"'The grim reaper had played the part of time keeper and had counted the pugilist out,' the Times-Democrat melodramatically concluded."

Storm of Blows
Melissa Haley

II. Duffy's Arena

The ubiquitous Professor John Duffy, the referee of the Fistic Carnival, becomes the hero of pugilism's palatable new image. Duffy, who participated in every capacity within the New Orleans boxing world—as a fighter, instructor, saloon and arena keeper, matchmaker, and money holder—reached his fame as a leading referee, known for his unfailing honesty and skill; Duffy, in all reportage about him, is the pure embodiment of probity. An entire page of the Fistic Carnival program was devoted to his character, to his "reputation for 'fair and square' decisions." The pro-boxing press, particularly the Police Gazette, promoted the figure of the "universally respected," upright referee (others included Bat Masterson and "Honest John" Kelly) in its effort to sell the sport. Duffy's sketched likeness appeared often, representing the new order of things.

Fig. 3. "Professor" John H. Duffy, from the Fistic Carnival program. Courtesy Louisiana Collection, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.

He was the youngest son of Irish parents. An early fighting gig found Duffy as a warm-up act for John L. Sullivan's touring vaudeville routine in 1884. At the age of twenty, at the St. Charles Theater, he sparred three rounds with Peter Burns: "toward the last, they warmed to their work," the Daily Picayune reported, "and pounded each other's faces until the gallery gods howled with joy." Duffy continued to fight and spar (once against a fighter known as the Big Gas Man), then became an instructor of pugilism for the Southern Athletic Club, on the corner of Prytania and Washington. One of the new breed of athletic clubs, the Southern, like the Olympic, catered to an upscale crowd, boasting of its decorum and equipment, all dumbbells and horizontal bars and "lofty tumbling," and athletic exhibitions for the ladies.

Duffy, "popular with the better element" and possessing "a host of friends," soon opened his own boxing establishment: Duffy's Arena, at 96 St. Charles Street. As the venture was not a chartered athletic club, fights could only be held there as exhibitions, with no prize money involved. The arena was also a saloon. Duffy often tended bar there, and boxing devotees from around the country, in town for the Fistic Carnival and other big events, congregated at his arena, "the 'Mecca' of all lovers of sport."

In February 1893, six months after the carnival, Duffy arranged a routine, amateur glove contest. George Goodrich (a.k.a. Ed. Williams, as said his tattoo) was a mulatto steamboatman from Tennessee who purportedly frequented the Franklin Street dives. This was his first public ring fight; he had sparred before. Duffy matched him with his protégé, Joe Green, a bricklayer. The Daily Picayune would later describe the room where the fight was held as dark and dirty and little and close and bad smelling. Though both white and black spectators were allowed to view the matches they were admitted separately, and black patrons were relegated to the "dressing room," the "unfinished space behind the stage, which had been separated from the stage by a flat of canvas, upon which had been painted rude pictures of Sullivan and Corbett," through which a hole had been torn for viewing the fights. The Master of Ceremonies was George Queen (née McQuinn), the brother of a minstrel. A quartet's singing began the night.

At some point in the second round, George Goodrich slipped on a patch of water (though the New York World reported it to be blood) while struggling to avoid a blow, fell, and broke his neck. No one yet realized that he was dead, though the rumors that he might be caused many patrons to quickly leave. Some of the men carried him to the dressing room and laid him on a pile of rags. Duffy was summoned, and he thought the man was fine and said so, adding that he would come around. "A crowd of bewildered and half frightened negroes and white men and boys crowded about the body of the fighter, and simply gazed at the prostrate man . . ." Then they tried to revive him. An ambulance arrived, the attendants held a candle over the body and declared the boxer dead while wax dripped onto his face.

"The grim reaper had played the part of time keeper and had counted the pugilist out," the Times-Democrat melodramatically concluded.

SLIPPERY FOR MEN IN BOXING.
HIS LEGS PARTED WIDELY,
AN INERT PIECE OF HUMANITY.
ENTERTAINMENT WAS RESUMED.

John Duffy, Joe Green, five accessories, and seven witnesses were booked at the First Precinct police station at 1:15 a.m. According to the record of arrests for the New Orleans Police Department, written in a fat scrawl and found at the city archives, Joe Green resided at 125 1/2 Perdido St., was colored, aged twenty, a slater, was single, and could read. He was charged with the murder of one Geo. Williams or Goodrich and remanded into custody without bail. The five additional accessories, whose occupations included laborer, porter, electrician, slater, and none, and the seven witnesses (all colored, ages fifteen to twenty-five) were held on a $250 bond each.

All pled not guilty at the arraignment. The Times-Democrat reported that when the Professor appeared before the judge, "his lips quivered visibly, and his cheeks assumed a fiery color foreign to them for many years. The hideous word 'murderer' was too much for John Duffy's equanimity." But the death was ruled an accident and all involved were acquitted of their charges in a well-attended hearing on February 8. "The prisoners were allowed to go and left the courtroom in cheerful spirits." The dead pugilist, of whom "nothing was known" except that "he came from Nashville, and possessed a good voice," was buried in potter's field when no family came down from Tennessee to claim him.

Although Goodrich's fatal bout was widely reported in New Orleans, the death of an unknown, black pugilist did not touch off any public clamor against boxing. Still, Duffy's good name had been tainted, and the reportedly sordid conditions of his arena exposed. Complaints raised against his establishment by his landlady, Mrs. Bidwell, were divulged by the newspapers, complaints that included "exhibitions of his kids and other small boys." Whether these were boxing exhibitions is not altogether clear; Duffy told his landlady that "it was an attraction by which he was enabled to sell a few drinks." In addition, Mrs. Bidwell objected to the tobacco smoke and the noise and the "class of people attracted to the place." Duffy survived all of this negative publicity, though he eventually moved his saloon, with his reputation more or less intact. He was, after all, acquitted.