Career
Born in Rotherham in 1894, Tom Gummer served as a Private (and later Corporal and Sergeant) in the York and Lancaster Regiment of the British Army, and had his first professional fight in 1914. A planned fight in July 1914 against David Cohen (aka Dick Simmonds) resulted in a court case after Cohen took payment for the fight but then disappeared after seeing Gummer and becoming "nervous and frightened". Gummer suffered his first defeat to Gus Platts in August 1915, at which time Gummer was a heavyweight and Platts a welterweight and over 2 stones lighter, and his second to Harry Curzon in November.
Gummer"s final fight was against Ted Kid Lewis in February 1922 at The Dome in Brighton.
Intended as a fight for Lewis"s British middleweight title, it was fought as a non-title catchweight bout after Gummer failed to make the weight. Lewis knocked Gummer out in the first round.
After retiring from boxing, Gummer played football for Rotherham Eastwood in the 1920s and worked as a boxing referee between the late 1920s and the 1940s. Tom Gummer married Myra McMahon and they had four children together.
He died in Rotherham in 1982.
