Slave boxer who ended up penniless in Galway

Lifestyle – The fascinating story of freed tobacco-plantation slave and outstanding boxer Tom Molineaux who spent his final years in Galway is told in new film. Judy Murphy recounts the tale.

“He was the worst of fools, in as much as he sacrificed fame, fortune and life; excusing himself by the absurd plea that he was a fool to no one but himself.” That’s an assessment of the life of freed slave and boxer Tom Molineaux (1784-1818) as written by boxing historian Henry Downes Miles in the late 1800s.

Miles’ observation from the book, Pugilistica, The History of British Boxing, is included in a new documentary being screened at Galway Film Fleadh on Friday, July 14.

Ag Trasnú an Atlantaigh Dhuibh/Crossing the Black Atlantic is the amazing and moving story of an outstanding boxer, who was born into slavery in the tobacco plantations of Virginia in March 1784 and died in Galway in August 1818.

Molineaux earned his freedom from slavery through boxing and went on to mix with aristocracy in Britain, but after being cheated out of a major fight in England and a series of other misfortunes, he ended his days penniless in Galway. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Mervue nearly 200 years ago.

This documentary draws on the history of black slavery in America, the Irish connections with that slave trade, the rise of boxing as a popular sport in the British Empire, and the fatal flaws of a man who rose above the circumstances of his birth, thanks to his extraordinary talent – only to end his life in poverty.

It’s the work of Galway-based DK Productions and will be screened on TG4 later this year.

Des Kilbane, who produced and directed the documentary, heard about Tom’s story by chance.

“It happened four years ago when we were editing A Fighting Heart,” he says referring to a previous film of his, based on the life of American-Irish boxer Johnny Kilbane.

“Andrew Gallimore, the script editor, asked me if I’d ever heard of a freed slave from Virginia called Tom Molineaux who in the early 1800s was robbed of the biggest boxing fight in history at that stage,” Des explains.

When Andrew added ‘we think there’s a Galway connection’ and that Molineaux might have been buried in Galway, Des started researching.

He approached bookshop owner and historian Tom Kenny, whose response was, ‘sure that’s the guy who was buried in Mervue’.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.