SIR - I wonder if T&A readers can possibly help me. I am a boxing historian specialising in the 18th and 19th century, author of the book on the London prize-ring, Up to Scratch: Bareknuckle Fighting and Heroes of the Prize-ring, and articles on prize-fighters for publications including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge Companion to Boxing and the British Boxing Board of Control Yearbook.
I am currently working on an article on a famous American fighter who was in his prime in the last decade of the 19th century, namely Frank Craig (nicknamed the 'Coffee Cooler').
He settled in England in the 1890s and lived here the rest of his life. According to a letter in a an Ex-Boxers' publication in 1991, Craig, when in his fifties, ran a boxing club in Bradford and was a much respected figure amongst the youth in the city at the time (that would have been in the 1920s).
I wondered if any of your readers know of any Bradford links for Craig. Maybe the father of one mentioned to him or her that the club had been an important part of his boyhood.
Incidentally, neither local libraries or archives have anything at all on this.
Anyone with information can email me at tonyprhist@gmail.com
Tony Gee
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