Cricketers’ Arms Hotel, Surry Hills, NSW. Picture: Mick Roberts Collection
JOE Wallis (pictured), hosted the Cricketers’ Arms Hotel, in the inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills during the 1940s.
The popular publican was born Joseph John Newton, to working-class parents, at St Peters.
As a teenager, he boxed for money and masculine honour.
After substituting in a bout for a friend called Wallis, he assumed his mate’s surname and went on to fight as a featherweight, but soon turned welterweight.
In later years he became a successful boxing referee before becoming host of the Cricketers’ Arms, which he was granted a license, in October 1941.
Wallis also ran a gymnasium and became well-known for giving away milk to children from poor families, outside his Surry Hills’ pub.
Joe Wallis died of cancer, aged 63, on October 30 1952.
The Cricketers’Arms, Surry Hills, Sydney, 1949, when Joe Wallis was host. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University
JOE WALLIS, well-known boxing referee, giving away milk to children of the district outside his hotel in Surry Hills recently. The milk had been given to him by one of his customers in exchange for a bottle of beer. It was the first milk the children had drunk that day. From left: Donald Friedwald, Alex Bradshaw, Windsor Chrispin (Wallis extreme right).
– Call and Bailey’s Weekly (Perth)Thursday 25 January 1945
Boxers Harry Collins and Sid Godfrey shake hands in front of referee and Cricketers Arms publican, Joe Wallis C1940. Picture: S.J. Hood.
Funeral of a fight referee
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Categories: Publicans, Sydney hotels
Hey Mick,
Would love to learn more. What is the best way to get in contact with you?
Cheers!
Email: timegents@yahoo.com
The first pub I worked in about 1972. Bill Haisler and his washboard band played there every saturday arvo It was a horseshoe bar with straight people drinking on the Foveaux st side and the gay guys on the other side while out the back in a very dark bar the gay women drank, I was never game to go out there. Joe Wallis’s photo was still on the wall along with a host of fighters of the time Funny but great times at that pub.