Foreigners Page 8
Randolph Turpin was now the undisputed 160 lb champion of the whole world, but he seemed temporarily bewildered, as though this title was not what he had been seeking, and the events of the evening had been a strange, unsolicited, consequence of simply doing what he enjoyed. As the Turpin group left Earls Court, they could hear those inside the Exhibition Hall still singing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!'. Outside in the car park, and in all the streets leading to the Earls Court Tube station, there was cheering and joyous celebrations the like of which had not been seen or heard since VE Day some six years earlier. However, Turpin seemed untouched by all of the exuberance, and he simply smiled as though unable to comprehend whatever forces he had just released in the soul of the British nation. Meanwhile, a chastened Robinson, having had his stitches administered in the privacy of his own dressing room, sought to avoid the press by seeking out a nearby Earls Court bed and breakfast. In the morning he would leave quickly on the first boat train to Paris, from where he would fly home to New York City. He left instructions that his entourage should make their own way to France as soon as possible.
In the morning a practically unblemished Turpin awoke in his hotel room bright and early, and he decided to go out for a short stroll with George Middleton and try to walk off some of the stiffness in his muscles. The country had partied hard and long on the previous evening, but Turpin had avoided the limelight and got his head down for a good night's rest. This morning it was not so easy for the new champion to avoid the crowds, but Turpin and his manager, with the assistance of the hotel staff, managed to sneak out of a back door. Predictably enough, the British newspapers were full of reports of Turpin's almost unbelievable victory, and triumphant stories were blazoned across both the front and the back pages. In the United States, reporters were aghast, not only by the fact that Robinson had been defeated, but by the manner in which he had been so easily outboxed, outjabbed and outmuscled by, of all people, a Limey. The only possible explanation was that Sugar Ray's constant whirl of European social engagements, his nightclubbing, golf games, exhibitions for money, and constant travelling, had taken their toll on the great man. Surely there would be a rematch?
Back in Leamington Spa, the mother of Britain's new sporting hero had listened to the fight on the radio. When reporters eventually beat their way to her door in order to secure a quote, she gathered her wits about her, looked them straight in the eyes, and, reluctant to distinguish between Randolph and her two other fighting sons, she told them, 'I am proud of my sons. A lot of people thought they were nothing. Well, my sons have shown them.' She knew that all of Leamington Spa, and the nearby historic town of Warwick, where Turpin had spent some part of his childhood, was abuzz with excitement. Turpin's mother assured the reporters that either later today, or tomorrow, her world champion son would be coming back home. Before the fight she had heard her son cautiously suggest that victory might mean a new car and a new house for him, but with a mother's instinct she sensed that it would probably mean much more than this for her son. She worried, for she knew that young Randolph did not possess the business acumen to surround himself with the right people, and he was by far the most sensitive of her children, but why worry about this now? Maybe when he came home she might talk to him about things, but her youngest son could be strangely reserved and moody, and she did not imagine that he was about to change.
On 12 July, 1951, less than forty-eight hours after his dazzling victory at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall, Turpin was back in the Midlands where the mayors of both Warwick and Leamington Spa, the two towns that could claim to have produced the boxer, organised a joint reception. Turpin was seated in the back of an open-top black Humber limousine, democratically perched between the mayors of both towns, and he began his victory journey in the narrow medieval streets in the centre of Warwick. He had never heard of these men, but they certainly knew his name and they continually pumped his hand, and slapped him on the back, and posed with him for photographs. A bemused Turpin understood that this was likely to be the way for some time, but this was not a life that he was eager to get used to. The car was twenty minutes late leaving Warwick because, having just arrived from London, Turpin had decided to take a nap and he had overslept. This delay meant that they would be late arriving in Leamington Spa for the official reception, but the mayor of Leamington let the new champion know that he should not worry for they would just tell the press that the car had suffered a punctured tyre.
The journey did not take long, and all along the way people waved and cheered as the Humber limousine glided by. A somewhat shy Turpin followed the lead of the mayors and waved back, and as the car eventually turned into the centre of Leamington Spa the crowds became denser, slowing the Humber's progress almost to a halt. Clearly most people had taken the day off work, for over 20,000 cheering people thronged the streets. Bright streamers and banners were hung from every available place, a brass band was thumping out music, and up above an RAF jet from the nearby base was doing victory rolls and loops in the sky. This was the greatest day in the town's history, and all of this was due to the success of one man. At the sight of their all-conquering hero the crowd began to sing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!' and their overwhelming adulation finally brought a lump to Turpin's throat. Surely all of this could not be for him? The limousine drew to a halt outside of Leamington Spa Town Hall, and Turpin looked up and read the sign that was hanging from the balcony: LEAMINGTON SPA WELCOMES THEIR CHAMPION RANDOLPH TURPIN.
Turpin stared at the banner and had to be prompted to leave the car. He entered the town hall, where the first man to greet him was John 'Gerry' Gibbs, the police inspector who had founded the Leamington Boys' Club, and who first saw promise in the fourteen-year-old Turpin. The new world champion warmly shook hands with his old mentor, and then made his way up to the balcony.
Photographs of Turpin on this special day show a handsome man in a double-breasted beige suit, a smart blue silk shirt, and dapper white shoes. However, Turpin appears to be a little confused. In almost every photograph he seems to be avoiding full eye contact with the camera as though hiding from somebody, or himself. Perhaps the most disturbing photograph of the day shows Turpin flanked by the two lord mayors in a wood-panelled room in the town hall. The mayors pose stiffly in pinstriped suits, while Turpin has his right arm draped loosely around his mother and he supports his young son in his other arm. A feeling of palpable discomfort radiates from the photograph, and nobody seems entirely comfortable on what should be a joyous occasion. The modest new world champion eventually stepped out on to the balcony of Leamington Spa Town Hall, and the roar from the crowd was almost deafening, as was the high-pitched drone of cine and newsreel cameras. The mayor of Leamington Spa urged him forward ('Go on, son') and Turpin took the microphone that was proffered. For a second he looked at the sea of white faces which swam out before him in all directions, and then he began to read from a speech which his manager had prepared for the occasion. 'It was a great fight on Tuesday and I am naturally very proud to bring the honour of the middleweight championship of the world back to England and Warwickshire.' Then Turpin stopped and looked again at the crowds of people before him. 'I must tell you how grateful I am to my manager, my trainer, my family and others who have helped me so much throughout my career . . .' Again Turpin stopped speaking, and this time he handed his speech to one of the mayors and addressed the crowds directly. 'Well, I'm not much at making speeches but you all know what I mean. Thanks.' He waved to the crowd and handed the microphone to somebody else. At this point George Middleton led an elderly Beatrice Manley, Turpin's mother, on to the balcony, and Turpin took her in his arms and gave her a kiss. Ailing now for some years, and suffering from a partial loss of eyesight, she was nonetheless the proudest woman in Leamington Spa and she had worn her best hat to prove the point. The coloured baby that, much to some people's disgust, she had given birth to twenty-three years ago in this very town was, on this day, the most famous man in England.
Rando
lph Adolphus Turpin was born in Leamington Spa on 7 June, 1928, the youngest child of Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin and Beatrice Whitehouse. There were already two older brothers, Dick and Jackie, and two older sisters, Joan and Kathy, but the cash-strapped family were struggling financially in a cramped basement flat in Willis Road. The new addition, who weighed in at 9 lb 7 oz, was the lightest of all Beatrice's children at birth, but he was still, by most standards, a heavyweight child. At a time when Beatrice and Lionel could barely afford food to put on the table the new baby was yet another mouth to feed and, to make matters worse, at the time of Randolph's birth Lionel was in hospital and ailing badly. The prognosis was not good.
Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, in February 1896. He enjoyed a traditional British schooling in the sugar-rich colony on the northeast coast of South America, but the young lad had a yearning to see the world. He arrived in England as a merchant seaman on the eve of the Great War, and by the time Britain declared war on Germany in the summer of 1914, Lionel was ready to sign up. He was eventually sent out with the British Expeditionary Forces to the Western Front where he fought numerous campaigns, including the legendary Battle of the Somme. He survived the slaughter, but towards the end of the war he was badly wounded by a gas shell which burnt his lungs and left a gaping wound in his back. Lionel was shipped back to a hospital in Coventry, where they did all they could to help him before discharging the West Indian to a convalescent home near Hill House in the nearby town of Warwick. Although it was clear to the doctors that the mild-mannered coloured soldier was never going to fully recover, Lionel Turpin was eventually allowed to leave the convalescent home and he attempted to find work locally.
Lionel stood out in Warwick, for there were no other coloured people in the town, and he was regularly referred to as 'Sam', which was an abbreviation for the more pejorative 'Sambo'. He was equally exotic in nearby Leamington Spa, where the introverted West Indian veteran soon met a local teenager named Beatrice Whitehouse. Beatrice came from a rough, but tight-knit, local working-class family, her father being well known in the area as a bare-knuckle prizefighter who plied his trade at the local Woolpack Inn. Lionel wasted little time in proposing to Beatrice, and although times were hard for everybody, they settled down and tried to raise their mixed-race family in a social atmosphere that was not always friendly or supportive. Later in life, Jackie Turpin remembered that 'there was a time when nobody would cross the road to speak to the Turpins. We was just little black kids as used to run around Wathen Road and Parkes Street.' However, Beatrice prided herself on having come from tough stock, so nothing was going to deter her from protecting and supporting her children, who were often taunted as being 'dirty' or 'khaki-coloured'. Sadly, as the family grew, Lionel's condition began to deteriorate, and it became increasingly difficult for him to hold down a job. He moved back and forth between the family's Leamington home and a hospital in nearby Coventry, until it was clear that the coloured veteran required fulltime care and attention. He was eventually allocated a bed at the Ministry of Pensions Hospital in Birmingham, but on 6 March, 1929, nine months after the birth of Randolph, his fifth child, Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin finally passed away due to war injuries that he had suffered over a decade earlier. His funeral hearse was drawn by four black horses, with six soldiers as an escort, and the thirty-three-year-old former military man was buried in the Brunswick Street Cemetery, Leamington Spa, in a ceremony that was paid for by the Leamington branch of the British Legion.
At the age of twenty-five, Beatrice was left by herself to bring up five children: Dick, Joan, Jackie, Kathy, and Randy. She was entitled to a widow's pension of just under thirty shillings a week, which she could supplement with whatever she might earn cooking and cleaning for other people, but however hard she tried Beatrice could not make ends meet. As a result, she often sent her children to stay with different relatives; Dick frequently went to stay with his grandmother, while Joan spent time in Wales with her aunt. However, when circumstances allowed, Mrs Turpin would bring all of her children back together under one roof, but life was never easy for Beattie, and young Randy was particularly worrisome to her. As a three-year-old boy, Randy had contracted double pneumonia and bronchitis, and although he eventually recovered the diseases returned on two further occasions. On their final appearance, the doctor told Beattie that she should prepare herself for Randy's death, but she chose instead to sit up all night with her youngest child, sponging him down to keep his temperature under control, and feeding him to keep up his strength. Much to the doctor's surprise, and the family's relief, little Randy survived, and this served only to make Beattie all the more determined to keep her children together. She once again retrieved them from the relatives among whom they had been distributed and, having now decided to marry a local English man, in 1931 she permanently reunited her household.
As a child, Turpin earned the nickname 'Licker', a moniker that he would carry with him into adulthood and beyond. Although most people assumed that the 'Leamington Licker' was so called because of his ability to beat, or 'lick', his opponents, according to his brother Jackie, the name had nothing to do with his fighting prowess. Randy, Jackie, and sister Joan were all born in June, on the 7th, 13th, and 19th respectively, and when the birthdays arrived young Randy used to assume that because his birthday came first that made him the oldest. Apparently, Joan would shake her head and insist that he was, in fact, the littlest, to which he would shout that he wasn't the 'lickerest' he was the oldest. Sister Joan would mimic his pronunciation, telling him that he was just a 'licker boy' and if he didn't behave himself she would spank his bottom. The fiery Randy would inevitably rush at his sister with his fists flying, insisting that he wasn't a 'licker boy', and the family pet name stuck and became eerily appropriate for a boy who would eventually grow up to become a champion boxer.
Randy was not an easy child for his mother, his siblings, or eventually anybody to deal with. Headstrong and capricious, his family struggled to both protect him and avoid his occasional outbursts of anger. With so many children to cope with it was difficult for young Beattie to exercise any real discipline, and it was particularly perplexing for her to know how to handle her youngest child towards whom she felt a special affection. To make matters worse, while swimming in a river young Randy was trapped by weeds and his hearing was permanently damaged. He was, for the rest of his life, very much aware of his partial deafness, but he did not like to dwell upon it and would become upset if it was mentioned. However, he was a fearless child, and was always ready to attack no matter how big or implausible the opponent. Young Randy Turpin was quite prepared to strike out with just his fists, but if there happened to be a weapon to hand then he would happily seize it. He once chased his eldest brother Dick with an axe, threatening to 'chop his bleeding head off ', but his weapon of choice was usually a knife. In one argument he actually stabbed his brother Dick, and despite Beattie's pleading with him to calm down it was clear to everybody that this child might well be on a collision course with trouble.
When he was five, Randy began to attend West Gate Council School, which was both understaffed and overcrowded. It was a school that was designed to provide precious little in the way of academic opportunities, being merely a place to hold working-class children until they could be processed out at the age of fifteen and enter the workforce. By the time Randy was twelve, the athletically gifted 'Licker' could beat any boy in the school with his fists, or with his feet. He paid little, if any, attention to his schoolwork, preferring to pour his energies into developing his well-earned reputation as both a sportsman and a 'tough nut'. He and his followers would 'persuade' boys to hand over money or sweets, and while his friends held their victim's arms 'Licker' would teach the poor lads a lesson by giving them a good pummelling. At home, his siblings were not spared his attentions. Joan remembers, 'He blackened my eyes for me twice. Once for my birthday, and once for telling my granny tales about him.' Sister Kathy recalls, 'If you
didn't do what he wanted he'd clank you for it. He'd squeal to my mother if you hit him back and if you did anything he didn't like he came in and smashed all my dolls. I had some black celluloid dolls and he'd put his foot in them and break them.'
To some of the townsfolk of Leamington Spa, young 'Licker' Turpin was a bully whose mother clearly had no control over him. There were those who would not dare to make eye contact with him in the street, or even in the semi-darkness of the cinema, and nobody wanted to be in a shop when 'Licker' came in and demanded that you buy him something. Any challenge to his 'authority' might well be met with a torrent of verbal abuse, and it was also possible that the unfortunate person would be given a good kicking for their trouble. Many believed that being from the only coloured family in the town obviously informed the boy's delinquency. It did not occur to them that being the only coloured family in town meant that the Turpins, Randy included, had to be able to take care of themselves, and sometimes get their retaliation in first. In the thirties, most British people were unfamiliar with the novelty of living among people of another race, but given the evidence of the Turpin family, the novelty of living with coloured people was something that a number of the more narrow-minded townsfolk of Leamington Spa had concluded that they could do without.