A History of Women's Boxing

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A History of Women's Boxing Page 5

by Malissa Smith


  Regardless of the number of actual fights, it was clear the glory days of the Fancy were waning. Voices outside of the boxing world were calling for its immediate stoppage and even elements within the boxing world recognized that the sport needed to be cleaned up. When it came to women as denizens of the Fancy, participants, even skilled ones, were no longer welcome in the prize ring—nor were the female boxing fans that had once been so sought after as spectators.

  The symbolic end of the era, however, was heralded when the huge Fives Court boxing complex, site of famous battles and sparring exhibitions during the heyday of the Fancy, was torn down in 1826 making way for Trafalgar Square and Britain’s reinvention of itself as an imperial and economic power.

  Boxing over the Pond: The United States Begins to Take Up the Gloves

  American boxing began inauspiciously in the 1700s on the Colonial plantations of the South when slaves purportedly fought against one another other in boxing and wrestling contests. Frederick Douglass mentions boxing and wrestling in his slave narrative. His recollections from the 1830s show that during the Christmas-to-New Year period slaves were encouraged to “engage in sports.” Douglass, however, was engaged in teaching his “loved fellow-slaves how to read,” but it had to be kept secret. He wrote, “It was necessary to keep our religious masters . . . unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were to learn how to read the will of God.”[10]

  Despite such recollections, the historical record is sketchy on how prevalent the practice was in the late 1700s, and while the British boxing author Pierce Egan noted that Tom Molineaux said that he had learned to fight under his father’s tutelage while still in bondage, the evidence is scant. What is evident is the popularity of British sports and sports betting among the slave-owning classes in the Colonial South and the rise of horse racing and cockfighting (even though it was illegal from 1740 on) as important events on the social calendar.

  Formal boxing of a sort does appear in the writings of Moreau de St. Mery, a Frenchman who took up residence in Philadelphia in the early 1790s. He wrote an account of pugilism in a book about his experiences in America. “Boxing has its rules and regulations,” he wrote. “Athletes settle on a site for the fight . . . strip to their shirts, and roll up their sleeves.”

  The fights he described, however, had none of the formalities of the boxing rules followed in England and the ring itself was reminiscent of the early fights of the Figg era—a circle of fans where “the spectators urge on their favorites”—rather than the more formal cordoned square with posts and ropes to hold the crowds at bay.

  The first “recognized” boxing contest in America was in New York City in 1816 between Jacob Hyer and Tom Beasley. As noted in American Fistiana, published in 1849:

  This fight . . . proceeded from a personal quarrel between the men . . . both of whom were very large and powerful first class men. [The fight] lasted through severe rounds, but was at length decided in favor of the latter [Beasley] by an accident and Hyer retired from the ring with a broken arm.[11]

  There were other periodic accounts of boxing matches in the 1820s in New York and its environs and even a smattering of gentlemanly fisticuffs at the New York Gymnasium, opened in 1826 by the British pugilist William Fuller.

  By the 1830s a steady stream of British and Irish boxers were making their way to America to seek out opportunities, again, mostly in and around New York City. The practice of boxing itself was illegal for the most part, but it didn’t stop newspapers from giving accounts.

  Boxing had reached sufficient renown in the United States by 1843 to warrant inclusion in the “The Sporting Chronicle, a weekly paper devoted to amusements.” The addition was not without controversy, as the Whig newspaper the New York Daily Tribune reported with “regret” that the sporting newsweekly would carry stories about “Pugilism.”[12]

  Prizefighting in this period had not yet arrived as an outlet for women, and although female boxing was not yet sufficiently recognized to be part of the public story, it was in the public realm. An article about a prizefight between two women in Great Britain that ran in the London Times provides a ready example. Republished in the Brooklyn Eagle on September 24, 1852, and no doubt picked up by other American newspapers, the piece described a first-person account:

  About a month ago . . . I perceived a number of persons passing through the field adjoining my house. The stream of men and women had come from Paddington to a prize-fight between two—no, not men—women! One of my family, being incredulous, contrived to look across the fields, and there saw the combatants stripped to the waist, and fighting. Men took them there, men backed them, men were bottle-holders and time keepers. They fought for about half an hour, some say for five shillings, some say for five pounds, and say they will do it again. I saw the winner led back in triumph by men.”[13]

  A small notice in the Brooklyn Eagle, in 1847, also took the leap to associate a woman with pugilism. The piece was about a mother who, while seated in a box in the upper level of a theater in Pittsburg, observed her son fighting below whereupon she “leaped from the boxes into the pit.” Having landed chest first onto a bench, she

  immediately sprung up again, notwithstanding she must have been badly hurt, and rushed like a tigress on the boy’s antagonist. By this time the police had reached the place, and in a moment cleared the pugilists out of the theatre.[14]

  While not exactly a “prizefight,” the association of fighting with pugilism—whether male or female—reveals the place of boxing in the popular culture of the time. The fact that boxing was in the main negative in the early history of the sport in America did not deter the images of fighting, whether in the ring or in a street altercation, to be seen as pugilism, nor for the rudimentary rules of boxing to be followed in many sorts of fights.

  The following, published in 1856, precisely associates a brawl between two women in Chicago with prizefighting, under the heading “Women’s rights must be progressing in Chicago, if we may judge by the following:”

  A prize fight took place on the lake shore between a couple of whiskey-bloated female denizens of that locality, in presence of an audience of fifty or sixty people of both sexes. A ring was made, seconds were chosen, and stripping themselves to the waist the two degraded creatures went at it. The fight lasted some twenty minutes and the yells and curses of the combatant might have been heard a full quarter of a mile.[15]

  The language is certainly pejorative, echoing the disgust and dismay of stories written in the British press in the 1820s, the more so perhaps because of the association of the two women with alcohol. We are also not privy as to the cause of the fight—though attendance by a sizable crowd and some modicum of attention to rules does give us the idea that all involved had some basic understanding of pugilism. Not to be lost is the added editorial commentary equating women’s rights with prizefighting. Certainly it is meant to be sardonic at best. However, the commentary is not only illustrative of how much the women’s rights movement had become part of the national conversation in the period, but also placed pugilism on a national footing.

  By 1860 a story entitled “Female Prize Fight” about a bout near Concord, New Hampshire, was of sufficient interest to have been picked up by a local paper in Ohio, the Holmes County Farmer. While the cause of the fight is unknown, as is whether any prize money was offered, the fight had a modicum of legitimacy in that “both parties” trained “for several weeks” prior to the match. Even so, the article describes the fight as “disgraceful,” and while it was an eighteen-round contest “lasting twenty minutes, in the presence of a large number of the roughs who reside in that section of the city,” the tone was decidedly negative, with one of the fighters described as the “notorious Mrs. Storin” who was “knocked completely off her pins in nearly every round.”[16]

  Female pugilism may not yet have risen above the occasional negative account in an American newspaper, but the last years of the
antebellum period did see a huge boom in the popularity of the sport in general. The successful marketing of boxing contests also led to the rise of boxing as a leisure activity for gentlemen and eventually gentlewomen.

  Post–Civil War Boxing: The First Female Fight at Harry Hill’s

  Under the heading “A Female Boxing Match. A Novel and Nonsensical Exhibition at Henry Hill’s,” the New York Times published an article on March 17, 1876, about two female pugilists, marking the beginning of the era of Victorian women’s boxing:

  Some weeks ago Prof. James Campbell, the manager of Harry Hill’s establishment in Houston Street, conceived the idea of having as a feature of its benefit, which took place yesterday, a sparring match with boxing-gloves between two women, and offered as a prize $200 and a piece of silver-plate. The opportunity offered by Mr. Campbell was embraced by two variety dancers, Miss Nell Saunders and Miss Rose Harland.[17]

  The New York Times piece made note of the fact that neither woman had any boxing experience prior to the announcement of the contest. Both women did, however, receive some modicum of training for the fight: Nell Saunders from her pugilist husband and Rose Harland under the tutelage of boxer James Kelly. This training gave Saunders “science,” adding to the air of “legitimacy” of the bout, whereas Harland, not to be outdone, though “over-matched in science, presumed on her superior strength, and ‘sailed in’ for punishment.”

  The New York Herald also reported on the event under the less editorialized heading “Female Boxers.” It noted:

  Rose is decidedly the heavier of the two, weighing yesterday 150 pounds, while Nell tipped the scale at less than 120 pounds. Both were attractively dressed. Rose wore a white shirt, blue silk trunks, white tights, red and gray stripped hose and neat morocco slippers surmounted by silver buckles. Nell was attired in white shirt, red plus knee breeches, red hose and light boots.[18]

  Both fighters were shown to have had a “mutual respect for each other” with Nell breaking “ground and in a little rally did slightly more effective work than her antagonist.” The article went on to note that in their second-round work they both “displayed considerably more science than some of the male novices that infrequently box before the public.”

  At the end of the third round the bout was called a draw with the score, according to the New York Times, 20-20. Nell Saunders was viewed as the better of the two and was given the prize. In the spirit of fairness, “Some gentleman handed Miss Harland a ten-dollar bill, and the two female boxers left the stage arm in arm.” The New York Herald reported it slightly differently, noting:

  A lively rally was in progress when Hill stopped the girls, and shaking hands they awaited the decision which came from Harry and was “that the counter hits were equal, but Saunders had landed one more straight blow than Harland.” Thereupon he presented Nell with the butter dish, and thus the first public female boxing match ever seen in New York was over.

  The show, quite obviously well received, was widely reported outside of New York with an article about the fight appearing in Scotland’s Edinburgh Evening News a few weeks later with a repeat of the story from the New York Herald.

  Harry Hill’s Variety Theatre was a notorious nightclub in the tradition of Bowery taverns from the 1840s and 1850s. With its dance-hall girls, variety entertainments including minstrel shows with African American performers, and sparring matches, Harry Hill’s was lively at all hours of the day and night. It also counted a cross section of New York types as customers from the well-heeled to workingmen, and on any given day one could count on seeing one or another society swell, politician, or even the likes of P. T. Barnum.

  Viewing pugilism as entertainment, Harry Hill’s sparring shows not only brought in fans but also provided the setting for brokering prizefights, some of which were held at Hill’s place with such boxing luminaries as John L. Sullivan counted among his coterie of fighters. It was Harry Hill’s showman’s eye, however, that saw him putting on the first “acknowledged” female prizefight in America. Well attended by the usual array of sporting men whom he counted as his loyal customers, Hill’s instincts had proven themselves to be correct—and thus began the era of female boxing shows, championships, and other related entertainments that spread from Hill’s establishment on across the country.

  Hill also quickly built on the momentum of his first show. A week and a half later, the New York Herald, writing about Harland’s and Saunders’s appearance in a boxing show at Hill’s, noted that:

  Both girls have improved since their first appearance, and if their progress in acquiring the “points” and “tricks” in the art of self-defence is as rapid in the future as it has been in the past it will not be long before they will show to great advantage.[19]

  Harry Hill’s also continued making announcements of other upcoming female boxing entertainments such as the one listed in the New York Herald on June 8, 1876:

  A unique exhibition of boxing may be witnessed at Harry Hill’s Variety Theatre this afternoon. It is proposed to give a benefit to the “Pioneer Female Boxers.” As Misses Rose Harland and Nellie Saunders are called in the bills. . . . The entertainment is to finish with a set-to in “full ring costume” between the “fair beneficiaries.”[20]

  In all likelihood, the popularity of the risqué establishment meant that it had license to push the boundaries of what was and was not acceptable without going so far as to lose its well-heeled patrons. This attitude toward Hill’s, and the money he paid “under the table” to police authorities, gave him the further impetus to put on new forms of entertainment. Also helping were the press outlets such as the New York Herald, which were quite receptive to Hill’s promotion of female pugilism.

  While the fight in 1876 at Harry Hill’s is considered the first fight between two women in the United States, there are tantalizing clues of a major prizefight held in the spring of 1872 in Canada. The fighters were likely from New York City and were brought to a training camp near Akron, Ohio. The story publicizing the bout was reported in an Ohio paper and republished in several newspapers across the country and even as far afield as Australia.

  The article noted that a party of “sports” from New York City were “engaged in training two young ladies for a genuine prize fight for $1,000 a side.” Both women were said to have “thrashed everything in their immediate neighborhoods” and had “agreed to meet in the prize ring and be governed by the rule that has made that time-honored institution, so famous.”

  The article continued:

  The ladies are in the hands of experienced trainers and the following is the order of their exercises: In the morning at 6 o’clock they get up and drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of brown bread; they get on their bloomer costumes, heavy soled shoes and dog-trot with the trainer for five miles. They then bathe, and are rubbed down in the most approved style, and permitted to rest in bed an hour. At 9 o’clock they breakfast. . . . At 11 they go to sparring or striking the sand bags. This exercise lasts about thirty minutes, when the trainer steps up and they have two hours of boxing. Then a bath and the usual rubbing down, and then their dinner. . . . Then a rest of thirty minutes and a walk or dog-trot with their trainers of a mile. . . . Then a half-hour’s exercise with sand-bags—that is, striking from the shoulder a bag of sand suspended about the height of their breasts and weight 175 pounds.[21]

  These unnamed female boxers were provided a training regimen in the time-honored tradition of the classic boxing camp—and it was obvious that no expense was spared in the run-up to the fight.

  The popularity of the first boxing show at Harry Hill’s led him to promote nightly female boxing events. Hill’s bold inclusion of female pugilists at this theater led other impresarios to add women’s fighting events to their roster of entertainers. A notice in a Virginia newspaper in 1877 of an upcoming show, including “Miss Rose Harland, the champion female boxer” as part of a card considered to be “monster entertainment,” was a case in point.[22]

  By the early 1880s
Hill’s nightly shows featured a stable of female fighters including regular African American women’s bouts. Hill’s also became the model for others of what were called concert saloons that greeted customers from all classes to a night of entertainment as far afield as California and in towns that crisscrossed the “wild” West. His inclusion of female boxers as part of his set of theatrical offerings also acted to legitimize women’s prizefighting as a form of entertainment, as well as to give credence to the idea of female pugilists as champions in their own right.

  Hill also banded together with the National Police Gazette to promote female pugilism. Founded in 1845 as a police organ to help capture criminals, under the ownership of Richard K. Fox, beginning in 1876 the Police Gazette, as it was popularly known, became renowned for its lurid headlines and a growing association with professional boxing. Its covers often featured scantily clad young women as victims of crimes or as exhibiting risqué behaviors.

  Newspapers such as the Police Gazette also became part of the conversation about what was and was not lurid and respectable—and, in particular, helped frame women’s participation in sports. Whether boxing in a saloon or bicycling at the forefront of a race in a prominent park, the Police Gazette featured stories and an illustration—often on the cover—that helped expose the outer reaches of Victorian decorum and the changing boundaries for those mores.

  Hill’s penchant for publicity and boxing promotion made his association with the Police Gazette—which began billing itself as “The Leading Illustrated Sporting Journal in America”—a natural. When it came to female boxing, Hill’s association with the newsweekly included the publication of a woodcut drawing entitled Honoring Nell Saunders, as well as other advertisements and coverage of Hill’s female bouts.

 

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