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PETER CORCORAN – HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF ENGLAND
Born in Athy, County Kildare, in 1749, Peter Corcoran held the distinction of becoming the first Irishman to claim the heavyweight title of England. Rumoured to have fled Ireland after killing a man in a dispute over a woman, Corcoran found work as a coal-heaver in London where his feats of strength enthralled great crowds. When he came to the attention of Captain Dennis O’Kelly in the 1760s, Corcoran’s career as a bare-knuckle fighter took off. O’Kelly was a dubious rogue and a gambler of note who oversaw the rise of Corcoran and his eventual challenge for the English title against Bill Darts at the Epsom Downs racecourse on 18 May 1771. That fight was for £200 and tens of thousands craned their necks to witness the battle. However, O’Reilly had paid Darts a small fortune to throw the fight, or to ‘fight booty’ as it was then known. Accordingly, within a minute, Darts, on shipping a punch to the nose, surrendered and Corcoran was declared the champion.
Corcoran was to defend that crown on five occasions and he purchased the Black Horse Inn in London’s East End with the proceeds from his career. His title, however, was lost in suspicious circumstances to Henry Sellars in 1776 in the eighteenth round of their bloody battle. This time it was thought that Corcoran had ‘fought booty’ as part of a betting coup. Such was the ‘upset’ that Pierce Egan, in his 1820 bookBoxiana, noted, ‘The poor Paddies were literally ruined as many of them had backed their darling boy with every last farthing they possessed.’ In defeat, Corcoran became yesterday’s man and his fortune dwindled away to nothing. He died in poverty in London in 1781, aged 32.
THE SWEET SCIENCE IN THE EMERALD ISLE
Daniel Mendoza was considered the father of modern boxing and had a profound influence on the development of the sport as a science. Born in Spain in 1764, Mendoza published his bookThe Art of Boxing in 1789, which expounded the theory that speed, footwork and technique could prevail over sheer brute strength. Standing at merely 5ft 7in, Mendoza used his boxing theory to great effect and won the English middleweight title in 1789, when he defeated the then champion Richard Humphries. On becoming champion, Mendoza toured the British Isles, showing off his skills as part of Astery’s Travelling Circus. On arriving in Dublin in 1791, Mendoza established a boxing school for budding pugilists in Dame Street. It was here that Mendoza was to be confronted by ‘a swell of great weight and little prudence’, named Squire Fitzgerald, the so-called ‘Pride of Ireland’. With the backing of, amongst others, the Duke of Leinster, the Earl of Ormonde and Lord Westmeath, who put up a £50 purse for a fight between the two men, Fitzgerald insulted Mendoza’s Jewish background and challenged him for his title. The two met in Dublin on 2 August and the fight lasted twenty rounds before Fitzgerald surrendered in exhausted disarray, apologising afterwards to his opponent for his offensive pre-fight insults.
THE LEGEND OF DAN DONNELLY
Come all ye true-bred Irishmen, I hope you will draw near
And likewise pay attention, to the lines that I have here.
It is as true a stor
