The Golden Age of British Boxing: Men and Women
at the Fights
In the 1780s, boxing began another remarkable transformation in England—entering what many scholars call the “Golden Age.” It had come a long way from the rough and tumble beginnings of prizefighting in the fair booths and Bear Gardens of the 1720s, and despite its illegal status, the sport had begun a climb to a level of respectability that saw such patrons as the Prince of Wales extol the virtues of British boxing.
One thing was apparent: Boxing had become inextricably linked to British manhood—an important consideration given the political realities of the period.
England was engaged in a series of wars, not the least of which was the Revolutionary War, won by the United States in 1783. War with France was again also in the offing, and the characterization of boxing as a uniquely British form of courage seemed irresistible: No need for fighting at a distance with swords; the British were willing (and able) to fight man-to-man with their fists if necessary. Boxing also connoted the idea of fair play, another British virtue that meant playing by the rules—an attribute of boxing since Jack Broughton first promulgated fairness in the ring in 1843 (Broughton’s Rules).
The sport of boxing was also evolving. No longer just a contest of brute force, fighters such as Daniel Mendoza combined quick hands, defensive posturing, and movement around the ring to expand the pugilist’s repertoire of boxing moves, exciting the crowd with a new elegance and level of sophistication that was viewed as scientific. Mendoza himself published a how-to book in 1787 entitled The Art of Boxing. Schools of boxing sprang up again as did numerous pamphlets.
Another feature of this period, alternatively referred to as the Fancy, was the shift in the audiences for contests. No longer just the sport for lower-class men and women with a smattering of men from the upper classes, this period saw the development of venues where even respectable women could watch a display of the manly art of boxing and a sparring contest—if not an actual prizefight. Pierce Egan, the author of the 1820 work Boxiana, discussed this change by describing Daniel Mendoza’s new venue as:
In the Strand for the express purpose of public exhibitions of sparring . . . [wherein] the manly art of boxing would be displayed . . . with the utmost decorum, that the female part of the creation might attend.[21]
The fact was women had been attending the prizefights since boxing’s inception. Egan’s sentiment that the “female part of the creation might attend,” however, had clear implications as to the class of women who would be in attendance. Boxing, because it had become elevated enough for even the most refined feminine sensibilities, had, in short, arrived.
What this meant for the female practitioners of the sport though was unclear. There continued to be women’s boxing contests—with some bouts fought with evident skill and adherence to the boxing rules of the day, and others featuring fighters with few boxing abilities—but as with earlier eras there was no particular place for women’s boxing. It remained an afterthought at best, acknowledged through the continued reportage in newspapers of the day and as reference points in books about boxing—but it was not quite legitimate either. Without any clear sponsorship or system of promotion, female pugilism as a sport remained precarious at best. Taken all together, the popular female contests that had helped launch boxing at its inception seem to have all but disappeared from the landscape of British boxing by the century’s end. Boxing had by this time become associated with British notions of manliness and even Britishness itself. As for the role of women in the sport—the female pugilist had been transformed to that of a dainty spectator, marveling in support of British might.
1. James Bramston. The Art of Politicks, p. 41.
2. London Journal, June 23, 1722. Quoted in Christopher Johnson and Henry Fielding. “‘British Championism:’ Early Pugilism and the Works of Fielding.” The Review of English Studies, New Series. 47:187, August 1996. Pp. 333–357, n. 33, p. 343. [JSTOR]
3. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenback. London, in 1710, p. 90.
4. Martin Nogue. Voyages et Aventures, p. 364.
5. London Journal, August 31, 1723. Quoted in Christopher Johnson and Henry Fielding. “‘British Championism’: Early Pugilism and the Works of Fielding.” Review of English Studies, New Series. 47:187, August 1996. Pp. 333–357, n. 33, p. 343. [JSTOR]
6. Weekly Journal, October 1, 1726. [Georgianlondon.com]
7. James Peller Malcolm. Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed. Vol. 2. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810, p.176. [Google Books]
8. Daily Post, July 17, 1728. Georgianlondon.com; See also William Shepard Walsh. Handbook of Literary Curiosities. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1893, p. 22. [Google Books]
9. Eliza Haywood. “A Wife to Be Let,” p. 159.
10. Samuel Pepys. Diary, 4: 168.
11. Allen Guttman. “English Sports Spectators,” p. 114. Quoted in Maria Kloeren, Sport und Rekord. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1935, pp. 42–43.
12. William Hickey. Memoirs, p. 82.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 83.
15. Ibid., p. 85.
16. Daily Advertiser, June 22, 1768. Quoted in John James Sexby. Municipal Parks, Gardens and Open Spaces of London. Cheap ed. London: Elliot Stock, p. 535. [Google Books]
17. Pancratia, or, A History of Pugilism: Containing a Full Account of Every Battle of Noted from the Time of Broughton and Slack down to the Present Day. London: W. Hildyard, Poppin’s Court, 1812, p. 120. [Google Books]
18. Ibid., p. 113.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Pierce Egan. Boxiana, p. 9.
Chapter 2
Victorian Ladies Boxing
“Oh, I can swing clubs, and box and fence,” she cried, successively striking the typical postures; “and swim, and make high dives, chin a bar twenty times, and—walk on my hands. There!”[1]
—Jack London, A Daughter of the Snows
With the advent of the early 1800s, women’s boxing began to wane in Britain. By the 1830s displays of women’s boxing became invisible, if not extinct, save for reports of street brawls and related battles amongst women of the lower classes. The earlier freedoms to attend boxing matches or sparring exhibitions were also no longer available to women.
Boxing itself lost its luster in England through the 1830s, and by the 1850s the hub of boxing had switched to the United States. Boxing was barely known among women in America in the early part of the century except for fistic contests reported in newspapers of the day and occasional street brawls. Beginning in the 1870s, and coinciding with the expanding popularity of men’s boxing, women in the United States took up the gloves alongside their male counterparts. These forays included legitimate boxing contests with winners crowned “world champions,” as well as playful sparring exhibitions and more serious ones labeled as pugilistic contests.
As the century came to a close, vaudeville and burlesque shows popularized both male and female pugilism around the United States. Women’s boxing and wrestling contests also drew in customers in France and Germany and eventually found their way to the music halls of Britain beginning in the 1880s. This resurgence of women’s participation in boxing was one aspect of the changing conversation about a women’s place in the world and gender relations in general.
Not to be underestimated was the belief that contact sports were physically and mentally dangerous to feminine health, a view promulgated by the medical “experts” of the day. Based on these beliefs, women were pushed to practice more “genteel” sports such as tennis and croquet. Conversely, pugilism, wrestling, field hockey, and swimming were considered too rigorous—even for the New Woman of the 1880s and 1890s.
It was hard for a woman to be immune to such efforts of continued control over their bodies and while some boxed, ran track, and lifted weights, most who participated in sports of any kind chose to exercise by riding bicycles, taking long walks, roller skating, play
ing tennis, or swimming. Still, such participation presaged a new era of freedom for women—and a boon for women’s boxing.
Winds of Change: An Outrage on Decency
The early 1800s saw a continued upswing in British boxing. A plethora of books were published recounting the history of the sport, training methods, and even diet. The virtues of boxing were extolled and publications such as the Sporting Magazine regularly reported on bouts, boxers, and the spirit of the sport. The practice of holding sparring exhibitions in upmarket venues also continued. The Royal Amphitheatre at Westminster Bridge, where pugilists donned boxing gloves as they showed off their fistic prowess, was particularly popular in the early 1820s. A good percentage of the audience at these exhibitions were women—so many that despite the efforts to “elevate” the sport by hosting sparring contests even the “gentler sex” could watch, with men on stage stripped to their waists, it might well have been a little risqué.
A ready acceptance of female audience members at sparring contests did not necessarily extend the license for their further participation in the sport. Still, there were instances of female bouts reported in the popular press. Typical of the reporting of women’s boxing at the time was this article from the Sporting Magazine in December 1811:
Amazonian Boxing.—A pitched battle, for a pint of gin and a new shawl, took place . . . between Molly Flower and Nanny Gent. The set-to was contested for twenty minutes, with some skill and determined courage. Both were good hitters, and they were worse hit about the head than is witness amongst many second-rate pugilists. Nanny jibbed a bit in the twelfth round, and “gave in from a dexterous hit down in the following round.”[2]
Women’s bouts—as infrequently held as they seem to have been—also continued to have a modicum of acceptance, if not the apparatus of support that pugilism, in general, enjoyed in this period. There were, after all, no schools for female fighters, just as there were few if any promoters and trainers. Pugilism as the tool for settling perceived wrongs did remain a viable option for women, and while most of their bouts were likely ad hoc at best, the crowds enjoyed them, and the women who fought received a guarded recognition in the press.
These bouts were held in the period of the Fancy, stretching from the 1780s through the early 1820s, a time of growth and popularity for bare-knuckle boxing encompassing the late Georgian and Regency eras in Britain. Its last true “hurrah” centered on the fights in the 1810s (which corresponded with Britain’s wars with France and the United States), the popularity of the writings of Pierce Egan and other followers of the Fancy, and the seeming respectability of the sport that even allowed the continued appearance of genteel female spectatorship.
Still, there were forces from the British evangelical Christian movement and within Parliament who were genuinely outraged by the sport. They advocated for boxing’s demise by giving teeth to the legal constraints against pugilism already in place (with women’s participation viewed as something even lower than an abomination). The evangelical perspective argued that pugilism was a pleasure of the flesh to be rooted out in the search for salvation and the revocation of sin through acts of free will. As for women, their association with the sport was nothing if not unnatural.
Other social and political considerations touched upon boxing as well. The Fancy was considered a mixture of the rabble, the worst of the layabout swells, and the British aristocracy, who in effect became aligned against the newer voices of the burgeoning middle classes who saw pugilism as profligacy of the worst sort. Even some trade unionists, looking for empowerment in the new economic reality of the nascent revolution that was changing the face of British industry, allied themselves with the reformers in response to the downturns that accompanied the end of Britain’s Napoleonic adventures in 1815.
As the public perception turned negative, the aristocratic support—once so bountiful—began to disappear along with the monies that kept the pugilistic clubs open for business. Even gambling, the mainstay of pugilism since its inception one hundred years earlier, could no longer be trusted due to scandals involving fixed fights—serving to heighten the message of the evangelicals that such profligacy would only lead to perdition.
No less affected were female denizens of the fight game. On October 15, 1824, the Stamford Mercury, a well-respected newspaper in Britain published since 1695, reported on a bout at the Five Fields in Chelsea. Attended by a crowd of two thousand or more people, the article, under the heading Female Pugilism, began with the words “A most abominable exhibition was presented on Thursday the 7th . . .”
The disgust to a spectator wants not description. . . . They fought with considerable skill and nothing but earnest right and left was given and received; they bled profusely, and nothing more horrific can be imagined than their appearance. The seconds endeavoured as much as possible to keep them to something like the ring; but owing to the slippery state of the weather, and the ring being repeatedly broken into, it was found impracticable; and so great was the fury of the antagonists, that although drenched in blood and covered with filth, they disputed every inch of ground, and actually fought with Amazonian valour for two hours and a half.[3]
Had the bout been fought even five years earlier, the “considerable skill” and “Amazonian valour” on display may have been more positively viewed as being in the scientific tradition of pugilism as can be surmised in a brief notice of a women’s bout from 1819 reported in the Chester Chronicle:
On Monday night last, two Amazonians, named Weaver, and Scully, gratified the female lovers of pugilism with a pitched battle in Hoole-lane-field, near the Bridge, in [Chester, northwest of London]. They fought some time, when victory settled her wreath on the brows of the former lady—This is a spirited age![4]
The author of the article from 1824, however, chose to dwell on the female pugilists “most abominable exhibition,” their “horrific” appearance “drenched in blood and covered with filth,” and the intractability of the crowd that “repeatedly” broke into the ring.
The behavior of the crowd, as described further, can also be an instructive indicator of the place of pugilism and the feminine practice of it beginning in this period.
At length the sight aroused the feelings of a satiated mob; the ring was broken in, and the parties were assisted away in a mutilated state, having scarcely a rag to cover them, thereby making it a drawn battle, which it is understood, is to be renewed at a future day. We trust, however, that the then interference of the magistrates will prevent a repetition of so gross an outrage on public decency.[5]
The abomination described is not only against the “nature” of renewed gentility in female-kind, but indicative of the rising fear of crowds. Not for nothing was there already a law on the books that limited assembly to no more than fifty persons; here was a crowd that repeatedly broke the sacrosanct area of the ring, into what one can only imagine was a sludge of mud, blood, sweat, saliva, and goodness knows what other impurities that became the “filth” that clung to the two unnamed fighters’ near-naked bodies.
The Westmorland Gazette reporting on the fight the following day did point out that “They fought with considerable science.” The emphasis, however, was tilted toward a decidedly negative view of female pugilism, while choosing not to highlight the machinations of the unruly crowd.
They bled profusely; and in their rallies, when, in addition to the loathsome appearance of their persons, their hair became loose, hanging in clotted disorder over their shriveled bosoms, nothing more horrific can be imagined.[6]
The negative views of female boxing in particular that coincided with the downturn of the Fancy were not, however, exclusive to the 1820s. There were many voices against pugilism in general, with an added bit of choice invective for the specter of two women waling on each other when the occasion arose. A short article in the Hampshire Chronicle and Courier from 1817 makes the point:
It is no wonder that foreigners should form a very unfavourable opinion of us, when they see with what
care the account of a pugilistic contest is circulated in the public prints. But these scenes disgraceful as they are to a nation professedly composed of civilized beings, and which aims at bearing the palm in moral, fall far short in depravity to what we are now about to relate: . . . A dreadful battle . . . between two amazons.[7]
The London Times, as early as 1807, was no particular fan of pugilism—female pugilism in particular—noting the two “Amazon” protagonists were “hideously disfigured by hard blows,” which “afforded the most disgust.”[8]
Given the spirited debate in and around the publication of the London Times piece, including William Cobbett’s Defence of Pugilism article published two years earlier, the forces for and against pugilism were clearly in two camps, with a special emphasis placed on eliminating female fisticuffs by the antipugilism group.
Even as boxing was beginning to lose popularity, writers such at Pierce Egan, whose 1812 Boxiana was considered canon a mere ten years after publication, were continuing to write with much success. Newspapers also continued, in the main, to report favorably on men’s pugilistic encounters. The Westmorland Gazette, publisher of the scathing piece on fight fixing, stated, “Two braver men never enter a ring,”[9] when describing the October 1824 encounter between Bob Baldwin and Ned O’Neal.
A History of Women's Boxing Page 4