Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Richmond Unchained The Biography of the World's First Black Sporting Superstar by Luke G. Williams Bill Richmond (1763-1829): Bare-knuckle king of the prize fight ring. Bill Richmond is one response you are unlikely to get if you ask someone to name a sporting great, but the bare-knuckle boxer, born in the 18th century, was arguably the first black sporting icon in history. Born into slavery on Staten Island in New York in 1763, Richmond was released at the age of 13 to British army commander General Percy. Some reports say Percy was impressed by the fighting prowess of the young Richmond and took him to England where he was provided for and educated in York, later marrying a local woman. 'Maggie the Machine' - the girl who never gave up. Richmond was frequently targeted with racism and was involved in a number of street brawls locally. Writer Pierce Egan (1772-1849) noted five boxing matches won by Richmond, who was already developing a reputation as a dangerous counter-puncher on the underground scene in Yorkshire. He moved to London near the turn of the 19th century where he was employed by naval officer and nobleman Lord Camelford - a man with a passion for pugilism, who was also cousin of then-Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. According to Luke G Williams, author of Richmond Unchained: the biography of the world's first black sporting superstar, Richmond challenged George Maddox while in the company of Lord Camelford at a prize fight at Wimbledon Common, losing to the battle-hardened boxer inside nine brutal rounds. It was Lord Camelford's death in a duel with a former friend that was the catalyst for Richmond's ring return. He earned memorable wins against Jack Holmes and Jewish fighter Youssop, and began training boxers, before losing to rising star Tom Cribb in a bruising 90-minute encounter in Sussex in 1805. Undeterred, Richmond would mount another comeback in 1808 with a series of impressive wins, reigniting his popularity, and paving the way for a rematch with Maddox a year later. An action-packed fight saw both men earn plaudits with Richmond's status and reputation elevated further after avenging his earlier defeat to Maddox in fearsome style after a gruelling encounter. 'Impetuous men must not fight Richmond' After becoming landlord of the Horse and Dolphin pub in London's Leicester Square, Richmond's focus turned to training young contender Tom Molineaux, who later suffered two defeats to his former adversary Cribb. But Richmond again returned to the ring in 1814 - aged 50 at the time - beating Jack Davis before locking horns with the durable Tom Shelton, a man who was described as half his age. He would beat Shelton in a 23-round battle of attrition, with Egan commenting at the time: "Impetuous men must not fight Richmond as in his hands they become victims of their own temerity. The older he grows, the better pugilist he proves himself." That appears to be Richmond's last contest, ending with a record of 17 wins and two losses. He continued to train fighters - as well as socialites including peer and poet Lord Byron - after his retirement. And such was Richmond's standing in society, he even acted as an usher at the coronation of King George IV in 1821. It capped a remarkable rise from squared circles to royal circles for the trailblazing Richmond, who died eight years later in December 1829 at the age of 66. Richmond was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame 170 years later in 1999. Bill Richmond – the pioneering pugilist. If you asked someone to identify the most significant sportsperson from black history responses would vary; the majority would probably cite Muhammad Ali, while others might make a case for Jackie Robinson or Jack Johnson. Yet the undisputed founding father of black sporting endeavour is none of the above. In fact, to trace the life of the first black sporting superstar, we must travel to America in the 1760s, during the turbulent days leading to the American War of Independence. Bill Richmond was born into slavery on 8 August 1763 in Staten Island, an outpost of the British colonies to the southwest of Manhattan. By the end of his remarkable life, Richmond had left his origins as a slave far behind and earned unprecedented acclaim for a black sportsman. Richmond did not achieve such fame in revolutionary America, but within the unlikely environs of Georgian England. The vehicle that enabled Richmond’s rise to prominence was boxing, a sport that united the lower and upper classes like no other leisure pursuit. So famous was he during the 19th century that his life was referenced in works of literature by writers such as William Hazlitt, Thomas Moore and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while his likeness appeared in popular prints by artists such as Richard Dighton and Thomas Rowlandson. Bill Richmond at the coronation of George IV, art by Trevor Von Eeden. Richmond’s eventual life as a celebrity in England would have seemed utterly inconceivable when he was born. The youngster’s slave master was the Reverend Richard Charlton, rector of St Andrew’s Church in Staten Island, who, in an example of the hypocrisy typical of this period, saw no moral contradiction between gospel values and slavery. The arrival of the British military in Staten Island in 1776 proved pivotal for the teenaged Bill, who endeared himself to General Hugh Percy, an English soldier famed for his kindness. Percy persuaded Charlton to release Richmond from slavery, brought the youngster to England and paid for him to be educated and then apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in York. At this stage the black population of Britain was larger than many might imagine. Many black citizens had arrived after being promised freedom in return for fighting against the rebels in the War of Independence. Sadly, life for these new arrivals was usually characterised by poverty, with little prospect of advancement within a society hidebound by a strict social and ethnic hierarchy. The well-dressed, literate and self-confident Richmond was an inevitable target for bigots. The regularity of the racial abuse he suffered while growing up was recounted by the leading boxing writer of the day, Pierce Egan, who described several occasions when Richmond became embroiled in brawls after being insulted, once after he was labelled a ‘black devil’ for being in the company of a white woman – probably a reference to Mary, who later became his wife and bore him several children. On such occasions, Richmond would answer these taunts in the time- honoured manner of many an English gentlemen – with his fists in a makeshift boxing ring. By handing out a series of severe beatings, he taught his abusers, in the words of Egan, that it was wrong to discriminate against a man on “account of his country or his colour”. Richmond’s reputation for his unique mixture of gentlemanly manners and imposing physicality soon spread. By 1795, he had moved to London, where he was employed by Lord Camelford, an aristocrat with a quick temper but generous heart. Several times Richmond visited prize fights in Camelford’s company and in January 1804 he issued an impromptu challenge to experienced boxer George Maddox. The seasoned Maddox was not the sort of boxer a novice should face in his first major contest, though, and Richmond was defeated. A less determined man would probably have quit boxing but, after Camelford’s death in a duel, Richmond returned to the sport. Having discovered an aptitude for teaching, he began training and seconding other fighters and was soon a regular attendee at the Fives Court, London’s leading pugilistic exhibition venue. By 1805 Richmond was on the comeback trail, defeating Jewish boxer Youssop and vanquishing contender Jack Holmes to secure a contest against highly touted Tom Cribb. Unfortunately, Cribb and Richmond’s counter-punching styles resulted in a dull bout, which Cribb won, leaving Richmond in tears. The contest solidified a grudge between the two men, which would last years. Bill Richmond in action Art by Trevor Von Eeden. Richmond didn’t box again until 1808, when several quick wins helped him land a dream fight – a rematch with Maddox. The contest, in August 1809, demonstrated Richmond’s mastery of ‘boxing on the retreat’. He battered Maddox mercilessly, earning the admiration of spectator William Windham, MP, who argued the skill and bravery on show were as impressive as that displayed by British troops in their triumph at the Battle of Talavera. Richmond’s winnings enabled him to become landlord of the Horse and Dolphin pub near Leicester Square. It was here that he probably met Tom Molineaux, another former slave. Richmond immediately discerned Molineaux’s pugilistic potential and put his own boxing career to one side to train him, with a view to a challenge against Cribb, who was now champion. Under Richmond’s tutelage, Molineaux demolished two contenders before squaring up to Cribb at Copthall Common in December 1810. It was an epic contest, and one of the most controversial bouts in boxing history – Cribb won, barely, amid the chaos of a ring invasion and whisperings of a long count that had allowed the champion longer than the allowable 30 seconds to recover in between rounds. Molineaux, many maintained, had been cheated. Historians disagree about whether the alleged bias shown to Cribb was motivated by racism, nationalism or fears on the part of Cribb backers that they would lose their wagers. Certainly, before the fight there was nervousness about the prospect of a Molineaux victory, with the Chester Chronicle claiming that “many of the noble patronizers [sic.] of this accomplished art, begin to be alarmed, lest, to the eternal dishonour of our country, a negro should become the Champion of England!” A rematch was inevitable but, by the time it happened in October 1811, Molineaux was past his best. Cribb won with relative ease and Richmond and Molineaux’s relationship was promptly severed. Having lost money brokering and betting on the fight, Richmond had to give up the Horse and Dolphin and rebuild. He became a member of the Pugilistic Club (‘PC’), the sport’s first ‘governing body’, and returned to the ring against Jack Davis in May 1814, despite the fact he was now fifty years old. A handsome victory against Davis encouraged Richmond to accept his riskiest challenge yet – a contest against Tom Shelton, a fancied contender around half his age. After suffering a horrendous eye injury early on, Richmond wore Shelton down after twenty-three pulsating rounds, leaping over the ropes with joy to celebrate the defining moment of his career. “Impetuous men must not fight Richmond,” Egan declared, “as in his hands they become victims to their own temerity … The older he grows, the better pugilist he proves himself … He is an extraordinary man.” Such achievements warranted a title shot, but with Cribb inactive, Richmond opted for retirement instead. His position among England’s leading pugilists was assured; he twice exhibited his skills for visiting European royalty and was among the most respected and admired of pugilistic trainers and instructors. Even more remarkably, Richmond was one of the pugilists selected to act as an usher at the coronation of George IV in 1821, earning a letter of thanks from Lord Gwydyr and the Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth. For a black man to be given such a role at an event symbolic of white privilege was astonishing, particularly considering slavery wasn’t outlawed in the British Empire until 1833. Touchingly, Richmond’s former rival Cribb became a close friend in the last years of his life, the two men often conversing late into the night at Cribb’s pub, the Union Arms on Panton Street. It was here that Richmond spent his last evening, before he died aged 66 in December 1829. Cribb planned to deliver a eulogy at Richmond’s funeral, but he was prevented from attending due to severe illness. A copy of the words he wrote has survived, though – using wording that is painfully clumsy to modern sensibilities, Cribb made a plea for racial tolerance, while also lauding Richmond’s character and conduct. Cribb’s insistence that all men were equally human flew in the face of mainstream opinion at the time, reinforcing Richmond’s remarkable achievement in earning fame during an age when understanding of non-white cultures was almost non-existent. For this reason, as well as for his impressive feats in the prize ring, Richmond was not only the first black sportsman of significance, but also one of the greatest. An appropriate epitaph for a man who combined the heart of a warrior with the temperament of a gentleman can be found in the words Richmond himself used when tutoring one of his many pupils. “A gentleman,” Richmond emphasised, “only uses his hands to defend himself, and not to attack; we call the pugilistic art, for that reason, the noble science of defence.” Richmond Unchained : The Biography of the World's First Black Sporting Superstar. Available. Expected delivery to Germany in 18-23 business days. Description. Today Bill Richmond is largely unknown to the wider public, but he was one of the most significant sportsmen in history and one of the most prominent celebrities of Georgian times. Born into slavery in Staten Island, Richmond won his freedom as a young boy and carved a new life for himself in England as a cabinet maker and then a renowned prizefighter and trainer. His amazing life encompassed encounters and relationships with some of the most prominent men of the age, including Earl Percy, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron, the Prince Regent and Lord Camelford. His fame was such that he fulfilled an official role at the coronation celebrations of King George IV in 1821. The story of Bill Richmond is an incredible tale of personal advancement, as well as the story of a life informed and influenced by a series of turbulent historical events, including the American War of Independence, the fight for black emancipation and Britain's long-running conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte. show more. Richmond Unchained. Author Luke G. Williams said: “The Tom Cribb pub is a perfect location for a permanent memorial to Bill Richmond. Cribb was a champion boxer and contemporary of Richmond who was once landlord of these premises. The two men were initially rivals but eventually became firm friends and spent many evenings conversing and socialising at the pub. In fact, Richmond spent the last evening of his life with Cribb in the pub. “I am delighted that Shepherd Neame brewery have agreed that Bill’s amazing journey from slavery to sporting superstardom should be recognised with a permanent memorial. For it to be officially unveiled by George Percy, a direct descendent of the man whose kindness transformed Bill’s life, is incredibly exciting.” Bill Richmond: The black boxer wowed the court of George IV and taught Lord Byron to spar. Born into slavery in the USA, Bill Richmond went on to be the world's first black sporting superstar – and forged friendships with the English upper classes. Why is his name so little known, asks Luke G Williams, author of a new biography. Article bookmarked. Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. It is 19 July 1821. King George IV has just been crowned and a lavish banquet in his honour is about to begin in Westminster Hall. Amid the extravagance and excess stand 18 powerfully built figures, whose imposing presence causes many of the nobles and dignitaries present to gasp in wonder and appreciation. Clad in retro-Tudor-Stuart costumes, these men are England's leading boxers and, as such, are the most famous and feted sportsmen in the land. Among this somewhat incongruous group, one man stands out. Amid a sea of otherwise uniformly white faces, Bill Richmond is the only black man present. Richmond was no more than 5ft 9in tall and was already 57 years old, but in contrast to the corpulent, sweating king (who was just one year his senior), Richmond was still in magnificent physical condition, without an ounce of fat on his defined and wirily muscular frame, which had once been described by an admirer as a "study for a sculpture". It had been 17 years since Richmond had first ventured into the glamorous but dangerous world of the London prize ring and he was now retired, but his achievements as a bare-knuckle boxer, or "pugilist", to borrow the Georgian term of choice, were impeccable. Metaphorically and literally, Richmond had undergone a remarkable journey since his birth in 1763, having travelled 3,500 miles to escape life as a slave in a Staten Island parsonage in America to carve out a life of freedom, glamour and social acceptance in London. Through the considerable force of his personality and his unerring eye for social advancement, Richmond had – like a real-life Charles Dickens protagonist – hauled himself from a life of grinding and condescending servitude to sample the rarefied heights of elevated upper-class English society, having mixed with MPs, nobles and the likes of Lord Byron to become one of the most prominent "men of colour" of the Georgian era. For a black man to achieve any level of prominence, let alone "celebrity", during the early 19th century was a rare feat. This was still a society, after all, where it was possible for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1810, to describe "negroes" as "an awful example of the corruption of man left to himself". Therefore it strikes me as a staggering collective omission by sports and social historians that the story of Bill Richmond has scarcely been told – as well as a shocking failure of imagination, given that the unlikely narrative of his life is worthy of a Hollywood movie. Richmond was a pioneering black boxer – the trailblazer for the likes of Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali. He began life as a slave in America in 1763, arguably the worst social circumstances a man or woman could be born into. By the time he was a teenager, though, Richmond had won his freedom and entered the protection of the British soldier and noble Hugh Percy, his wit and intelligence having dazzled Percy while he was stationed in the loyalist stronghold of Staten Island during the American War of Independence. In 1777, Percy persuaded Richmond's slave-owner, the Rev Richard Charlton, to release him into his care. This transformed the young man's life, and by the 1820s Richmond had become hugely respected, not only as a boxer but also as a trainer and tutor of both professional and amateur pugilists. For example, he gave lessons to the brilliant essayist William Hazlitt, who admiringly referred to him as "my old master", while Lord Byron was also said to have been one of Richmond's eager pupils. Percy brought Richmond to the North of England, paying for his tuition in reading and writing and then setting him up with a cabinet-making apprenticeship, an unusually high level of formal education for a black man living in Britain at this time. He later moved to London with his white wife, Mary, whom Richmond had met during his days as a cabinet maker in Yorkshire. It was in the capital that Richmond's life turned towards his unlikely fame; he was in his forties and with a young family to support when he became a successful boxer. In the early 19th century, boxing, along with horse racing, was the dominant sport in England, with the pages of newspapers often containing exhaustive reports of the latest contests. Richmond soon became one of the sport's most famous practitioners, beating many top contenders and assembling a career record of 19 fights and 17 wins. His presence at the aforementioned coronation celebrations of George IV was the ultimate symbol of his acceptance into English society and sporting circles. I had been aware of the bare facts of Richmond's life and career for a while, thanks to the George MacDonald Fraser novel Black Ajax – in which he appears as a subsidiary character – as well as the Channel 4 documentary Bare Knuckle Boxer and various books about boxing history – but I was shocked to learn that there had not been a single biography devoted to Richmond since his death in 1829. Despite my fascination with Richmond's life, I initially had no intention of researching and writing his biography. However, all that changed in the summer of 2003, when I discovered a revealing and inspiring article from Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle in the British Newspaper Library in Colindale, London. The article was a "funeral oration" written about Richmond after his death in December 1829 by Tom Cribb, the former holder of the English Boxing Championship. It contradicted the narrative I had read in boxing and sports history books: that Richmond and Cribb had been irredeemably bitter enemies. Certainly the men, at one stage, shared a fierce rivalry – Cribb had, after all, defeated Richmond in the ring in 1805, before also vanquishing his protégé, Tom Molineaux, in a pair of controversial championship contests in 1810 and 1811. Nevertheless, Cribb's warm and generous tribute to the deceased Richmond, modelled on Mark Antony's tribute to Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play, suggested that once the men had retired from the prize ring, they had become close friends. Recommended. Reading the speech, I also found myself profoundly moved. Partly, I think, this is because it was written by "plain, blunt Tom Cribb", one of the toughest, most manly men who ever walked the face of the earth, yet when he wrote about Richmond, Cribb seemed uninhibited, unabashed and unashamed in expressing affection and love for his friend. "You all lov'd Richmond once," he emphasised at one point, a sentiment that could seem like a trite rhetorical flourish but, coming from Cribb, who also admitted that his "heart is slumbering in that shell with Billy", it was a line that, for me, achieved significant emotional resonance. Cribb's speech was also fascinating in terms of how it addressed Richmond's ethnicity. To modern eyes, its liberal use of the "N-word" and Cribb's reference to Richmond as "blacky" are, at worst, offensive and, at best, painfully naive and clumsy. However, despite its embarrassing stumbles ("I am not here to say that Bill was white"), Cribb's speech succeeded in doing something quite remarkable: directly challenging the barriers and prejudices that were so prevalent in Georgian England. When Cribb wrote his eulogy, the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire was four years away, and the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln still 33 years in the future. Yet, years in advance of these landmark events, Cribb was making a brave call for all human beings to be judged by their characters and actions, and not their ethnicity. Cribb's rejection of the idea that "colour always [makes] the man" was both honestly expressed and inspiring; in the face of death, as Cribb pointed out, all men, no matter what their "colour", will one day succumb to the same fate and "tumble" from their "perch". The tribute helped to bring into focus for me just how remarkable a life Richmond had led. Through the course of the following decade of research, which took me from the dusty archives of Britain to the church in Staten Island where Richmond was once a slave, I discovered that on many occasions Richmond suffered abuse because of his ethnicity. Whether in the boxing ring, while walking the streets or while tending the bar of the Horse and Dolphin – the public house which became a focal point for London's black community after Richmond's fight earnings enabled him to become landlord between 1810 and 1812 – the threat of racial taunts and violence was ever-present for Bill. In an approving piece in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, he was referred to as "the Lily-white", a popular Georgian term for chimney sweep. This was typical of the sort of patronising language that even Richmond's admirers used to describe him. He was also referred to variously as "the black", "Mungo", the founder of the "sable school of pugilism" and the "black devil". The bravery he demonstrated to overcome these taunts and prejudices and live a professional and public life was considerable. Furthermore, Richmond's pugilistic exploits caught the imagination of the public and were regularly recounted in detail in the pages of national and local newspapers, and this at a time when most newspapers ran to only four pages in length. The extent of Richmond's considerable fame can also be measured by the fact that artists of the period produced prints of him, such as Robert Dighton's A Striking View of Richmond. Furthermore, the coronation celebration of George IV was not his only encounter with royalty, for when Frederick William III of Prussia visited London in 1814, Richmond was one of the "celebrated professors of the fist" who were commissioned to spar in front of him and other assorted royals and nobility. Another of Richmond's notable characteristics was that he was as far removed from the common stereotype of the monosyllabic thug as it was possible to be. Those who met him frequently referred to his excellent manners, witty conversation and intelligence, as well as his ability to tell amusing "milling anecdotes" – a series of qualities that put paid to the bigoted but widespread perception at the time that black people were intellectually inferior to whites. Indeed, Richmond was invariably better educated than his white contemporaries, several of whom were illiterate. Pierce Egan, the writer who was a key factor in popularising the exploits of Georgian boxers, wrote at length about Richmond's intellect in the first volume of his journal, Boxiana, declaring: "He is intelligent, communicative, and well-behaved; and however actively engaged in promulgating the principles of milling, he is not so completely absorbed with fighting as to be incapable of discoursing on any other subject." Impressively, Richmond was also a man of iron self-control; in retirement, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not become corpulent and dissolute, but retained his trim, muscular features, and remained largely abstemious in his approach to alcohol, with The Morning Post observing that he seldom took "more than a glass of sherry and water". Richmond was also endowed with the business sense and altruistic spirit of a social entrepreneur. For young black men in London during the early 19th century, boxing was one of the few routes (albeit a dangerous one) to paid and independent employment, and Richmond would often tutor such men; one of his pupils was another former slave, Tom Molineaux, whom Richmond mentored and trained for his famous championship contests against Cribb in 1810 and 1811. These were arguably the two most significant sporting occasions of Georgian times, attracting huge crowds and unprecedented press attention, and Richmond was a key figure in brokering and promoting both bouts. Sadly, while Richmond bucked the age-old cliché of the fast-living sports star, Molineaux's career and life were marred by personal excesses and proved all too short-lived. Richmond has a good case to be recognised as the first black sportsman of national fame and international significance, the trailblazer to a long, illustrious and socially significant line that eventually stretched to include the likes of Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. Richmond wouldn't have known this in 1821, of course, but as he stood at the heart of coronation festivities – a black man thriving within a bastion of white privilege – he could have been forgiven for pausing to reflect just how far he had travelled, and how remarkable a life and career he had already led. Given the wide scope of his accomplishments, it is high time that Richmond was afforded the prominent place in British history that his life and achievements so richly deserve. I hope that my book Richmond Unchained will enable more people to learn about this remarkable man and his remarkable life, and that the unveiling yesterday of a memorial to Richmond at the Tom Cribb pub in Panton Street, London – once the stomping ground of his rival-turned-friend, as well as the location where Richmond spent the last evening before his death – will provide a lasting tribute to a man who overcame the terrible circumstances of his birth to become one of the wonders of the Georgian age. 'Richmond Unchained' by Luke G Williams (Amberley, £15.99) is out now. Join our new commenting forum. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.