One hundred and seventy-five years ago, an epic pugilistic contest took place that excited an entire colony. As quickly as the punches flew, the event then disappeared from the pages of history virtually without a trace. I told a version of this story on West Bremer Radio.

The match happened in 1848 in Ipswich in the rough-and-ready Moreton Bay district. Independence and naming of the new colony Queensland was still over a decade away. The Marquess of Queensberry rules governing the sport of boxing would not be published for another two decades.

On one side there was James Smith. He was a Scotsman by birth, but having arrived in the colony as a child, he was commonly known as “The Native”. This was a revered moniker normally reserved for those born locally.

He was probably the same James Smith who in 1846 had a house in the middle of Ipswich. That year he appeared before the Ipswich police magistrates court for letting his pigs and horses stray onto the public streets where they got a free feed. He got off with a stern warning. Smith was buying up more town land before the big event in 1848 that I’ll tell you about.

But first, on the other side was William Jones who was better known as “Black Bill”. Jones was a Welsh convict who arrived in Port Jackson in Sydney in 1827. He’d been given a sentence of fourteen years transportation. I don’t know what his crime was, but it must have been something bad to be given that amount of time. He remained a recidivist because Jones was still a convict in Moreton Bay when he was given his ticket-of-leave in January 1848.

Just one month later, in a mill four miles from the centre of Ipswich, the Welshman “Black Bill” Jones was matched against Scotsman “The Native” Smith in a grand pugilistic encounter for the ages.

The boxing match was for £50 to the winner – that’s over $100,000 today. It caused great excitement throughout the colony, and many people travelled for miles to see it. On the night before, Ipswich was crowded with strange faces creating a bustle in the town just like you’d see before any National Rugby League or Australian Football League grand final today.

Come daylight, the road leading to the big fight was filled for at least a mile with groups of twenty and thirty people, walking and on horseback, all heading to see Black Bill and The Native go head-to-head.

The supporters of each of the fighters were equally split, and so the betting ran high. Shortly after seven o’clock in the morning the fight commenced. There was evidently an existing grudge between the two men because any sense of gentlemanliness was immediately non-existent as they went all-out right from the start, science being the first to be knocked out the ring.

This was bare-knuckle boxing and thirty-two rounds were fought. Finally, a lucky blow by The Native caught Black Bill in the jugular. This proved decisive and The Native James Smith was declared the champion.

The crowd went back into town where a large sum of money was again collected for Black Bill Jones to challenge Smith to a rematch. But I can’t find any record of a second fight ever happening, and so that’s where the fight story ends.

But it’s not quite the end for the convict Black Bill Jones. He’d probably been relying on fight purses to survive, but it wasn’t enough. You see, exactly twelve months later in March 1849, Jones’s ticket-of-leave was cancelled because he was unable to support himself. Jones was therefore forced back into penal servitude.

Shortly after that, he got in a hotel scuffle with a constable and so came under the ire of well-known South Brisbane publican Thomas Grenier. Twelve months earlier at the time of Jones’s Ipswich fight, from Grenier’s nearby home the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt departed on his fateful second journey, never to be heard of again.

A similar fate awaited Jones. When the former convict and boxer died in 1860, no one knew the names of his mother or father to put on his death certificate.

The story of what was no doubt the biggest fight in Ipswich and probably Queensland history, was just forgotten and disappeared.

This year is its 175th anniversary, so maybe we can remember “Black Bill” and “The Native” and their epic thirty-two round encounter just a little bit.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD LIVE ON RADIO.

Photo credits:
Australian champion Laurence Foley – Illustrated Sydney News, 11th July 1889, page 28.
The Marquess of Queensbury and son, 1895 – Yale University Press.
Ludwig Leichhardt – National Library of Australia.