Owney Geoghegan has handed in his chips. I was friendly once with him. In after years we drifted apart, but with all his faults he was a decided âcharacterâ in his day, and any amount of stories will be told about him for years to come. He didn’t know or care anythinâ about scientific sparrinâ–he was like Jim Sandford in this respectâbut as a rough-and-ready, rough-and-tumble fighter he has never been beat. He differed in one respect from most fighters. They generally like a man who has made a good stand-up against âem; but Geoghegan always hated any man who stood up against him. He made his fights personal matters. He went into âem with intense, bitter, âdead earnestness,â and always regarded those he encountered as personal enemies. One of the old gas house gang, Pat Boyle, fought him once, and for ten years Geoghegan went for and against Pat Boyle in every way. He was a man whom old Dr. Sam Johnson, the dictionary man, would have loved, as he was a âgood hater,â but at the same time he was a pretty good sort of a friend to his friends, and always had a big âfollowinâ.
He got into a scrape once, and for nearly nine months he was hidinâ right in the heart of New York. Hundreds of people knew where he was hidinâ and could have given him away any time, but not one of âem told on himâevery one of them, even the women, kept his secret. Among others, this very Pat Boyle, who had fought Geoghegan, knew where he was and knew, too, that Owney hated him, and yet Pat was too manly to give his enemy away. What makes the case stranger yet was that a woman who had fallen in love with Owney, not for his good looks, but his very roughness and ugliness, and who was jealous of the woman who was livinâ with Owney, knew all about his secret hidinâ place, and yet didn’t give him away. It was one of the queerest cases that ever happened, but as a mere matter of fact Owney Geoghegan, with all his rough ways and all his enemies, managed to defy the detectives of New York for the major part of a year, and to escape the sentence of the court that had been passed upon himâshowinâ that he must have had some commandinâ qualities after all, qualities that commanded silence and secrecy on the part of, say, a hundred people for nine months.
One of the toughest fights Geoghegan ever had was with Jim McGovern. The two had indulged in a lot of âchin musicâ on various occasions, and finally met in a saloon on the Bowery and Hester street one winter’s night, when it was snowinâ hard. They commenced to call each other names, and from names proceeded to blows. The proprietor of the saloon then interfered, and told the men that if they wanted to fight they must fight outside; he would have no fightinâ in his place. He thought this would end the row, but it didn’t. It only gave the two men a new idea. They would fight outside, and they did.
Jim McGovern and his âchumâ Dick Fitzgerald, âthe Lambâ (so called because he was in appearance and character the very opposite of a lamb), went out into the Bowery, and Owney and his friends followed âem. It was after midnight and was snowinâ hard. The Bowery was deserted, even by the tramps and the police, and presented only a vista of whiteninâ loneliness and silence.
But it was soon changed into a very lively spot indeedâat least round the corner of Hester street and the Bowery. For as soon as Owney Geoghegan and Jim McGovern met outside of the saloon on the sidewalk they rushed at each other, and one of the most terrific rough-and-tumble fights that ever took place transpired then and there.
The middle of the Bowery would hardly be considered a suitable place for an uninterrupted fight, but the fight this time was uninterrupted. For fifteen minutes the two men gouged, and punched, and pinched, and kicked, and bit each other, the pure white snow fallinâ quietly but steadily and heavily on âem all the time, coverinâ âem with a mantle of whiteâwhite which gradually reddened with blood.
The two men fought with the courage and ferocity of tigers, and although after a few minutes the friends of each got frightened and wanted to interfere between âem, nobody dared to interfere; interference would have cost a broken limb or head.
There has never been a fight fought more desperately than this fight on the Bowery, and although a crowd had gathered, although the neighborhood was soon aroused, although sports and pugilists and demireps flocked together, seeminâ to come by magic from all points of the compass, no policeman put in an appearance, and the battle was only terminated by the defeat of McGovern, who would probably have been killed by the now wildly excited and utterly reckless Geoghegan had not his friends at last found courage to rush in between the victor and the vanquished.
This rough-and-tumble in the snow was equal in dramatic intensity and picturesqueness of surroundinâ to the fight near the docks between John Morrissey and Bill Poole.
It wasn’t at all scientific, it was never a ârecord,â not a word was ever written about it in Fistiana, but for sheer bull-dog ferocity and pluck, for dogged endurance on one side and tremendous energy on the other, it has never been surpassed and very seldom equaled.
The news of this encounter and Owney Geogheganâs style of fightinâ soon got round among the boys, and probably it formed one of the principal reasons why Dick Croker, Tom Allen, Bill Dwyer, Tom Wilson, and other pugilists never cared about tacklingâ Geoghegan, though repeatedly challenged. They didn’t like the âtiger in the snowâ style of fightinâ.
[Editor’s notes: Geoghegan’s barroom/boxing hall was called the “Old House at Home,” located at 105 Bowery. He previously ran the Windsor Palace, at 103 Bowery, before moving next door. He was the lightweight boxing champion (bare-knuckle era) from 1861-1863. He died in January, 1885, a relatively rich man.]
