A century on, the greatness of Tancy Lee still glows

The town of Leith was gripped by First World War fever in January 1915 but excitement of a different kind was stirring among boxing fans in the old sea port and also neighbouring Edinburgh. So much so that when Tancy Lee stepped onto the train for London on a cold winter day a century ago, the platform at Waverley station was mobbed by people wishing the 33-year-old former labourer well on his trip to London.

Ironically, given that Lee's opponent at the Covent Garden-based National Sporting Club was to be legendary Welsh champion Jimmy Wilde, the Scot's interest in boxing had been awakened by another Welsh great, featherweight Jim Driscoll. In 1908 Driscoll had boxed in a charity fundraising show in Edinburgh for the Scottish Lifeboat Fund.

Lee, then aged 26, was struggling to support his wife and five children and having already fought and won 38 bouts in local boxing booths the doughty Leither decided to become a full-time pro boxer under the management of Frank Munro. What's more, Tancy Lee had already in 1908 created a British and Scottish "first" to match his Lonsdale Belt bout with Wilde at the NSC in London.

Earlier in 1908, Lee had gone to London and become the first Scot to win a British amateur ABA flyweight title plus a silver cup worth ten guineas to go with his new eight-stone class crown. Alas, the euphoria of being lionised by proud fellow Leithers on his triumphant return from those 1908 London ABA championships was short-lived.

A newspaper leaked the details of Tancy's 38 paid bouts in the boxing booths while ostensibly an amateur boxer and the English Amateur Boxing Association chief, Tom Calver, demanded and received the trophy back while also voiding Lee's victory in the 1908 London-based championships

Nevertheless, albeit temporarily Tancy Lee became and remains the only Scottish amateur boxer to have won a British amateur crown. He just had 38 paid bouts first.

Enter Fred Lumley, then the greatest sports equipment retailer and theatre impresario. Born in Hackney, he was between 1896 and 1938 the Sir Tom Hunter of Scottish sports retailing and a pioneer of early Scots boxing promotion.

Lumley, whose shops based in Edinburgh and Glasgow supplied the Old Firm and Hearts and Hibs with the bulk of their jerseys and boots, had been himself a highly successful amateur boxer, the only English-born boxer to win three consecutive Scottish amateur lightweight crowns. But he now became Lee's principal backer after he embraced the pro game. And he was in Lee's corner against Jimmy Wilde on January 25, 1915.

Wilde was called 'The Ghost With a Hammer in his Hand' due to the fact that although he looked like worryingly malnourished he racked up an astonishing 101 knockout wins in 151 paid fights. Wilde claimed overall to have had 854 ring battles but that figure is inflated by many that took place in boxing booths.

Lee had many less bouts under his belt than the Welsh champion, whose British and European flyweight crowns he sought to grab that evening a century ago in London. Also Airdrie bantamweight Alex Lafferty had shown that Lee's chin was not fireproof, having knocked Tancy out in Edinburgh's Olympic Arena in the 13th round of a Scottish bantamweight joust in April 1911. Nevertheless, going into the NSC ring to challenge Wilde over 20 rounds, Lee had recently in London demonstrated his fitness by stopping former world flyweight champion Bill Ladbury inside eight rounds.

For all that, various English boxing writers including James Butler, who was at ringside for the Wilde v Lee joust, and Reg Gutteridge more recently have claimed that Wilde entered the ring against Lee suffering from flu. In later years, nothing infuriated Tancy more than this claim.

In fact, in a 1922 newspaper interview Lee pointed out that when he entered the ring the London bookies had installed Wilde as the firm 5-2 favourite. Thus an irate Tancy pointed out that London bookies did not install flu victims as 5-2 favourites to win boxing titles.

In any event, English boxing scribe James Butler and a ringside witness to Lee's victory as Wilde's cornermen threw in the towel in the 17th round, described the typical Lee style that helped him register that historic win over Wilde as Butler observed, "Lee refused to allow correctness of style to hamper his natural desire to go in and fight . . . from the waist up he may have been a middleweight . . . deep chested, broad shouldered, magnificently biceped . . . tearing into Wilde he was even more terrifying . . ."

Thus did James Tancy Lee from Leith become Scotland's first British flyweight title and Lonsdale Belt winner in January 1915, blazing a trail for such as Benny Lynch, Jackie Patterson, Walter McGowan, Jim Watt and many other Scottish belt winners.

In 1917, Lee became both the first Caledonian boxer to win two Lonsdale Belts when he annexed the British featherweight title, and the first to make the coveted Lonsdale trophy his own property by beating two tough challengers, both of whom were 17 years younger than him. In 1919 Lee helped to found what is now Scotland's oldest extant amateur boxing club, the Leith Victoria.

Later in life, Lee became a top boxing coach and cornerman, seconding his nephew George McKenzie at the Antwerp 1920 Olympics where McKenzie won bronze. He coached McKenzie's kid brother James to Olympic flyweight silver in 1924 in Paris, and when George followed in Lee's footsteps in 1923 by winning the same British pro featherweight title that he had won in 1917, his uncle Tancy was in his corner.