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CHAPTER 1

In the Days of Giants

DONNYBROOK FAIR, DUBLIN, 1854. Blind Jimmy Gorman sat amid the din and chaos of a bustling alehouse, drinking stout. He was pleased with himself. Though sightless since birth, Jimmy had never let his affliction stop him doing business and had just bought and sold a horse in a matter of minutes. Now the profit was burning a hole in the pocket of his topcoat, and he intended to celebrate in the time-honoured tradition of the Irish travelling man: by getting drunk.

The annual fair at the village of Donnybrook on the outskirts of Dublin was a lawless event; so much so that an affray in Ireland became known as a 'donnybrook'. Itinerants, merchants, entertainers, cattlemen, farmers, conmen and rogues came from all over the country for an orgy of horse trading, dealing, drinking, wenching and thieving. Travelling theatres and freak shows, as well as bareknuckle matches, added to the atmosphere. The people were rough, illiterate and lived for the moment: one newspaper writer, visiting the fair in 1822, had reported that 'the Irishman is the only man in the world that fights for amusement.' Life and limb were cheap.

As Blind Jimmy lifted his tankard to his lips, he was unaware of the giant, black-headed man shouldering his way through the crowded bar. But he heard the room falling quiet, and could sense the figure looming over him.

'You, man, that has just sold me that horse,' came a growl.

Jimmy recognised the voice. This was the fellow he had slapped palms with a few minutes earlier to seal the deal. 'Yes?' said Jimmy.

'You're a blaggarding bastard. That horse is lame.'

'Never.'

'It has a swollen spavin. I'm Jack Ward, the best travelling man in Ireland. And I'm going to make you pay hot and heavy for this.'

Before Blind Jimmy could say another word, Ward wrenched him by the collar and dragged him through the crowd of drinkers, punching him to the face as he went. He threw Jimmy outside and set about him with his huge fists. Each time Jimmy was knocked to the floor, he tried to crawl away, and each time Ward pulled him up and knocked him down again. Men crowded around to watch but no one dared interfere. Ward was the meanest fighting man in Ireland: the King of the Tinkers.

Ward left Jimmy unconscious in a heap. Some people who knew the blind man lifted him into a barrow and pushed him nearly dead to the small circle of wagons where his family was staying. The Gormans rarely stopped in the middle of a throng, preferring to stay on the outskirts or by a crossroads; they thought themselves a cut above the general rabble. His bearers shouted for help and the women came rushing out. They saw a bloodied pulp, barely conscious. There were wails and oaths. Wet towels were fetched and placed gently on Blind Jimmy's swollen face.

Most of the Gorman men were at the fair or drinking in the pubs but Jimmy's younger brother was still in his wagon. Bartholomew Gorman didn't care for drink. He heard the commotion and came down the steps of his barreltop. He was eighteen years old, his shirt collar and cuffs undone, his shoulders broad in a collarless shirt. His family called him Bartley.

'Who has done this?' he asked.

'It was Jack Ward,' someone replied.

They carried Jimmy gently to his wagon. One of the women went to make a poultice to apply to his wounds. There was no thought of fetching a physician – they couldn't afford one. They were their own doctors. As they tended their barely conscious relative, no-one noticed young Bartley slip away.

The King of the Tinkers was still laughing when the saloon door swung open and Bartley Gorman walked in.

'Which man is Jack Ward?' he asked.

For the second time in an hour, the bar fell silent.

'I am,' said the huge, black-headed man. 'Who wants to know?'

'Step outside,' said Bartley.

Ward looked him over and snorted. He put down his drink and strode outside, his men eagerly following. Bartley was alone, facing a powerful giant surrounded by cronies, but he was unafraid. He neither knew nor cared who Ward was. He believed that God was on his side, so who could harm him? They were taking bets on how long Bartley would last when he laid into Ward like a whirlwind. The big man swung back but his cumbersome blows were easily ducked. For the next ten minutes, young Bartley Gorman gave the King of the Tinkers the hammering of his life, until the vanquished giant could rise no more.

Donnybrook Fair was closed down a few years later because it was too rowdy. By then, Bartholomew Gorman had become the most renowned fighter among the travelling fraternity. That encounter with Ward had changed the course of his life; a century later, it would set the course of mine. Bartley was my great-grandfather. I would inherit both his name and his violent calling.

* * *

A WARLIKE SPIRIT runs through the bloodline of my family like a curse. A thousand years ago and more, Ireland was a Celtic kingdom ruled by warrior clans, or septs. The Mac Gormains were one of these ancient tribes and ruled lands around what is now the town of Carlow in County Leix. Their name came from the word gorm, meaning blue. Some say it signified woad, the blue plant dye that Gaelic warriors painted onto their bodies before battle to intimidate their foes; a prominent warlord would be renowned for his body decoration and his sons and daughters would be known as 'children of the blue one' – Mac Gormain. Certainly they were fighters: our family motto is 'First and Last in War' (in Gaelic, Tosach Catha Agus Deire Air).

Like many Celtic chiefs, the Mac Gormains were driven from their fiefdom during the Norman invasion and dispersed, eventually settling in Clare to the west and Monaghan in the north. Some became noted for their wealth, hospitality and patronage of the Gaelic poets. But eventually my branch of the family was forced off the land again. What put them back on the road? There are various theories about the origins of the Irish travellers. Some say they are the remnants of an ancient class of wandering poets, joined by those dispossessed during times of upheaval such as Oliver Cromwell's campaign of slaughter in the 1600s and the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim in the 1690s. Perhaps they were overthrown by a neighbouring chief, put to flight with their servants, their children and their dogs, and never again allowed to settle. Perhaps I am the King of Ireland in exile! Others were people left homeless by the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, when the potato blight destroyed the staple crop and one-third of the population perished or fled abroad.

Many of them earned their living by crafts such metalworking: until not so long ago, all Irish travellers were referred to as tinkers, the word deriving from the Irish tinceard (tinsmith). Today it is often seen as an insult and many get upset if you call them tinkers. I am proud of it. In those days, people could not afford to buy a new pot or kettle if they found a hole in their old one. They had to repair things, a skill that has almost disappeared in our modern consumer society. How many young women – or men, for that matter – can even darn a sock today? Most of the travellers' traditional crafts – spoon-mending, tinsmithing, flower-making – have gone by the way, destroyed by new inventions and mass production, but in those days they were vital.

My great-grandfather, Bartley Gorman – who took the mantle King of the Tinkers after beating Jack Ward – was a genuine travelling tinsmith. I have a treasured photograph of him as an old man, mending a pot, his great fists and his battered face bearing testimony to a lifetime of fighting. He was born in Ireland in 1836 and named after Saint Bartholomew, one of the Apostles (Hebrew names run in my family). He was educated by monks and unlike many travellers could read and write. He was also an athletic young man but not known to be a fighter until the beating he gave Ward. He was certainly no thug. The wagon in which he lived was virtually a shrine to the Blessed Virgin and Our Blessed Sacred Heart and he would let no man enter it that used bad language or conducted himself improperly. Into old age he would read the Divine Offices in Latin every night.

The stories that follow have been passed down orally from generation to generation in my family and others. My great-grandfather is known in our family as Bartley I. His son, my grandfather, was Bartley II, and one of his sons, my uncle, was Bartley III. My cousin, another Bartholomew, is Bartley IV and so I am Bartley Gorman V. All were knuckle men except my cousin – he says he was a lover, not a fighter.

Bareknuckle boxing is often described as an English sport, but the Gaels of Ireland had staged fighting contests at their annual Tailteann Games, at the site of the ancient queen Tailte, until the twelfth century. With the re-emergence of prize-fighting from the seventeenth century onwards, many Irish pugilists made their mark. The most famous was Dan Donnelly but there were many others, and most of the heavyweight champions of the American prize-ring were of Irish immigrant stock, including the great John L. Sullivan. Bartley never competed in the organised prize-ring; he was a tinker, on the margins of society, and stayed within his own world. There his fame quickly spread – the tinkers called him 'Boxing Bartley' – and his right-hand punch was christened the 'Dublin ox-dropper'.

By the time Bartley I reached manhood, the top fighter in England was, by coincidence, also of gypsy background: Jem Mace. He was flash, with silk tie, top hat and silk handkerchief (our word for neckerchief). He never paid for anything because of his fame and, even today, 'to mace' means to get something without paying or to take someone for a ride. He won the heavyweight championship of England against Sam Hurst in 1861, but lost it a year later to the bigger and heavier Tom King. King refused to give him a return match so instead Mace fought Joe Goss – whose wife, Helen Gray, was a Romany – and beat him in nineteen rounds for the middleweight championship of England.

Next he was matched against an American of Irish birth, Joe Coburn. The American's backers wouldn't let him fight in England, claiming they would not get fair treatment, so the bout was arranged for Pierstown, Ireland, on October 4, 1864. Both men travelled there but at the last minute they argued over the choice of referee and the match fell through. It was re-arranged for October 14 but was again abandoned. The Irish were all for Coburn, who hailed originally from Armagh, and accused Mace of backing out. A ballad was later written about it, The Cowardly Englishman, including the verse:

The Englishmen bet five to one that Mace would gain the day, But indeed they were mistaken for poor Jem he ran away, Our champion boldly stood the ring without either dread or fear, But he was disappointed Jem Mace did not appear.

The travellers were also upset with Mace; they believed he had let them down. And so it was that he was drinking in a Dublin saloon when in walked my great-grandfather and challenged him out. Mace was then the most famous bareknuckler in the world but my great-grandfather was now King of the Tinkers and feared no man. He was twenty-eight and Mace was thirty-four, so both were in their prime.

Mace knew the craic with the travellers; there was no backing down. He took off his coat, went outside on the cobbles and squared off. Mace was a master – he invented half of the moves boxers use today – but my great-grandfather went at him hell for leather. The garda intervened and stopped it, so we shall never know who was best, but Boxing Bartley always believed he would have won. The contest was later written about in an old boxing magazine called Famous Fights; it had a pencil sketch of my great-grandfather calling out Mace, with his cap in his hand. Speaking many years later at a Liverpool sporting club supper, Mace recalled that the only punches which had troubled him in his prime were the 'temple-tickler' of Bob Brettle and Bartley Gorman's 'ox-dropper'.

Two years later Mace regained the English heavyweight title and in 1870 he beat the American champion, Tom Allen, in Louisiana for the heavyweight championship of the world. He went on to travel the globe, conducting tournaments and teaching the scientific skills that enabled him to beat men nearly twice his size. But he never forgot the power of the punch that Boxing Bartley landed on his jaw. Mace died in 1910, and lies in an unmarked grave at Anfield Cemetery in Liverpool. With the help of the Merseyside Ex-Boxers' Association, I intend to erect a proper headstone on his grave in recognition of one of the most important figures in boxing history.

This same period saw an exodus of Irish tinkers in the wake of the savage Potato Famine. Many sailed to the British mainland, where they encountered the English and Welsh Romanies. At first there was a clash of cultures, and the Romanies developed a somewhat jaundiced view of the Irish tinker:

He is by nature a fighter, and he fights with a cold fury and a fixed desire to maim that is rather frightening. When the travelling Irish first invaded Wales and the Welsh border counties they came in rough contact with the Gypsies, and the Gypsies very definitely had the worst of it. So much so, in fact, that they would rather move camp than risk a fight, unless they were in greatly superior numbers. All that was long ago, and the Irish tinker, with the passage of time ... has softened, if he has not entirely disappeared. But the memory lingers in the Gypsy mind.

(Gypsies of Britain, Vesey-Fitzgerald, p 184)

My breed were part of this exodus. They brought with them their secret language, Shelta, also known as Cant, which goes back hundreds of years. The Romanies, of course, had their own tongue: for example, they say gry for a horse, we say curry; their word for dog is juckle, ours is camra. There are hundreds of such words and they are still used today. Eventually, the travellers of both communities mixed more freely. They were not alone on the open road. Many people lived rough in those days: deserting soldiers, dispossessed tenants, seasonal labourers, orphans, vagrants, highwaymen and brigands. Fistfights were an everyday occurrence.

Bartley I observed a strict ritual on the eve of every fight. During the day he would sit for hours in the nearest Catholic church, praying. He would return at supper time, wash outside his wagon in a bowl of cold water and shave with a cut-throat razor. Then he would put his spindle-backed chair in front of a stick fire and sit up all night with his wife's shawl over his shoulders, staring into the flames. No one could approach him: the women and children would watch him in awe from the windows of their wagons. 'He's going to carib the juck,' they would whisper to each other, meaning, 'He's going to fight the man.' As dawn broke, he would go to his opponent's wagon, knock on his door and challenge him out in the time-honoured way. Gypsies did it that way so they would be fighting when sober, and God help the man if he had a hangover – he had to come out anyway. They always did. Sometimes a ring was made up but more often they would fight in a hollow or the corner of a field or even right there amongst the wagons and horses.

The English travellers thought they had found the man to beat Boxing Bartley in Caleb Wenman, a tearaway from the Bristol area, traditionally home to many of the best pugilists. He and Bartley met at the Black Patch at Smethwick, Birmingham, a vast camp which at any one time would have 1,000 horse-drawn wagons. Their fight was one of the most vicious in history. No quarter was asked or given. Finally Wenman, who was getting the worst of it, aimed a desperate right cross. The punch landed on my great-grandfather's neck with a sickening crack: the force was so great that Wenman's forearm broke and the bone stuck out through his skin. In agony and shock, he could not continue. Boxing Bartley was also in a terrible state; the punch had dislocated his neck. An old gypsy herbalist put a pony collar around his neck and strapped it to hold his head still. He had to wear that for three months. Wenman fared much worse; his broken arm became infected and had to be amputated at the elbow.

The ferocity of the Wenman bout deterred most challengers: who wanted to fight a man whose jaw was so strong that you broke your arm punching him? Boxing Bartley was now in his prime, six feet tall, strong and fearless. He looked like a human version of the bull terriers he kept for dog fighting. But one man was not afraid of him. Moses 'Moe' Smith was one of the great unheralded prizefighters, a pure-bred Romany from Wilmslow in Cheshire and the pride of the English gypsies. They said that even Mace avoided him. He and Bartley were similar, both gentlemen with manners, but a clash had to come.

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Excerpted from "Bareknuckle"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Bartley Gorman and Peter Walsh.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
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