Tipton Slashers refurbished grave and Slasher Trail unveiled in Dudley.

Express & Star

St Johns Church in Dudley is home to the famous Tipton Slasher. His grave has just been refurbished and a new Tipton Slasher trail launched. We call in to find out more.

Transcript

00:00So Bill, do you want to get one end?

00:02Yes, you want to set that clutch.

00:07And we'd like to...

00:09It's been restored back to its original marble.

00:12So without further ado, here's the new stove.

00:16Hey!

00:26Hello, my name's Robert Hazel.

00:28I'm the chairman of the Tipton Town Libraries Local History Group.

00:31We're here at St John's and we've just unveiled the Tipton Heritage Centre

00:36and the newly restored grave.

00:39Tipton Slasher, he was a bare knuckle fighter from Tipton

00:42who was champion of England from 1850 to 1857.

00:46And there's loads of stories about him.

00:48I mean, first off, we're here at St John's in Dudley.

00:51How come he wasn't buried in Tipton, Robert?

00:53Well, when he had his last fight against Tom Sayers,

00:56he decided to bet everything.

00:58He always was very confident in his ability.

01:01So he put everything he owned, including his pub, the champion of England,

01:05and he lost to a much younger man over ten rounds.

01:09So he ended up with just £22, which was a whip round from the crowd.

01:14When he died, he was penniless.

01:17And his wife had died a few months before, was buried in Cades Hill.

01:21So that's why the story is that he's buried in Dudley and not Tipton.

01:25And what was his pub called?

01:27The champion of England, and it was in Sponline, West Brom.

01:30Oh, okay. And is that building still there?

01:33No. No, it's one that's gone.

01:35Well, he did have a couple of pubs in Wolverhampton as well.

01:39I'm not sure whether they are still there.

01:41Oh, do you know what they were called?

01:42No.

01:43No? Interesting.

01:44Yeah, it seems his family were Republicans.

01:47There was a bit of a family trait, wasn't there? A lot of them had pubs.

01:49Yeah, well, Chris Smith, who's the only one who's got the definitive family tree of the Slashers.

01:54When you look, of the Perry, sorry.

01:56When you look on that, 80% of his family were publicans.

02:01Yeah.

02:02And all worked on the canals.

02:03Yeah.

02:04And this trail, it takes in kind of all the local landmarks, doesn't it, really?

02:08Yeah, we tried to be six local landmarks, so it's easy to do.

02:13You can do it on foot or in the car.

02:15And you can download it as well to your phone.

02:18Yeah.

02:19And it's just six sides of local interest, including the statue in Tipton, the fountain, the boxing club.

02:26And, of course, it ends at St John's, where he's finally laid to rest.

02:31Now, you've brought some old pictures along.

02:33And there's one that's from an old TV show.

02:35Did I recognise Pat? What's his name?

02:37Pat Roach.

02:38Pat Roach, yeah.

02:39Pat Roach.

02:40That was from a thing made by Central in the 80s called Geed to Mama.

02:44Yeah.

02:45And it was a reenactment of his last fight against Tom Sayers.

02:47Oh, right.

02:48Where was Tom Sayers from?

02:49He was from London.

02:50Okay.

02:51Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:52And it's interesting because Tom Sayers, this town is in Highgate Cemetery.

02:57Ah.

02:58And it's a massive, massive, like, mausoleum.

03:00Yeah.

03:01And it's got a statue of his dog at the end of it.

03:05Yeah.

03:06And it was one of the most regularly visited graves of that time.

03:10Oh, wow.

03:11And the story is that he had the dog on because he loved the dog more than he loved his wife.

03:16Yeah.

03:17Oh, God.

03:18And what's this story about him winning an ape in a competition that I was listed to?

03:22Yeah, he had an ape and he used to use it to spar with.

03:26I mean, he won it as a prize.

03:27He won it, yeah.

03:28A lot of prize.

03:29Um, but during his lifetime he won donkeys, bags of sand, all sorts of different things.

03:34Yeah.

03:35And this ape, it ended up stuffed in a pub, didn't it?

03:37Yeah, it was stuffed in a pub when he went to a couple of pubs in Tipton.

03:41Yeah.

03:42Um, and there's some nice old photographs that you can still see of it sometimes.

03:46Yeah.

03:47Great.

03:48So why is it important that we've refurbished this stone and we're keeping these stories

03:52going, Robert?

03:53Come on.

03:54I'm putting you on the spot.

03:55The important thing is he's a local legend.

03:58It's somebody to aspire to, really, because it proves that you can come from working class

04:04background and become champion of England.

04:07But the nearest person we've probably got to him now is Tyson Fury, who, his life is

04:13probably a bit like the Slashers, really.

04:15But it's just important to know that, especially the kids, to have this civic pride and be proud

04:21of where they come from.

04:22And that's one thing our local history group likes to do, is to collect things in and put

04:28them out in such a way, like a local history day or a leaflet, that makes it accessible

04:33to everybody, really.

04:34Well, thank you for everyone involved, Robert.

04:36And thank you for all your hard work.

04:38It looks fantastic.

04:39Thank you, sir.

04:41So, you know, at the height of his fame, was he quite wealthy in relative terms?

04:45Well, when he first won the champion of England, well, he fought somebody called Charles Freeman,

04:49who was known as the American Giant.

04:52And he lost to Charles Freeman, but they became really good friends.

04:56And they went on a tour of the country.

04:59And they were playing, like, theatres.

05:00Yeah.

05:01So, they'd spar, then they'd come out.

05:04And he earned loads of money from that.

05:07So, he did go from his time on the canal.

05:10I thought it was rags to riches to ruins.

05:12Yeah.

05:13And then he bet it all.

05:14And then he bet it all.

05:15But the one thing that's really nice about the tale, and it's the tale we like to tell,

05:20it's things that people don't know.

05:22Is that he had a waxwork at Madame Tussauds, which a lot of people didn't know that.

05:27And when he was in London, he met Charles Dickens and Thackeray, quite a lot of writers.

05:34And it's thought that the boxing things in Dickens' novels were stories that had come from the slasher.

05:41Oh, okay.

05:42Because he used to go up to all the best parties in London because of his good looks.

05:47The women always used to fancy him.

05:49And then the fellas used to like to take the mic out of his black country accent.

05:53And that never changes anywhere you go, does it really?

05:55For Dickens novels, but in the newspaper, they were like serialised, weren't they?

05:59Yeah, yeah.

06:00Does anything exist for him, like the boxing gloves or anything?

06:04Well, he never had boxing gloves because he was very naughty.

06:06Oh yeah, well, say the training equipment.

06:08A couple, there are only two things, and I think Chris was telling me about them.

06:12He had a cuckoo clock that was a prize.

06:15Well, that's out there.

06:16And there's a watch, a fob watch belonging to him.

06:19Because he came up on eBay a few years ago.

06:22I don't know which it went for, I bailed out.

06:25Don't look at it, don't look at it.

06:27So, they're still on there.

06:29And Chris did a lot of work researching his family tree really as well.

06:33And he found direct descendants in America and Australia as well.

06:39And again, we're here today.

06:42Thanks to Chris, to Tom Langley who did the first book,

06:46Robert Davies who did a book as well.

06:48Everybody who's researched it really, because that enables me to do what I do,

06:54if you know what I mean, because the work's already been done.

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