Boxer, Bouncer and Now a Doctor

Jeff Slater Doctor

Description

It all started in a small industrial town in the north of England. Walking into a boxing gym was the start of an amazing metamorphosis for the 14-year-old. At age 20, he had developed into a 16-stone boxer, powerlifter and ferocious street fighter, with a knock-out punch in both hands. This is the story of a young man who, lacking education, immigrated to Australia at just 18 years of age only to experience the twilight world of sleaze and violence in Perth’s underbelly, confronting and often overcoming the many challenges he encountered. Returning to England at 21, he mastered his craft as a bouncer and street fighter, attended two universities, obtained three degrees and was awarded a doctorate at the age of 39.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528967471
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Boxer, Bouncer and Now a Doctor
Doctor Jeff Slater
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-11-30
Boxer, Bouncer and Now a Doctor About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six The Koolabha Tavern Chapter Seven The Charles Hotel Chapter Eight Sydney Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve The Circulation Chapter Thirteen Bradford University-V-The Circulation Chapter Fourteen The Angels Chapter Fifteen The United States Chapter Sixteen The Queens Chapter Seventeen Highlands Adolescent Psychiatric Unit Chapter Eighteen The Angels: Back to the Future Chapter Nineteen On The Road Again Chapter Twenty Two University Degrees Chapter Twenty-One Becoming a Professional: Learning a Violent Trade Chapter Twenty-Two A Master of Science and a Master of Violence Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Lancaster University
About the Author

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Doctor Jeff Slater was born in 1956 in Burnley, Lancashire, and attended two village schools before being sent to a very violent all-male secondary modern school several miles away for failing his eleven-plus.
At the age of fourteen, he joined a boxing gym to learn to protect himself from the many physical attacks he was subjected to, both at school and on the street. Leaving Burnley in 1974, aged just eighteen, he immigrated to Perth in Western Australia.
He returned to England in 1977 as a bouncer and streetfighter. He was awarded a doctorate aged thirty-nine.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my daughter, Ayshea.
Copyright Information ©
Doctor Jeff Slater (2020)
The right of Doctor Jeff Slater to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528933445 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528967471 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Dr Greyson Holden, Jaques Makin and Professor Dan Shapiro, my friends and fellow bouncers in Australia and England.
Chapter One
"How Working-Class Kids Get
Working-Class Jobs." (Paul Willis)
‘ Boxer, Pub Bouncer and now a Doctor ’ – Lancashire Evening Telegraph. They were the headlines in the local paper on the 4 th of July 1996. Below is a brief excerpt of one of my experiences as a bouncer.
Jeff: “You either walk down the stairs or I’ll fuckin’ knock you down ’em.”
Blondie: “Fuck off, cunt.”
Jeff: “I’m fuckin’ telling yer. You can have it either way.”
Darkie: “Leave him, you fuckers.”
Ray: “Jim, get the bastard!”
Jeff: “Right, you fucker, stay on the floor or I’ll smack you again.”
Ray: “Fuckin stay down, cunt.”
Blondie: “Fuck off, you fuckin’ bastards.”
Ray: “Fuck off.”
Jeff: “I’ve told you, you cunt, I’ll fuckin smack you again. I don’t want to but I fuckin’ will.”
Born on the first of January 1956, in Burnley or Bank Hall Hospital to be precise. My mother and father were from a working-class family and were themselves working-class, my dad worked for himself as a bookmaker. Mum was originally from Liverpool, Dad from Burnley. They had three children, counting me. We were not a particularly close family but we were there for each other. My mother and I were close. My earliest memories of my childhood were a mixture of great fun and more sombre moments. Fortunately, the family lived just outside of the town in a very pleasant suburb surrounded by countryside. Friends were easily made in such a welcoming environment and together we would explore the landscape around us. Fishing, collecting bird’s eggs and haymaking in the summer. Locating a nest was a hard and laborious task but absolutely exhilarating when we found one.
We never robbed the nest completely; we would take two eggs from a clutch of four or five and blow the eggs by inserting a hole in the top of the egg and one in the bottom and blow from the top of the egg leaving just the shell.
The shell would then be varnished, labelled and placed on a tray full of cotton wool. Regrettably, even in these idyllic surroundings, violence was not far away. Martin W was a year older than me and about three stone heavier. He had no contact with his birth father and lived with his stepdad, and biological mum.
Martin W was fearless and would fight anyone but he was also a bully. He would often accompany me on my sojourns into the countryside. My survival skills developed quickly in order to avoid being beaten, and for most of the time they worked but not always, and I would often receive a smack in the mouth from him for no apparent reason.
Martin W was jailed many years later for sexually abusing his own children. Dave, who was a year older than me and lived in the neighbourhood introduced me to archery. For one pound and five shillings we could purchase a Wooden Bow from Cockers Sports Shop, the arrows were one shilling each. My parents agreed to buy me one as a future birthday and Christmas present.
On the weekend, we would take the weapons to the nearby field and practice. Martin B was a year younger than me and asked if he could have a shot. Martin B was not very tall for his age and running was not his forte. He was allowed a shot, on one condition, he would have to ‘Run the Arrow’.
Rod Steiger had appeared in the movie The Run of the Arrow . He had to try and escape from the Apache who gave him a head start, before they tried to kill him with the bow and arrow. Martin B agreed and after a few shots, set off running. He was given a ten-second start. Like Rod Steiger, he was heavy and slow, and like Steiger, he stood little chance of escape.
Summing up all my strength to pull back the bowstring until the metal tip of the arrow was flush with the frame of the wooden bow, and like an archer from the Battle of Agincourt, I uncurled my fingers. Martin B was shot in the middle of the back some three hundred feet away. He screamed, arched his back and dropped to the floor on his front, wriggling and moaning, imitating a seizure. He was in severe pain for a few minutes but was okay.
School was tolerated until my mother agreed to move me to another one, aged six years old, the headmaster, Mr Clitheroe was a bully, and subjected me to unnecessary violence at an early age. “Where is your grammar?” he asked me.
“In bed with my grandma,” was the reply. He hit me with a closed fist in the mouth, aged about nine years old. The teachers believed my intelligence was low and accordingly, my behaviour and actions corresponded to the label given to me.
The eleven-plus examination was, as predicted, failed. Awaiting me now was a very violent Victorian school, built in the late 1800s only four miles and two bus journeys from where I lived, but another world away, as Joseph Conrad would say, a journey into the ‘Heart of Darkness’.
The school was surrounded by row upon row of tiny terraced houses, built in the Victorian era. Many had no bathrooms or indoor toilets. The lads attending the school lived in these houses, in very poor conditions. Unlike the semi-detached house in the suburbs, where I lived.
Barden Secondary Modern School by its very existence reinforced in one the reality of failure, of being second best, only the clever kids passed the eleven-plus and they attended the grammar school. It was almost like having a criminal record at the age of eleven.
One was physically excluded from certain occupations, and also psychologically excluded. Conversely, the kids who went to the grammar school had the confidence and well-being associated with success. They were expected to perform well and were taught and treated accordingly by their teachers.
There existed a form of educational apartheid, or more precisely, a class system with different strata existing within the working-class. The public school represented the very top of the class system, accommodating middle class pupils. The secondary modern represented the lowest strata within the working-class. Universities were also a product of the class system with mostly middle-class kids in attendance.
In the 1970s, very few working-class kids from the secondary modern schools attended university. The expectations of the pupils at Barden was low, matched by the low expectations of the teachers.
Mr Smith was the maths teacher, his wife taught music, and he was giving a maths lesson to my form 1c, and Danny Abrahams put his hand up to be given permission to finish off the calculations Mr Smith was illustrating on the blackboard.
“Put your hand down, Abrahams, if you knew the answer you’d be at grammar school.” The school in many ways resembled a prison. Like Strangeways Prison in Manchester, it was built in the Victorian era; it was dark and depressing. The inmates at Barden School were given sentences of four years for the crime of failing their eleven-plus. The majority would leave at fifteen-years-old, after serving their full tariff. The secondary modern school, like a prison, was a place of confinement and control. Not as claimed, a place of learning.
The state sent its losers to schools like Barden, just as it sent its criminals to prisons like Strangeways. Barden and Strangeways, awaited those who fell short of society’s academic expectations or