BOXING CLEVER

Matt Lewis, Great grandson of Young Billy Lewis.

One hundred years ago boxing was many things to many people.  A sport, or even the noble art, but to East Enders it was the preferred form of mass entertainment.  Any building that is, or has been, a cinema, bingo hall, music venue or theatre in the last fifty years, would have spent some time in the previous fifty hosting boxing bills.

  To one particular East Ender – William Luccione – boxing served another purpose.  It was a source of serious income.  The money to be made from boxing was a dazzling reflection of how much East Enders were enjoying watching the fights.  This particular cockney, the son of an Italian immigrant who had fled the Austrian army in his homeland and made his way to Clerkenwell and Bethnal Green, was now himself a father, to the three handsome fellahs in the photograph, and his skill in the ring was allowing him to handsomely supplement his wages as a Billingsgate fish porter.

  This additional income was hard-earned though; the fee-paying public was not prepared to wait months between fights like they do today, and Young Billy Lewis, as this was the ring name that William Luccione had adopted, would face a gruelling regime with plenty of punishment, alongside the physical work at the fish market, which must have been good stamina training.

  Between 1900 and 1914 Young Billy Lewis amassed enough money to support his family and establish a life for themselves in the East End, but also gained a reputation as one of the area’s best fighters, who in a different era might have enjoyed more adulation than that which had been afforded him by the East End of a century ago.  By 1914 he had another fight to contend with, and he never returned from the trenches in Belgium, fighting for the country his father had fled to near the end of the 19^th Century.

 

  In the middle of Billy’s boxing career another East End fighter launched a career that would eventually lead to a world title.  Born Gershon Mendelhoff in Aldgate, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, in 1893 his boxing destiny was unfolding before him in 1909 and, like William Luccione and so many other fighters, needed to adopt a name that would do more to endear him to his English homeland.  He chose Kid Lewis, eventually becoming Ted “Kid” Lewis, and began a journey that eventually led him to Madison Square Garden, a World Welterweight crown and a six year rivalry with the already legendary Jack Britton.  It is a testimony to his achievements that whilst the East End is considered one of the hotbeds of boxing talent, he is still the name that gets referred to most when talking about great East End fighters, eighty years after his heyday.

  Fast forward to 1950, and a seventeen year old called Barry Lewis, my old man, is about to start his National Service.  Whilst he is waiting for this peculiar rite of passage to get underway he often goes to train and spar with his cousin Ted, who is working under the watchful guise of Jack Solomon at his Soho gym, a mark of the promise that Ted possesses.

  A permanent fixture at Solomon’s is none other than Ted “Kid” Lewis, the former world champion, who remains seated in the corner of the gym holding court through successive pots of tea.  Young Barry dares not to approach the legend, but during a quiet moment the champion approaches him.

  “I hear you are a Lewis.”  The statement does not invite a reply.  “Is it true that your grandfather was Young Billy Lewis?”  Barry replies in the affirmative.  “I named myself after your grandfather.  When I was young, and making my way I had to lose my Jewish name, I looked around and he was the best that there was, so I chose Lewis for myself.  Your grandfather was one of the best I ever saw.”

  Proper East!
Words and photo, Matt Lewis.