Boxing in the Great Depression was an occupation that fed families as father’s put their safety on the line. But so many of them have been bypassed by history. I told a version of this story live on radio 4WK.

One of those men was William Robert Wilson or better known as Spike Wilson. Spike was born in Queensland in 1900 on the twentieth birthday of his single mother Annie. Later in life he sometimes went by his mother’s married name of Wolffe.

When Spike was eighteen-years-old he married sixteen-year-old Emily, and by the time Spike was twenty-three he had three children under three.

In 1924 he went working at a re-opened coal mining town of Mount Mulligan outside of Mareeba in far north Queensland. The mine had closed in 1921 when an underground explosion killed seventy-five miners which was all the miners in the town. It took two years for a workforce to be recruited to re-open the mine.

Spike made his income as a professional boxer and in 1924 he fought a lesser opponent at Mount Mulligan. The pair had met previously, and Spike had knocked him out after a round and half of hurricane fighting. This second fight ended exactly as the first, with Spike again winning by knock-out in one and a half rounds. Never-the-less, the two were scheduled to fight yet again, because something had to entertain the otherwise rowdy miners of the town. 

Spike got into a bit of trouble. In Charters Towers in 1925 he was charged with stealing a horse at Yungaburra. His defence was that the horse was given to him in payment for work done three years earlier, which he broke in and then sold. The local jury believed him so he got off.

By the end of the decade things had got bad for everyone with the onset of the Great Depression. It started with the Wall Street crash of 1929 and spread worldwide. Australia suffered years of high unemployment which reached a record high of thirty percent. Spike stayed on the road working to feed his family which now included at least five children.

In 1930 Spike was boxing in Maclean in northern New South Wales. That’s where he was convicted of riotous behaviour and an unprovoked assault. Spike was half-boozed when he went up to a man in the street, knocked him down, and sunk his teeth into him. The complainant didn’t demand a heavy penalty because Spike was a married man. All he asked for was protection. Spike was fined £8 and put on a £20 twelve-month good behaviour bond.

Spike left the prying eyes of the New South Wales court system and came back to Queensland. In 1931 with the Depression in full swing, he was arrested in Goondiwindi for stealing £7 and an overcoat. He appeared in the Toowoomba court and again got off.

Come 1935 Spike was living in Upper Edward Street in Brisbane, and boxing in the Brisbane Stadium which was where Festival Hall used to be. Tragedy struck a training-partner and Spike was in court, this time as a witness.

Nineteen-year-old John Sheridan, better known as ‘Curly’ Sheridan, collapsed and died while sparring in a George Street gym. Curly was on relief work, or working for the dole, and had come down from Toowoomba to pursue a boxing career. The promising young Toowoomba product had made his first appearance at Brisbane Stadium just a few months earlier. The cause of the death was a blow on the solar plexus resulting in respiratory failure.

A further result of the punch was that Curley’s aging father William Sheridan, who was back up in Toowoomba, was then under pressure to feed the family without the support of his son. In 1936 Mr Sheridan was convicted in the Toowoomba courthouse of stealing meat valued at just £1/7/6. A couple of years later, the father pleaded guilty to stealing four gallons of petrol valued at a measly 8 shillings.

Meanwhile, Spike was seriously injured when the truck he was travelling in wrapped around a light pole on the corner of Grey and Peel streets in South Brisbane, which is right by the Queensland state library and cultural centre today. In 1945 Spike was a waterside worker when he appeared in court after he lodged his tax return claiming deductions for hospital and funeral expenses of his wife, who was not dead.

Spike Wilson passed away in 1961 at sixty-years-of-age. Today he’s buried in Lutwyche on the northside of Brisbane under the name of William Robert Wolffe.

And so that’s the story of two boxers Curly Sheridan and Spike Wilson who fought through the Depression and who should be remembered.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Boxing match, New South Wales c1930 – National Library of Australia.
Testified at the Inquest: John Fitzgerald sparring partner, Richard Cullen trainer, William Robert Wilson – Truth, Brisbane, 15th December 1935, page 12.
People milling around the entrance of the Brisbane Stadium c1925 – State Library of Queensland.
William Robert Wolffe Lutwyche Cemetery Brisbane – Find a Grave by Brizboy 2023.