“Wannop was nearly killed.” So concluded a cablegram from The Sporting Life’s New York special correspondent, published on 10 May 1888 to update British readers on Jack Wannop V Evan Lewis three days prior. The wrestling match at Chicago’s Battery D Armoury for the first wrestling ‘Championship of the World’ had been hotly anticipated. A… Read More For Blood and Money: Jack Wannop V Evan ‘The Strangler’ Lewis
I love local newspapers. From their late teens onward both my parents (@coxchat and @stage_review) spent their careers as reporters, editors and film/theatre critics on the Luton News, Dunstable Gazette and Leighton Buzzard Observer. Since 2011 a large part of my day job has involved trying to get the public interested in fun and educational… Read More Grappling With History in the Lewisham Ledger
If there is any mystery that has taken me as many hours of research and head-scratching as the disappearance of Hezekiah Moscow, it is the search for Wannop’s Gymnasium. It’s not quite as exciting a story, but I have at least come closer to a resolution. In the early to mid 1880s, Jack Wannop managed… Read More Finding Wannop’s Gymnasium
This is the third and final chapter of Ching Hook / Ching Ghook / Hezekiah Moscow’s story. You can read the first part (which includes information about why I’m researching him and what on earth all the name variations are about) here and the second part here. There has been a relatively huge amount of interest… Read More Where Did You Go, Hezekiah Moscow? (Part III: Some Final Thoughts)
A post-script to yesterday’s blog post. A newly found clipping that has left me rather shaken by these ghosts from 140 years past. Three months of research and this did not come up in a single British Newspaper Archive search until now. Here we have it: The Sporting Life, Wednesday 13 July 1892: Read Part… Read More CHING GHOOK WANTED
This is the second chapter of Ching Hook / Ching Ghook / Hezekiah Moscow’s story. You can read the first part (which includes information about why I’m researching him and what on earth all the name variations are about) here. The year 1888 started well for Ching Hook, with a week-long residency at the Sebright… Read More Where Did You Go, Hezekiah Moscow? The Life and Times of Ching Hook (Part II: 1888-96)
Search the internet for “Victorian boxers”, “British boxers 1800s”, or any of the related phrases comprising 90 per cent of my Googling history, and you will probably – hopefully – come across this photograph: It is held by the UK National Archives alongside pictures of boxers Toff Wall and Bill Hook (no relation), with all… Read More Where Did You Go, Hezekiah Moscow? The Life and Times of Ching Hook (Part I: 1882-87)
