Library of antique British boxing books, ephemera is the main event at Chiswick’s Aug. 24 Books & Works on Paper auction

Featured: Rare 18th C. manuals on the art of boxing, written by famed bareknuckle fighters

LONDON – Chiswick Auctions’ Aug. 24 Books and Works on Paper features a collection of boxing books compiled by private collectors Brian and Debbie Watkins over five decades. Highlights include two rare Georgian manuals on the art of boxing written around 1790 by well-known bareknuckle prize fighters.

Boxing Reviewed; or, the Science of Manual Defence, displayed on Rational Principles was penned by the Birmingham, England, pugilist Thomas Fewtrell. Dubbed “the gentleman jaw breaker,” he is said to have taken part in more than 1000 fights in his career. In this book, possibly the first written by an active pugilist, he studies the techniques of several leading Georgian boxers. The frontispiece depicts a scene titled “Thomas Johnson the first Pugilist in the World,” who was the English champion between 1784-91. It carries an estimate of £1,200-1,800.

Fewtrell was a friend and sparring partner of Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), a fellow prize fighter who was also highly regarded as an instructor of pugilism. He held frequent public exhibitions and published several books on boxing technique. The copy of The Modern Art of Boxing offered here is a previously unrecorded variant state from 1790. In later paper-covered boards, it is guided at £1000-1500.

Also by Mendoza is a rare autobiography from 1808, one that appears never to have been offered for sale at auction before. Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza; Containing a Faithful Narrative of the Various Vicissitudes of His Life, and an Account of the Numerous Contests…, is estimated at £4000-6000. The work numbers 320 pages with the title page outlining it was “Printed for D. Mendoza, Ship Tavern, Commercial Road, by G. Hayden, Brydges Street, Covent Garden, 1808” – eight years before a better-known edition of this work. 

The text is thought to have been written around 1806 when Mendoza spent time in debtor’s prison. This copy, estimated at £800-1200, is a copy of a contemporary account of the contest fought on December 11, 1821, between Bill Neat (aka the Bristol Bull) and Tom “The Gas Man” Hickman. A crowd of 22,000 gathered on Hungerford Common (Berkshire, England) to witness 18 bloody rounds before Neat reduced his opponent “to senselessness.” Pierce Egan’s 22-page report titled An Account of the Great Fight for the Championship of all England, suggests that the fighters shared a purse of 400 guineas.

Tom Sayers (1826-65) was the heavyweight champion of England between 1857-60. His lasting fame followed his final contest against American champion John Heenan. The fight is considered boxing’s first world championship. An estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral in Camden Town (London), after which an auction was held of his personal effects. A catalog for the sale on December 1, 1865, including Sayers’ “silver cups, vases, belts, valuable jewellery, paintings, and furniture, the well-known English mastiff Lion and the performing mule, Barney. The auctioneer commented that the proceeds from the sale of catalog at one shilling each “will be presented to the late Tom Sayers’ aged father.”

The catalog to be auctioned, with each lot annotated with the selling price and each page with the running total, is expected to bring £1000-1500.

Visit the full auction catalog online at Chiswick Auctions’ website: www.chiswickauctions.co.uk. 

Today’s rate of exchange: £1 = $1.27