The Legendary Irish Pugilist: John Langan was born in Clondalkin in 1798

John “Jack” Langan was a bare-knuckle pugilist who was born in May 1798 in Clondalkin, reports Ryan Butler.

Paul Langan (no relation), who lives in Ontario, Canada, and is of Irish descent, has written a book about Ireland’s legendary boxer for the first time.

The book is about his formative years and contains a lot of discussion about the two great 74- and 76-round fights with England’s Tom Spring.

After then, the book chronicles Langan’s retirement in Liverpool as a brewer and publicist until his passing.

Paul had been “researching another subject” and came across a Canadian newspaper that had a full review of Jack’s second fight with Tom Spring, from June 1824, that lasted 74 rounds.

Paul was amazed by how long the fight lasted and the vivid description of each round of the battle in the news article.

There was also an illustration of the fight in the article, which was well done.

He decided to research the history of Jack Langan further and noticed there was a gap, and no one had done a book on him. He put together this small book to celebrate the history of this great Irish pugilist

Paul usually works on several historical publications at once, just to ensure he does not ‘burn out’ on any one topic; this book took about a year to get done using this system.

According to Paul, the biggest challenge in creating this book was just finding “enough information” on the subject to make the book.

Jack’s life happened a long time ago, and there was only so much information available.

In this case, there was very limited information on Jack that was repeated over the years, and Paul had to work hard just to find enough information for this 124-page book.

It would also prove to be a challenge living in Canada and researching a topic of Irish origins.

With the internet, it was more a case of relentless sleuthing to find whatever information on Jack that he could.

He hopes to return to Ireland this year for another visit and would appreciate it if a history group in Dublin, particularly Clondalkin, would have him come over for a talk and a book release.

People can reach out to him through his website if anyone is interested.

He will continue to do historical booklets and books on eclectic topics, most of which are Canada-related.

Paul would like to thank Dónal Murray for encouraging him to do this project.

He will self-publish the book, and it will be available on Amazon in Ireland no later than May 1—possibly earlier, given that editors are currently reviewing it.