Hi all,
I'm new to this forum. I am trying to find out something about my grandfather, for my dad. The family legend is that he was a boxer who traveled to the USA for at least one bout. There is one surviving photo of him, and he sure looks like a boxer :-) However, I have no documentary evidence and haven't been able to trace anything about boxing in his life history.
My grandfather's name was Ernest Albert Cale, born 1892, died 1947, in Birmingham, England. He joined the Royal Field Artillery in 1906 as a boy soldier (age 14), became a trumpeter, and was then discharged in October 1908 after serving 20 days in detention for some unspecified offence! He re-enlisted in July 1915 (calling himself Albert Ernest Cale) and served again in the Royal Field Artillery as a Gunner until 1919. He married in 1917, and worked (in Birmingham) as a paper machinist. I've been in touch with the Royal Artillery Museum archive, but they didn't have anything to tell me about boxing in the RFA.
My dad thinks his father fought under the name Kid Daly (maybe Daley). I see on the BoxRec database that there is one entry for a Kid Daley (Global ID 147178), middleweight division, one bout fought against Leo Matlock in San Francisco on 11-11-1919. Kid Daley lost. I can't see where this bout information comes from - there are no source details on the database. Can anyone help me with that? I'm intrigued that this *could* be my grandfather, since the date is after he is discharged from the army. He could have taken up boxing while a soldier, and traveled to box afterwards as an amateur. (My dad thinks his father was a professional, but that seems much less likely to me.)
Does anyone have other ideas for places I could look? I've also viewed the Birmingham Post for the period which is available on the British Library Newspapers website; and asked at Birmingham Central Library's archive, to no avail; and I've checked the incoming and outgoing ship passenger lists on Ancestry.co.uk without success.
Thank you for any ideas!