By Miles Templeton
I WAS recently contacted by John Vail, a very generous man. He had a hand-coloured photograph of a long-forgotten fighter, Gammy Smith of Cambridge, which he wished to go to a good home. Gammy was an old friend of John’s father and, when Gammy died in 1988, he did not leave a family behind to pass the photograph on to, and so John wished to give it to me.
I have long thought that there should be a national boxing museum around somewhere, as there is with football, and if there was such a place then it would prove the natural location for a lovely piece such as this to go to. When I get the time, it is my intention to see if something can be done along these lines.
Hand-coloured photographs were very popular at one time. Colour photography, at the time that Gammy was around in the1920s, was virtually non-existent and it wasn’t until the 1960s that the process became normal for personal photographs. This is why all the photographs of old greats like Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and even Rocky Marciano, are in black and white. For a young boxer from Cambridge in 1927 to ask an artist to hand-colour his black and white photograph was quite unusual, but this is what Gammy did, and the resulting portrait is quite beautiful. While I knew of the name Gammy Smith and had researched his fight record, I knew little about him or the details of his ring career. I think it fitting now to adorn this colour image, so rare, with a brief look at his exploits.
Gammy was a middleweight and a big fellow for his time. In the 1920s most young lads were inches shorter than they are today, and stones lighter. Times were hard and the diet was not good, especially for working class lads. Most professionals in Britain in 1927, when Gammy’s photograph was taken, weighed no more than nine and a half stone and most of them boxed between flyweight and lightweight.
This made Gammy stand out, and he didn’t have to fight his way past a myriad of little lads to establish himself. He was part of what was known as the ‘Cambridge School’, a group of fighters from the city who all emerged at about the same time and who all trained together in a School of Boxing. Gammy, along with Archie Allen and brothers Ed and Gilbert Stubbings, formed the backbone of the ‘School’ and they filled the bills at the Corn Exchange in their native city throughout the 1920s. He had 20 professional contests, only eleven of which were reported in the pages of BN.
There was so much boxing around back then and BN, whilst capturing most of it, still missed an enormous amount. This is why the careers of boxers from that period are so hard to research. Early in his career, Gammy suffered two losses at Bedford, going down to Johnny Seamarks, a very good fighter, and to Harold Bass by knockout. He then boxed in Ipswich a couple of times, wining one and losing one, before re-establishing himself with a long series of wins back at the Corn Exchange.
His first 15-rounder took place there in 1928 against Londoner, Mick Harris. This was a return, as Gammy had beaten him six months previously over 12 rounds. Harris was dissatisfied with the verdict in their first encounter and Gammy was only too happy to meet him again. The two fought in front of a packed house and the BN report states that Gammy won this contest clearly. In his next contest, Gammy knocked out a Canadian in five rounds and then followed this with good wins over Bert Cannons and Bill Softley.
Gammy boxed at the Blackfriars Ring a few times before bowing out in 1930, with an 11-9 record. He is forgotten now, but this picture does him proud. Thanks, John!
