After the photo of my late cousin Dave Thomas recently appeared in a FaceBook group, I just happened to mention we were related and a member of the group sent me his obituary which I’d never read before. She’d taken a number of photos of Boxing News article and I tried to pieced them together. But in the end I had to rewrite the article to be able to read it with continuity.
After going to so much trouble to put this together, I thought our readers might like to have a look.
It’s a change from the normal Taxi News stories
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, Dave and brother Patsy were family icons, both amateur boxers who then went on to become London Taxi drivers. Dave and Patsy were two of my early hero’s and the main reason why I decided to do the knowledge and join them on the mean streets of London.
Dustman Dave, The Pride Of London by Brian Pigden of the Boxing News. October 1980
Dave Thomas, the much-loved three times ABA champion, who’s untimely death last Sunday stunned the boxing world, he was simply Britain’s greatest postwar amateur heavyweight.
But as Dustman Dave of Marylebone, to those of us who grew up in the same era and can remember his long run of televised victories for London and England, he was the most famous amateur boxer of all.
Dave, still a trainer at his old Polytechnic club died on a regular Sunday morning run with another amateur coach Peter Carson. They had just jogged the outer circle of Regents Park and were finishing as usual with a Sprint over Primrose Hill.
Dave collapsed. Peter realising something serious had happened, darted for the phone boxes at the foot of the hill but met two policeman on the way.
All three scurried back up the hill to find the tracksuited legend died from a heart attack. Dave had just turned 43 the previous month.
Dave Thomas retired at the top in 1960, rejecting the probable wealth of professional career after defeating Billy Walker three times. He chose the simpler life of a London cab driver living quietly with his lovely wife Cathy in a St John’s Wood Council flat in the same area he had lived all his life.
Dave and his 18 month older brother Pat received their initial tradition at the local Stowe boys club but left for the find Polytechnic ABC club without boxing for the Stowe. Patsy was a good heavyweight, but it was Dave who proved the more dedicated of the brothers.
In 1956 Thomas won the first of his five successive London titles but lost in a disputed ABA final decision to Dave rent also died prematurely.
The Marylebone Dustman became a household name in the three following years as he dominated the British amateur heavyweight scene.
Proud to be a Londoner, he regarded the Royal Albert Hall as his favourite venue and thought more of his five London titles than his three national ABA triumphs. Two of Daves three wins over Walker were in the London area the third at West Ham Baths
A durable 6‘4“ he stylishly won the ABA titles from 1957 to 1959 but international championship glory always alluded him and was the only the sad reflection he had in his career when it was over.
Four years ago when I interviewed him for a boxing News feature he told me “I’d would have love to have won something in Europe”.
Twice in his international career it was his arch rival Joseph Nemic of Czechoslovakia who was the stumbling block. They met three times with Dave only winning one of the decisions.
The first time was in the 1957 European Championships in Nemic’s own capital Prague. International experience cost Thomas the decision as he collected two public warnings. He had beaten the highly ranked Eastern European Vasil Mariutan of Romania and Lazlo Szarbo of Hungary to reach the semi-final stage.
Thomas and Nemec next met in the semifinals of 1959 Lucerne European Championships. Dave got the verdict this time and went on to a battle in the final which will probably be remembered as his greatest ever.
Outweighed by two stone Thomas stormed the mighty 16 stone Russian Andrei Abramov, but was a judged a disputed loser to the three times European champion. Most of the English observers and press thought Dave had got it as did his trainer Dick Tarrier.
But with typical modesty Thomas himself always conceded that he had thought he’d lost. The silver metal presented to him by former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling was his second in a year.
Ill fate cost him another coveted gold in the 1958 Commonwealth Games at Cardiff. Winning through to the final with a broken thumb, Thomas was so stricken by various ailments, that it prompted a reporter to comment that he should have been carried to the ring on a stretcher.
Dave was suffering from gastroenteritis and an ear infection as well as the thumb injury. Drained of stamina he was out pointed by the South African southpaw Dan Becker in the Sophia Gardens pavilion.
Dave’s fourth and final quest for a gold came to an abrupt end in a disappointing preliminary of the 1960 Rome Olympics once more against Josef Nemec. By now they know each other too well and the Czech got the decision.
In the series Thomas saw the close decisions as reversed he thought he’d lost in Lucerne but was sure he won the other two.
He had just one more international win before retiring at 23, with only 10 losses in 140 contests.
After spells as a Bank of England messenger, Smithfield meat porter, and Dustman in his beloved Marylebone, Thomas did the knowledge of London to became a Licensed Taxi driver.
After his boxing retirement, he remained with the Polytechnic becoming a coach.
Dave was always so impeccably turned out in his whites, so respectful and sporting. He was at the Porchester Hall show on Wednesday of last week, which was to be his last show.
The surviving boxing writers of the London evening papers and Chronicles his career Wally Bartleman a rage Gutteridge were distressed by the news of his death.
Reg, in probably his final obituary in the doomed Evening News, described him as the ‘gentle giant’ and said they come no bigger than Dave Thomas as boxer and man”.
Veteran Wally of the evening standard who, like Reg followed Dave on the European missions, was shaken when I passed the sad tidings on.
Thousands of London taxi drivers heard of the passing of the cab trade hero over their radio circuits in the Monday morning traffic.
My own lasting memory of Dave Thomas will always be walking down the steps of his flats with him. He stopped and turned to me, spreading his arms wide and said “what do you want to write about me for” he said “I was nobody”, humility personified. Some nobody!!!
Saddened though I am by his death, I am proud to be able to say I knew Dave Thomas.
All of us at the boxing News express our sincerest condolences to his widow and relatives.
Dave and Cathy had no children, his funeral was yesterday Thursday at Kensal Rise cemetery.
Below is a short video of a couple of clips of Dave I found on Google
2 comments:
He's featured towards the end of this video. Also his Wikipedia entry looks like it's showing him as still alive today. https://youtu.be/tONm4WUwbiM
https://youtu.be/tONm4WUwbiM
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