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Boxer fights from grave for prize purses
Elley Bennett was one of the most loved Australian sportsmen. He was
a boxer who had no peers during the peak of his career. Bennett was
born at the Barambah Settlement (known as Cherbourg), near Murgon,
Queensland, on April 4, 1924. He died on April 4, 1981, and was buried
at Bundaberg.
Most of his youth was spent on Fraser Island where he helped his
father, Roger, to load timber logs and then drive a bullock team
across the island to the ocean side so the logs could be shipped
to Maryborough. He entered the fight game because he had no job
and was broke. He left Maryborough after an old fighter told him
to go to Brisbane and find boxing trainer Snowy Hill. It was a good
decision, because they became a great partnership.
Bennett was the Australian bantamweight boxing champion from 1948
until 1951. He then held the national featherweight title from 1951
until 1954. Back in the May of 1949 Bennett knocked out Cecil Schoonmaker,
of the United States, who was the number one world title contender.
Elley made short work of him with a right hand thunderbolt to score
in six rounds at the Sydney Stadium.
An attempt was made to arrange a match between Bennett and Mexican
world champion Manuel Ortiz. However, Ortiz simply refused to meet
the Australian. A few months later Ortiz was called on to defend
his world title against the South African Vic Toweel, and lost.
Negotiations were then opened with the Toweel camp and a world
title match between Toweel and Bennett was arranged. But it was
cancelled the moment South African promoters found out that Bennett
was an Aborigine. At that period of time, white South Africans banned
coloured persons from taking part in sport.
Bennett later lost his bantamweight title to Jimmy Carruthers in
Sydney. It was more than well recorded in Australian boxing records
that Carruthers went on to win the world championship in South Africa
from Towell with a first round knockout.
Bennett had an amazing short left hook. It travelled only about
31cm and it was a power-plus blow. In many of his championship fights
he would slip behind on points early, but would storm home to win
by a sensational knockout. In a title defence against the tough
Ray Coleman at the Sydney Stadium in 1951, Bennett was well behind
on points with 30 seconds to go before the final bell. Bennett then
knocked him out.
The fact that he was an Australian champion for six straight years
in a period of exceptionally good fighters was ample proof of his
ability. There was no doubt in the minds of countless Australian
boxing experts that Bennett had the ability to win the world championship.
It was a great tragedy that he was denied the opportunity because
he was world class.
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By Mark Oberhardt
12 March 2003 - Relatives of an Aboriginal boxer of the 1940s and 50s
are suing the State Government for $18 million in stolen wages.
They claim Elley Bennett, who won 40 fights by knockout, earned a fortune
as a boxer but died a pauper after his money was apparently dissipated
by a government agency supposedly protecting him.
In the Supreme Court in Brisbane yesterday, Bennetts descendants
filed a writ against the Queensland Public Trustee and State Government
claiming more than $18 million.
The figure was reached on an assessment of the £12,000 they say
Bennett earned - at current monetary value - plus interest for up to 55
years.
The Courier-Mail first highlighted the mystery of Bennetts missing
money in 1991.
His cousin John Dalungdalee Jones spent years putting together an 83-page
claim on behalf of the beneficiaries of Bennetts estate but said
the court action had far wider ramifications for thousands of other Queensland
Aborigines.
Mr Jones said the Bennett case would be a landmark case for others wanting
inheritances for work done by their relatives.
He claimed millions of dollars was owed to the descendants of Aborigines
whose pay was put into the Aborigines Welfare Fund.
We are going to deliver a knock-out blow to the Government because
they have no defence to the claim, he said.
Mr Jones said Premier Peter Beattie had said he had put aside $50 million
of public money to pay Aborigines with legitimate claims.
However, he said only $2000 to $4000 would be paid per person.
We are not after public money, Mr Jones said.
We are after what is rightfully ours from money earned by our relatives
and put into trust.
Bennetts money apparently disappeared into the Aborigines Welfare
Fund which was the subject of a year-long state government inquiry a decade
ago.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister Judy Spence said individuals had a right
to bring their cases before the courts, but said it was the governments
role to defend the taxpayers dollar.
Ms Spence said there was little benefit in her commenting specifically
on this case.
Born in Cherbourg, in the South Burnett region, Bennett was among the
biggest money-earners in boxing for eight years until he retired at 31
in 1954.
He had 59 professional bouts, including 40 knockout wins.
He was Australian bantamweight champion and then featherweight champion
between 1948 and 1954.
He was at one stage also the No. 1 contender for the world bantamweight
title.
One of his few defeats was at the hands of Jimmy Carruthers who later
won a world title.
A colour ban stopped Bennett from going to South Africa to fight Vic
Toweel, from whom Carruthers won the world title.
Newspaper clippings at the time quoted his trainer Snowy Hill and state
government ministers assuring the public Bennett would be financially
secure when he retired.
However, Bennett spent years without a job and was a regular before Brisbane
Magistrates Courts on a series of street offences such as vagrancy
and drunkenness.
He died of pneumonia in 1981, aged 55, and was buried in a Bundaberg
cemetery.
Most of the money earned by Queensland Aborigines from 1884, including
Bennetts winnings, was paid into the state Aborigines Welfare Fund.
There are no records to show if Bennett received any of his prizemoney
after he retired.
Source: Courier
Mail
Further Reading:
- Work and Wages - National Perspectives
Dr Rosalind Kidd, Delivered at the University of Adelaide, April 2003
During most of the twentieth century, in every Australian state and
territory, one group of people has been subjected to physical confinement
and bureaucratic supervision on a scale otherwise applied only to the
criminally culpable or the mentally deficient. Yet in almost every case
these people had committed no crime. Without due process and without
right of appeal they, and too often their children and grandchildren,
were sentenced in perpetuity. For most people escape from this internment
was conditional on walking away from family, country and culture. This
was your reality if you were of Aboriginal descent.
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Stolen Wages National Situation Round-up
May 2003 - Strong anecdotal evidence exists that wages and savings
were controlled and are now missing. Stolen
Wages Update ANTaR Qld Newsletter March 2003 - Our struggle is
now being fought on several fronts as well as nationally.
- Stolen wages activist accepts Government reparations
offer
31 March 2003 - "They've given me up to 12 months to live, I have
a death sentence and that was the thing that made me decide ... To put
it bluntly I don't have the extra time to go and fight it in court but
my heart is there and if I had that time I would be there fighting.
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'Stolen Wages, Stolen Lives'
29 April 2003 - Speech by Alfred Lacey, Deputy Chair Palm Island Council.
When I was a young man on Palm Island in the early 1980s the phrase
'stolen wages', was used in my community by those who knew they had
worked, knew they had been paid and wanted to know where it had gone
... My people want ... an honest settlement which acknowledges the
value of their work and the pain of their deprivation.
- Black Lives Government Lies
13 February 2003 -The launch of the second edition of 'Black lives,
government lies' by Dr Rosalind Kidd.
- Investigators to report on national stolen
wages case
22 January 2003 - A national team of investigators have commenced work
on a report into the lost and stolen wages and savings issue. But the
probe will go much further than the Queensland border, with the team
setting its sights on determining whether Governments controlled and
then lost or stole Indigenous money in all states and territories.
- Unions back workers over Stolen Wages
20 January 2003 - National Tertiary Education Union - An online petition,
critical of the Queensland Government¹s handling of the stolen
wages issue, will be launched tomorrow at the Queensland Council of
Unions. The petition, posted a week ago under the sponsorship of Member
for South Brisbane Anna Bligh, has already drawn well over 100 signatures.
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