Ted Kid Lewis

TED "KID" LEWIS d1970. English professional boxer who twice won the World Welterweight Championship (147lb). His career record 301 Fights (232 wins / 46 losses / 23 draws). He is often ranked amongst the all-time greats, with ESPN ranking him 41st on their list of the 50 Greatest Boxers of All-Time and boxing historian Bert Sugar placing him 46th in his Top 100 Fighters catalogue. Statistical boxing website Boxrec ranks him as the 17th best welterweight of all-time and the 7th best UK boxer ever. During the early 1960s, he was befriended by the notorious Kray twins ; the boxing-infatuated gangland bosses enjoyed bringing the famous old champion to their parties and charity evenings and they even used him as a decoy when arranging the escape of a fellow criminal from Dartmoor prison. In his final years, after his wife died, he was afflicted with failing eyesight and Parkinsons disease. From 1966 he lived comfortably in a south London retirement home for the Jewish elderly, Nightingale House in Clapham. He died there aged 75 in October 1970