Photographic portrait of champion Danish West Indian-Australian heavyweight boxer Peter Jackson – “The Black Prince” – in a fighting stance. New York, circa 1890.

A$1,650 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

New York, USA : Newsboy, [circa 1890]. Albumen print photograph, cabinet card format, 167 x 109 mm (mount); mount with the publisher s imprint and 73. Peter Jackson ; the image has lost some contrast, and the mount has a water stain at left edge (not affecting the albumen print) and a chipped corner. A rare studio portrait of the great black fighter Peter Jackson. Jackson arrived in Sydney from the Caribbean in 1880 and adopted Australia as his home. After winning the Australian heavyweight title in 1886 he fought in North America and England. Although he garnered a reputation as one of the finest boxers of his era, the colour of his skin ultimately played a part in preventing him from challenging for the world heavyweight championship. He died in Queensland at the age of just 40. The only original nineteenth-century photographs of Peter Jackson which Trove locates in Australian collections are held in the NLA. The following is Richard Broome s brief biography of Jackson in the ADB : Peter Jackson (1861-1901), boxer, was born on 3 July 1861 at Christiansted, St Croix, Virgin Island, West Indies, son of Peter Jackson, warehouseman, and his wife, and grandson of Jackson s freed slave Peter. [This last statement does not make sense. ed.] He was well educated to primary level before going to sea. Landing in Sydney about 1880, he worked on the waterfront and in hotels before drifting into boxing in 1882 under the tuition of Larry Foley. Between 1883 and 1886 Jackson fought seven t

• Binding: Hardcover

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