Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/367

Rh prize-fighter has given it a wider reputation than all the honest hammers it swings from year to year. "The Tipton Slasher" once had as popular a fame as the Stilton Cheese, and doubtless nine in ten of the people who pass the station on the railway are reminded of that celebrated bruiser of the prize-ring. Still the town is no worse, perhaps, for producing him, or at least has outgrown his influence and example. Cock-fighting was for many generations the favourite sport of all these communities, and the transition from shorter to taller bipeds was easy and natural. In 1744 John Wesley attempted to effect an entrance into the town with his Bible, "but finding the mob were raging up and down," he returned to Birmingham. The following year he succeeded however, and preached on Tipton Green, and, though greeted at first with a few clods, he at last obtained a hearing for such a sermon as they never listened to before, even if they had ever heard one at all. The town now contains four churches, a Baptist, and thirteen Methodist chapels, embracing the three divisions of that denomination. This fact proves pretty conclusively that Wesley's preaching here, in face of clods, was not in vain. The population has doubled itself since 1831, numbering at the present time nearly 30,000. It is enriched with seemingly exhaustless stores of coal, and presents a scene, especially at night,