Foreigners (17 page)

At Randolph Turpin's funeral, the Revd Eugene Haselden
spoke loudly and passionately about what he believed was
the principal contributory factor to the death of this man
who, only a few years earlier, was Britain's most celebrated
sporting hero. 'At the height of his career,' he began,
'Randolph was surrounded by those who regarded themselves
as friends and well-wishers. But he was deserted by
many as he lost his position and money. The fickleness
of his friends and the incompetent advice must have
weighed so heavily upon him that he was forced to desperation.
Randolph was a simple man, a naïve man and he
needed friends to protect him from the spongers. To our
shame he was let down. The tragedy is not his failure alone,
but the failure of the whole society.' At the conclusion of
this blunt and unapologetic sermon there was silence inside
Leamington Spa's Holy Trinity Church. The newspaper
reports claimed that there were nearly 2,000 people present,
but the truth is there were maybe 500 people inside the
church. However, as the mourners began to spill out into
the weak light of this gloomy day their numbers were
augmented by passers-by, and by those who had decided
to brave the rain and just come and pay their respects.
Turpin's grief-stricken family were present, including young
Randolph, his son from his first marriage, and many of
the friends with whom he had grown up in Leamington
Spa made an appearance. The promoter Jack Solomons
sent neither words of condolence nor a note of apology
for missing the funeral. Shockingly, nobody from the British
Boxing Board of Control in London made the trip to the
Midlands as one might have reasonably expected for a
holder of a Lonsdale belt, and a former British, European,
and World boxing champion.

Some time after the interment the Warwickshire coroner,
Mr S. Tibbets, concluded his findings by suggesting that
Randolph Turpin appeared to have been an impulsive and
generous man who had given away a large part of his
earnings in the ring, and in some way this had led to the
present tragedy. Turpin's one-time business partner, Leslie
Salts, went further, describing Turpin as 'intelligent in
some respects but childish in others. You can tell people
what is the best for them,' he said, 'but they don't always
take notice.' This, of course, was somewhat ironic coming
from a man who made a handsome profit from Turpin,
and who had enjoyed the most successful and lucrative
years of his life because of the efforts of the now deceased
boxer. The coroner read aloud part of a note that Turpin
had written and left pinned to a bedroom door before
his death. In the note, Turpin made it clear that he felt
that he was 'having to carry the can for money owing to
the Inland Revenue'. He continued and insisted that his
mind was clear and not disturbed. As it transpired, the
verdict of the Coroners' Court agreed that this was most
likely the case. The entry on the death certificate of
Randolph Turpin records that the cause of death was as
a result of:

Gunshot wounds of the heart
Self-inflicted (Suicide)

On 14 May, 1966, three days before Turpin's death, yet
another letter from the Inland Revenue had arrived at the
transport café in Leamington Spa, this one claiming £200
that was due as a result of non-payment of tax on the
income from some of Turpin's wrestling engagements. The
latest demand seemed unnecessarily harsh to Turpin and
this news, together with the increasing likelihood that the
local council was about to exercise the compulsory purchase
order on the café, and thereby render Turpin and his wife
and four daughters homeless, caused the former fighter to
slip into an even deeper trough of depression. By now
Gwen was used to enduring her husband's moods so she
knew that there was little that she could do beyond wait
and hope that his anxiety might soon subside. Three days
later, on 17 May, Turpin was working in the café with his
wife. After lunch the two older daughters, eleven-year-old
Gwyneth and nine-year-old Annette, went back to school,
while Turpin went upstairs to check on four-year-old
Charmaine, who was suffering from a cold. After a few
moments Turpin came back down and told his wife that
the child was sleeping, and then he went back upstairs.
Their youngest daughter, Carmen, who was almost two
years old, followed her father. Shortly after 2:30 p.m. a
curious Gwen went upstairs to check that everything was
fine. She saw her husband on the floor between some
packing cases and the bed, and she noticed bloodstains on
the blanket. Her motionless husband looked as though he
had tumbled from the bed, and her daughter, Carmen, was
sitting on the floor beside her father, but the crying child
was surrounded by a pool of blood. Gwen snatched up
Carmen and ran with the child to Warneford Hospital
where the authorities informed her that her daughter had
been shot. Back at the café neighbours had already called
the police, but the word on the street was that Turpin had
shot himself twice with a .22 calibre revolver, once to the
left side of the head and then fatally in the heart. He had
used the same weapon to shoot his youngest daughter
twice, and one bullet was lodged near Carmen's brain and
the other had punctured her lung. Their local hero was
dead, and his youngest daughter was fighting for her life.

Two weeks after Turpin's suicide, Gwen Turpin sold her
story to a Sunday newspaper. Carmen was now out of
danger, and it was clear that she was going to survive, but
Gwen was still trying to find some justification for what
her husband had done to their child. In the newspaper she
said, 'I think he wanted to take her with him because he
had begun to look on the world as a place not fit for her
to live in.' But Gwen knew that this was a world that she
and her children would have to continue to live in, and
she was now determined to protect her four children from
any scrutiny and, if truth be told, from the Turpin family
with whom, Turpin's elderly mother aside, she wished to
have no further dealings. Never wishing to set foot again
in the transport café, and realising that she could only stay
with friends for so long, once it was safe for Carmen to
travel Gwen took herself and the girls off to Prestatyn in
North Wales. Gwen went home, remembering that her late
husband had told her that she should always try and visit
the Great Orme, for that's where they had been happy. In
many respects, it was her love and support, and Turpin's
devotion to his daughters, that had enabled him to survive
the years of debt and anxiety that followed his retirement
from boxing. His love for his family had meant that he
persevered even when he could see no future, but in the
end life's pressure finally defeated this proud warrior. But
in Gwen, who was anything but a shy, retiring Welsh Valley
girl, he had found a sustaining love, and after his death
she deeply mourned the loss of her beloved husband.
Eventually, short of cash, Gwen sold her late husband's
Lonsdale belt for £3,000.

In 2001, exactly fifty years after Turpin shocked the world
and defeated Sugar Ray Robinson, an imposing 8'6'' statue
of Randolph Turpin in boxing pose, on a five feet high
stone plinth, was unveiled in the centre of Warwick. On
the bronze plaque below his feet are inscribed the words:

In Palace, Pub, And Parlour
The Whole of Britain Held Its Breath.

And beneath this '
Celer Et Audax
' – Latin for 'Swift and
Bold' – the motto of the King's Royal Rifle Corps with
whom Turpin's father served during the First World War.
Thirty-five years earlier, in 1966, Gwen Turpin had already
chosen her own memorial words and had them inscribed
on her husband's headstone. Randolph Turpin may have
ruled the world for an extremely brief sixty-four days, but
whatever his troubles she wanted this stubborn, often naïve
man to be remembered as an English hero.

TO
THE DEAR MEMORY OF
RANDOLPH ADOLPHUS
TURPIN
DEVOTED HUSBAND OF
GWYNETH
AND FATHER OF
GWYNETH, ANNETTE,
CHARMAINE & CARMEN
WHO PASSED AWAY
17 MAY, 1966. AGED 38

World middleweight
boxing champion 1951.

*

Annette is the older of the two Turpin girls sitting before
me. Both Annette and Charmaine are now in their forties,
and there is a joy to their faces and demeanour which
immediately challenges any notion of seeing the story of
their father as a tragic one. Charmaine's eleven-year-old
son Ieuan sits to her side. Opposite him, and next to me,
sits sixteen-year-old Rachel. She is Carmen's daughter, and
both she and her cousin are quiet and conscientiously
polite. It is now forty years since Randolph Turpin died,
and on this hot July afternoon we are having lunch at an
Italian restaurant on London's South Bank, only a few
hundred yards from the National Film Theatre where some
twenty-one years ago I watched a poignant documentary
film about Randolph Turpin. Annette smiles. She informs
me that she too was in the audience that day, and she liked
the film about her father. But that is all that she says; that
she liked it, nothing more. We decide to order lunch.

Annette lives in South London, where she is a psychiatric
nurse working with children and adolescents in a
hospital outpatient department. Charmaine has travelled
down with the two children from Prestatyn in North
Wales, where she is employed by a company that manufactures
military equipment. She is planning on spending
the weekend with her sister. Carmen was due to accompany
her, but she has recently found another job and so
she has decided to stay behind in Wales. Gwyneth, the
oldest sister, died of Hodgkin's disease in 1987, and their
mother Gwen died in May 1992. She never remarried. As
Annette and Charmaine study the menu, I look closely at
the sisters and can see that they both have something of
the Randolph Turpin twinkle in their eyes. They lay down
their menus and then break into charismatic smiles which
remind me of the film footage I have seen of their father
being interviewed as he prepared to board the
Queen Mary
and sail to New York for the first time. However, it is
the young boy, Ieuan – the grandson – who is truly blessed
with his grandfather's features. I wonder how much he
knows about Randolph Turpin, or if he is even interested.
'HMS
Belfast
and the Imperial War Museum,' says
his mother, 'that's what Ieuan likes to visit when he comes
to London.' Did Ieuan know that his grandfather, and his
grandfather's brothers, served in the military during the
Second World War? Did Ieuan know that his West Indian
great-grandfather was wounded in the First World War
and suffered wounds that later killed him?

Having ordered lunch, the children now begin to talk
to each other. Suddenly I feel the pressure to pose a question
to the sisters, but it is Annette who asks the first
question. 'Do you think my dad would have got proper
recognition if he wasn't black?' I have to think for a moment
for this is a somewhat blunter version of a question that
I
was hoping to pose to the sisters. 'Although,' continues
Annette, 'somebody told me that there are only two statues
to black men in England. One is just along the river here,
the one for Nelson Mandela, and the other is of our dad.
The one that's in Warwick.' For a moment it occurs to
me that in a sense she has answered her own question, but
she continues. 'But there should be more recognition for
black people, shouldn't there? And the one in Warwick has
happened relatively recently.'

Two days after winning the world middleweight title,
twenty-three-year-old Randolph Turpin found himself on
the balcony of Leamington Spa Town Hall with a microphone
before him and being asked to make a formal speech.
He began, but clearly he was not comfortable with the
situation he found himself in and so he departed from
the text and decided to thank the crowd in what he called
'me own language'. There was nothing pretentious or
affected about Turpin. He was a working-class kid who
was neither overly proud of, nor ashamed of, his roots. He
was not hoping to secretly ascend through the ranks of
the class system and become 'accepted' by the middle or
upper classes. I suggest to the sisters that a combination
of race and class probably operated against their father
being fully recognised, and I ask them what they think he
would be doing now were he still alive. Both are sure that
he would still have something to do with boxing, probably
working with youngsters as a trainer of some kind.
'How about media work?' I ask. They think for a moment,
but I quickly continue. 'His face wouldn't have fit, right?'
Charmaine nods. 'Yes, that's probably right.' In England
issues of race and class frequently operate hand in hand,
and had Randolph Turpin lived it seems clear to me that
he would undoubtedly have 'suffered' as much for his class
as for his race.

Annette steals a quick glance at Charmaine. 'You know,
our grandmother had to deal with a lot of racial abuse
after her husband died. She got it because she had black
kids. Five of them, but she always stuck by her children.
Mum told us that. Mum never told us anything about
anybody that was bad. When we were growing up she just
let us make our own minds up about things.' Charmaine
nods, and then takes over from Annette. 'But if we wanted
to know then she would tell us her opinion, but only if
we asked. After our dad died we left Leamington Spa, but
we would sometimes come back and see people. Our mum
would bring us from Wales, but she didn't badmouth
anyone.' Annette's eyes light up. 'For instance,' says Annette,
'I idolised my Uncle Dick.' She stops abruptly. 'Mum never
said anything to me until I started to ask questions about
what had happened with the family, but even then it was
just her opinion. You know, you should see pictures of
her back then in the fifties. She was beautiful and glamorous,
just like a film star. But when it came to family and
questions about our dad she just let us make our own
minds up.'