Daniel Mendoza
The Tragic Story of the Man who Taught Jews to Defend Themselves and Revolutionised Boxing
The 1771 murder of Joseph Slew that we discussed last week caused an outburst of anti-Jewish agitation in the streets of East London. A Jewish gang had been convicted of the murder, four of them were hanged and, in the popular imagination, London’s Jews were collectively responsible. In his 1810 History of Chelsea Thomas Faulkner wrote that the crime “gave rise to a scene of insult and inhumanity highly reproachful to the lower ranks of people in London . . . . a Jew could scarcely pass the streets, but he was that braided with the words “Hutchins” and “Chelsea” and many of them were pulled by the beards; while those, who ought to have taken the insulters into custody stood calmly by and triumphed in the insult.”
The baiting of London’s Jews continued for 20 years. It only came to an end when the boxer Daniel Mendoza opened an academy in Capel Court in the City of London, to teach young Jews to defend themselves using their fists.
Daniel Mendoza was born in 1765, to a family he described in his memoir as ‘in the middle ranks of society, by no means affluent’. They may not have been affluent but neither were they poor. Unlike children from poor families, Daniel had been educated at school until the age of twelve, studying English grammar, writing, arithmetic and, unhelpfully, ‘those branches of education which are usually taught in school.’
Daniel Mendoza seems to have been a quarrelsome young man but if he hadn’t had a short temper he may never have become England’s most famous boxer. After leaving school he was apprenticed to a glass cutter. He worked alongside his boss’s son, a youth who he considered to be far too haughty. When the son’s behaviour eventually became too unbearable, Daniel decided to speak his mind:
Having one day taken the liberty of remonstrating with him on the subject, hoping thereby to induce him to amend his manner. . . he became highly exasperated at my presumption, as he was pleased to term it, and made use of such insolent threats, that I determined no longer to submit and therefore gave him a severe thrashing (though in his father's house) and having done so. . . . I resigned my situation, to avoid being turned out.
After leaving the glass cutter Daniel drifted from one short term job to another until he found employment with a tea dealer. One day, a porter brought a chest of tea into the shop and the 15 year old Daniel, as was customary, offered him a tip. Perhaps offended by a youth offering him money, the man snarled, refused to take it and, when the tea dealer entered the shop, the porter challenged him to a fight. Daniel told his employer he would take care of it and squared up to the porter. The porter, three times Daniel’s age and far burlier, prepared to teach the young upstart a lesson. A crowd gathered, formed a ring and the pair fought for 45 minutes, until the porter gave in.
Mendoza began to fight professionally but the stakes were small. Although he won most of his bouts boxing was not yet a sport at which a successful fighter could earn a living. He took a job as a travelling tobacco salesman and journeyed to the naval dockyards at Chatham, about 30 miles from London. As he was setting up his stall a passing sergeant pushed him out of the way. Daniel refused to move and the sergeant struck him with his halberd. Daniel punched him and a fight broke out. The two men fought for an hour, until the sergeant could fight no longer. An officer who had been watching was so impressed with Mendoza’s style that he gave him five guineas and encouraged all those standing around to buy his wares and submit new orders. A group of sailors, happy to see their bullying sergeant vanquished, carried him ten miles in triumph to the neighbouring town of Gravesend.
Daniel continued to fight professionally until he caught the eye of the Prince of Wales. Boxing was becoming fashionable; it was known as the Sweet Science, and Daniel’s distinctive, scientific style of tactical fighting was being talked about in high society. In 1787, after he had defeated a man known as the Bath Butcher in a prize fight worth 500 guineas, the Prince gave him a gift of the same amount. It was enough to enable Daniel to get married and open his boxing academy in Capel Court. He was still only 22 years old.
As well as teaching young Jews how to defend themselves, Daniel Mendoza gave boxing demonstrations at his academy. But the City’s magistrates did not approve. Two years after the academy opened, they ordered it to be closed down. Daniel managed to flout the ban for a few months by having engravings of himself made and employing a Freeman of the City, who had commercial rights, to sell them. Everyone who bought an engraving was invited, free of charge, to attend an entertainment: a boxing demonstration.
In 1788 Mendoza fought his great rival, Dick Humphries. The prize was 400 guineas and untold sums were staked on Mendoza to win. As they fought, Mendoza fell, slipped through the ropes and sprained an ankle; Humphries was declared the winner. Mendoza immediately challenged him to a rematch. They fought twice more in the next two years, with Daniel winning both times. It was enough to have him acclaimed as the National Boxing Champion.
The forced closure of the boxing academy had not dented Daniel Mendoza’s entrepreneurial spirit, but he was never cut out for business. His career and life began to spiral out of control. He leased the Lyceum theatre in the Strand to hold boxing exhibitions. But the venture was not a success. Mendoza quarrelled with his sparring partner, the theatre closed and in 1793 he was indicted at the Old Bailey, charged with fraudulently obtaining handkerchiefs from a draper. He was acquitted but he had creditors pursuing him and he ended up in a debtor’s prison where he remained for two years. On his release he took a job as a recruiting sergeant for a territorial militia, a job which he could quit at a moment’s notice. He did just that, going back into the ring to fight a man six years younger than himself and losing badly.
Daniel Mendoza had lost fights before. Until now though, he had never lost his popularity. But Daniel Mendoza’s time in the public eye was at an end. He was getting old; he’d suffered too many setbacks.
In September 1809 protests broke out at the Covent Garden theatre. The management had raised the price of the seats and angry members of the public were demonstrating in the auditorium and barracking the performers. In desperation the management recruited a group of prize fighters to maintain order. Several of the fighters were Jews, at their head was Daniel Mendoza. The management gave Mendoza and his associates free tickets. They told them to distribute them among their friends so that they could keep order from within the auditorium.
It was a foolish move. Protestors who booed or heckled the performers were set upon; beaten up or challenged to fights. The audience grew even angrier; riots broke out, antisemitic slogans were chanted, the protests against Mendoza and the other Jewish fighters became louder than those against the seat prices. One evening a bunch of Jewish thugs with sticks assembled outside the theatre, intending to batter the protestors as they left. On another occasion a Jewish gang staged a sham fight in the bar while their associates picked the pockets of the bystanders watching the scuffle.
When he heard what was going on, Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell of the Great Synagogue was outraged. He removed the names of the offenders from the list of those entitled to charity from communal funds and threatened to excommunicate them if they repeated their crimes. It was no secret that Daniel Mendoza had been involved; his reputation never recovered. He struggled on, giving exhibitions and writing his memoirs, but he was a spent force. The man who had taught London’s young Jews to defend themselves, who had become National Boxing Champion and a favourite of the Prince of Wales, died in 1836, a broken and largely forgotten man.
Forgotten that is until 1954, when he was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Posthumously, his star shone once again. The testimonial that the Hall of Fame gave him is glowing:
Daniel Mendoza was the first to truly put the “science” in the Sweet Science. More than any previous fighter, Mendoza relied on footwork, jabs, and defence rather than pure brute force. Although relatively small at 5’7” and 160 pounds, Mendoza’s speed and agility allowed him to triumph over larger, slower opponents. Lauded by early boxing historian Pierce Egan as “a complete artist” and “a star of the first brilliancy,” Mendoza was a very popular fighter who enjoyed a short reign as England’s champion.