The Prize Ring
The Prize Ring is a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in The Daily Chronicle on 9 december 1893.
The Prize Ring
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
Sir, — Might I be allowed to say a word in reference to your paragraph which remarks that the prize-ring never produced heroic qualities? The poor ring has so fallen from its former glory in these days of crossed fights and paper talk that we may at least allow it credit for what it has been. It bred a race of men of indomitable courage and energy. I cannot understand how any one acquainted with their record can doubt it. At Waterloo there was, as far as I know, only one professional pugilist on the field — Shaw the Lifeguardsman, who, had he lived, would probably have held the champion belt of England. The Homeric combat in which Shaw and Colonel Kelly fought back to back is now a matter of history. It was said that ten lancers and cuirassiers were cut down by him before he was shot.
The number of the first-class pugilists whose deeds were matters of public interest was at any one time very limited. Yet among this small body of men we have many examples of nobility of character. The incident of Pearce, the Game Chicken, risking his life in Thomas-street, Bristol, by getting on the parapet of a burning house, to pull the servant out of the upper window by the wrists, when her safety had been despaired of, is a well-known and authentic case. As to the innumerable cases where men like Cribb, Pearce, and Randell interfered to protect the weak, or to defend women from insult, are they not written in Pierce Egan, or in the reliable pages of "Boxiana"? One champion of England, John Gully, became a Member of Parliament, though in those decorous days he did not find the same field for his talents there which he might have had more recently. The old prizefighters were, as a rule, men of steady, law-abiding habits, if only for the fact that they always either kept, or hoped to keep, a public-house. In either case their license depended on their behaviour. Their main fault was that they often consumed too much of their own stock, so that it was a rare thing for any of them to wear grey hair.
It must be borne in mind that fewer men lost their lives through the ring in a whole generation than are killed by football or hunting in one season. During the whole of the time when the ring was at its height, I can only recall one fatal fight, that between Curtis and Ned Turner. On the other hand, the exhibition of systematic fair play must have been an object-lesson to the hundreds who saw and the thousands who read. It is time enough to discourage any instinct! when it has ceased to be of use to the community. With all Europe one armed camp, the fighting instinct is as necessary in this country now as ever it has been; and the day may be coming when we may find that our ancestors had some reason for its systematic encouragement. It is really the ring-side betting and ruffianism which have killed the ring, but the pugilists themselves were, I think, men who had much of the heroic in their natures. — Yours faithfully,
- A. CONAN DOYLE.
- 12, Tennison-road, South Norwood,
- Dec. 8.
