Talk:Tom Spring

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External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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Minor changes[edit]

Removed several references to Spring and Cribb having been, at different times, 'English Heavyweight champion'. No weight-based categories existed at this time, they were simply 'English champion'.

Also removed a quote stating that prizefighting was very badly effected by gambling-related corruption, cheating and disqualification. Given that there are only a handful of established examples where any of those sorts of incidents are known to have occurred, the idea that these problems were widespread is questionable at best. Axad12 (talk) 10:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Date that championship switched from Cribb to Spring[edit]

The article here used to give 1821 as the date of the championship passing from Cribb to Spring. Fistiana (1841) gives the exact date as May 15th 1822, saying...

On the 15th May 1822, Cribb publicly resigned the championship on the stage of the Fives Court, on which occasion he was presented with a belt, and was succeeded by Tom Spring, who retained the rank till he in turn resigned and Jem Ward took the distinction’'

The same date is given in Pugilistica, volume 1, page 271, with some extra description of the event (Spring was standing alongside Cribb, etc).

I've changed the text of this article to reflect the exact date (also added Fistiana as an external link for anyone wishing to check that this is correct). I also changed the Tom Cribb page to record May 15th 1822 as the date at which the championship formally changed hands. Axad12 (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of image[edit]

I removed an image located in the 'Retirement' section of the article. It was claimed in the subtitle to the image that it depicted a typical 19th century prizefight - but that was evidently not the case because the fighters appeared to be wearing boxing gloves. In addition, the indoor location marked it out as probably being an image of a sparring exhibition at either the Fives Court or the Tennis Court. Subtitle for the image also claimed that 19th century prizefights were regularly held indoors in warehouses which is certainly completely untrue for the period in which Spring was fighting (if it is true at all - perhaps it refers to U.S. fights much later in the 19th century, but that was never the case for U.K. prizefighting).

If there is a need to add a picture of a typical 19th century prizefight to this article I'd suggest perhaps a picture of Spring vs Langan (for which there is an excellent and well-known one - see the frontispiece to Pugilistica vol 2 or the cover of Brailsford's rather wonderful (and highly recommended) 'Bareknuckles: A Social History of Prize-fighting'. Or, failing that, any picture of a decent sized English prizefight from the 1820s. Axad12 (talk) 15:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

His Place of Birth[edit]

One source in google books, and his monument inscription shown in this article here (if you zoom in really close) on Wikipedia give his place of birth as "Rudgend/ Rudge End". According to a source on Google Books, this was a farm about a mile from Fownhope in Herefordshire. It may even be still there. Rudgend is also the birth place given for Spring by Hurley in his biography of the fighter. -

A celebration of Tom Spring | Hereford Times

Most sources I have seen on Google Books, and on British Newspaper Archive just give his place of birth as "Fownhope".

At the time of the 1851 census the birth place of Thomas Winter was put as Fownhope.


A few sources give his birth place as "Witchend, near Fownhope", but not many.


Thank you. Reddog78 (talk) 15:35, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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