Jem Mace was born in the village of Beeston, near Swaffham, on the 8th April, 1831, the son of Bill and Ann Mace. Bill was the village blacksmith, both he and Ann were barely literate.
Jem received no schooling and was called on to help in the smithy from a young age. Yet this young man was to find fame and (temporary) fortune, to travel the world and to become the World Heavyweight Champion.
Jem also turned out to have considerable musical talent. His favourite family member was his Uncle Barney, an idiosyncratic character who, having married a 15-year-old girl, moved to live with her in a Romany community – Jem was a frequent visitor and was enthralled by the vivacity of the Romany music and dancing. His father combined his sometimes itinerant work as a blacksmith with a secondary career playing the fiddle at local fairs. Jem inherited his talent.
Strangely, it was his fondness for the violin that led him indirectly to a pugilistic career. Hating the forge work and perhaps afraid that it might damage his fingers to the extent that he could no longer play the fiddle, Jem left home and found himself, at just 18, busking outside a pub in Great Yarmouth.
Three fishermen, perhaps the worse for drink, took exception to his playing and attacked him, breaking his violin. Enraged, Jem – quite a slight figure at the time, set about his assailants, knocking out two of them, while the third beat a hasty retreat.
By this time a crowd had gathered and one of them tipped Jem a guinea and suggested that he might have a good career in prize-fighting, illegal though it was.
The idea appealed. Jem had never been one to shirk a fight with his fellow village lads, usually to win the favour of one of the village girls; he was extremely athletic and his strength of punch was established when as a demonstration he punched a hole in an inch-thick door panel with a single blow.
He signed up with the proprietor of a small touring circus, charged with ‘sorting out’ any disruptive intruders and entertaining the crowds on his fiddle. But the idea of prize-fighting still appealed to him and, on his own initiative he issued challenges to all-comers, setting up a boxing booth at various local fairs.
Fights in these booths were not illegal – gloves had to be worn and time limits imposed. But Jem also took part in illegal prize-fights which lacked such legal niceties and where bouts could last for several hours.
On at least one occasion he, his opponent and the crowd they attracted had to ‘up-sticks’ in mid bout and re-locate. Bare fist fights drew a crowd of gamblers, pickpockets and prostitutes and police raids were quite frequent.
By this time Jem had married his first wife, Mary, a local girl and the daughter of a schoolmaster. They soon had three children – Jem was known to have fathered at least 14 altogether – and the need to have an established career was more pressing.
His fighting schedule was now in the hands of a London promoter, Nat Langham. His boxing exploits made him a popular hero in Norwich, and he decided to cash in on his popularity by becoming the landlord of the Swan Tavern in his home city.
Initially he did very well but his popularity fell rapidly when an article in a prominent magazine described him, scathingly, as a coward. The reason for the story was Jem’s failure to show up for a fight.
The true reason wasn’t cowardice, it was simply that, having, the previous night, been caught in bed with a barmaid by his trainer, he had, in frustration, gone on the bender to end all benders. But he could hardly use that as an alibi. The trade of the pub fell sharply, and it was set alight by the mob.
Jem’s reputation recovered quite quickly and in 1858 he became middleweight champion of England and in 1861 added the heavyweight title to his collection. His boxing career was extraordinary.
He won world heavyweight championships in the USA and Canada, and fought in Australia and New Zealand. Still fighting at 65 he won two veteran world championships. His final recorded fight was an exhibition bout in 1909 – he was 78 years old!
But the story of his fights is a readily available matter of record, and in this column I want to focus on Mace the man rather than Mace the fighter, though the two are inevitably intertwined. Looking at his life in a short article it is probably best to look at different aspects separately, Mace the businessman, Mace the ladies’ man, Mace the travelling man.
We have already seen a little of Mace the businessman in his purchase of the Swan Inn in Norwich, not in the long term a success. But despite this he later ran another pub, in London, again not a success.
Perhaps his most daring venture was to set up his own circus. Having worked with a number of others (including that of fellow Norfolk boy, Pablo Fanque) he set up his own in 1862. Again, it was a short-lived enterprise.
In his later travels he owned a bar in Manhattan – the haunt of gangsters one of whom was shot dead in his bar, and a hotel in Australia. On his final return to England, he ran a pub called the Black Lion, in Birmingham.
Despite deficiencies in his business understanding he accumulated a large amount of capital and lived the life of Reilly for a while. He was interested in ‘the turf’ and owned a number of racehorses. Sadly, racing was to be his downfall too. An inveterate gambler, he made too many bad bets and his fortune melted away.
He is believed to have fathered at least 14 children from five different women - one son became a priest and officiated at his father’s funeral. He was married three times – at least once (and possibly twice) bigamously.
He had a large number of mistresses including, it is generally believed, the highly successful American actress Adah Isaacs Menken. She had at least two things in common with Jem – she had also contracted a bigamous marriage and she blew her considerable wealth to die in poverty at the age of just 33.
His early experience with the barmaid which led to a public charge of cowardice when he failed to show up for a fight the following morning obviously didn’t curtail his interest in the fair sex.
As for his travelling, he first major excursion was to the United States, where he fought in both New York and San Francisco. Some sources suggest that he went because he was tired of interruptions to his bare fist bouts by police and magistrates.
Whatever the reason it was there that he won his first World Championship. Although generally popular in America, he found himself the object of significant aggression from the large number of newly arrived Irish settlers, whose resentment at the English was so intense that he was the subject of an assassination attempt.
Later, in his mid-40s he travelled to Australia where, although still boxing in matches, he was most prominent in training and developing a string of future champion boxers. But in Australia too he had problems with Irish settlers.
On one occasion he was even threatened by four Irish members of Ned Kelly’s infamous gang but having trained and then taken into partnership the Irish/Australian boxer Larry Foley had earned Jem enough brownie points to ensure his safety. Add in spells in New Zealand and South Africa at a time when travelling was not easy, and his roving instincts are clear.
There was more to Jem Mace than can adequately be covered in one article. He denied a Romany background throughout his life, although he was nicknamed – to his apparent disgust, ‘Gypsy’.
But he certainly was not the slightest racist in an age when many were and he was very popular with the black fighters he trained in his later years. Given that he was barely literate and almost entirely lacking in education he led a surprisingly full life.
Intermittently successful businessman, major contributor to the development of the Queensberry Rules which helped to make boxing ‘respectable’, gifted musician, tactically aware fighter he even displayed enough dramatic skill to appear in a Broadway production of As You Like It. A full life indeed.
At the time of his death in 1910 one American paper reported that 40 years earlier, in his prime, he had been worth $1,000,000 approximately equivalent today to £75,000,000. Yet he was made bankrupt in 1894 and ended his life in poverty, occasionally busking in the street but primarily living off a state pension of five shillings (25p) a week.
He died barely noticed and was buried in an unmarked grave in Liverpool. More than 90 years after his death a headstone was erected to his memory. Perhaps one of the more surprising tributes to him came from Mike Tyson when he visited London to fight in 1990. When asked who in the history of this country he would most have liked to meet he is quoted as having unhesitatingly named Jem Mace.
