Talk:Tom Sayers

Untitled
Thomas Sayers: References

I am working on a book (to be published next year) on the Sayers-Heenan prize fight of 1860. I may have something to contribute to this article, but do not feel qualified to do so without being able to follow up the References to Thomas Sayers, which presently lead nowhere.

In particular, I am interested in Sayers's life up to 1849, on which I have found a great deal of contradictory information.

Iain07 14:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Thomas Sayers is my great uncle...
Hi I am Tom Sayers great great great grandson and do have quite alot of info and picture about Tom Sayers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.196.250.237 (talk) 13:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

on my mother's side. I have a print, which features him wearing the Union Jack as the title belt. My cousin has researched him and may know more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryanpolitics (talk • contribs) 06:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Projected rewrite
I am the author of the most recent book on the Sayers–Heenan fight: The Lion and the Eagle (ISBN 978-1-899807-67-3) by Iain Manson was published by SportsBooks in 2008.

A substantial part of my book is devoted to the life of Tom Sayers, as a result of which I am able to correct many earlier misconceptions, some of which have found their way into the present article.

I offer a sample here:

the deprived slum district of Pimlico: Pimlico was a street, not a district.

Sayers met a 21-year-old divorcee, Sarah Powell, around 1842: The woman in question (later his wife, of course) was Sarah Henderson, single and only about fifteen when they met. I have a copy of the 1853 marriage certificate.

a former fight in 1815 between the English champion Tom Cribb and the American Tom Molineaux: Cribb and Molineaux fought twice – once in 1810 and once in 1811.

Following his retirement, Sayers bought a house in Camden Town where he lived with his sister: In fact, now estranged from his wife, he lived with a rather shadowy woman named Charlotte.

All of these errors are entirely understandable, since they are to be found in earlier works on Tom Sayers. But since I am in a position to correct them, I propose to rewrite the entire article. I would be very happy to discuss points of interest or dispute here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iain07 (talk • contribs) 14:53, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please go write (right) ahead. I wrote more or less most of the page here after seeing Sayers' tomb in Highgate Cemetery and finding it rather fascinating way back in 2006. Most of what is here was harvested from the internet, never the most reliable source, so it's not surprising if there are a few spurious facts. Regarding your book, there are some odd rules here regarding "own research", but I'm sure so long as it's "published", it's OK to use as a source. Good luck, I look forward to your improvements. I think somebody is supposed to welcome you to Wikipedia and show you how to sign your name and things like that, I will see if I can find the template to do that  -  this place breathes only by template. In the meantime if you need any help on the technicalities of posting or writing a page here - click on my signature and leave a message on my discussion talk/page.   Giacomo   18:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The rewrite is now done.


 * I've had to reference my own work (The Lion and the Eagle) here and there, but I think that should be acceptable in the circumstances. I'm happy to field any comments or queries.

Iain07 (talk) 13:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Requested move
Thomas Sayers → Tom Sayers — Sayers was always known as "Tom", never as "Thomas". (At least two other bare-knuckle fighters, namely Cribb and Spring, both appear, I think rightly, as "Tom".) While I'm at it, I notice that in the category "English boxers", Sayers is misplaced under "T" instead of "S". I'm not sure how to fix this. Iain07 (talk) 15:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ Done  Giacomo   15:46, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * God, that was quick! 87.80.32.97 (talk) 15:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I added a DEFAULTSORT so that all of the categories will be sorted under "S". Racepacket (talk) 13:24, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Info box
I just have a few bits of tidying up that I'd like to do here, and was considering adding an info box. I'm wondering why there is a request not to do this. Iain07 (talk) 13:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * .......because an info box is totally unecessary. All the relevant information should be readily availabe in the lead paragraph. Info boxes are unsightly and reduce the lead image to postage stamps.  Giacomo   14:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * with the rise of wikidata, and scraping of infoboxes by open data people, they are increasingly necessary. 198.24.31.118 (talk) 20:15, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

What about the strangling?
Many sources, including the John C. Heenan Wikipedia page, reference the final action of Heenan during the big fight: "The defining moment came when Heenan almost strangled Sayers by forcing his head down over the top rope." or "Forty-two rounds later, Heenan pressed Sayers into the ropes, using the cords to choke the champ. As Sayers turned blue, the crowd cut the ropes and stormed the ring."

Shouldn't this be included on Sayers' page as well? Joel.sbateman (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Reverting recent edits
I am in the process of reverting all of SQMeaner's edits. Two of them have not come out properly, while the others show blatant pro-British and anti-American bias. Iain07 (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * As I said in the other thread, be prepared to have them reverted, as I personally found the pages in their previous state ridiculously pro-Heenan.19:12, 12 April 2016 (UTC)SQMeaner (talk)


 * Since SQMeaner and I profoundly disagree on this point, I asked to have the page given protected status, so that edits which I believe to lack the objectivity expected of any encyclopedia would not stand. However, this was refused, and SQMeaner has just reverted my latest edit. I am not prepared to go on fighting about it, but I stand by my opinion, which is based on an intensive study of every published report of the fight, and of the subsequent controversy. Iain07 (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2016 (UTC)