The author
- David Fells -
My father, Maurice, was a keen boxing fan who would watch all the top televised boxing matches and it was he, rather than us, who decided myself and my brother John should attend the Bestwood Village (where my father worked at the colliery) Boxing Club. In retrospect, I am pleased to have experienced that albeit brief period of time actually feeling the butterflies in the pit of my stomach as I would climb through the ropes to face another youngster. It was good to have experienced the controlled boxing artistry of self defence disappear as attack took over, driven on by fear and adrenaline and then the trickle of the 'claret[1]' as it (very regularly in my case) would run freely from my nose and down to my mouth. These things I like to feel have given me the very slightest of insights into the stories that follow. Although I too have watched the big televised fights occasionally, I am not a fan of the idea of two men facing each other in the name of sport where the sole aim of that sport is to try and inflict damage upon your opponent. I did not stay long with boxing as my heroes of that time were from football rather than boxing. This book has therefore come to fruition not so much to promote the sport of boxing but rather to record a piece of Nottinghamshire history.
My mother's maiden name was Kathleen Eva Caunt and as I researched my family tree I discovered that my mother’s great great grandfather was Frederick Caunt a brother to Benjamin Caunt who was the bare-knuckle boxing champion of England. As I read this I recalled how many years earlier, as a then reluctant amateur boxer at the Bestwood Village Boxing Club, I was told by my uncle Nev Caunt (my mother’s brother) that I had an ancestor who was a bare-knuckle boxer. I had stored away this information without ever really knowing the facts behind the statement, but now here he was again appearing in my family tree. After a couple of years of researching 'ordinary' working people I was suddenly quite excited by the thought of a celebrity in the family.
All I knew of Ben Caunt at that stage was that although born in Newstead in Nottinghamshire he spent much of his youth, as I had, just down the road in Hucknall. In fact his grave was in the grounds of St. Mary Magdalene, in the market place in Hucknall, the same church in fact where Sue and I had married in 1973. Off I went to both the Hucknall and Nottingham libraries expecting to find lots of information about him but unfortunately there was next to nothing, only a few scraps of poor quality photocopies from past local newspapers.
I was so disappointed and I needed to satisfy my thirst for information about Ben Caunt that I decided to do something about it. Although my initial intentions were not necessarily to write a book, I just had a very strong desire to know more about him. My search took me to various people and places including direct descendants of Ben who still lived in Hucknall and a well respected author of boxing books in London named Bob Hartley. Bob helped me enormously and pointed me in the right direction on a number of occasions. Eventually the amount of information about Ben and his fights grew considerably and I realised that for anyone else to find out about Ben Caunt they would also be faced with having to tread a similar arduous path. This book therefore, is the result of that research being a compilation of the articles discovered about the bare-knuckle fighter who caught my imagination - Ben Caunt - Champion of England.
My mother's maiden name was Kathleen Eva Caunt and as I researched my family tree I discovered that my mother’s great great grandfather was Frederick Caunt a brother to Benjamin Caunt who was the bare-knuckle boxing champion of England. As I read this I recalled how many years earlier, as a then reluctant amateur boxer at the Bestwood Village Boxing Club, I was told by my uncle Nev Caunt (my mother’s brother) that I had an ancestor who was a bare-knuckle boxer. I had stored away this information without ever really knowing the facts behind the statement, but now here he was again appearing in my family tree. After a couple of years of researching 'ordinary' working people I was suddenly quite excited by the thought of a celebrity in the family.
All I knew of Ben Caunt at that stage was that although born in Newstead in Nottinghamshire he spent much of his youth, as I had, just down the road in Hucknall. In fact his grave was in the grounds of St. Mary Magdalene, in the market place in Hucknall, the same church in fact where Sue and I had married in 1973. Off I went to both the Hucknall and Nottingham libraries expecting to find lots of information about him but unfortunately there was next to nothing, only a few scraps of poor quality photocopies from past local newspapers.
I was so disappointed and I needed to satisfy my thirst for information about Ben Caunt that I decided to do something about it. Although my initial intentions were not necessarily to write a book, I just had a very strong desire to know more about him. My search took me to various people and places including direct descendants of Ben who still lived in Hucknall and a well respected author of boxing books in London named Bob Hartley. Bob helped me enormously and pointed me in the right direction on a number of occasions. Eventually the amount of information about Ben and his fights grew considerably and I realised that for anyone else to find out about Ben Caunt they would also be faced with having to tread a similar arduous path. This book therefore, is the result of that research being a compilation of the articles discovered about the bare-knuckle fighter who caught my imagination - Ben Caunt - Champion of England.