Repton Boxing Club

The mid-1800s were not a good time for public schools.

- DAVID ELLIS

Founded for poor scholars, Eton and its kin were facing scrutiny for having sullied those early ideals in pursuit of educating the elites. In Derbyshire, Repton was under it as well. Is this why the school established a club for the East End’s underprivileged youths in 1884? Was it some kind of Victorian publicity move? Whatever the truth, it’s fair to imagine the school didn't think it would one day end up training Britain’s most feared gangsters.The Repton Club offered East End boys somewhere to go and something to do. Its first iteration, on Bethnal Green Road, ran to three storeys, with boxing at the top. Below things were gentler: whist, chess and bagatelle. At the club’s second home, in Victoria Park Square, Repton persevered even as the bombs of the Second World War fell: it offered football, art, even dressmaking. But boxing was the thing.

It was at the Victoria Park Square club that some of its earliest champions were formed, moulded at the bags and shaped on the pads. Champions such as Antiguan-born Maurice Hope, who fought for Britain at the 1972 Olympics, and by the end of the decade was the first black British immigrant to win a world boxing title. Champions such as John Henry Stracey, who lost to gold medallist Ronnie Harris at the 1968 Olympics. But besides these two were streams of boys coming and going, slugging it out, helping the club build its fearsome reputation. Few amateurs anywhere fancied their chances against a Repton boy: later, in 1980 and 1983, Repton fighters won seven National Schoolboy titles in a single day. The record stands unmatched.