Hand coloured aquatint. Engraved by Charles Turner after T. Blake, Titled below the image: ’The Interior of the Fives Court with Randall and Turner Sparring’. Published 1825. Plate size: 53cm x 71cm. Framed and glazed.
Jack Randall, depicted here on the left, was the dominant lightweight bareknuckle boxer of his era, winning all sixteen of his professional prizefights before retiring in 1822. Born in the ‘rookery’ of St Giles, the notorious slum district that Hogarth depicted in his 1751 print Gin Lane, Randall was of Irish ancestry and stood only 5’6” tall, but was known as a deft pugilist able to adapt to any style. He is credited as the inventor of the one-two punch, and on retirement he used his accumulated winnings to open the Hole in the Wall public house on Chancery Lane, where he would live and work until his death in 1828.
Edward ‘Ned’ Turner hailed from Montgomeryshire, but took to boxing while working at a tanners yard in Bermondsey. After soundly beating the yard foreman who had insulted his Welsh heritage, Turner took to boxing seriously. His first prize fight led to the death of his opponent, and after a trial Turner was held for three months on a charge of Manslaughter. Hailed as one of the great “bruisers of England” and one of the only lightweight fighters who had a chance of laying out Randall, a fight between the two was arranged for the 5th of December 1818 at Crawley Downs, Sussex. Despite throwing Randall bodily out of the ring in the 17th round, Turner lacked the hitting power of his opponent, and after a bloody contest of 2 hours and 19 minutes the contest was declared to Randall in the 34th round.
The Fives Court on St. Martin’s Street stood to the north-west of Trafalgar Square and what is now the National Gallery. Randall was a popular draw for audiences, who would pay to view him spar and perform shadowboxing, with up to a thousand spectators cramming into the court, and the proceeds going to retired boxers. The sparring contest shown here occurred just a year before Turner’s death at the age of 34. Randall’s final public appearance was a memorial for his rival and friend Turner, on the 18th April 1826.