page_title: William Thompson (boxer)
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: William Thompson (boxer) / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Sneinton: statue of Bendigo This concrete statue of the Nottingham bare-knuckle fighter William Abednego Thompson (1811-60) stands over the door of the public house at the corner of Sneinton Hollows and Thurgarton Street which was once named after him. Bendigo had many admirers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote: "You didn't know of Bendigo? / Well that knocks me out! / Who's your board school teacher? / What's he been about? / Chock a block with fairy tales; / Full of useless cram, / And never heard of Bendigo / The Pride Of Nottingham."
context_page_description: William Abednego Thompson was an English bare-knuckle boxer who won the heavyweight championship of England from James Burke on 12 February 1839. He was inducted into The Ring magazine Hall of Fame in 1955, the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Bare Knuckle Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011.
  'Bendigo' is credited for introducing the Southpaw stance.
context_section_description: 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 popular among Sneinton locals. Ironically the pub was forced to close in the late 1990s due to brawling but re-opened as The Hermitage in 1999 and remained in operation for another decade before closing again in 2009.  As of 2013, the building has been renovated and is used for private events, although the statue of Thompson above the entrance still remains and locals commonly refer to the site as Bendigo`s or The Bendigo to this day.
  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 nature reserve on Sunrise Hill that was a copse known locally as "Bendigo's Ring". The name is now mistakenly associated with nearby Glade Hill which still carries a highly visible copse. 
  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.
  A Nottingham-based group called the 'Bendigo Memorial Fund' are raising money to have a statue of Bendigo in Nottingham city centre.
caption: Statue of Bendigo in Sneinton
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