28. National Police Gazette, December 27, 1884, p. 10. [Fultonhistory.com]
29. National Police Gazette, February 21, 1885, Page 10. [Fultonhistory.com]
30. Buffalo Express, December 22, 1887, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
31. St. Paul Daily Glove, October 4, 1886, p. 3 [Library of Congress]
32. St. Paul Daily Glove, October 5, 1886, p. 3. [Library of Congress]
33. St. Paul Daily Glove, October 11, 1886, p. 3. [Library of Congress]
34. St. Paul Daily Glove, November 28, 1886, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
35. St. Paul Daily Glove, November 29, 1886, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
36. St. Paul Daily Glove, December 1, 1886, p. 3. [Library of Congress]
37. St. Paul Daily Glove, March 8, 1887, p. 3. [Library of Congress]
38. St. Paul Daily Glove, February 21, 1888, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
39. “Loves to Fight.” Buffalo Express, December 22, 1887, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
40. Daily Morning Astorian, September 24, 1890, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
41. Oswego Daily Times, July 13, 1888, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
42. New York World, September 17, 1888. [Boxinggyms.com]
43. “Women in the Prize Ring.” New York Herald, September 17, 1888, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
44. World, September 17, 1888. [Boxinggyms.com]
45. “Two Girls in the Prize Ring.” Sun, September 17, 1888, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
46. “Women in the Prize Ring.” New York Herald, September 17, 1888, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
47. Ibid.
48. Alexandria Gazette, September 17, 1888, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
49. “Women in the Prize Ring.” New York Herald, September 17, 1888, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
50. New York World, September 17, 1888. [Boxinggyms.com]
51. Troy Daily Times, September 17, 1888, p. 2. [Fultonhistory.com]
52. Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), September 17, 1888, p. 4. [Library of Congress]
53. New York Herald, September 18, 1888, p. 8. [Fultonhistory.com]
54. Daily Leader, September 21, 1888, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
55. Wichita Daily Eagle, October 5, 1888, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
56. The Brooklyn Eagle, September 29, 1888, p. 1.
57. New York World, October 23, 1888, p. 1. [Library of Congress]
58. National Police Gazette, September 24, 1892, p. 11. [Fultonhistory.com]
59. Ibid.
60. National Police Gazette, February 7, 1885, p. 11. [Fultonhistory.com]
61. New York Clipper, April 17, 1880, p. 31. [Fultonhistory.com]
62. Dallas Herald, November 20, 1880, p. 8. [Library of Congress]
63. National Police Gazette, November 24, 1880, p. 14. [Fultonhistory.com]
64. National Police Gazette, January 12, 1884, p. 10. [Fultonhistory.com]
65. New York Herald, October 4, 1874, p. 4. [Fultonhistory.com]
66. New York Clipper, October 17, 1874, p. 230. [Fultonhistory.com]
67. Brooklyn Eagle, April 5, 1875, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
68. New York Spirit of the Times, December 1875, p. 553. [Fultonhistory.com]
69. New York Sun, February 6, 1876, p. 1. [Fultonhistory.com]
70. New York Clipper, April 17, 1880, p. 31. [Fultonhistory.com]
71. New York Herald, November 29, 1878, p. 2. [Fultonhistory.com]
72. National Police Gazette, April 8, 1882, p. 14. [Fultonhistory.com]
73. National Police Gazette, May 12, 1883, p. 12. [Fultonhistory.com]
74. National Police Gazette, August 16, 1884, p. 14. [Fulton History.com]
75. Syracuse Daily Standard, January 29, 1885, p. 5. [Fultonhistory.com]
76. St. Paul Daily Glove, January 11, 1885, p. 6. [Library of Congress]
77. Sun, April 24, 1890, p. 4. [Fultonhistory.com]
78. National Police Gazette, February 7, 1885, p. 11. [Fultonhistory.com]
79. Atchison Daily Champion, August 30, 1888, p. 1. [Library of Congress]
80. St. Paul Daily Globe, March 8, 1887, p. 4. [Library of Congress]
81. Allen Guttman. Women’s Sports, p. 99.
82. John L. Sullivan is alleged to have brought a husband-and-wife team, Hessie Converse (Donahue) and George Converse, along on his “Honest Hands and Willing Hearts” tour around the United States in the late winter/spring of 1892. The story goes that in a mock sparring match with Hessie, he punched her hard in the face by accident, and pivoting around, Hessie let loose with a right that landed Sullivan on the floor of the stage, knocking him out cold. Milwaukee Journal, August 17, 1989, p. G1. [Google News Archive]
83. T. R. Coombs. Quoted in Allen Guttman. Women’s Sports, p. 101, n. 49.
84. New York Herald, January 31, 1888, p.12. [Fultonhistory.com]
85. St. Paul Daily Globe, April 25, 1886, p. 12. [Library of Congress]
86. Derby Mercury, May 25, 1887, p. 6. [British Newspaper Archive]
87. Semi-Weekly Interior Journal, April 28, 1887. [Library of Congress]
88. Albany Times, December 8, 1887. [Fultonhistory.com]
89. Nellie Bly. “A Visit with John L. Sullivan.” New York World, Sunday ed., July 28, 1889. [Bareknuckleboxinghalloffame.com]
90. Mike Sowell. “A Woman in a Man’s World: ‘Annie Laurie,’ One of American’s First Sportswriters.” In Linda K. Fuller, ed. Sport, Rhetoric, and Gender, p. 65 (65–70).
91. Ibid., p. 66.
92. Ibid.
93. Kasia Boddy. Boxing, p. 159.
94. Ibid., p. 158.
95. St. Paul Daily Globe, January 16, 1891, p. 4. [Library of Congress]
96. “Mr. Corbett through a Women’s Eyes.” San Francisco Call, February 25, 1897, p. 4. [Library of Congress]
97. Salt Lake Herald, March 14, 1897, p. 1. [Library of Congress]
98. Hartford Herald, March 24, 1897, p. 1. [Library of Congress]
99. Sacramento Daily Record-Union, March 23, 1897, p. 2. [Library of Congress]
100. St. Paul Daily Globe, August 17, 1897, p. 4. [Library of Congress]
101. Evening Times, September 8, 1897, p. 6. [Library of Congress]
102. Gordon Sisters Boxing/Thomas A. Edison, Inc. The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870–1920. Edison Manufacturing Co., 1901. [Library of Congress] [Memory.loc.gov]
Chapter 3
Boxing, Women, and the Mores
of Change
The Jungle Woman is again with us.
—A sports page editorial, July 21, 1914[1]
The New Woman at the turn of the century was on the cusp of dynamic change. Her clothing was less restricted, and she no longer expected to remain in the home. Daughters of the middle and upper classes attended college. Some of them even pursued careers, whilst working-class women could now aspire to something more than a factory job. Universal women’s suffrage eventually became a reality in the United States with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920.
Boxing for women in the early years of the new century reflected the progressive nature of the era. Whether as spectators, including those female journalists who reported on the fights, or as practitioners—on stage, in the gym, or in the ring—women became publically associated with boxing more than ever. This participation, however, continued to be subject to the vicissitudes of public attitudes, the press, and fashionable trends. While boxing for men was increasingly legitimized both legally and in the eyes of the public, women remained on the periphery as marginal players at best.
The image of the female boxer, while still an anathema to womanhood in some quarters, was nevertheless a potent image by the 1920s, which saw the popularity of women’s boxing matches spread as far afield as London, Paris, and Berlin, not to mention its continuing popularity in variety theater. Images of women in boxing attire were also featured in Hollywood films and magazine spreads. And, as distinct from the largely staged female sparring contests of the
1870s–1890s interspersed with occasional prizefights, the new century brought with it more recognition of “scientific” female boxing matches. The increased visibility of female prizefighting did not necessarily portend positive recognition of the sport or of the right of women to pursue it as headlines continued to decry boxing as shameful and the fighters as “Amazons.” Still, the continued reportage and visibility meant that the sport was tacitly if not whole-heartedly accepted as an activity women were “given permission” to pursue.
Men’s boxing was also subject to negative press and periodic calls for its banishment as brutal and inhumane even as many state legislatures were legalizing it. Despite the occasional calls from the pulpit to rid the world of the evils of the sport, boxing was becoming big business—attracting not only the 19th-century “sports” types but also the J. P. Morgans of the world. A bevy of politicians were also often seen alongside the newly crowned heroes of boxing.
The development of a well-regulated amateur boxing program under the auspices of the AAU—first constituted in 1888—also mitigated some of the negativity. Beginning in 1904, when men’s boxing was featured as a demonstration sport at the St. Louis Olympic Games, amateur boxing enjoyed legitimizing of the highest order, especially after 1908 when it became a fully recognized sport by the IOC. Women’s boxing was also demonstrated, but not as part of the Olympic Games. Rather, an exhibition match was put on under the auspices of the St. Louis Exhibition and World’s Fair.
Amateur women’s boxing, however, was not included as a sport under the AAU, despite the occasional “smoker” held at an AAU-affiliated boxing club. This meant that the opportunity for a robust program of boxing tournaments for women was denied to them as well as the development of sanctioned weights classes, unified rules, and amateur standings. It also meant that women were not given the chance to learn their craft in an amateur program governed by rules and regulations meant to ensure the safety of the participants, including the imposition of sanctions for clubs not adhering to the rules—something it would take nearly a century to enact in the United States.
The exclusion of women from a sanctioned amateur program also closed the path toward greater legitimacy for women’s boxing as a sport. Amateur boxing contests in the United States did not begin to be sanctioned until the late 1970s and in many jurisdictions not until the mid to late 1990s.
The Fin-de-Siècle Woman: Gussie Freeman,
Woman Pugilist
The fin de siècle woman is making rapid strides into the realm of man that it begins to look as though the weaker sex will become the stronger and man have to step aside in all vocations that have been exclusive his own.
—Brooklyn Correspondence, Daily Argus News, June 11, 1895[2]
The battling slasher Gussie Freeman is best known for her four-round battle against Hattie Leslie in November 1891 on the stage of Brooklyn’s Unique Theater on Grand Street in East Williamsburg—a neighborhood fondly recalled as Dutchtown, so named for all the German immigrants that flooded the area beginning in the 1840s. Gussie was more than just a battling slasher though: She was a force of nature with a man-sized body on her large frame, a fierce will, and a fighting spirit that belied any frailties that might have beset her.
Gussie was born into poverty in the Ridgewood section of Queens of German parentage in or around March 1864. “I never had any education,” she told a correspondent in 1895, seated at her newly opened saloon at 138 Cook Street on the corner of Bushwich Avenue in East Williamsburg. She added, “My mother was too poor to send me to school, and when I was twelve years old she send [sic] me to the rope walk to work.” The ropewalk was the Waterbury Rope Works jute (hemp) factory at Waterbury and Ten Eyck Street where she worked well into her twenties before embarking on her colorful career as a boxer.
Even before she went to work at the ropewalk, some of her earliest memories were of setting out to find “wood and cinders for the family fuel.” Once at the factory, she quickly rebelled against the fine needlework of women’s work. “Whenever I could get out of the shop I would go to the yard and help load the trucks and before I was 14, I could do as much work as any man. I was larger and heavier than any woman in the shop.
“I wish I was more like a woman,” she continued.
“I don’t like to be so much like a man, but I can’t help it. I must make a living and I am not fit for anything but the kind of work I do. I have a flat upstairs. It is the first home I ever had and the best thing I ever had.”[3]
At the rope works, her hard labor hoisting bales of hemp gave her the strength of a man as she drew the reputation of defender of girls and women who were molested by the boys and men at the factory. As a scrapper, she also came to raise fighting cocks and fighting bulldogs, and was never afraid of a fight.
Gussie’s life as a professional pugilist began when Hattie Leslie came to Brooklyn as “the leading feature” at an “Irving Specialty company” production at Williamsburg’s Unique Theater. In the advertisements for the show, Hattie had issued her usual offer to give $25 to any male boxer at 135 pounds or any female boxer at any weight who could knock her out in four rounds.
Gussie, known as “Loney” or “Lonely,” egged on by her pals at the ropewalk, took up the challenge and a four-round bout was scheduled. Fight night found the theater with a rambunctious sold-out crowd with the loge seats filled with the usual swells, the reserved stage seats with local Brooklyn politicians, and the rafter seats with the hooting and shouting of the boys and girls from the Waterbury Rope Works where it was said the tickets had been purchased for everyone to attend for free. A contingent of police from the Fifth Precinct in Brooklyn was also present in the wings under the command of its captain, Martin Short, just in case, it was said.
Some fifty years later in a remembrance published in the Brooklyn Eagle, one of her coworkers recalled that “All Dutchtown turned out to see her that night . . . the crowd went wild with excitement,” as the women, looming large on the stage and with hard skills and definite science, battered each other from start to finish.[4]
The four-rounders then in vogue at the variety theaters across the country could be every bit as exciting as a regulation prizefight—and as one reporter put it:
The Theater was crowded to suffocation.
Mrs. Freeman . . . is big and powerful and weighs about 160 pounds. Her handiness with her fist has got her into innumerable rows and a majority of her opponents have been men, whom she has invariably thrashed. . . . [Patrick] Patsy Lantry seconded “Lonely,” and Jim Brady of Buffalo, did the needful for Hattie [who] wore black fighting tights, a white silk tunic and a gold medal. Gussie was dressed in virgin white. Her hair . . . bound in a tight knot and tied with rope yarn . . .
The lady scrappers walked to the centre of the stage, shook hands and came on guard. Gussie had a high, firm guard that contrasted favorably with the loose way that [Hattie] held her hands.
While Gussie was a natural bruiser with some skills, she was not a trained boxer, which began to tell as the fight wore on. Hattie threw a barrage of “scientific” punches, with Gussie answering and never letting up. As it was, both women launched stunning blows from end to end in the first round and eventually drew blood by the end of the second round when Gussie’s waist-length blonde hair also let loose, swirling around her and partially covering her face (some accounts have noted it as happening in the third round).
At the suggestion of Hattie’s corner, and seeing that the fight was a tough one, Hattie rushed out at the start of the third round swinging in a blaze of upper cuts, jabs, and straight punches, each answered by Gussie who was by now quite breathless but still very game. She was, however, clearly being beaten and to the deafening shouts of the rope works gang in the gallery, “Captain Short interfered and stopped the affair amid tremendous confusion,” at which point “the referee, after being shouted and sworn at, gave the fight to Hattie.”[5]
A History of Women's Boxing Page 10