A Prize Fighters Funeral

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 11, 8 July 1886, Page 4

A Prize Fighters Funeral

r >Theprizefighters's funeral on Satur--day-(says'the"Pall Mall Gazette") anust.hayobeen. about the strangest, among the many strange things of theVkind jwhich JKen sal Green has witnessed. The champion heavy-weight to wnjom we all have to throw up the sponge at' last whether the fignt be not or easy, stepped into the ring -with Jina Barry cruelly spdn, for the ligli.t^we%ht was only twenty-six, and triuinEhs many, according to his bac&ers, were in store for him. Two tlKMifeandpeople, mostly "sportsmen," atßrass "band, a drum and fife band, ftloiigline of omnibuses, cabs, waggon«ttesj faraps, carts, and donkey barrows, accompanied " poor Jim" to Jiis long home. And, says the account^ -with unconscious pathos, all "spoke appreciatively of Barry's sjnrit, his n\mblenessand his gentleness, lightly parsing over his failings." It is a reminder that prizefighters are men and' have friends 1 and lovers like other people, a fact which we are ready to "forget with regard to so many men and women outside our own pale. James Barry- had even a laureate friend, for verses " in memory of poor Jim" were laid on his grave. We should like to see those verses.