Hi. Look, there are countless moments that make up the story of Australia,
but every now and then there’s a special moment, a defining moment.
I’m Mikey Robbins and I’m here at the National Museum of Australia
to check out their project Defining moments in Australian history.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to go behind the scenes,
we’re going to check out some objects that tell the stories about these moments, about who we are.
Stick around, it’s going to be fun.
This is the smallest object we’ll be discussing, but it is incredibly poignant.
It’s a memorable locket, a mourning locket, for the boxer Les Darcy.
I am joined by Jono Lineen from the Museum. Hi, Jono, nice to meet you. Hi, Mikey.
Let’s start off by telling those who don’t know who Les Darcy was.
Well, Les was one of Australia’s greatest boxers ever.
He was born in Maitland, New South Wales in 1895
and, by the age of 20, he had defeated every boxer of note in Australia.
He was a middleweight but he defeated the heavyweight champion of Australia.
We should point out this was given to Winnie O’Sullivan who was his girlfriend. Yup.
She was the daughter of the owner of the Lord Dudley Hotel
which I have to confess is my local pub.
So every time I go down and have a pint there I think of Les,
because Les used to stay at the Lord Dudley.
Absolutely. Every two weeks leading up to a bout, he would stay at the Lord Dudley.
The Lord Dudley was positioned above Rushcutters Bay,
which is where the Sydney stadium was at that time,
and all of the big boxing bouts happened there in the stadium.
The phrase gets thrown around these days
‘Don’t mix politics and sport’, but it’s not a recent occurrence.
In 1916, Les finds himself in the middle of one of the most divisive conflicts politically
this country has ever been through,
which is the defining moment I want to talk about - conscription.
What was Les’s role in that argument?
1916, the conscription debate was really based around the fact
that Australia was unable to fill its commitments to the British government
and the Imperial Force to keep their overseas units
up to the particular manpower levels that they needed.
This put a lot of pressure on the government, especially the Prime Minister Billy Hughes.
He became a big supporter of conscription.
Hughes thought the only way he could really legalise this in a way
was by bringing it to a vote to the people.
There was a lot of people, especially pro-conscriptionists, who believed that
sports, entertainment, gambling - all of these things - should be shut down while the nation was in crisis.
So Les, to them, personified that.
And they believed that if they could get Les to join up
or conscript Les, then all of these other men
who were involved in sports and in entertainment would follow him in that.
Les was like this embodiment of Australian manhood,
which is probably why there was so much trouble when he went overseas.
He was the most famous athlete in Australia at the time.
Is it true he was sent white feathers? Oh yes, many white feathers.
Even more tragic about that is that Les actually signed up for the Australian Army twice.
He was under 21 so he had bring - his mother’s permission in and she refused.
She refused; she threw the paperwork in the fire.
He had a lot of problems early on in 1917 in getting bouts in Australia.
So he goes to the States to get fights.
He goes to the States to get fights but - what had happened was
a couple of the big promoters at the time - you’ve probably heard of Snowy Baker?
Yes. The other bigger promoter actually
was a guy called HD McIntosh, also known as Huge Deal.
Les didn’t want Snowy or Huge Deal to be his promoter going to the States,
he wanted to do it himself because he’d had other friends
as boxers who had gone over there with promoters -
And not made money. Exactly.
When he arrives in New York, promoters are rowing their boats
out to the ship to try and sign him up.
And eventually he gets signed up by one of the big promoters in New York City,
lines up a huge fight at Madison Square Gardens.
And then it turns out that three days before the bout is to take place,
the governor of New York State steps up and says,
‘This fight is not going to happen because Les Darcy has run away from his country and his obligations.’
How did that happen?
Well, it seems that Huge Deal McIntosh had connections in the States
and actually undermined Les’s ability to fight.
The fight had been cancelled there.
He went on to Ohio with another promoter.
The governor of Ohio cancelled the fights there.
He went on to Louisiana, the same situation.
Eventually he came to an agreement with a promoter in Memphis, Tennessee.
And the agreement was that Les would join the American army, this was in April,
and then in June and July of that year
he would have fights in Memphis,
he would make the money he needed to give the security to his family,
which is really where his responsibility lay,
and then in August he would actually join the American Army
and potentially go overseas.
So it is all set up, and all of a sudden Les is not feeling well.
He hadn’t felt well since he came to the States
but he starts feeling worse and worse,
and eventually he’s brought into the hospital in Memphis.
His bride to be, Winnie, has arranged to come to the States
with her best friend Lily Molloy, who went on to become a silent movie star.
She arrived on May 23rd to see and talk with Les.
The next morning she went in, and the nurse said,
‘Well, Les is going now,’ and Winnie was by his side when he passed away.
The tragic story is that Les died from septicaemia.
He was fighting Harold Hardwick, a great Australian boxer,
who knocked out his two front teeth.
And the situation in those days was as quickly as possible after the bout,
you went straight to a dentist and the dentist re-attached the teeth with gold pins.
The pins went up into the nerves, that got septic,
and Les actually died from a boxing injury more so than even a dental injury.
And then he comes home to a hero’s welcome. Yeah.
Well Les actually had four funerals. One in Memphis, one in San Francisco,
a huge one in Sydney where they estimate that 250,000 people came out.
They say that people were lined 20 deep along Oxford Street.
And then one final one in Maitland.
Now the question is: Why was this man, who was claimed to be a shirker
when he left to go to the States, all of a sudden returns home as the hero?
I mean, it is the great Australian story. He was a battler, he went out.
He felt that responsibility to his family.
His drive was to create security for his family.
When you stare at that tiny locket, Jono, how do you feel?
Wow, sometimes I look at that little locket
and I honestly - I get a little bit teary,
because that is Les’s hair, and Winnie actually
cut that hair from Les on his deathbed that day, 24th May 1917.
She kept that with her all her life.
In fact, if we were able to look on the outside of the locket,
we would see it’s rubbed completely clean
by Winnie actually holding it like that.
Thanks for watching. But it doesn’t end here.
We want you to join the conversation.
Go to the National Museum of Australia’s website -
that’s nma.gov.au - and let us know what you think
are the defining moments in Australian history.
We’d love to hear your opinion.
Once again thanks for watching. See you soon.