Henry Cooper by Robert Edwards Page B

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    Research revealed that the wages at Sydenham Gasworks, from where they had carried sacks of coal to Bellingham during the war, the wages were a halfpenny an hour better, and so they promptly tried that. But even higher wages were available quite locally, on Bellingham Estate itself, where a builder was allegedly paying 10½d (just under 5p) an hour. It was dangerous roofing work, 60 feet up, with no harness. It was during this time at Bellingham that Henry had a nasty accident, which would revisit him in later life. While attempting to ride a bicycle with a chimney pot under his arm, he fell off and broke his left elbow. It was, of course, extraordinarily painful, but he needed to work. Unfortunately, there was a three-month waiting list at the local hospital, so the elbow was simply bandaged and he merely rested it a little, until the pain receded, but it later transpired that a chip of bone had been knocked off it and worked its way into the joint. It would stay there as well, slowly being ground down to a fine powder, both by the heavy manual labour he was doing as well as the increasingly arduous work in the gym.
    When the twins discovered that the 10½d an hour was actually a fiction (it turned out to be 10d), they left in high dudgeon. Ultimately, their search for useful employment came as a direct result of their membership of the Eltham club; George Page had a good friend called Reg Reynolds, who ran a successful plastering contractor’s business. It is atrade that George would never leave; better still, much later on, Reynolds would become his father-in-law. So, finally they had found a business that they could learn, and that would actually start to financially support them. Settled at last, they concentrated on their boxing to the exclusion of almost everything else.
    The trade was quite good for them; Henry plastered with his left hand, George with his right and the effort required to mix a fair-sized load was considerable. Even the arm movements developed the right muscles so, coupled with the gym work, both boys quickly became extraordinarily fit.
    But there was some debate as to whether he could go to Helsinki for the 1952 Olympics, to represent Britain at light heavyweight division; he was the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) champion and had been since April, when he had outpointed Joe MacLean in the final, but the six weeks loss of earnings, perhaps £25, which would be the result, was economically important to the Cooper household at Farmstead Road. If Henry didn’t go, then there were plenty of boxers who could. In the end Lily simply increased her work rate and, by dint of even more charlady work, financed the gap.
    The Helsinki Olympics had originally been scheduled to take place in the late summer of 1940, while Henry and George were still living in Lancing, and the Olympic village really dated from then. The British boxing team had high expectations, in fact, and had every reason to be optimistic, but the boxing was to be dominated by America.
    The 1952 Olympics were extremely political, taking place as they did on the borders of the Soviet Union; not only was the Korean War in full swing, there was a particular localissue. Twelve years before, the Red Army had invaded Finland without declaring war, and the memories of that action were still fresh in the minds of the locals. As a result, security for the USSR contingent was strict, on the Soviet side to prevent defections and on the Finnish side to protect the athletes from being attacked, as the Finns had no reason to love its huge Eastern neighbour. It made for a rather tense Games. Henry’s first bout was scratched, propelling him forward, but in the second round he came up against the Russian Anatoli Perov, who, of course, he had never met, for security reasons, and who beat him on a 2:1 split decision. Two out of the three judges were from Warsaw Pact countries, one from France.
    Henry’s defeat gave him plenty of time to watch the