Sports Men
Dick Burge ? - 1918
The boxer who married Bella Lloyd
and friend of Alec Hurley
His claim or rather my claim to include him in a work devoted to the Music Hall is really his connection to the Lloyd family, although he was appearing at Gatti’s ‘in the road,’ Westminster Bridge Road, when he met Bella Lloyd. Bella has her own page and in the piece below you may find some repetition of that page. Frederick Denny
On their meeting at Gatti's, Bella and Dick Burge were immediately attracted to each other. After a short courtship, they were married at Brixton Registry Office on 26 October, 1901.
Everything looked set for a bright future for the pair, but in less than a month, on 24th November, Dick Burge was arrested. He was indicted, with others, on charges concerning the biggest bank fraud then known. The magistrate remanded the prisoners in custody for trial at the Old Bailey set for February 1902. Details of the trial make fascinating reading. The upshot was that Burge was committed to prison for a period of ten years. Bella promised her husband that she would wait for him and decided that the best way to make the time pass quickly would be to throw herself into her stage work.
Burge proved to be a model prisoner, and was highly commended for risking his life to safeguard a warder during a disturbance. He was released prematurely, in June 1909.
After a happy reunion the couple got down to deciding their future. It was obvious that, at the age of fourty four, Dick's boxing days were over. They decided on the next best thing. Dick would become a boxing promoter. It would cost a great deal of money and he was unsure as to whether they could raise it. He was amazed when Bella told him the money was no problem. She had worked long and hard whilst he was in prison. The problem would not be the finance, the difficulty would be finding a suitable venue.
Today, if you walk down the east side of Blackfriars Road, just beyond the bridge going southward from the City, you will come to a block of flats and offices. Across the road is a public house now called The Ring. In February, 1910, when Dick Burge took a penny tram ride down that very road, the pub had a different name. On the site where now stands the flats was a peculiar shaped building, being circular but with square projections, making it many sided. It had been built originally in 1783 as the Surrey Chapel, and had gone through a number of different uses. When Dick saw it, it was a disused warehouse with a dilapidated TO LET sign outside. He knew it was just right for his purpose. After a few initial difficulties, he managed to negotiate a lease with the Ecclesiastical Commission who owned the properly. The old building needed a good cleaning and so Dick & Bella recruited an army of 'down and outs' from along the Embankment to help clean out the place and get rid of the army of rats that infested the property. Work continued apace and the grand opening of THE RING, as it was to be called, took place on the night of 14 May, 1910. Prices of admission. Reserved 3/-, Ringside 2/-, Standing 6d.
Business was slow at first until Bella thought of opening a soup kitchen for the poor of the district. The idea was to bring them into the building before the boxing commenced. She asked for volunteers from her friends of music hall days and before long, stars such as Sam Mayo, Marie Lloyd and Marie's husband Alec Hurley, were to be found ladling out the free soup, and passing thick slices of bread around. By October, the RING was established and running three shows a week. As the RING became more popular, the money began to roll in.
One thing that marred the Burges' enjoyable life was the death of Alec Hurley in London at Jack Straw's Castle on December 1913.
Marie was away in Chicago with the new man in her life, Bernard Dillon. Alec had little or no money at the time of his death. He and Dick had been good friends and it was typical of Burge that he settled all Hurley's outstanding debts from his own pocket.
At the outbreak of war Burge volunteered and joined the Sportsmen's Battalion of a Surry regiment. He still continued to run boxing shows and charitable efforts at the RING raised £12,000. But Dick's efforts in the war were to bring his comparatively short life to a close. Whilst on duty he caught double pneumonia and died on 15th May 1918.
Anyone interested in learning more about Dick Burge and the Ring can obtain an excellent little booklet 'Box On' by Stephen Powell, obtainable from The Ring Public House, 72 Blackfiriars Road, London SE 1 8HA.
Condensed from an article by Max Tyler in Call Boy (Journal of the British Music Hall Society), Summer 1997
Sam Mayo was also a friend of Dick:
... a good snooker player and reached the finals of the amateur championship of Great Britain. He might have won, but his friend Dick Burge died on the day of the match and Sam withdrew from the competition.
From Sam Mayo and the Cowans by Leslie Baker