‘I BEG to state,’ Tom solemnly assured the Telegraph afterwards, ‘that neither bishop nor peer was present at the late encounter’. But William Johnston saw a duke, a marquis, several MPs and dozens of celebrities.* The Hon. Henry Coke was ringside.*
After two bruising hours it looked bad for the diminutive Tom. ‘Come along, Bertie,’ Coke sighed to Lord Redesdale, ‘the game’s up.’ Tom’s right arm was broken; but one puffy eye of Heenan’s was already closed, and soon he could not tell friend from foe. Flailing blindly, he clutched at Tom, drove him face down onto the ropes, and began to choke him. Doubt persists over whether this broke the rules of boxing, but the Constabulary were sure it broke the law. Even as Sayers turned an ominous colour, the ropes were cut; the crowd surged in, cries of ‘Police!’ went up, and everyone stampeded for the train. A draw was declared, and Sayers and Heenan, now the best of friends, shared the belt.
Recorded by William Edward Johnston (1823-1886), a medical doctor from Ohio in the USA who became a news correspondent in Paris covering unrest in Europe. He took his nom-de-plume from the Battle of Malakoff in The Crimean War.
Henry Coke was a son of Thomas William Coke MP (1754–1842), 1st Earl of Leicester, and Lady Anne-Amelia Keppel (1803–1844), his second wife, daughter of the 4th Earl of Albemarle. Together with his friend Bertie Mitford, later Lord Redesdale, he was a member of a music group called the Wandering Minstrels, and had just given a concert in the Hanover Square Rooms.