Thomas Sayers
| Tom Sayers | |
|---|---|
Tom Sayers, early hand-tinted photograph, circa 1860.
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| Born |
25 May 1826 Brighton, England |
| Died | 8 November 1865 (aged 39) Camden Town, London, England Buried Highgate Cemetery West Section; London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Height | 5 ft 8 in (173 cm) |
| Weight | 150 lb (68 kg; 10 st 10 lb) |
| Years active | 1849-1860 |
| Professional boxing record | |
| Total | 16 |
| Wins | 12 |
| Losses | 1 |
| Draws | 3 |
Tom Sayers (15 or 25 May 1826 – 8 November 1865) was an English bare-knuckle prize fighter. There were no formal weight divisions at the time, and although Sayers was only five feet eight inches tall and never weighed much more than 150 pounds, he frequently fought much bigger men. In a career which lasted from 1849 until 1860, he lost only one of sixteen bouts.
His lasting fame depends exclusively on his final contest, when he faced American champion John Camel Heenan in a battle which was widely considered to be boxing’s first world championship. It ended in chaos when the spectators invaded the ring, and the referee finally declared a draw.
Regarded as a national hero, Sayers, for whom the considerable sum of £3,000 was raised by public subscription, then retired from the ring. After his death five years later at the age of 39, a huge crowd watched his cortège on its journey to London’s Highgate Cemetery.
Tom Sayers was born in May 1826 in a slum in the Brighton alley of Pimlico (now Tichborne Street) not far from the Royal Pavilion. He was the youngest of the five children of William Sayers (33), a shoemaker, and his wife Maria, ten years her husband’s senior. At the age of six, Tom became a Jack in the Water, earning a few coppers performing small duties for holidaymakers and fishermen on Brighton beach. Claims that he attended school in 1836 may be unfounded, and he was barely literate.
At the age of thirteen, he went to London, where he stayed with his sister Eliza and her husband Robert King, a builder. Sayers became a bricklayer, and for the next seven years shuttled between his home town and the capital. He is known to have worked on the London Road viaduct outside Brighton, and may well have taken part in the construction of London’s King’s Cross Station. In 1846, he finally settled in the capital, taking up residence in the notorious slum of Agar Town, just north of where St Pancras Station now stands.
It was around 1847 that he set up home in a more salubrious part of Camden Town with Sarah Henderson. Only fifteen years old, Sarah was unable to marry without her father’s permission, and her daughter Sarah (1850-1891), and son Tom (1852-1936) by Sayers were consequently illegitimate.
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Wikipedia