youngbrit

Williams [and] Young Britt (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• Joe said:

  After a false start (see my comment on this photo of Young Britt and Kid Williams), I've been able to identify both of the boxers in this photo, thanks to the book "Baltimore's Boxing Legacy" by Thomas Schaif (Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2003.) On page 7 it says:

  "On Bond Street, just around the corner from Fleet, stands the building where Johnny Gutenko became Kid Williams. In a small room behind a confectionery store—run by Tom the Greek—Williams learned to box with the help of local boxer Young Britt."

  This identifies the Young Britt in this photo as the bantamweight born in 1890 whose real name was Henry Treffinger (bout list at BoxRec.) Kid Williams (1893-1963) was born John Gutenko in Copenhagen, Denmark. In his long ring career he fought more than 200 bouts, winning 156 of them, and held the title of Bantamweight Champion of the World from 1914 to 1917 (bout list at BoxRec.)

• Joe said:

  Looking at other photos of Kid Williams (I haven't found any non-LOC photos of Young Britt), I'm wondering if Bain got the identities switched. Look at these photos of Kid Williams from BoxRec and from Cyber Boxing Zone Encyclopedia. See the other LOC photo I linked to in my comment above, too, which shows both boxers from their other side. To my eye, the photos of Williams from the other sites both more closely resemble the blond on the right in this photo and the left in the other Bain photo than they do the darker fellow identified in the Bain captions as Williams. There are also photos of Williams on page 8 and page 53 of the Thomas Schaif book I cite in my previous comment. They are definitely the same blond guy on the BoxRec and Cyber Boxing pages, so any error is not theirs. I'm pretty sure Bain's captioner got this wrong. Anybody else see the resemblances I do?

• The Library of Congress said:

  whyaduck: Thanks for all of your research on these boxers. We'll add the information to our source catalog. We're not sure about whether the identities are switched or not so will probably hold off on making a note about that.

• Joe said:

  I've found a small photograph of Henry Treffinger, aka Young Britt, on this page. It convinces me that whoever put the caption onto these negatives reversed the identities. Note that the photos from the other sites show that Kid Williams parted his (light) hair on the right, and Young Britt parted his (dark) hair on the left. Other features (forehead height, nose shape, jawline, ear size and shape) strongly indicate a reversal as well.

• Richard Norton said:

  Possibly: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Williams