Stephen Graham’s Sugar Goodson doesn’t appear in A Thousand Blows – a new historical drama on Disney+ from Peaky Blinders writer Stephen Knight – until right at the end of episode one. But when he does, we’re left in no doubt whatsoever that we’ve just met our antagonist-in-chief.
Based on a real boxer from 19th century London, he gets a mention earlier in the episode, by way of brother Treacle Goodson’s introduction to a boxing ring as “the brother of the more famous Sugar Goodson”. Treacle proceeds to beat the living shite out of everyone bold enough to challenge him. And he’s the less famous one. Then later on, in some 1890s pub boxing equivalent of a green room, the first we see of Sugar is his hulking back, as a gruff voice we don’t yet have a face for shares a few terse words with his bro.
After he turns around to reveal a heavily-muscled chest, we cut to Daniel Mays’ ring announcer, who, in a marked departure from his jovial introduction of Treacle at the start of the episode, employs a hushed, foreboding tone to announce the arrival of “The King of the River… the East London gladiator… the ALMIGHTYYYY… HENRY! SUGAAAAAR! GOODSONNNNNN!”
The crowd goes wild, the camera goes slow-motion, the caveman-like frame of Stephen Graham strolls into the ring, and the until-then impervious smirk of Erin Doherty’s gang leader Mary Carr disappears for the first time in the wake of a presence that could rock a boat or two on the nearby Thames.
Who was this man?
Real-life Goodson’s real life began near Brick Lane in the East End of London in 1856, as one of thirteen children born to Edward Goodman, who was a “Master Carman” (a sort of 1800s equivalent of a lorry driver), and his wife Sarah. Historical records have him popping up for the first time in the 1870s as a prominent participant in one of the period’s favourite pastimes – bare-knuckle boxing.
Bare-knuckle boxing dates, as far as records show at least, to 1680s England, and by Goodson’s day had developed an array of protocols and rules. The beginning of Goodson’s boxing career coincided with a period of transition between London Prize Ring Rules and Queensberry Rules – the latter of which are now considered to be the origin of the modern sport’s regulatory rulebook.
Under London Prize Ring Rules (let’s go with the slightly snappier LPRR from here onwards), bare-fisted fighting only stopped when a fighter was relieved of his ability to stand, whereupon he was given 30 seconds to “rest” (read: try and remember his own name, current location, etc) and another eight (most generous!) to make his way back to the centre of the ring. Fights ended when a fighter failed to get his proverbial shit together in time.
Queensberry rules introduced such luxuries as “gloves” and breaks every three minutes, even if both fighters were still able to stand at the end of them. Though A Thousand Blows depicts Goodson during the transition from LPRR to Queensberry, resisting the posher West London-based officiating in favour of the more brutal version of the sport still favoured in the east, it’s likely that the vast majority of his fights would’ve been Queensberry affairs.
One of the most famous examples was an early-career encounter with the significantly more experienced Jack Hicks in a fight known as The Fight in the Chapel at Tavistock Square. Its location (a house of our Lord, in central London, no less), was chosen in accordance with a “hiding in plain sight” approach to avoiding undesired attention from the law – most fights at the time were illegal and took place in the unregulated environment of the pub.
It didn't work. Police arrested Goodson just after he’d knocked his opponent to the ground in the third round, robbing him of the precious opportunity to establish unequivocal dominance over a senior fighter, which he seemed poised to seize. This fight took place in 1882, only a year after Goodson is thought to have lost an eye to Smallpox. Yeah. He only had one eye.
Then again, he wasn’t a man who seemed to have been particularly concerned with any of his own physical disadvantages. Records show him standing at a little over 5 foot 5 (so Graham was a bang-on casting there) and 11 stone (so perhaps not quite as muscle-bound as he is in the show). Though weight divisions did exist at the time, Goodson is recorded as having fought and defeated men with up to two stone (and one eye) on him over the course of his career.
The man was charged with rioting in 1882, assaulting his brother in 1883, “unlawful assembly to fight” in 1884, and “disorderly conduct and use of obscene language” in 1890. This was a guy who was always up for a scrap.
After his death in 1917, an obituary in The Sportsman reported that “he was a good boxer, if not particularly clever, Sugar Goodson, and a good fellow, if a rough diamond.” Who needs brains when you've got fists of gold.
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