Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes’s popularity, however, was evident from 1722 onwards, drawing crowds to both her single-combat fights and to mixed bouts with her partner and eventual husband, John Stokes. The popularity of these bouts was very likely confined to the “low haunts” of boxing amphitheaters and the like, with their crowds of rowdy regulars plus a large helping of assorted male “gentry” from the higher classes who delighted in rubbing shoulders with the wild assortment of working men and women at the fights—scenes captured in the drawings of the noted 18th century artist William Hogarth.
The allure of women’s contests at places like Hockley in the Hole can be surmised from this snippet in the London Journal from August 31, 1723, which stated, “Scarce a Week passes but we have a Boxing-Match at the Bear-Garden between Women.”[5]
Another example was Elizabeth Wilkinson’s bout on August 8th, 1723, at the Boarded House in Marybourne where she faced a basket-woman at Newgate Market known as Joanna Heyfield. Given how close Joanna Heyfield’s name was to Hannah Hyfield, whom she was to have fought in 1722, it is likely the same person, but it is unknown which was her actual name. Also on the “card” was no less a boxing figure than James Figg fighting James Stokes—although their fight was for only three guineas.
The draw of women’s boxing continued as shown by this advertisement in the Weekly Journal from October 1, 1726:
In Islington Road, near Sadler’s Wells, on Monday next, being the 3d of October, will be perform’d a trial of skill by the following Championesses. Whereas I Mary Welch, from the Kingdom of Ireland, being taught, and knowing the noble science of defence, and thought to be the only female of this kind in Europe, understanding there is one in this Kingdom, who has exercised on the publick stage several times, which is Mrs. Stokes, who is stiled the famous Championess of England; I do hereby invite her to meet me, and exercise the usual weapons practis’d on the stage, at her own amphitheatre, doubting not, but to let her and the worthy spectators see, that my judgment and courage is beyond hers.
I Elizabeth Stokes, of the famous City of London, being well known by the name of the Invincible City Championess for my abilities and judgment in the abovesaid science; having never engaged with any of my own sex but I always came off with victory and applause, shall make no apology for accepting the challenge of this Irish Heroine, not doubting but to maintain the reputation I have hitherto establish’d, and shew my country, that the contest of its honour, is not ill entrusted in the present battle with their Championess, Elizabeth Stokes.
Note, The doors will be open’d at two, and the Championesses mount at four.
N.B. They fight in close jackets, short petticoats, coming just below the knee, Holland drawers, white stockings, and pumps.[6]
As can be seen, boxing at this time not only consisted of fighting with fists, but also with short swords called cudgels. The idea of women practicing scientific prizefighting was also introduced, and was in keeping with the growth of boxing as a highly technical sport under the tutelage of James Figg.
The following year, Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes and her husband James Stokes also competed in “mixed-double” pairs. In one such instance the couple fought Robert Barker and Mary Webb. The advertisement for that engagement read in part:
In Islington road, on Monday, being the 17th of July, 1727, will be performed a trial of skill by the following combatants. We Robert Barker and Mary Welsh, from Ireland, having often contaminated out swords in the abdominous coporations of such antagonists as have had the insolence to dispute our skill, do find ourselves once more necessitated to challenge, defy, and invite Mr. Stokes and his bold Amazonian virago to meet us on the state, where we hope to give satisfaction to the honourable Lord of our nation who has laid a wager of twenty guineas on our heads. They that give the most cuts to have the whole money.”[7]
The battle, with its potential for a brutal outcome given that the losing pair would be marked by cuts and gashes from their opponents, was purported to be Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes’s last prizefight.
If the advertisements were any indication, she did not retire after her 1727 bout, but fought in at least one more for the tidy sum of ten pounds at her husband’s amphitheater:
This present Monday, being the 7th of October, will be a complete Boxing Match, by the two following Championesses: Whereas I, Ann Field, of Stoke Newington, ass driver, well-known for my abilities in my own defence, whenever it happened in my way, having been affronted by Mrs Stokes, styled the European Championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of her best skill in Boxing, for 10 pounds; fair rise and fall: and question not but to give her such proofs of my judgment that shall oblige her to acknowledge me Championess of the Stage, to the entire satisfaction of all my friends.
I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought this way since I fought the famous Boxing Woman of Billingsgate 29 minutes and gained a complete victory (which is six years ago); but as the famous ass-woman of Stoke Newington dares me to fight her for the ten pounds, I do assure her I shall not tail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows I shall present her with will be more difficult to digest than any she ever gave her asses.
N.B Attendance will be given at one, and the encounter is to begin at four precisely. There will be the diversion of cudgel playing as usual.[8]
After this fight, there is nothing more on the record that can be found about Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes, so it is highly likely that she retired from the ring after having fought for six years.
This popularity of boxing aside, the “middle class” attitude toward female pugilists in the 1720s can likely be gleaned from the English actress and writer Eliza Haywood’s reference to it in her play entitled A Wife to Be Let, first performed in 1723. In her comedy of manners, a male footman pretends to be a member of the gentry in the guise of Sir Tristam and marries the wealthy Widow Stately. Learning that she has been hoodwinked, she yells, “Villain! Rogue! I’ll tear you to pieces.” In response to her outburst, a character named Gaylove admonishes her with the words, “Patience, madam, patience! Boxing does not become a woman of quality.”[9]
During this period, training at Figg’s Academy was becoming almost de rigueur for young gentlemen. By the 1730s they were taking to heart Figg’s calls to masculinity and were learning the “noble art of self-defense” in greater and greater numbers. It didn’t hurt that no less a person than George II had been in attendance at a Figg fight. Yet, heedless of the fact that female prizefighters were not trained at the popular boxing school, women’s bouts remained popular in the 1720s and 1730s, and these fighters were skilled enough to fill seats and spur on robust betting.
In what was a decided testament to the working-class roots of the boxing women of this period, early female pugilists wore their affiliations with names such as “A Female Boxing Blacksmith,” “The Market Woman,” and the renowned “Fighting Ass-Driver” from Stoke Newington (a district in London). Their names spoke of the rough world of work demanded of 18th century women that not only required inordinate physical strength, but also a fierce independent pluckiness that would have them risk injury or maiming as part of their work-a-day world. Entering the prizefighting ring also required an inner fortitude that spurred them on to pick up the cudgel, the sword, and their bare fists to fight until one or the other of the two opponents dropped to the floor in a bloody heap.
This prizefighting world of the Figg era, to which women added their weight, was rough-and-tumble at best. There was no concept of such things as boxing rounds, low blows, or the standing eight count that became the mainstays of a fair fight in later eras. Each participant fought until he or she was no longer able to fight.
Much as with the animal-on-animal fighting or animal baiting that were the precursors to the prizefighting contests between armed human combatants, the rowdy crowds yelled for blood, which was assuredly in abundance with fighters willingly obliging to spill. The crowd also intently followed the action, exchanging shillings thr
oughout and placing bets on one or another of the fighters as the bout pressed on with the hope that they had backed the winner. The effect was a maelstrom of crowd noise, the shouts from each of the fighter’s camps, the clinking of tankards, and the general din of an overcrowded space intermingled with the grunts and groans of the combatants. So loud were these events that Pepys writing in 1663 said it made his “head ake all the evening.”[10]
Thomas Brown, writing about a prizefight in 1705 at a beer garden, offered a more elaborate description.
Seats fill’d and crowded by Two: Drums beat, Dogs yelp, Butchers and Footsoldiers clatter their Sticks: At last the two Heroes in their fine borrow’d Holland shirts, mount the Stage about Three; Cut large Collops out of one another to divert the Mob, and make Work for the Suregeons: Smoaking, Swearing, Drinking, Thrusting, Justling, Elbowing, Sweating, Kicking, Cuffing, Stinking, all the while the Company stays.[11]
The carnival spectacle of such fights also lent itself to the notion of having females in the ring. Not unlike the animals that still fought in some of the same venues, whether anthropomorphizing animals with human characteristics, or females with masculine-gender attributes, the fights were irresistible within a milieu where gender views, while quite clearly delineated through custom and dress, held a fascination for the possibilities of what happened when genders were mixed up.
Certainly this is an interesting consideration given the robust sales of female warrior ballads during the period. The very fact that women worked as ass drivers or blacksmiths attests to the permeability of gender connotations in the world of work among these classes. It must also not be forgotten that many of the women who boxed were true professionals when they were in the ring. They risked life and limb for hard-earned cash (or goods) for their labors as prizefighters—which given the purse sizes was not insignificant for its time and place. As with their male counterparts, there was an honor of place to their positions and consideration given for their evident bravery in entering the fray.
The use of cudgels, swords, and fists in this early period must have both thrilled and terrified the throngs, with each spurt of blood a death-defying moment. That women also willingly took up these instruments must have driven the crowds into a wild frenzy of emotion as they watched such characters as the “Ass Driver” of Stoke Newington risking all for the joy of the crowd and the guineas that lined the purses of the winners.
She-Devils and the Fighting of Bruising Peg
The famed 18th-century rake and memoirist William Hickey, born to wealth in 1749, made a detailed description of a female bout he witnessed in 1768 at a bar called Wetherby’s just off Drury Lane. He describes himself as somewhat intoxicated and in the company of an older brother and other friends who wanted to hobnob with the lower classes in what the book describes as a “den.” Upon his arrival he made note of his impressions of two women in the midst of a fight:
Two she-devils, for they scarce had human appearance, engaged in a scratching and boxing match, their faces entirely covered with blood, bosoms bare, and the clothes nearly torn from their bodies. For several minutes not a creature interfered between them, or seemed to care a straw what mischief they might do each other, and the contest went with unabated fury.[12]
Hickey’s discomfort with the experience was clear, especially when he turned to observe a fight in progress between an “uncommonly athletic man of about twenty-five” and “no less than three Amazonian tigresses [who] were pummeling him with all their might.”[13] The scene provoked him to “an immediate restoration of my senses the effect of which was an eager wish to get away.”[14]
In a later reference to the “riot” he had endured at Wetherby’s, he was enticed by his brother and a friend to return. Once there, he recognized one of the two “she-devils” from his previous visit, a singer named Burgess whom he observed for some time before getting the courage to speak with her:
Burgess and I became very sociable, and I asked her how it happened that she could have been principal in such a horrid broil as I had witnessed; to which she replied that both herself and her antagonist were exceedingly intoxicated, having drank an unusual quantity of spirits, and in their cups had quarreled; that the other battle royal, of which I was also a spectator arose from the man (who was a notorious women’s bully) having basely robbed the two who attacked him, that the rest concerned the friends of one party or other and acted accordingly.[15]
Hickey seemed satisfied by the explanation, and while still acutely aware of his own discomfort became at ease with the idea that the “fight” was not so much a boxing match per se as the actions of drunks in a low-haunt bar, fermented by a combination of liquor and “questionable” morals.
The same year as Hickey’s “remembrances,” an article appeared in London’s Daily Advertiser on June 22, 1768, that read in part:
On Wednesday last, two women fought for a new shift, valued at half-a-guinea, in the Spaw Fields near Islington. The battle was won by a woman called “Bruising Peg,” who beat her antagonist in a terrible manner.[16]
Spaw Fields, in Clerkenwell, was also known as Spa Fields and London Spa. It was a well-known haunt for such sports as bull-baiting, duck-hunting, and wrestling, beginning in the 17th century, and for prizefighting in the 18th century.
Whether Bruising Peg’s defeat of her unnamed opponent “in a terrible manner” was in line with her other appearances at Spaw Fields as a professional pugilist is unknown, as is the reason for the fight. Its appearance as a line item in the Daily Advertiser, a London paper founded in 1703, which featured political, social, and business news, as well as a large classified section, leads to the strong probability that the fight had been advertised and might well have been part of a larger fight card. It is also likely that the bout saw heavy betting and that Bruising Peg was a known quantity before the epic battle.
Despite what seems like a paucity of information in the written record about Bruising Peg, her renown, and her association with any later boxing shows at Spaw Fields, she became a symbol of female pugilism more than one hundred years later with the publication of Paul Creswick’s 1898 book entitled Bruising Peg: Pages from the Journal of Margaret Malloy, 1768–9. Reference is also made to her in books about London in the 1700s and Spa Fields in particular, published during roughly the same period as Creswick’s book. That she should become an object of such fascination in the late Victorian era, at a time when women’s boxing was undergoing a renaissance, is fascinating in and of itself. As an 18th-century heroine, however, she remains an interesting figure in the transition of gender meaning and a significant figure in the history of women’s boxing.
Another fight of renown in the late 1700s found in the written record was the June 5, 1795, bout between Mrs. Mary Ann Fielding and the “Jewess of Wentworth Street.” The bout was reported as seconded by two legendary boxing figures, “Gentleman” John Jackson and the Jewish champion, Daniel Mendoza. The bout even had bottle holders in accordance with the standard rules of the day—though they were also said to be women.
As described in Pancratia or, A History of Pugilism, published in 1812, the fight had an air of legitimacy from the beginning:
Every thing having been properly arranged, the combatants set to, and for some time each displayed great intrepidity and astonishingly well-concerted maneuvers in the art of boxing. Fielding fought with great coolness and singularity of temper, and by well-directed hits knocked down her adversary upwards of 70 times. After the battle had lasted one hour and 20 minutes, with much alternate dexterity, Fielding was declared the conqueror.[17]
Pancratia also describes another fight from the same general time period. The bout occurred in August 1793 at “Elmstead near Chelmsford, Essex,” between “two LADIES of pugilistic spirit.” In this description, however, the author writes:
They set to, and for 45 minutes supported a most desperate conflict; when, although one of them was so dreadfully beat as to excite apprehension for her life, her husband possessed brutality
enough still to prompt her to fight; but, through the interference of the spectators they were separated.[18]
In discussing the fight, the author opines that though he “strongly advocates the cause of pugilism, he by no means feels desirous to see such conflicts displayed by the softer sex” [italics added].[19]
The glaring contradiction of the two descriptions represents the evident changes in how women were viewed in relation to the shifting signifiers of gender between the time women first entered the ring and the late 1700s. On the one hand, the author shows us that the women in the fight, seconded by two legitimate boxing champions, demonstrated “astonishingly well-concerted maneuvers in the art of boxing,” perhaps influenced by the evident legitimacy of having two well-respected champions sponsoring Fielding and the unnamed Jewess of Wentworth. The two female fighters showed skill, adhered to the rules, and acquitted themselves well in the ring, attributes that can be worthy of praise, even though they are women, because they were supervised by men.
As for the “two LADIES of pugilistic spirit,” they were unsponsored and clearly unskilled, leading the author to view them as softer, a state he further explained when he wrote, “It is the gentleness of their manners, and their acknowledged inability of defending themselves, that frequently excite us to acts of the greatest bravery and gallantry!”[20]
A History of Women's Boxing Page 3