Jacco Macacco - History

History

Most details on Jacco come from second-hand or fictionalized accounts. In Pictures of Sporting Life and Character (1860), William Pitt Lennox gives a detailed account of Jacco's career: he was landed at Portsmouth where he fought dogs in a number of local sporting arenas before being purchased by a London sporting impresario and transported to Hoxton from where he continued his career, fighting in the Chick Lane and Tottenham Court Road pits, and earned one of his monikers as the "Hoxton Ape". Lennox writes that after biting his owner he was sold to the proprietor of the Westminster Pit, Charles Aistrop. Although he was already somewhat famous, at the Westminster Pit Jacco's fights began to attract spectators from the higher reaches of society and considerable wagers were placed on his fights. Aistrop gave a somewhat different account of Jacco's history. In a statement published in 1825 he claimed that Jacco had belonged to a sailor who had kept him for three years . Jacco had always been very calm but one day suddenly became aggressive over a saucer of milk and lacerated three of the sailor's fingers. The sailor had sold him to a silversmith called Carter from Hoxton. Carter had taught Jacco many tricks, but because the ape was extremely aggressive Carter had to purchase a large sheet of iron to use as a shield whenever he approached him. Carter finally tired of Jacco's constant attempts to attack him and took the ape into a nearby field where he set a dog on him. Jacco defeated both this dog and a second dog, and was then matched against a dog bred for fighting at Bethnal Green. When he also defeated this dog, his reputation began to grow and a fight was fixed for him at the Westminster Pit.

Lewis Strange Wingfield (1842–1891) wrote in his 1883 novel Abigail Rowe: a Chronicle of the Regency of an advertisement for a hundred guinea match between Jacco and "Belcher's celebrated dog Trusty". Pierce Egan also wrote about a battle between the "monkey phenomenon" and a dog in his popular account of the adventures of the characters Tom and Jerry in various sporting venues, Scenes from London Life. Although Egan's account of Tom and Jerry's visit to the Westminster Pit to see the fight between Jacco and the dog is detailed and is accompanied by a fine print by George Cruikshank, it is a humorous fiction and even though it may be based on real events it is impossible to judge how accurate the record of the fight is.

It appears that there was at least one contest between Jacco and the equally renowned white Bull and Terrier bitch, Puss, who belonged to the former prizefighter Tom Cribb. The various accounts of the fight and its outcome appear contradictory: the two animals may have been matched more than once, so reports may be from different fights. Aistrop puts the date of the contest as 13 June 1821. Lennox gives the terms of the fight on which he reports as a wager of fifty pounds that Puss could either kill Jacco or last five minutes with him (almost double the length of time which any of Jacco's previous opponents had managed) and reported Jacco as the victor though he did not record the eventual fate of the dog. Thomas Landseer produced an etching from his own sketch of Fight between Jacko Maccacco a celebrated Monkey and Mr Tho. Cribbs well known bitch Puss which shows the two combatants locked together tearing at one another's throats. Richard Martin, the MP for Galway who was known as "Humanity Dick" for his philanthropy and constant attempts to introduce legislation improve the treatment of animals, gave an impassioned speech to Parliament in 1822 when introducing a bill to prevent the mistreatment of horses, cattle and sheep (his earlier attempt in 1821 had been defeated in the Lords). He claimed that he had seen a bill advertising a fight between Jacco and Puss:

Jacco Macacco, the celebrated monkey, will this day fight Tom Crib's white bitch, Puss. Jacco has fought many battles with some of the first dogs of the day, and has beat them all, and he hereby offers to fight any dog in England of double his own weight.

The result, according to Martin, was that after the fight had gone on for half an hour the dog had its carotid artery severed and Jacco's jaw had been torn away causing the death of both animals within two hours. Martin's bill passed, but later his accounts of acts of animal cruelty were challenged in Parliament. Protected by Parliamentary privilege, he could not be accused of lying, but opponents managed to discredit some of his claims of acts of cruelty. Martin also revised his own account of the outcome of Jacco and Puss's match when he used the fight as an example of cruelty in a 1824 speech, claiming that the dog had been killed, but although the monkey's jaw had been torn away he had not been humanely dispatched but "allowed to languish in torment". Martin's version of Jacco's death was disputed by the owner of the Westminster Pit who claimed that Jacco had dealt with Puss in two and a half minutes (although he had not injured her fatally) and had died 15 months later of an unrelated illness. According to Aistrop, Jacco was then stuffed and sold to a Mr Shaw of Mitchum Common, which would have been impossible if the monkey's jaw was torn away. An account from George Charles Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley in My Life and Recollections also contradicted Martin's tale. Berkeley stated that he had attended the pit on the night of the match and had seen Tom Cribb cradling the dog's head in a suspicious manner before the fight began. When the dog was turned loose it immediately latched onto the monkey and gave Jacco no opportunity to fight back. Despite this the dog had appeared to be bleeding and slowly weakened. Cries from the audience eventually led to the contest being declared a draw and the two combatants were separated. Berkeley realised that Cribb had cut the dog before releasing it and this was confirmed by the unrepentant Cribb who claimed that it was for the purposes of giving the audience a good show. There is a possibility that the two animals fought twice: a extant poster from 1821 advertised a match between Jacco and a 19-pound bitch that was to take place on 27 November 1821 and referred to a match between Jacco and Puss that had already taken place.