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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.

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, Bennett’s 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 Bennett’s missing money in 1991.

His cousin John Dalungdalee Jones spent years putting together an 83-page claim on behalf of the beneficiaries of Bennett’s 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.”

Bennett’s 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 government’s role to defend the taxpayer’s 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 Magistrate’s 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 Bennett’s 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.
• 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.
• '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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