On this date in 1935, Canadian pugilist Del Fontaine was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, “the bravest fellow we ever saw go to the scaffold.”
Winnipeg-born as Raymond Henry Bousquet, Fontaine twice won the Canadian middleweight belt.
But a grueling, 98-fight career took its toll on the man.
By the end — when he had crossed the pond for a couple years traversing the English rings — Del Fontaine was visibly punch-drunk. The onetime champion lost 12 of his last 14 fights.
Punch drunk — scientific name dementia pugilistica — is just the classic diagnosis for “concussed all to hell,” afflicted by traumatic brain injury and its mind-altering long-term effects: Depression, violence, mood swings, loss of judgment and impulse control. Those are the kinds of behavior patterns that tend to brush up against the criminal justice system.
The syndrome’s popular name suggests its most visible injury, to motor skills — a symptom Fontaine’s colleagues in the business could readily diagnose.
“Del shouldn’t have been in the ring at all for his last fight. He wasn’t in a fit state,” fellow prizefighter Ted Lewis testified at Fontaine’s trial, recalling a Newcastle bout that ended in a flash on three first-round knockdowns. “As a boxer, he has received more punishment than anyone I have ever seen.” The house doctor at a Blackfriars venue Fontaine had appeared at earlier in 1935 said the fighter complained of double vision and sleeplessness, and couldn’t walk straight. (London Times, Sep. 17, 1935)
If 1935 was a few decades’ shy of our present-day understanding of concussions, it was still well-enough known to those who had experience of the punch-drunk that psychological changes accompanied the physical impairments. Those who knew Del Fontaine knew he wasn’t right in the head.
The reason this tribunal had to sit for the humiliating public probe of Fontaine’s mental crevasses was that Fontaine had left his wife and kids behind when he crossed the Atlantic. Once he got to the Isles, he took up with an English sweetheart in Bristol.
This Hilda Meek, a West End waitress a decade the junior of her lover, became the object of an obsessive infatuation. In a fit of jealous rage, Fontaine gunned her down (and her mother too, although mom survived) when he caught Meek making a date with another man.
Fontaine was captured, unresisting, dolorously on the scene, and openly admitted his actions. Acquittal on the facts would be a nonstarter; diminished responsibility because of dementia pugilistica was the best defense gambit available.
The highly restrictive legal bar against an insanity defense aced out the legal maneuver: however impulsive and moody a lifetime of concussions had left him, they couldn’t be said to have prevented him “knowing right from wrong.” Still, his case attracted a fair bit of public sympathy, and when a petition for clemency went nowhere, hundreds of people, including a number of other boxers, turned up at Wandsworth to protest on the morning the punch-drunk Del Fontaine hanged for murder.
On this day..
- 1799: Domenico Cirillo
- 1890: Tom Woolfolk, "Bloody Wolfolk"
- 1965: Eighteen prison rioters from Pulau Senang
- 1915: Mrs. Chippy, safe return doubtful
- 1543: Pietro Fatinelli, betrayed by Lando
- 1936: Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, Falangist
- 1792: Three of the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers
- 1927: Baldomero Rodrigues, and then Baldomero Rodrigues again
- 1812: Claude-Francois de Malet and his conspirators
- 1268: Conradin of Swabia
- 1901: Leon Czolgosz, William McKinley's assassin
- 1618: Walter Raleigh, age of exploration adventurer
Hilda was my grandmothers older sister, so I would have made her my great aunt?
I only found out about this tragic story story after nan died in 2006, Nan would have been six at the time, from what I’ve learned after the trial such was the level of public feeling against the sentence they had to go into hiding, Great Grand dad Sam never got over his daughters murder and became an angry alcoholic, my nan suffered from mental health issues, during her teens also took up with a boxer, my grand dad Joe who was mixed race and similar in look to Del Fontaine, also Joe was in his 40s with nan Monica being 18 when my Dad was born in 1947, I believe that grand dad Joe being a prizefighter of roughly the same age as Del and living in Bristol would have no doubt be on the same circuit as each other,
I think nan suffered from schizophrenia as she appeared to be emulating her dead sisters life, once my dad was born Joe went back to his wife and dad went into forster care until he runaway to London at 14 to find his mum, which he did before doing a spell in Bostal for attempted armed robbey, on coming out he met my mum and she straighten him out, the full out from the crime had far reaching consequences, however I still can’t help feeling sorry for Del Fontaine, looking at the case had he not shot Hildas and Nanny’s Mum he might have not been sentenced to death as it would have been viewed as a crime of passion,
Anyway the story would make a great Sunday evening drama as its got all the elements of a tragic love story
Hilda was my grandmothers older sister, so I would have made her my great aunt?
I only found out about this tragic story story after nan died in 2006, Nan would have been six at the time, from what I’ve learned after the trial such was the level of public feeling against the sentence they had to go into hiding, Great Grand dad Sam never got over his daughters murder and became an angry alcoholic, my nan suffered from mental health issues, during her teens also took up with a boxer, my grand dad Joe who was mixed race and similar in look to Del Fontaine, also Joe was in his 40s with nan Monica being 18 when my Dad was born in 1947, I believe that Joe being a prizefighter of roughly the same age as Joe living in Bristol would have no doubt be on the same circuit as Del,
I think nan suffered from schizophrenia as she appeared to be emulating her dead sisters life, once my dad was born Joe went back to his wife and dad went into forster care until he runaway to London at 14 to find his mum, which he did before doing a spell in Bostal for attempted armed robbey, on coming out he met my mum and she straighten him out, the full out from the crime had far reaching consequences, however I still can’t help feeling sorry for Del Fontaine, looking at the case had he not shot Hildas and Nanny’s Mum he might have not been sentenced to death as it would have been viewed as a crime of passion,
Anyway the story would make a great Sunday evening drama as its got all the elements of a tragic love story
Just want to say he was my moms uncle.and my great uncle.sad story and tragic for both parties.to or since then a lot of people went to the gallows and cried.
Hey Guy
How strange is this to see the families from both sides of the coin meeting In a chat room 87 years after the event
That proper mad,
Any hope you and yours are well