Love that this article promises I will find out where Hezekiah Moscow went (he disappeared from London in 1892) in my forthcoming book. Uh, I better get on that then. No pressure 😅 In seriousness, I DO know where he went, but there's scant evidence. And the WHY is a mystery. Will keep trying... - ThreadSky

oispooky.bsky.social • 95 days ago

Love that this article promises I will find out where Hezekiah Moscow went (he disappeared from London in 1892) in my forthcoming book. Uh, I better get on that then.

No pressure 😅

In seriousness, I DO know where he went, but there's scant evidence. And the WHY is a mystery. Will keep trying...

Reposted from Sarah Elizabeth Cox

I'm sitting in a cafe at Goldsmiths having a bit of a cry. Not for the first time 😂

Thank you @davidolusoga.bsky.social, thank you @jaseokundaye.bsky.social. Thank you for this acknowledgement, but mostly thank you for sharing Hezekiah's story as it should be 🙏🏻

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/fe...

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seanrobbins.bsky.social•95 days ago

My first thought on reading your original blogs was that he may have gone on the run, perhaps in fear for his life. The boxing world at the time over-lapped with some very powerful and ruthless figures. It is said that Charles Sabini was a boxer in his youth.

oispooky.bsky.social•95 days ago

Ooh! But he left for a place with even more powerful and ruthless figures ;) I've always found it interesting that he went exactly 10 years after he arrived. And just a few months earlier on the 1891 census gave his occupation not as boxer, not as performer, but 'traveller'. A restless spirit...

oispooky.bsky.social•95 days ago

He'd been travelling as teenager before his 1882 arrival in London and he'd been around the UK a bit over the 1880s. But describing himself as a traveller after 10 years in one country seems odd, right? I consider it a clue that he was planning to leave - even if he hadn't told his new wife!

seanrobbins.bsky.social•91 days ago

A few months after Hezekiah went missing in September 1892, the boxer ‘Black Jack’ Stevens was killed in a knife fight in Kent. By Billy Maher, a man who seems to have been employed by John McCarthy. ‘Black Jack’ had been a pupil of Hezekiah’s in 1887 - 88 (and perhaps as early as 1885).

seanrobbins.bsky.social•91 days ago

That could just be coincidence, but as with Alec Munro, no-one was brought to justice for Stevens’ death. There’s a bit of a pattern. Hezekiah may not have felt able to trust the local police. He might have been right not to, for all I know. ;)

seanrobbins.bsky.social•91 days ago

I believe I can place him at an event with John McCarthy, a young Jack Stevens and the Randlords Harry and Barney Barnato, in December 1885. In a pub known for selling undocumented jewellery and gemstones.
The power and the ruthlessness of the Randlords can hardly be doubted.

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