Description:
AN IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN COLONIAL SILVER-GILT BOXING BELT
(article published in the World of Antiques & Art, August 2006 - Feb.2007 edition; author Judith Heaven)
A prize-fighter’s belt with Australian associations was recently discovered in London. The imposing silver-gilt belt had been presented to the Englishman, James Mace (1831 – 1910), often called ‘the father of boxing’. The Australian associations, as initially shown by the belt’s inscriptions, were that the Englishman, ‘Jem’ Mace, the world champion, was presented with the belt ‘by his Australian friends and admirers’ in September 1881.
Preliminary research showed that Mace had arrived in Sydney in 1877 after a distinguished international fighting career and left Australia from Melbourne in early 1882. During this time Mace gave numerous exhibition bouts, worked with the noted Australian fighter Larry Foley at his boxing academy in Sydney and mentored and trained Foley for his greatest achievement, Champion of Australia in 1870.
Research into Mace, Foley, prize-fighting and boxing in Australia provided details of the men’s movements, escapades and successes. Boxing was then bare-fisted fighting and brutal matches could last for dozens of rounds. It was carried out under the London Prize-Fighting rules, such fighting being declared illegal in Britain in 1861 and therefore, in most Australian colonies. In 1867 the new Marquess of Queensberry rules were introduced and led to the re-legislation of fighting or boxing matches. Mace, in fact, is credited with the introduction in Australia, and most elsewhere, of gloved boxing and the new, strict boxing rules which revolutionised fighting and turned it into a modern boxing, a highly-skilled and regulated sport.
Fighting was popular and seemed to attract colourful characters, although the sport did attract a wide range of followers. In early colonial Sydney, as in England, a group of wealthy and upstanding gentlemen championed the sport and provided financial and other support. Fighting matches often attracted unruly crowds and were stopped by police or even proposed matches declared illegal were moved to safer ground, such as rural locations. Mace himself seems to have been a colourful character, loved by the common man to the point where there were anecdotes of his being presented with a gold brick by idolising Victorian miners. His colourful life and habits, however; meant that this, like so many of his valuable medals etc, was said to have been soon sold to support his lifestyle.
In mid-nineteenth-century Australia, reports of fights were made in newspapers and publications such as Bell’s Life in Sydney and mention usually made of the generous prizes and purses awarded to the victorious. It was Bell’s that made a report of a fight and prize, discovered while researching sporting belts in Australia and proved to be most interesting. In an article by J M Houstone in The Australasian Antique Collector in 1979 in which early Australian boxing belts are discussed, he mentions belts made by J Cohen in Sydney in 1847 and 1848. He also mentions another belt made in Sydney prior to that. In early 1846 the Australian prize-fighter, Bill Sparkes, was presented with a belt made by the Sydney silversmith, Richard Lamb. The description of the belt in Bell’s Life in Sydney, while differing slightly with the engraved inscriptions and the trim, leaves little doubt that it is the same belt presented to Jem Mace 35 years later.
… the clasp is of solid silver – executed by M R. Lamb, of George Street, from a design of our old friend Meredith. / THE CLASP / exhibited in the centre, the figure of a Pugilist in attitude, in strong relief; on either side of a Corinthian column on the caps of which was engraved ‘Pugilism’ and ‘Pedestrianism’, each twined by a ribbon on which his various achievements were inscribed – and on the pedestals the words ‘Courage’ and ‘Speed’, the whole surmounted by the ‘Australian Arms’ and at the foot, waved a ribbon bearing the motto ‘Honor the Reward’…
Objects such as this for presentation were usually commissioned and often this meant a local silversmith importing an appropriate item and adding an inscription of other decoration pertinent to the recipient or the occasion. These pieces were usually reported as being the work of the colonial silversmith who may have only reworked or simply retailed the item. The depression of 1842-50 was felt sorely by silversmiths in Sydney, a situation which changed after the 1850s gold boom but no doubt they welcomed such lucrative commissions at any time. Even later when bare-fisted fighting was considered illegal, the funds for prize-fighting purses and belts were provided by a fraternity of gentlemen, ‘The Fancy’, which patronised pugilism. The membership of the group included the leading lights of the colony: lawyers, doctors, rich businessmen and even gentlemen in high public office. Because of this involvement, police enforcement of any laws against fighting was often merely token. Substantial sums were available for pries and purse of £500 and £1,000 were regularly awarded. When Mace was engaged to provide exhibition bouts in Sydney, he was paid an amazing £500 a month. But a heavy, silver belt was always considered the ultimate and appropriate fighter’s prize.
The earliest of three belts made in 1840s Sydney and mentioned by Houstone was that awarded to Sparkes, made by Lamb. Richard Lamb, silversmith, had arrived in Sydney from London in September 1838 and commenced business by November. Despite being declared insolvent in 1844, Lamb seems to have continued business and then retired in late 1858. John Hawkins, in his book, Nineteenth Century Australian Silver, describes Lamb as mainly relying on importing English silver and it seems from the Sydney press that he was held in some esteem as a silversmith. He is reported as making a silver cup for the Goulburn Races in 1848, as well as the silver boxing belt presented to Bill Sparkes.
Lamb is known to have used imported silver items, and as the central portion of the belt appears to be in a style different from the rest of the belt, it may be that Lamb produced a belt for Sparkes incorporating a new central panel into imported components, probably the two panels either side of the central section and the British coat of arms. These appear to be by a different, even more skilled maker to the central panel and the Australian arms. The stamped marks on the reverse of the belt are not at all clear but the clearest is similar to ‘I B’. As there are no clear identifying marks on the belt and the main identification results from Bell’s description of Sparkes’ belt, it may be that the 1846 belt was reworked with new cartouches and inscriptions for Mace and then gilded, or re-gilded. The number of silversmiths, particularly in Melbourne, in 1881 were legion and any number would have been capable of doing such work.
It does not seem clear if either of the early, Sydney belts by Cohen and Lamb was presented to Foley as Champion of Australia. Larry Foley, often credited with the founding of modern boxing in Australia, is mentions as being presented with a championship ‘gold and silver belt’ after becoming Heavyweight Champion in Australia in 1879, a contest for which he was trained by Jem Mace. Houstone also mentions a champion boxer’s belt, made by J J Cohen in Sydney (or in England as later described in the press), which had originally been presented to Isaac Read in Sydney in 1847, then came into the possession of Foley who presented the silver belt to his protégé, Peter Jackson, Champion Boxer of Australia in 1886. Is it possible that the idea for this came from Foley having been awarded the Lamb ‘gold and silver belt’ in Sydney which had initially been given to Bill Sparkes in 1846, and then making this belt available for presentation to Mace as he was about to leave Australia? It was quite common practice for sportsmen to give their awards and prizes to others. Jem Mace also presented his own silver prizes to fighters he considered worthy.
By the early 1900s Mace had spent all the money from the sale of a hotel he had owned in Bourke Street, Melbourne. No doubt he had also sold the belt, along with any other remaining prizes, even photographs, as he had ‘fallen on hard times’ and apparently relied upon the generosity of old friends in the years before his death in England in 1910.
The Sparkes/Mace belt, long thought lost, was recently discovered in the deceased estate of a London collector who had purchased it because of a great uncle who was a boxer and contemporary of Mace and had followed or accompanied Mace on his tours of South Africa and Australia. Presumably, this person had removed part of the cartouche which carried the inscription to Mace at the top of the buckle, evident in a modern photograph which was kept with the belt.
Categories: Australian History > Silver (Australian)
