Albert Pearce, a Black man from Chicago in his early 30s, 5ft 7, under 11 stone fighting-fit but probably a little heavier at this time, shuffled into the Boxing World and Mirror of Life offices on the arm of a young lad named Jem Scott.
It was Thursday 9th December 1897, and Pearce had come to let the newspaper know that some of his friends in the boxing fraternity were planning a benefit in his name. Would they kindly advertise the occasion? This was to become a regular request.
Pearce had recently been discharged from St Mary’s Hospital where he had undergone an operation which attempted to rescue his eyesight. It was not a success.
‘Poor blind Albert Pearce’ (as the newspaper headlined its short article describing the visit) was in great need of help. His professional boxing career, which had started in 1880s Newcastle before an 1889 move to London, had been brought to an abrupt end in 1894 in the third of three fights with Ted Rich. In March of that year the two had met at the Kennington Social Club for a six round match. Pearce was dispatched via knock-out in round three. Another fight had occurred at Newmarket soon after, and their last was in Paris.
Please be aware that this article includes newspaper screenshots and quoted text which may contain language that is considered offensive today.
Please also note that only after completing this article did I discover that Pearce’s surname was often misspelled as Pierce and a second newspaper archive search has opened up lots of new information, particularly about his early career in pedestrianism! I will update this post soon.
Let’s step back a decade. In December 1887 Pearce was billed to appear at a competition organised by Sergeant Green solely for Black fighters at the Red Lion off Fleet Street (Proprietor, Mr E. Stephens), alongside Hezekiah Moscow (known in the boxing ring as Ching Hook), J. Stewart, Felix Scott of Liverpool, and Albert Lyons.
At the Cambridge Hall Newcastle, a few weeks later, he was matched with John Douglas of Gateshead, to go the best of 10 rounds under Marquess of Queensberry Rules for £20, and the turnout was apparently sizable. Queensberry Rules, it was not, however. The Sportsman described the first four rounds as an unscientific wrestling bout. In the fifth, both men fell out of the ring. Pearce went to strike his opponent while the man was still trying to get up off the floor, and was duly disqualified.
Pearce, still based in Newcastle, could be found touring with Professor H. Wright’s boxing pavilion, or booth, from at least July 1888. That summer they pitched up at Carlisle Sands, before travelling on to the Glasgow Fair. Pearce was among “the cleverest men of the day” sparring and taking on local challengers, alongside the “Champion Lightweight of the North”, Billy Lowes. The following month, a James Lowes, who may have been a relation to Billy, posted in the Newcastle Chronicle that “he was surprised to see Albert Pearce challenging me, when he knows he can get a match any time he pleases,” suggesting Pearce meet him at the Black Boy, Groat Market, to arrange it.
At the Albion Hall, Glasgow in January 1889, in a fight for £30, Lachie Thompson or Thomson knocked Albert Pearce out in the seventh round. They had met each other recently in the first round of Jem Mace’s 11 stone competition, and Pearce had been knocked out then too. Thompson then took the prize belt after beating his next opponent.
The game Pearce had been dissatisfied with the decision and wanted a rematch. In front of a packed crowd, he walked to the ring with his second, William Ingram of London. Groggy by round four, by the sixth he came in “remarkably fresh”, only to be knocked to the floor three times in quick succession. He made the most of the 10 second allowance to leisurely rise each time. Knocked back down in the seventh, he remained prostrate on the stage. While most of The Sportsman’s write-up hardly sells the fight to me as a good one, they concluded that it was “the best seen in Glasgow for some time”. Both men were loudly cheered.
In February 1890, the newly London-situated Pearce was awarded a benefit at the Brompton Club, which stood at 142 Fulham Road – the site now of a large Art Deco style cinema. The same week the Sporting Life announced a forthcoming match between Pearce and Charles Bartlett, who was often known as Bartley or, thanks to his nationality (he was from somewhere in the Caribbean) and occupation (butcher’s porter), the Meat Market Black.
The pair were set to fight under Queensberry Rules (at catchweight, ‘for endurance’, and with small gloves…) with the winner taking £50 and the loser £20, funded by Mr Temple of the Ormonde Club. That would have been no small change for a travelling boxing booth fighter or a guy who lugged animal carcasses around for a living at around £5,400 or £2,200 in today’s money, but hardly a colossal payday. The date was set for 11 March with the Sporting Life to appoint a referee. I’ve not yet managed to find a write-up which indicates how it all went down but some months later, there is reference to Pearce’s victory to be found in articles about other events.
At the end of April, a large number of pugilists decamped to Newmarket for an assault at arms organised by Frank Hindes to capitalise, presumably, on the number of sporting men in the area for the horses. “Better boxing could not be witnessed” reported the Sporting Life’s man on the ground. A band led by someone called Ginger, known as Ginger’s Band, performed in the intervals between the five, six, and twelve round contests.
After several preliminaries, Ted Rich and Albert Pearce stepped into the ring for their second meeting, the spectators prepared for something sensational.
Half a minute later, it was all over. Albert Pearce was down for the count.
Yet he was back to issuing challenges through the Sporting Life just weeks later, with these adverts suggesting a preference for small gloves (which took various forms at the time, and might sometimes be known as skin-gloves or 2oz or 4oz gloves, which were extremely lightly padded compared to regulation pairs). The challenges continued over the summer, with Pearce gunning for Alf Bowman, Bill Husband, and seemingly anyone else fighting around the 10st 12lb mark: “man and money ready any time.”
Harry Nickless offered to fight him too, with small gloves, and a Colonel E.T. Keenan of the Shamrock, White Hart Street, Drury Lane, offered up £50 for Pearce to match with his lad, E. White. While the newspaper challenges from Pearce or to Pearce seemed to be coming in thick and fast, I have struggled to find him actually in action as regularly as some of his peers. Again, perhaps he continued to tour with the travelling booth.
A permanent or temporary return to America seemed to be on the cards. In July 1890, Pearce was soliciting money for a trip to the States, with promotor and National Police Gazette founder Richard K. Fox supposedly already putting a pound in the pot. That sounds like marketing spin to me.
In mid-September a representative of Alf Bowman left a slightly patronising note for Pearce in the Sporting Life – “Bowman is too far away and too busy with some good engagements to pay much attention to his challenge right now.” – and in November Pearce was afforded a benefit at the Shamrock to raise further funds for his planned departure for Chicago.
A short but interesting piece on the benefit appeared in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, along with the London-based sporting newspapers, suggesting that while Pearce had recently moved out of the city, he had been well known there. Of particular interest is a reference to his pre-boxing career as a cyclist. Before that, he was into pedestrianism, the Victorian walking race craze. Pearce apparently loved a Six Day Wobble. I have little knowledge of Victorian cycling and I’m not sure yet if he competed in the United States or here, but a Black American in 1880s Newcastle entering into it competitively may, it seems to me, have been quite an unusual affair?
Strangely, Pearce was still in London and being held another benefit on the 9th December at the Claremont Hall, Penton Street (a non-conformist mission hall which still stands today) consisting of boxing, sword and bayonet exercises and singing. Felix Scott, a Black boxer from Liverpool, challenged him to a match the same week. Unless he only visited the United States for a couple of weeks in late November – unlikely, given the travel time and cost – he doesn’t look to have made it at all. I wonder if anyone questioned where the money went.
The reason why, I believe, he did not depart can be found in the 1891 census. He might have stayed for love, or at the very least because Pearce and his lady friend were in a bit of a fix.
Marriage records show that Albert Pearce, son of William Pearce, married Emma Susannah Swannell on 23rd April 1891. At 35, the dressmaker from Chiswick was seven years Albert’s senior.
In her mid-20s, the daughter of a Samuel Swannell and his wife, also Emma, had been living in the family home in Putney with three younger sisters.
In 1891 Albert Pearce and Emma Susannah Swannell were living together on Lower Richmond Road, Putney, and they had a newborn baby at the time of their marriage. The 1891 census was recorded on 5 April 1891 and the couple, who don’t appear to have married until the 23rd, had a male child listed as “not yet named”. Emma later became Emma Pearce but was still going by her maiden name on the 1891 census. The couple were also living with Emma’s mother, who had been widowed. The baby was soon to be named William Albert Pearce.
Unusually, Albert’s occupation was given as Professional Boxer. I have certainly seen this in the course of my research but it was, during this period, much more common for pugilists to give their ‘day jobs’ instead. Jack Wannop, for example, never went as anything other than a carpenter on the census, even when he was wrestling in front of thousands, or teaching at or running his own gymnasiums.
Pearce and Scott were going back and forward in the Sporting Life’s columns across January, Pearce accepting Scott’s challenge, suggesting a match in the “old style”, and Scott disputing the prize money as he had “no friends” who would put up the suggested amount. They were still going in March, with Scott expressing his eagerness to fight, but still calling on backers to put up a purse. Despite the lengthy attempt to agree and fund a fight, there seems to have been little action for Pearce in the ring over the year and into 1892, unless his matches went unremarked on in the press.
Renowned promotor Parson Davies was in London during the spring of 1892, bringing 6ft heavyweight Polish American boxer “Chrysanthemum Joe” Choynski and the Australian Jem Hall to the Novelty Theatre. Davies was offering £10 to anyone who could last four rounds with either, and Pearce volunteered his services for a match with Hall.
The Sportsman didn’t mince words in their write-up:
“Hall did simply as he liked with Pearce, who was stopped in the second round.”
Pearce was then boxing at the slightly more genteel-sounding Anglia Boat Club Assault-at-arms in January 1893, which was held at the Prince’s Hall, Kew, with “many ladies present”. Between exhibition matches were a tug of war, Scotch reels by members of the London Scottish RV and lance demonstrations by the 17th Lancers. In February he boxed at another benefit, this time in Hammersmith, and was then afforded another of his own at Lillie Hall, West Brompton.
It seems strange to me how remarkably popular Pearce seemed to be amongst his peers when he hadn’t – certainly as far as I can tell, anyway – ever really made much of an impression in the ring.
It was in 1893 that Albert and Emma had their second child, and named her Lilian Dagmar Pearce. Lilian’s story – which I allude to in the slightly daft title of this article – is fascinating, and I will explore it in part II of her father’s story in the coming weeks. For reasons I am unsure of (perhaps Albert was still touring with a boxing booth, or up north for a professional match, I know him to have been in Leeds in October, for example, losing again), Lilian was born in Hull, Yorkshire.
That brings us, almost, to that March 1894 match against Ted Rich, their short follow-up at Newmarket, and the conclusion of Albert Pearce’s career with the third in Paris.
A letter writer to the Sporting Life a few years later recalled the date exactly of the match that blinded poor Albert Pearce, and it was 13 June 1894. Yet I have so far found no write-up of it in the newspapers currently available to me, on this date or thereabouts. I’ll keep looking.
A few more details can be found in the Sporting Life, however. On the 27 September, the paper published a short piece under the title “Illness of Albert Pearce” which reads:
“The coloured boxer is laid up in the infirmary in the Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith. The trouble with Pearce is partial loss of eyesight and general disability. The misfortune is traceable to Pearce’s encounter with Ted Rich in Paris last June, when the pair fought a stubborn battle for a purse given by Fred Boon.
“By the courtesy of Dr Collingwood Fenwick and W. Steer, medical superintendent, the Sporting Life was enabled to have an interview with Pearce yesterday. The disabled boxer said he hoped that some of his friends would rally round him in his hour of distress. Pearce will need some assistance as it is doubtful he will ever have full use of his eyesight again. This will be unpleasant news to the boxer’s relatives, who reside in Chicago.”
He then disappeared from sight, so to speak.
Two years later, a letter writer with the initials J.P.S. appealed to the Sporting Life on behalf of Albert Pearce.
Their letter to the Editor reads:
“Dear Sir, allow me to bring a case of sad distress before your notice. Albert Pearce, late of Putney, a coloured pugilist, is in absolute want. He is suffering from cataract in both eyes and is practically blind, caused through injuries he received in a contest with Ted Rich of Walworth, in Paris, on June 13, 1894.
“He went into Fulham Infirmary last Saturday, but wants to come out next week to attend the Ophthalmic Hospital at Moorfields.
“As sporting men are notoriously generous to one who is down from no fault of their own, I venture to think if you would place this case before your readers, some little help may be forthcoming to cheer the afflicted toward recovery.”
READ PART II OF THE TRAGEDY OF ALBERT PEARCE
Research into Pearce is ongoing and additions or corrections may be made.
Rediscovering the wrestlers and boxers of Late-Victorian London 
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