William Thompson (boxer) - Legacy

Legacy

A public house in Sneinton, Nottingham was named after its famous resident, the Old Wrestlers pub was converted to Bendigo's in 1957 and became a popular pub among Sneinton locals. Ironically the pub was forced to close in the late 1990s due to brawling and re-opened as The Hermitage in 1999. There are currently no plans to return to the original name, however locals still refer to the pub as Bendigo's and the concrete statue of him that stood above the public house was recently removed . But again in 2009 the pub closed again due in part to the recession.

The area of Sneinton just north east of the pub falls within the Nottinghamshire Police beat called Bendigo. This covers the area from Kentwood Rd north east to Highcliffe Rd and part of Colwick Wood, including the north part of Racecourse Rd (opposite the entrance to Nottingham racecourse). Just off this road is a small new build housing area, the main road being Bendigo Lane.

One of the trams operated by Nottingham Express Transit carries the name of Bendigo Thompson.

The city of Bendigo in Victoria, Australia is indirectly named after Thompson. An early Australian shepherd on the Ravenswood Run was also a bare-knuckle boxer with a style reminiscent of Bendigo, and hence was given the same nickname, which was then applied to the area as Bendigo's Creek. The town that grew up around the area in the 19th century was named as Sandhurst but reverted to Bendigo in 1891.

In Bestwood, a suburban part of Nottingham, there is a small copse known locally as "Bendigo's Ring". Legend has it that his spirit haunts the place, trying to exact revenge on the children that taunted him when he was often found there drunk.

A character named Gonolph Bendigo, clearly meant to be analogous to William Thompson, appeared in the second series of Defoe, a comic anthologised in 2000AD. Although Defoe is set in the seventeenth, rather than nineteenth, century, the character owes a lot to the real-life boxer, being a retired bare-knuckle fighter of note whose nickname was also 'Bendy,' and who famously defeated a Ben Caunt.