It is well documented that Bendigo had problems with alcohol after his career ended. His behaviour meant that the Nottingham magistrates sentenced him to several periods of detention at The House of Correction.
On his retirement in 1850, Bendigo took up a role at Oxford University, teaching rich young gentlemen the noble art of pugilism. It was an unofficial role and they had to disguise him as a professor to get him into the grounds. However, mixing with the upper echelons of society didn’t appeal to him much either, so it wasn’t long before he made his way back to Nottingham.
Soon after his return, in 1854, his mother died and Bendigo soon lost his way and turned to alcohol. Within a few years the ‘Champion of Champions’, credited with inventing the left-handed ‘Southpaw’ stance, had become a sorry drunken mess.
Gangs of children would taunt him when they saw him out in the streets.
A magistrate summed up Bendigo, while sending him for one of his 28 visits to The House of Correction for drunken behaviour:
“Bendigo, when you’re sober you’re one of the nicest men in Nottingham, but when you’re drunk, you aren’t”.
Bendigo was mixing with an unruly group of his former supporters known as The Nottingham Lambs. An official who visited Nottingham and reported an incident involving Bendigo in the Three Crowns Tavern.
”Upon turning away from my friend to reach for the tankard that I had ordered, I found him burying a portion of his facial development there-in. When I was informed that it was Bendigo, one of the Nottingham Lambs, I did not question the matter but did exclaim: ‘Great Scott! What must the Nottingham Wolves be like?
Eventually Bendigo realised that his lifestyle needed to change but not before a number of spells in Nottingham’s prison, known at the time as the House Of Correction.
The court for the town of Nottingham was then on Weekday Cross in the old Town Hall
The Guildhall was abandoned in 1877 with the opening of the new Guildhall and the old town hall was demolished in 1895 when the Great Central Railway built a tunnel with the portal just underneath Weekday Cross
What was the House Of Correction
From 1846, The House of Correction officially took on the function of the Town’s Gaol with the closure of Nottingham Town Gaol. After the 1877 Prison Act, and the closure of the County Gaol in 1878, this prison became the local prison for the area.
How Did The House Of Correction Operate?
An Inspectors of Prisons report of 1838 gives us an idea of what it was like when Bendigo served time there.
This house of correction, or St. John’s prison, so termed from occupying the site of a religious house, is conveniently situated for its purpose in the town of Nottingham. Shortly after the passing of the Gaol Acts, this prison was enlarged, or rather reconstructed, upon the principles of classification then introduced. The design contemplated was that of an unequal square, with the keeper’s dwelling in the centre. Two sides have, however, only been completed, each three stories high, with day-rooms on the ground floors, and sleeping cells on the upper. A portion of the old, irregular, and inconvenient buildings were allowed to remain, and were the keeper, and wards for the converted into apartments for female prisoners.
The prison stands in an extensive area, enclosed, except at the south-west angle, with a boundary wall surmounted with courses of loose bricks. Where the enclosure is imperfect, the windows in the galleries and staircases look upon the street.
The entrance fronts St. John’s Street; the lodge is connected with other buildings, and comprises apartments for a turnkey, drop room, reception cells, and tread-wheel sheds.
The accommodation for the keeper adjoining consists of a room for the magistrates, parlour, office, kitchen, cellarage, and three chambers. The chapel is in the centre of the principal wing, and is divided for male and female prisoners. The airing-yards are paved, and separated from each other by walls. Many of the sleeping cells have fire-places: they are arched, with the exception of those occupied by the females, which are ceiled with lath and plaster.
The keeper, from the inconvenient position of his house, has no inspection over the part occupied by the male prisoners, and that allotted for the confinement of females is too small, is likewise deficient in ventilation.
The Prison Diet
Breakfast consisted of a pint and a half of milk porridge, made with a pint of milk and 2 1/2 ounces of oatmeal. Dinner was a pint of soup, made from 1 lb of beef, without bone, half a peck of potatoes (allowed weekly to each prisoner) and is made into soup. Supper was:1 ½ pints of gruel. Males 1 1/2 lbs of bread daily and 1 lb for the females. Two cooks have an extra allowance of 6 ounces of meat.
Clothing
Felons (those serving over 12 months) wore a suit of party-coloured frieze, red and brown, shoes, linen. Misdemeanants (those serving less than 12 months were issued a suit of brown frieze. The women were issued striped cotton bed-gowns, linsey-woolsey petticoats, linen and shoes.
Bedding
Iron bedsteads were provided with a straw mattress with two blankets and a rug. Sheets were issued to the females.
Health
The surgeon attends twice a-week, and more often if required.
The surgeon was present at corporal punishments.
This was being whipped.
The handle of the whip was 18” long with nine lashes of common whipcord 18” long each with 4 single knots.
Moral and Religious Instruction
The chaplain performs one full service on the Sabbath and reads prayers twice a week.the only absentees from Divine Service are the cooks.
Labour
Male prisoners would be set to work the tread- wheel which resembled a water wheel but driven by humans standing inside the wheel. Used as hard labour for either grinding grain (corn) or pumping water. Other employment would be tending the keeper’s.garden, carpentering, or white washing the walls. The females were tasked with washing and mending the prisoners and officers linen.
Bendigo Reflects
In his interview with James Greenwood in 1874 Bendigo talked about his time in gaol, specifically when he served his last sentence in 1872.
The twenty-eighth time. What was it for? Not for thieving. No; it was never as bad as that. When I was a boy, and up to the time when I was a young fellow, my life was a rough ‘un, and if I saw any chap eating, and I was hungry, I’d take his grub away from him, Oh, yes, I’d do that; or if I was dry, and had no money for a drink, I’d think nothing of making free with somebody else’s beer; but, d’ye understand me, I never would what you might call steal anything.
Well, this twenty-eighth time was for the old game. It was at one of the public-houses where they were set against me, and wouldn’t serve me with any strong drink, even with the money to pay for it. So somebody got a pint of ale for me, and just as I was going to drink it, the landlord came along and knocked the jug clean out of my hand. Well, no sooner was he knocked down himself, then in comes the policeman, and there was a row, and it was, ‘Bendigo in trouble once more.’
And I had to make the best of it before the bench of magistrates. Of course I knew em, well enough, and they knew me. There was one of em, a hearty, John Bull kind of man, that I took a likin’ to, and I used always try and get round, and generally managed it, putting the matter to him in a man to man kind of way, d’ye see; but there was another, a vinegar looking, narrow-jawed cove, who was always hard on me.
Well, I made my story out pretty well, and made ’em laugh a bit, and, thought I, I shall get off this time, but I didn’t. Said my friend on the bench, ‘Bendigo, when you’re sober you are one of the nicest men in Nottingham, but when you’re drunk you ain’t; therefore you will go to prison for two months, and afterwards give bail to keep the peace for three months longer.’
Somehow that sentence seemed to knock me over more than any of the twenty seven I had served before, and I took to thinking what a fool I was not to live quiet and comfortable on my pound a week, like another man. Yes, a pound a week-that’s what I’ve got to live on. Did I save it up? Not I; I couldn’t save. No; what I did when I was making a heap of money in the ring was to hand it over to my brother on condition that he always gives me a pound a week, and that’s how it comes. And I’ve got a nice little country house, for which I pay two shillings a week, and I never was happier in my life, though I ain’t very rich, you’ll say. But I’m better off now than ever I was. I’ve got my belts – three of em the champion’s, which was never took from me, and two others, and a lot of silver cups and things; they’re all out of pawn now, and I’ve got em all at home in the cupboard.
PRISON CHAPLAIN
Bendigo continued:
Well, I was going to tell you about the conversion. Twice a day on Sunday we had to go to chapel – to hear the parson. I didn’t care much for listening to such things in general, but, somehow, this Sunday I did. When I say somehow, I mean to say I couldn’t but do it. It was just in my line. It was about the set-to between David and Goliath. And when the parson began to talk about the big un; how tall he was, and how broad and strong – I was all the time picturing him as being a man after the style of the big un I had fought three times – Ben Caunt that was – and wondering how I should have got on in a stand-up with Goliath. Well, the parson went on to us about the little ‘un – about David, and about his pluck in facing the giant, though he had only a sling and a stone to tackle him with.
When he came to describe the fight, I listened with all my might, quite lost myself listening, and when it came to the wind-up, and David floored the giant and killed him, without thinking that I was in chapel and that it was against the rules to say a word, I bawls out ‘Brayvo! I’m glad the little ‘un won.’
It was very wrong, and what made it worse for me, all the prisoners and the warders burst out laughing. The parson turned away, but I could tell by the move of his shoulders that he was laughing too; which, perhaps, made it a little better.
They thought it was a joke of mine; but it wasn’t. I took to it too serious for joking, and when I got to my cell and was quiet, I kep’ thinking about it, and about how somebody must have helped little David to lick the giant with his sword and armour, and about them old times when I used to ask that I might win the fight, that I might keep my old mother out of the workhouse.
Well, it was as sing’lar as though it was done on purpose. The very next Sunday the parson preached another sermon which seemed hitting at me harder than the one the week before. It was all about the three men, Shadrack, Mesheck, and Bendigo, who was cast into the fiery furnace, and who was saved by the Lord from being burnt. On, yes, I’ve heard about that since, it wasn’t exactly Bendigo who was third man; but the name sounded like it to me, and I think it as such, though I didn’t say anything to anybody. If one Bendigo can be saved, why not another? I said to myself; and I thought about it a great deal more than anybody there thought, I’ll wager. If I’d have told em I might have thought that the sermons was got up for me. It really seemed so. Sunday after Sunday I looked out for something about me in the sermon, and there it always was. After the one about the fiery furnace came one about the twelve fishermen. Now, I’m a fisherman myself. Bless you! I should rather think I was; one of the best in England. I’ve won lots of prizes, and got a fishing-rod that Mr. Walter, of the Times, give me. Well, after that came another sermon about the seven hundred left-handed men in the Book of Judges; and I am a left-handed man. Of course I am. It was that what took in the knowing ones I have had to stand up against.
Well, it was this always going on that made me make up my mind to turn as soon as ever I got out. It was on a Thursday, and in the winter, and when I was let out at the gaol door there was my old friends kindly come to meet me. ‘Come along, Bendy, old boy,’ they said, we’ve got something to eat and something to drink for you all ready. Come along.’ But I had made up my mind, and wasn’t to be shook; so I turned round, and I ses, ‘Look here, I never will eat or drink along with you, or along with any man in a public-house again as long as I live. I’ve done with it.’
Bendigo kept to his word up to a point. He remained in Beeston for the final 7 years of his life.
Following Bendigo’s death in 1880, Nottingham’s courts and prisons underwent more change.
The prison at Perry Road in Sherwood (then known as Bagthorpe) replaced the House of Correction in 1891 and the Nottingham Guildhall on Burton Street was opened in 1888, replacing the Town Hall on Weekday Cross. The new Guildhall contained the Police (magistrates’) Court, the Central Police Station and the new Fire Station.
With thanks to theprison.org for the extracts of the Prison Inspectors Report:
