Bendigo The Boxer

I have been a fighting character, but now I'm a miracle. What could I do? I was the youngest of 21 children, and the first thing that was done with me was to put me in a workhouse. There I got among fellows who brought me out, and I became a fighting character. Thirty years ago I came up to London to fight Ben Caunt and I licked him. I'm 63 now, and I didn't think I should ever come up to London to fight for King Jesus. But here I am, and I wish I could read out of the blessed Book, and I could talk to you better. But I never learnt how to read, though I'm hoping by listening to the conversation around me to pick up a deal of the Bible, and then I’ll talk to you better.

A report in the Weekly Budget of December 1874, entitled 'Bendigo in a new light', purports to quote verbatim thus from a speech made to the London Cabmen's Mission in King's Cross by William Thompson of Nottingham, known as Bendigo, formerly a prize-fighter, twice Champion of England, who two years earlier had been rescued from the life of an habitual drunkard and the reputation of being 'the wickedest man in Nottingham', and was now introduced by the superintendant of the Mission as 'their dear and saved brother, Bendigo'. The man who had been sent to the House of Correction no less than twenty-eight times in the space of twenty years was now a reformed character, an evangelist with a slightly unorthodox style; when confronted by persistent heckling, especially on the part of former boxing cronies, he would pause in his delivery and pray aloud, 'O Lord, Thou knowest that since I gave up my wicked ways I have devoted my life to Thy service, and have given Thee the whole of my time. But now, seeing what's going on in this room, with Thy kind permission I will take just five minutes off for myself.' The hecklers would then painfully learn how it was that 'Brother Bendigo' had beaten Ben Caunt in a fight that had lasted two hours and extended to ninety-three rounds.