Jem Belcher was born to be king. He was the grandson of Jack Slack, who was allegedly
the grandson of James Figg. The man who was to become famous as ‘The Napoleon of
the Ring’ was born at St James Back, Bristol, on 15 April 1781, the son of a butcher who married Slack’s daughter Mary.
Jem Belcher was born to be king. He was the grandson of Jack Slack, who was allegedly the grandson of James Figg. The man who was to become famous as ‘The Napoleon of the Ring’ was born at St James Back, Bristol, on 15 April 1781, the son of a butcher who married Slack’s daughter Mary.

His first known, official prize-fight was as a 17-year-old at Lansdown Fair near Bath, and at 18 was fast and graceful enough to hold Jack Bartholomew to a draw in London. He was still only a month past his 19th birthday when he beat Bartholomew in the rematch. One of the most naturally gifted fighters of them all, he was mature beyond his years, and because of his youth could afford to walk the wild side more than most.

After his second victory over Bob Britton of Bath he toasted himself by drinking a yard of ale. His brother Tom was also a respected pugilist, and so was his brother-in-law Pardo Wilson. There is also a record of a sister engaging in a prize-fight against another woman which lasted 50 minutes. But at 22 Jem was blind, and at 30 he was dead.

So much was packed into such a short time, its convenient and not altogether inappropriate for historians to see in him, and his greatest contemporary Henry Pearce, lives that parallelled those of the great Romantic poets, Percy Shelley and John Keats, both of whom died young and yet left behind them a magnificent legacy.

The first challenge to Belcher was from an Irish stonemason Andrew Gamble, who himself had on 1 July, 1800, broken the collar bone and jaw of Noah James on Wimbledon Common ‘within sight of the gibbet upon which dangled the ghastly skeleton of Jerry Abershaw, the notorious highwayman’. Abershaw had been hanged for murder in August 1795, going merrily to his death with a flower in his teeth and chatting with anyone who had the time of day. As a macabre warning, the authorities refused to allow the body to be cut down, instead hanging it in chains and gibbeting it afresh to rot in its own time.

Four days before he fought Gamble, Belcher survived an attack by four men in Chelsea, all of whom he saw off, without coming to harm. With an estimated 20,000 guineas laid in bets, it was perhaps understandable that this was seen as a deliberate attempt to nobble the young star. No proof was ever at hand, however, and the incident was virtually forgotten once Belcher had dispensed with the game but outclassed Gamble in five rounds and nine minutes at Wimbledon on 22 December 1800 in front of a huge Jem Belcher crowd, whose roar was reported to have been heard ten miles away.

When pigeons carrying the news of his victory arrived in Bristol, the bells of several churches were rung in celebration. With the proceeds Belcher bought a London house and one of the finest coaches and pairs in the city. Some say it was this fight that convinced the Fancy of his right to be called champion. Beforehand, Belcher was only a narrow 7-5 favourite, but made nonsense of the odds. At the end of round four; Gamble was flat on his face and out to the world, and although he was pushed back by his seconds, who included Daniel Mendoza, it took only one right hand to put him away.

Three times (once unofficially) he dealt with Joe Berks, sometimes written Bourke, who was a truculent, tough, sometimes drunken butcher from Shropshire. Berks struck Belcher at a prizefight at Wimbledon in 1801, to which the champion had been specially invited. The outraged Belcher demanded honour be served there and then in the available ring. When he took almost 20 minutes to overcome ~he butcher, the watching Lord Camelford considered it a worthy proposition to set them at each other again, in formal conditions, with Berks sober and well-prepared.

He put down a stake of 100 guineas and called in Mendoza to train the Midlander. The return was delayed when Belcher was arrested, but they eventually met again at Hurley Bottom, a valley four and a half miles from Maidenhead between the Henley and Reading roads, on 25 November 1801. In another part of the field as the Fancy gathered, a man raced a sow ... hardly heroic stuff, but it must have been chaotic fun.

This time Belcher won in 25 bloody minutes, wearing down the raw but game challenger with careful body attacks. At the end Belcher offered a winner-take-all purse of 300 guineas to Mendoza. Quite properly, Mendoza, who had been a retired and much respected old champion for the past five years and who kept a good house at the Admiral Nelson in Whitechapel, turned it down. Mendoza, however, was never a man to lose an opportunity for publicity and said he would only meet Gentleman Jackson, who had been retired seven years.

The inference was plain — and insulting to the young champion. The bad feeling graduated into a public slanging match. The third match between Belcher and Berks was delayed twice before it was successfully carried out in a large field behind St George’s Chapel, Joe Berks facing Hyde Park, at Tyburn Turnpike, on 20 August 1802.
The previous day the two men had argued and scuffled at Camberwell Fair. Berks had a front tooth knocked out! For some reason, possibly because the result was considered predictable, Belcher earned only 30 guineas for a victory that turned out to be unexpectedly savage.

Maybe he underestimated Berks, who didn’t even make an attempt to box with the champion, preferring to wrestle. His tactics worked so well that after one round it was feared Belcher’s neck was broken. Slowly, Belcher picked his defences apart with precise punches and his mouth and face bled. At one point they fell down — and as they got up, the ever-defiant Berks spat a mouthful of blood into Belcher’s face. After 14 rounds Berks’ features were horribly distorted and he could barely see. Defeat was conceded, but ‘butcher’ Berks would remain one of the most resilient, and probably one of the craziest of championship contenders.
After the fight he was left in a post-chaise until the result of the succeeding contest was known, but the neglect caused him no obvious ill-effect. Two days later he won 20 guineas by beating Jack Warr, son of the prize-fighter Bill, in a 100-yard sprint after they had argued about who was the faster in the One Tim in Jermyn Street.

Some time after their second fight Berks and Belcher, along with their chief seconds, were forced to appear before Newbury Magistrates to face charges of unlawful assembly and public fighting. Berks had been unable to raise bail and so had spent three months in Reading jail. They were given what amounted to conditional discharges — and within a month the announcement of their third fight was made! The authorities wouldn’t let it drop and in May 1803 all four were charged again ‘that being persons of evil and malicious disposition and fighters, duellers, rioters, etc. had staged a duel’. Again, they were found guilty. Again, they were warned to keep the peace.

Belcher clashed with the authorities once more when he hired Sadlers Wells Theatre for a pugilistic exhibition. The magistrates reacted by closing the building for the summer. In 1806 Berks was charged with two accomplices, including an Irish prizefighter named Jack O’Donnell, with stealing a £5 note and a guinea from a man named William Gee. They were found guilty and sentenced to be transported. Only the intervention of Gentleman Jackson saved Berks from a new life in Botany Bay or some even worse place, and he was last heard of as a non-commissioned officer in the Grenadiers serving under Wellington in Spain.

Belcher’s last fight as champion was at Linton, near Newmarket, on 12 April 1803 when he outclassed the declining Jack ‘Young Ruffian’ Fearby for a prize of 100 guineas. The action was interrupted briefly and with riotous consequences by a, local clergyman and a constable, who made what must have been hilarious attempts to curtail the proceedings. They were both hauled away by the jeering mob and slung into a ditch. By round five Fearby was vomiting blood. In the 11th and after a 20-minute battering, he conceded.

Belcher was 22 years old and lord of the sporting world, comparable in history only with Mendoza and the great Jack Broughton. He owned property, ran with the finest of London society and acted pretty much as he pleased. And then one day after training at Gentleman Jackson’s he travelled over to Little St. Martins for a game of rackets with a friend.

He was hit in the left eye by the ball and blinded. Surgeons had no choice but to remove the eye and in that one terrible moment, his life was thrown into disarray. Benefits were held for him around the country and enabled him to take over the Jolly Brewer in Wardour Street, Soho. And he stuck it for a while, enjoying the deceit of bringing his old Bristol acquaintance, Henry Pearce, to London as a ‘dark horse’ and watching him become champion.

But gradually, as Pearce’s reputation grew to rival his own, Belcher became jealous and frustrated. He began to spar with his brother Tom and slowly became obsessed with beating Pearce and regaining his former glories. A one-eyed man should not have been fighting, of course, but these were hard times, when men were responsible for themselves and not each other. Eventually, he pressed so hard that the match was made. At Blyth, south of Doncaster, or more exactly half a mile outside town on a small piece of common land, on 6 December 1805, the two great fighters met in front of a crowd of 25,000. Pearce was a reluctant 4-S favourite, but began like a rank outsider as the still boastful and bitter Belcher gave him a boxing lesson and opened a cut on his right eyebrow.

The blood streamed down on to the chest of the ‘Game Chicken’. In round seven Pearce was rocked by a right hand, but kept slinging wide, arcing punches at the body and arms and inside used his greater size and strength. He headlocked Belcher and hammered him with one hand until the former champion’s blood spurted on to the ground.By then Belcher was tired and his arms were dropping. By the 12th Pearce was in complete, if reluctant command. Pearce went about his grim business unhappily, refusing to apply the finish with what might have been a kindly ruthlessness. According to Egan he even called out:

‘I’ll take no advantage of thee, Jem. I’ll not strike thee, lest I hurt thy other eye.’

Belcher made a last, defiant rebellion against his fading senses in the 17th but as they came up for the 18th, he admitted: ‘Hen Pearce, I can’t fight thee no more.’ One of the saddest encounters in the history of pugilism was done. Pearce recovered at the Blue Bell Inn at Barnby Moor, three miles away, and then moved on to Grantham for a victory party the same night.

As ridiculous as it may seem to us, Belcher fought twice more, losing both times to a later champion, Tom Cribb, firstly at Moulsey Hurst, Surrey, in April 1807, and a second time at Epsom Downs in February 1809. Just as he had done with Pearce, he gave Cribb a boxing lesson. Cribb was an inferior fighter to both Belcher and Pearce, but he had a huge heart and immense durability and strength.

Pearce, now himself in a steep decline thanks to his inclination towards London’s hellish gin-palaces and women of both polite and rough society, was ringside to see his old friend fight Cribb. Belcher’s performance was a magnificent piece of defiance. After 18 rounds, it looked as if the old champion was on the brink of regaining the title when he put the bleeding Cribb down heavily. But in round 19, he elected to stand and wrestle and the fight turned against him. In the 20th he broke his left hand and from then on he faded, round by round, until at the end of 41, he had no more to give. And as Belcher satin his corner weeping tears of frustration and misery, Cribb danced a hornpipe in mid-ring to the cheers of the gathered multitude.

When they fought again, Belcher was a pitiful figure. His health was failing as rapidly as his business, he was sour and morose and no longer filled with the inspiration to train properly. Cribb was a 1-2 betting favourite — and frankly, that was generous to Belcher. Cribb was at his peak and although Belcher outboxed him at times during the first 10 rounds, his end was hastened when he broke an arm on a ringpost. His hands were no longer able to stand up to hitting a man in a long fight and they were cut and battered when he gave m after 31 rounds.
Belcher was simply unable to cope with his ever declining fortunes. He moved to a smaller pub, but that also failed, and some have said he would sit there brooding in silence for hours as custom passed him by. He gambled away most of his possessions, including his £30 gold watch, and was eventually jailed for 28 days after his part in a drunken fracas in Horsemonger Lane. In prison, he caught cold, which turned into pneumonia. His liver, ulcerated by an excess of gin, caused him intense pain.

A benefit was held at the Fives Court on 2 July 1811 and he was described by William Oxherry, the writer of Pancratia, as a ‘decrepit invalid’. Four weeks later, on Tuesday, 30 July 1811 he died at his last pub, the Coach and Horses in Frith Street, Soho. He was still only 30 years old.They buried him at Marylebone after a funeral procession that did full justice to one of the greatest popular heroes of the century. On the Oxford Road so many thronged around that the procession could not move for some time, and as the coffin was lowered into the grave, the distraught prize-fighter William Wood jumped in after it, weeping uncontrollably.