Boxing legend Joe Attwood's memorabilia up for auction

A legendary Black Country boxer's gloves will come under the auctioneer's hammer in Staffordshire this week.

A large collection of personal memorabilia that belonged to Halesowen-born Joe Attwood was taken along to a recent valuation day run by Richard Winterton Auctioneers in Walsall.

The welterweight, who was born in 1890 in Hayley Green, fled to Wales to work in the mines and then to Canada after being accused of throwing a fight in his home town and being chased down the street.

Joe, who died in1975, was reputed to have been able to hold his own in any fight.

The medals to be featured in the sale from Thursday and Friday include his first welterweight medal from Paris 1919, a 1918 gold winners medal, his First World War and Victory medals and a First World War City of Welland gold medal. The haul also includes his 1922 licence card to fight in New York, photographs and programmes.

The collection is lot 450 in the antique, 20th Century and collectors' sale at Lichfield Auction Centre, which is also being filmed for ITV's Dickinson's Real Deal.

The sale's illustrated catalogue can be viewed here.