(A-Z by most-commonly used first name or pseudonym)
Albert Pearce or Albert Pierce
A Black middleweight boxer from Chicago, born in the early 1860s. He was also a competitive walker, baseball player and – very likely – the first Black cyclist to compete in British professional races. Albert was blinded in the early 1890s and died in a London workhouse in his 50s:
Alec Munro or Alexander Hayes Munroe
A boxer and (maybe!) a lion tamer from Kingston, Jamaica. Born around 1850, he was stabbed in a Whitechapel boarding house in 1885 and died of infection a few days later. Buried in Manor Park Cemetery:
Alf Ball or Professor Alfred Ball
A middleweight boxer and touring boxing booth proprietor who later became a Bioscope presenter. Showman. Born in Hull (1864), based in Deptford, London, lived and worked all over. Died, 1926:
Billy and Mrs Noon
A featherweight boxer in the 1870s and ’80s, after breaking his arm Billy Noon formed a husband and wife boxing act with his wife and performed in Birmingham and London between 1887 and 1891:
Ching Hook or Ching Ghook or Hezekiah Moscow
A lightweight boxer, gym instructor, bear tamer and music hall sketch artist born somewhere in the Caribbean around 1862. Lived in Whitechapel from around 1882. Disappeared in 1892, leaving a wife and child. There is some evidence to suggest a move to New York. Death year and cause currently unknown:
Constantine Morris or Charles C. Morris
Born in Birmingham, England, around 1854, Morris was a plasterer and pugilist who repeatedly got in trouble with the law for violence outside the ring. He appears to have spent many years in America prize-fighting, managing a boarding house in Illinois in his 70s:
Dennis or Denny Harrington
An Irish East Londoner and dock worker named among the country’s top middleweight boxers in the 1870s. He spent much of the 1880s drunk and getting arrested for jumping on sailors or attacking policemen. Died in 1911.
Ellen and James Bevan
A boxing trainer (including for Jem Smith) and his wife. James left Ellen for another woman, and Ellen then threw acid in her face, half-blinding herself at the same time:
Ellen Birch or Ellen Beck
A female boxer with a ‘Herculean’ frame. Ellen was arrested multiple times for assault and theft and committed to an asylum. She died there aged 29 in 1891:
Felix Augustus Scott
A Barbadian former Royal Navy stoker who became a top boxer in Liverpool and London during the late 1880s before serving prison time for assaulting a policeman. Scott later married a Welsh woman, and spent decades touring with a boxing booth. He died in 1920.
George Brown
A (very) heavyweight wrestler and Greenwich publican. Born in 1850, died in 1906 with dropsy, buried in Brockley Cemetery:
Henry ‘Sugar’ Goodson
A middleweight boxer and publican from Brick Lane. Infamous for his involvement in an 1882 prize fight in a chapel. Born in 1856, died 1917:
Jack Davenport or John Devonport
A Black American light-heavyweight boxer, barber and nightclub doorman who lived in central London. Born around 1864, disappeared in the early 1900s – rumoured to have entered an asylum, or to be ‘doing something in munitions’ up north during WWI. Death year and cause currently unknown:
Jack Wannop or John Wannop
A wrestler, boxer, gym manager and founder of the New Cross Boxing Club. Born in Crosby-on-Eden, Cumbria, at the end of 1854. Moved to New Cross, south east London, around 1880. A father of 10, married to Miriam Wannop (1858-1948). He died from ‘senility’ in 1923 and is buried in Brockley Cemetery. A pioneer of catch-wrestling and all-round legend:
Jem Haines or James Haynes
A Black American light-heavyweight boxer and boxing instructor who lived in Lambeth, and then central and west London. Born around 1864, died from tuberculosis in 1894. Buried in Kensal Green Cemetery:
Jem Smith or James Smith
The last bareknuckle Heavyweight Champion of England. Lost his title to Ted Pritchard at Wannop’s Gymnasium, New Cross, in 1891. Born in Shoreditch, 1863, and died in Willesden, 1931:
John Smith or The Greenwich Bruiser
A Deptford boxer described as a “very inoffensive man” by his wife, who died a couple of weeks after being assaulted by a group of men outside a South East London pub in 1886:
John Willie Price or John William Price or J. W. Price
A wrestler from Lancashire, born in 1870. Died in 1957:
Juno May
A 6ft 2 female music hall wrestler from Brockley, south east London, born around 1884. Real name, death year and cause currently unknown:
Plantagenet Green or Edward Green or John Edward Plantagenet Green or John Augustus Edward Green
A former ship’s cook from Barbados turned boxer in the 1850s and 1860s. Boxing instructor for gentlemen in central London:
Punch Lewis or William Caddell Lewis
Proprietor of the boxing saloon at the Blue Coat Boy on Dorset Street, Spitalfields, and a former boxer. Died from heart disease in his late-30s and was buried in Ilford:
Samuel Sloper
A bookmaker or Commission Agent from Hoxton who lived in New Cross and Catford and backed Jack Wannop in the late-1880s:
Sisters Mills or Violet and Rosaline Mills
Two Black or mixed heritage female boxers, possibly from Central or South America, who travelled with Alf Ball’s boxing booth in 1888-1889. Their real names and dates are currently unknown:
Tom ‘Curley’ Thompson
A wrestler and boxer from the New Cross / Deptford area. Born around 1869, died 1906, buried in Old Camberwell Cemetery. Once wrestled a donkey called Steve:
Walter Armstrong or The Cross-Buttocker
A wrestler, referee, Sporting Life and Boxing World writer and author of two books on wrestling. Born in 1835 or 1838 (possibly in the Carlisle area) and moved to Brixton, south London, in the 1870s. Died in 1917:
Rediscovering the wrestlers and boxers of Late-Victorian London 