Boxer Cuthbert Taylor’s memorial, Merthyr Tydfil
Inside Merthyr Labour Club is a plaque honouring British amateur flyweight champion Cuthbert Taylor. He trained here in the years after the club was established in the town’s ancient Court House to give working people a place to socialise and take part in sports.
Cuthbert was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1909. When the 1911 census was taken, he was 16 months old and living at 16 John Street with his father Cuthbert, aged 26, and mother Margaret Ann, 24. She was born in Swansea.
Cuthbert senior worked as a colliery tip haulier. He was born in Liverpool and had Jamaican ancestry. This denied Cuthbert junior many fight opportunities because of a rule then in place which barred British boxers who didn’t have two white parents. He won over 150 fights but never had the chance to try for world champion titles in his weight classes.
He competed at the 1928 Olympic Games, becoming the first non-white boxer to represent Britain at the games. He became a professional boxer after the games.
In 1935 he fought Freddy Miller, the American featherweight world champion, in a charity bout to raise money for families of the 266 miners who had died in the Gresford colliery disaster, Wrexham, in 1934. Cuthbert retired from boxing in 1947 and died 30 years later.
The plaque was unveiled in 2021 by local MP Gerald Jones, who had highlighted Cuthbert’s story in the House of Commons.
Postcode: CF47 8DU View Location Map