John Slade

“Jack Slade” – Devon’s Champion in the London Ring

I. Life and Career

John Slade — known universally as “Jack Slade” — was the most prominent Devon wrestler to make his career principally in London, and the man whose rivalry with the Cornish champion Joseph Menear defined metropolitan Westcountry wrestling in the 1860s. Described in the Illustrated Sporting News and Theatrical and Musical Review as “the holder of the Champion Wrestling Belt of the West of England” and “a well-known player in that part of the country” (Illustrated Sporting News, 11 April 1863, p. 52), Slade held the Devon title for many years in the mid-nineteenth century and was all-weights champion of England in 1860 (Wikipedia, “List of Cornish wrestlers”). He won both the Prince of Wales Cup and the Duke of Cornwall Cup, and his name recurs throughout the London wrestling archive from the early 1860s to the mid-1880s — a span of over two decades in which he was never far from the centre of Westcountry wrestling’s metropolitan stage.

The circumstances under which Slade first won the Duke of Cornwall Cup — the most prestigious trophy in London Westcountry wrestling — exemplify both his talent and the controversy that attended his career. At Easter 1863, the Cornwall and Devon Wrestling Society organised a competition for the Great Duke of Cornwall Cup at the White Lion grounds, Hackney Wick, before three thousand spectators. The cup competition had been intended exclusively for natives of Cornwall, but insufficient Cornish entrants led the organisers to open it to Devon men. In the final, Slade faced Menear, and when neither could gain a decisive back as darkness fell, the outcome was decided by the toss of a coin. Slade won the toss, and with it the cup (Edwards, The Cornish Historian, 2025; *Bell’s Life*, 12 April 1863). Thus began, as one historian put it, London’s great wrestling rivalry — a fight for the very heart and soul of the sport.

Menear immediately challenged Slade for the cup. Under the Society’s rules, the holder had to defend the trophy against any challenger who put up £25, with matches to be held at the White Lion. On Whit Monday, 8 June 1863, the two men met before a strong muster at Hackney Wick. Three hours of wrestling produced no clean backs. Slade had reckoned on disposing of Menear quickly, but the Cornishman proved more than his match, and as the numerous “dog falls” accumulated, it became increasingly evident that Menear had the greater stamina. Failing light forced a premature end, and the rematch was set for Saturday 20 June. On that occasion Menear was in fine fettle while Slade looked off-colour. Forty minutes in, Menear gained a dominant grip and threw Slade heavily. Slade attacked desperately for over an hour but could not equalise. The bout left Slade hospitalised with a severely bruised side. Menear had brought the cup home to Cornwall (*Bell’s Life*, 14 June 1863; 28 June 1863; Edwards, The Cornish Historian, 2025).

The war of words that followed lasted for decades. Slade challenged Menear repeatedly but always on his own terms — insisting on conditions that Menear, as the heavier man and the holder, refused to accept. In 1867 there was talk of a superfight at the Spotted Dog on the Strand, but nothing came of it. At the Society’s fifty-first Hackney Wick meet in 1868, Slade served as umpire for Menear’s opponent W. Harper — and used the position to make gamesmanship objections to Menear’s holds within two minutes of the start, though Menear was unfazed and threw Harper a minute later to claim his eighth consecutive title (*Bell’s Life*, 18 April 1868; Edwards, The Cornish Historian, 2025). Even in the 1880s, Slade was still sniping at Menear in print, claiming to be the better man (Sporting Life, 13 November 1883; Edwards, The Cornish Historian, 2025).

Slade’s match against Ellis — a Plymouth man who travelled to London with his backers specifically for the contest, for a stake of £50 — was one of the most infamous in the history of London Westcountry wrestling. Ellis threw Slade on his back with ridiculous ease in the first fall, and the odds laid against Slade became almost fabulous. Yet on resuming, Slade threw Ellis twice in succession in a manner so suspicious that the referee, James Truscott, rushed to the stakeholders at Bell’s Life and declared all bets off. Ellis’s backers afterwards fell away from him, declaring that he could scarcely keep Slade on his legs yet had fallen twice so easily. “Argus” noted grimly that the result dealt a heavy blow to Devon and Cornwall wrestling in London (“Argus,” Western Times, 14 November 1879).

Slade continued to compete into the 1870s, though with diminishing success. At Old Ford in 1872, he made a standard but nothing more. He challenged George Stone to a match at ten stone for £25 a side, and both men with their backers went to the offices of Bell’s Life — but on reaching the door, Slade refused to enter. They tried the Sporting Life office next, where articles were drawn up, but when Slade’s signature was requested, he again refused to give it (“Argus,” Western Times, 14 November 1879). This pattern of issuing challenges and then withdrawing from them at the final moment is a recurring feature of Slade’s later career, and it may explain why “Argus” — who admired honest play above all else — treated Slade with evident wariness despite acknowledging his talent.

II. Match record

III. Summary statistics

IV. Key observations

1. The Slade–Menear rivalry was the defining contest of London Westcountry wrestling. The battle for the Duke of Cornwall Cup in 1863 — a Cornishman’s trophy won on a coin toss by a Devon man, then reclaimed by the Cornishman through superior stamina — has all the elements of a sporting epic: a disputed origin, a dramatic rematch, hospitalisation, decades of recrimination, and a trophy that was never wrestled for again. Francis Edwards has rightly identified it as a fight for the heart and soul of the sport.
2. Slade’s Devon career is almost entirely undocumented. Wikipedia records that Slade held the Devon title for many years and was all-weights champion of England in 1860, yet no individual Devon bout is documented in the archive. His reputation in the West of England — attested by the Illustrated Sporting News‘s description of him as holder of the Champion Wrestling Belt — must have rested on numerous tournament victories that predate the surviving press coverage.
3. The Ellis match is among the most damaging episodes in the archive. “Argus”‘s detailed account — the suspiciously easy initial throw by Ellis, the fabulous odds, the two inexplicably easy falls by Slade, and the referee’s decision to void all bets — reads as an unambiguous description of a fixed match. The episode did lasting damage to Devon wrestling’s reputation in London, and “Argus” identified it as the proximate cause of the sport’s metropolitan decline.
4. The pattern of withdrawn challenges. Slade’s repeated failure to follow through on challenges — refusing to enter the Bell’s Life office, refusing to sign articles at the Sporting Life, never materialising for the proposed Spotted Dog superfight with Menear — suggests either a calculating temperament that preferred the rhetoric of challenge to the risk of defeat, or a deeper insecurity about his ability to prevail against the very best opponents on open terms.
5. Slade as the bridge between Devon and metropolitan wrestling culture. More than any other Devon man except Richard Pike, Slade made his career in London, competing within the institutional framework of the Cornwall and Devon Wrestling Society, the White Lion grounds, and the sporting press. His story thus illuminates a dimension of Devon wrestling largely invisible in the “Argus” columns: the metropolitan diaspora of Westcountry wrestlers who competed year-round in London’s entertainment economy.

V. Methodological caveats

Slade’s biography draws on an unusually diverse range of sources: the Joseph Menear research files in the project archive (principally Francis Edwards’s scholarly blog The Cornish Historian, which cites Bell’s Life in London, the Illustrated Sporting News and Theatrical and Musical Review, and the London Standard); “Argus”‘s wrestling notes column (Western Times, 14 November 1879); and Wikipedia’s List of Cornish wrestlers. The nine entries in the match table are certainly a drastic undercount of a career spanning over twenty years: Slade’s pre-London Devon career — during which he won the Champion Wrestling Belt of the West of England and the England all-weights championship — is entirely undocumented in individual bout detail. The Edwards material, while scholarly and carefully cited to primary sources, is a secondary interpretation of *Bell’s Life* and related periodicals, not itself a primary source. The suspicious Ellis match is documented only through “Argus”‘s retrospective account, written from memory; no independent contemporaneous report has been identified.

VI. References

1. “Argus.” (1879, 14 November). Wrestling notes [Slade, Stone, London matches]. Western Times.
2. Bell’s Life in London, 12 April 1863; 14 June 1863; 28 June 1863; 18 April 1868.
3. Edwards, F. (2025, 2 August). Joseph Menear and Cornish wrestling in London. The Cornish Historian. https://the-cornish-historian.com/2025/08/02/joseph-menear-and-cornish-wrestling-in-london/
4. Illustrated Sporting News and Theatrical and Musical Review, 11 April 1863, p. 52; 7 April 1866, p. 201.
5. London Standard, 15 April 1868 [Easter wrestling at Hackney Wick].
6. Sporting Life, 13 November 1883.
7. Tripp, M. (2023). Cornish Wrestling: A History. Federation of Old Cornwall Societies. Pp. 74–95.
8. Wikipedia. (2025). List of Cornish wrestlers [entry on John Slade]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cornish_wrestlers
9. Project archive material: Joseph Menear research files; “Argus” columns 1879.