the fight, when he should have been in the Catskill Mountains at his training camp, this newly 'troubled' Turpin was spending time with her at her apartment on Riverside Drive at 125th Street in Harlem, but she grew to be frightened of him. She alleged that Turpin had assaulted her on a number of occasions, kicking her and striking her around the face. In fact, after the Olsen contest, in which the British fighter had been badly beaten and was in need of attention, Miss Daniels claimed to have 'loyally nursed him' and in return for her troubles she was again beaten and kicked by this 'maniacal and dangerous person', so much so that for a short while the left side of her face had suffered temporary paralysis. Miss Daniels' lawyer, Mr J. Roland Sala, wanted Turpin held in custody so that he might be properly examined, for Sala claimed that Turpin was 'definitely mentally ill, psychopathologically'. He continued: 'This man is bestially primitive.'
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