Jimmy DeForest Papers

James Royal "Jimmy" DeForest was a prominent boxing trainer based in New York City and New Jersey during the early twentieth century. According to the biographical details that DeForest often told, as a child he toured with his family's trapeze and aerial artists troupe, performing in the United States and Europe with Wulff's Circus. According to DeForest, his parents believed that a girl trapeze artist would attract more fans than a boy trapeze artist, so he preformed as a girl, wore girl's clothes, and grew his hair long for the benefit of the act. DeForest said that he ran away while in England during the late nineteenth century and took a ship back to the United States, where he joined Barnum and Bailey's circus. After DeForest left the circus, he studied boxing and the development of the body and found success teaching boxing in New York City. He trained or conditioned many successful boxers in the early twentieth century including Jack Dempsey, Kid McCoy, and many others. He published popular boxing training manuals. During his career, he accumulated a large collection of boxing artifacts and memorabilia that were lost in house fire in the 1920s. DeForest retired from boxing in 1926 and died in New Jersey in 1932.