Game Chicken, at 32, Turner at 35, Hudson at 38, Randall, the Nonpareil, at 34.  Occasionally, when they did reach mature age, their lives took the strangest turns.  Gully, as is well known, became a wealthy man, and Member for Pontefract in the Reform Parliament.  Humphries developed into a successful coal merchant.  Jack Martin became a convinced teetotaller and vegetarian.  Jem Ward, the Black Diamond, developed considerable powers as an artist.  Cribb, Spring, Langan, and many others, were successful publicans.  Strangest of all, perhaps, was Broughton, who spent his old age haunting every sale of old pictures and bric-a-brac.  One who saw him has recorded his impression of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fashioned garb, with his catalogue in his hand—­Broughton, once the terror of England, and now the harmless and gentle collector.

Many of them, as was but natural, died violent deaths, some by accident and a few by their own hands.  No man of the first class ever died in the ring.  The nearest approach to it was the singular and mournful fate which befell Simon Byrne, the brave Irishman, who had the misfortune to cause the death of his antagonist, Angus Mackay, and afterwards met his own end at the hands of Deaf Burke.  Neither Byrne nor Mackay could, however, be said to be boxers of the very first rank.  It certainly would appear, if we may argue from the prize-ring, that the human machine becomes more delicate and is more sensitive to jar or shock.  In the early days a fatal end to a fight was exceedingly rare.  Gradually such tragedies became rather more common, until now even with the gloves they have shocked us by their frequency, and we feel that the rude play of our forefathers is indeed too rough for a more highly organized generation.  Still, it may help us to clear our minds of cant if we remember that within two or three years the hunting-field and the steeple-chase claim more victims than the prize-ring has done in two centuries.

Many of these men had served their country well with that strength and courage which brought them fame.  Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the Royal Navy.  So was the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and shoulders, whose springing hits for many a year carried all before them until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack Randall.  Shaw, who stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo.  The brutal Berks died greatly in the breach of Badajos.  The lives of these men stood for something, and that was just the one supreme thing which the times called for—­an unflinching endurance which could bear up against a world in arms.  Look at Jem Belcher—­beautiful, heroic Jem, a manlier Byron—­but there, this is not an essay on the old prize-ring, and one man’s lore is another man’s bore.  Let us pass those three low-down, unjustifiable, fascinating volumes, and on to nobler topics beyond!