Boxing bio info request
Posted: 17 May 2012, 18:28
To: Boxers of the past Forum; BoxRec / Boxing Record Archive
17 May 2012
Hi, all
Please, can anyone help?
My late grandfather James (Jim) William Newark was reportedly twice the English national flyweight champion, dates unknown. Can anyone provide or link me to likely sources of info and materials about Jim's boxing training and subsequent career?
Born in Bethnal Green, London, UK in 1906, Jim died in my home town of Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland in 1981.
Until his 1930 marriage to Ita Ada O'Kane (from South Stanley, County Durham, then living in Tottenham), in Tottenham / Edmonton, Jim lived in various areas of London...chiefly Bethnal Green, Walthamstow and Tottenham. His parents, and the family home, were in Enfield from the 1930's to the mid-late-1950's.
Prior to World War II, Jim, like his father and grandfather, was a cabinet maker and french polisher. He was also a tennis racquet maker and stringer. In 1940, as an employee of the Waltham Abbey ordnance / explosives plant, where he may have begun employment as a caskmaker or trimmer or in some other role involved in the storage of gunpowder, etc., Jim and others were sent North to Paisley, Scotland, to help develop the Royal Ordnance Factory at Bishopton. Ada and their then children followed. My grandparents remained in Paisley until their respective deaths in 1981 and 1982. A number of my close relatives also later worked at the Bishopton establsihment.
At ROF Bishopton, Jim eventually became a Factory Safety Inspector. He later worked with the MoD's nuclear division. He also travelled with a 1960's MoD and multi-agency task force to India and Pakistan where he and others discussed and advised those nations' ordnance sector counterparts ref the production, improved production and purchase of weapons and ammunition.
Jim, for his bravery during and after a large ROF Bishopton explosion, was also awarded the George Cross, an award signed by Winston Churchill, presented by the King and announced in the London Gazette.
I hope that the above triggers some curiosity and is of interest. Any relevant information and memorabilia about Jim, his life in London and his boxing career would be warmly welcomed. Reciprocal research on any legal topic guaranteed if requested.
Best wishes...
Alan Newark
PS...My father, Frederick 'Freddie' Newark, born in Enfield in 1935, was himself a Scottish ABA champion. He was said by the Glasgow Evening Citizen newspaper - which published three mid-1950's fotos of my father (a) being allegedly sucker-punched by one of the Fisher brothers (Eddie? John?) (b) slumping before his fall and (c) hitting or on the canvas - to be the 'fastest thing on two feet in Scotland'. Freddie, who died in Paisley in 2008, had strong prospects of a professional boxing career but also wanted to join the RAF. Both options were killed dead by a bad leg injury, whose wound leaked for the rest of his life.
My brother Jim, now 50, served for 15 years in the Royal Corps of Signals. In the late-1970's, he was a junior battalion boxing champion. I had a very brief, inglorious, mid-1970's spell in the reserve boxing team of 15 Para (TAVR) Btn.
17 May 2012
Hi, all
Please, can anyone help?
My late grandfather James (Jim) William Newark was reportedly twice the English national flyweight champion, dates unknown. Can anyone provide or link me to likely sources of info and materials about Jim's boxing training and subsequent career?
Born in Bethnal Green, London, UK in 1906, Jim died in my home town of Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland in 1981.
Until his 1930 marriage to Ita Ada O'Kane (from South Stanley, County Durham, then living in Tottenham), in Tottenham / Edmonton, Jim lived in various areas of London...chiefly Bethnal Green, Walthamstow and Tottenham. His parents, and the family home, were in Enfield from the 1930's to the mid-late-1950's.
Prior to World War II, Jim, like his father and grandfather, was a cabinet maker and french polisher. He was also a tennis racquet maker and stringer. In 1940, as an employee of the Waltham Abbey ordnance / explosives plant, where he may have begun employment as a caskmaker or trimmer or in some other role involved in the storage of gunpowder, etc., Jim and others were sent North to Paisley, Scotland, to help develop the Royal Ordnance Factory at Bishopton. Ada and their then children followed. My grandparents remained in Paisley until their respective deaths in 1981 and 1982. A number of my close relatives also later worked at the Bishopton establsihment.
At ROF Bishopton, Jim eventually became a Factory Safety Inspector. He later worked with the MoD's nuclear division. He also travelled with a 1960's MoD and multi-agency task force to India and Pakistan where he and others discussed and advised those nations' ordnance sector counterparts ref the production, improved production and purchase of weapons and ammunition.
Jim, for his bravery during and after a large ROF Bishopton explosion, was also awarded the George Cross, an award signed by Winston Churchill, presented by the King and announced in the London Gazette.
I hope that the above triggers some curiosity and is of interest. Any relevant information and memorabilia about Jim, his life in London and his boxing career would be warmly welcomed. Reciprocal research on any legal topic guaranteed if requested.
Best wishes...
Alan Newark
PS...My father, Frederick 'Freddie' Newark, born in Enfield in 1935, was himself a Scottish ABA champion. He was said by the Glasgow Evening Citizen newspaper - which published three mid-1950's fotos of my father (a) being allegedly sucker-punched by one of the Fisher brothers (Eddie? John?) (b) slumping before his fall and (c) hitting or on the canvas - to be the 'fastest thing on two feet in Scotland'. Freddie, who died in Paisley in 2008, had strong prospects of a professional boxing career but also wanted to join the RAF. Both options were killed dead by a bad leg injury, whose wound leaked for the rest of his life.
My brother Jim, now 50, served for 15 years in the Royal Corps of Signals. In the late-1970's, he was a junior battalion boxing champion. I had a very brief, inglorious, mid-1970's spell in the reserve boxing team of 15 Para (TAVR) Btn.