Another paper reported: “Miss O’Rourke has a black eye and her lips are cut and swollen . . . [and] Miss Donavan has several bruises on her face but is not otherwise injured.”[30] The tone of the articles, which featured headlines such as “Texas Mamie Knocks Out Goldie O’Rourke in 13,”[31] were minus the disparaging remarks of newspaper accounts describing her fight with Ellen Devine—despite the fact they both had sustained injuries during their battle. Given Texas Mamie’s evident technical prowess and popularity, the editorializing may well have been put on the back burner, as she proved her staying power as a figure in the boxing world.
Texas Mamie also worked hard to become a member of both the New York boxing and theatrical communities, gaining notice in the New York Times for participating in a charity boxing match at the 1908 edition of the theater group’s annual field day held at the polo grounds. The event raised $5,000 for the New York Home for Destitute and Crippled Children. A highlight of the show was a wrestling match featuring Cora Livingstone, the champion female wrestler, and a fellow performer in variety theater. Livingstone was also known to participate in boxing shows from time to time, including a bout held in Buffalo, New York, against Bertha Smith, a Cincinnati-based fighter, in November 1911.
By 1909 Texas Mamie was appearing in Fred Irwin’s Big Show with an unnamed partner, performing a physical culture exhibition that included fencing, boxing, and wrestling at places like the Gayety Theatre in Columbus, Ohio. She also appeared in the newly remodeled Ninth and Arch Museum in Philadelphia with a boxing act.
At some point, likely in late 1908 or early 1909, Texas Mamie suffered a tough defeat at the hands of Flora Ryan, a New York–based boxer. Flora Ryan’s next bout, that spring, was against a Connecticut boxer named Kid Broad. Tippy Fay, Kid Broad’s manager, put on the fight before a “select crowd of dead game sports” numbering about three hundred who had come out to see Flora, the woman who “gave Texas Mamie such a great battle.”[32] Flora put on a fabulous exhibition of boxing at its best and defeated Kid Broad on points at the end of their ten-round bout.
From that point on, however, Texas Mamie seems to have receded into obscurity with little or no press, and beginning in 1910 there were seemingly no more notices of upcoming theatrical appearances or boxing events.
The fights of Texas Mamie recalled the bouts fought by Hattie Leslie, Hattie Stewart, and the other women who plied their trade as female boxers on stage and in makeshift rings across the country. Texas Mamie was also representative of a new breed of professional boxers whose exploits were more prominently featured in the world of sports and boxing enthusiasts.
At the Fights
It has always been a supposition that boxing is a man’s sport, but nowadays the women seem to be taking up all kinds of sports and they have included boxing in the list. So that settles it.
—T. S. Andrews, “Prize Fighting Becoming a Favorite Pastime for Women,” July 28, 1914[33]
Yes, but that’s part of the game. The excitement and nervous tension you are under when you are boxing makes you forget the pain of a blow almost as soon as you feel it.
—Helen Hildreth, 1917[34]
One of the more controversial aspects of boxing in the early 1900s was the increasing visibility of women at prizefights—whether as boxers, spectators, or even as boxing managers—on both sides of the Atlantic. One newspaper headline published in 1914 went so far as to state “Prize Fighting Becoming a Favorite Pastime for Women.” The article went on to report on the attendance of more than one thousand women ringside at the heavyweight white championship of the world between America’s Gunboat Smith and France’s George Carpentier in London. So large was the expected crowd that the fight’s promoter, Dick Burge, “engaged the services of a corps of female stewards.”[35] A second match held in a different London venue, between Freddie Welch and Willie Ritchie, was also reported to have had a large number of women in attendance.
The surge in popularity was not, however, limited to London. Women attended boxing matches in Paris by the hundreds and were seen at boxing matches in New York and even in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where boxing writer T. S. Andrews reported that women “thoroughly enjoy” watching boxing and further opined:
Most women who attend these contests were very out-spoken and said that they could see no reason why the fair sex could not attend them just as well as watching a football match.[36]
Given that football then, as now, was known for its violence on the field, the notion was a potent one, though the brutality of boxing, pitting two fighters against one another in the ring, was certainly more readily identified as “violent.” The presence of women at the prizefights, as noted earlier, while a subject for public debate, played into the hands of boxing promoters who in looking to further legitimize the sport from the earlier stigmas sought out the presence of women to prove that boxing had crossed a threshold of respectability. The pervasiveness of gloved fights versus the predominant bare-knuckle fighting of a generation before was another selling point in proving that prizefighting was no longer the brutal sport it had once been. The fact that women were more familiar with boxing, both as spectators and perhaps not as contestants so much as denizens of boxing gymnasium programs geared toward exercise and light sparring, also took the stigma from spectatorship.
An amateur boxing charity event to benefit the city’s poor held at the Sixty-Ninth Street Armory in New York City, including a contest held between police and fire department boxers, drew in excess of two hundred women—said to be the largest number of women to have ever attended a boxing card in the city—was a case in point. The presence of so many well-heeled men and women, alongside the city’s political and social elite plus a veritable “who’s who” of boxing champions including Bob Fitzsimmons—considered a “dean” of the boxing community—gave credence to the idea that prizefighting was not only becoming mainstream but also embracing a full spectrum of spectators.
In 1917 the Tacoma Times even ran a series of three articles penned by Elizabeth Tucker, touted as “the only woman boxing manager in the world.” Elizabeth gained notoriety acting as boxing manager and trainer for her twin brother, Lonnie Tucker, and a younger brother, Frankie Tucker. In one of the articles she wrote, “If the entrance of women into politics and all the other lines so long held by men is going to do good, I don’t see why a woman managing professional boxers won’t help.” She went on to argue, “Lots of harm has come to the boxing game because of unscrupulous tricks by some boxers and promoters. I would certainly stop anything of that sort if I [k]new of it and no doubt I would find out.”
The brilliance of her argument was in aligning her very femininity, and therefore one was to presume her forthright scrupulous nature, with being an instrument to further “cleanse” boxing of its illegitimacy by ensuring its respectability, saying as much when she wrote, “My intention is to do everything I can to regain for boxing the prestige which it once held.” She furthered her goal by her support for a national boxing commission—something that is a “gleam” in the “eye” of boxing reformers to this day. The fact that the newspaper ran a series of articles by her also further legitimized both her presence in the boxing world and the notion that women were actually good for boxing.[37]
A full-blooded Cherokee originally hailing from Oklahoma, Elizabeth and her brother Frankie were shown running along side of each other down a street in St. Louis in September of 1916 ahead of his bout against Harry Atwood (which Tucker subsequently won in a twelve rounder). The article about her, entitled “Trains Her Brother to Be a Fighter,” noted:
When Frank Tucker, a pugilist of St. Louis goes on the road he knows he must do some real work. He can’t sit down and rest without doing his three miles like some fighters do. “Sis” Elizabeth Tucker, his trainer and manager, goes along to see he does his work. She appears in the ring also as his chief second. The boy believes she is going to make a great fighter of him. Anyway, she is large[ly] responsible for his present winning form.[38]
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br /> Elizabeth began by managing and training her twin brother, Lonnie Tucker’s, boxing career. A featherweight, he began fighting in 1912. She also told a newspaper that she was going to accompany her brothers on a trip to Australia in late 1916, telling the reporter, “Why shouldn’t a girl manage a fighter? I have to look after my brothers anyway and what’s the difference if I manage or let someone else do it. I think my interest in them makes me the proper person to do it.” The article also stated that she’d been a “delegate from Oklahoma to the Progressive convention where she led a demonstration for Roosevelt” and otherwise rode “the range on her own ranch, which she manages capably.”[39]
Her notoriety didn’t end there. She was also an early motorcycling enthusiast, horsewoman, swimmer, and expert publicist who kept herself and her brothers in the news as late as 1921 when she proclaimed, “The fight game offers opportunities for individuality, financial remuneration, plenty of diversion and business ability,”[40] all of which is well within the reach of women.
Women’s prizefighting also began to subtly change with the growth in popularity of the sport in France alongside the French boxing variant—not dissimilar from modern kickboxing—known as savate. Roughly following the popularity of boxing in England and the United States throughout the 19th century, women began to participate in both savate and regular boxing. Female boxers came to notoriety in France, and stories of their fights made the newspapers in Europe and in the United States.
The French female boxer who seemingly garnered the most attention was Mlle. Marthe Carpentier. Her first notices in the American press were in March 1914, having defeated Mrs. Lucie Warner, “wife of an English fighter, in four fast rounds,” of a six-round bout. The prizefight was put on at “Chantilly before a large audience of fashionably-dressed men and a surprisingly large number of women.” The report continued that “the English woman had the better of the fighting in the first three rounds,” but in the last round, “Mlle. Carpentier rallied” and after “landing a heavy blow on Mrs. Warner’s jaw,” put her on the canvas. The fight was over when “after the count of seven her seconds threw up the sponge.”[41]
English reports of the fight from the Central News wire were not so enamored of the bout. With a headline screaming “Disgraceful Scene in France,” the crowd was described as “about 400 jockeys and stable lads.” The write-up of the fight itself was also decidedly negative, describing an unsatisfactory event where “After the first two rounds the combatants fought rather wildly, and the referee was obliged to interfere very frequently to compel them to observe the rules.”[42]
The disconnect between the two reports of the fight is telling of the continuing social and cultural concerns being raised by the sight of women in the ring. This is especially so when considering the descriptions of the crowds as being made up of well-heeled men and women versus horseracing louts—the latter reminiscent of the crowd description of the Hattie Leslie v. Alice Leary fight thirty years before near Buffalo, New York.
Within a few days, having been proclaimed the “world’s champion woman boxer,” Mlle. Carpentier, in an article by United Press and widely distributed throughout the United States, was described as “a good looking French brunette, 18 years of age,” who had been trained for six months by a Monsieur Albany, “an expert boxer and jiu-jitsu instructor.” Although the first press accounts had described her as being twenty-five, it is difficult to ascertain her actual age at the time she entered boxing. The United Press piece went on to note “her first serious match will be with Miss Grace Cleveland of Geneva who has signed up for a ten round contest.”[43]
Carpentier’s championship match with Cleveland was scheduled for April. Despite the popularity of Mlle. Carpentier’s previous bout and the rise of female spectatorship at boxing matches in Paris, however, the promoters encountered problems putting on the fight, for what they believed would have been a very well-attended night of boxing. As stated in an article datelined Paris, France, April 18, “the proposed match in which [Mlle. Carpentier] and several other female boxers had promised to appear, has been forbidden by H. Henion, prefect of police,” due to the “many protests against the match on the ground that it would foster brutality among women.”[44]
By the end of April 1914, however, Mlle. Carpentier was headlining on stage at the Royal Hippodrome in Liverpool as part of a show entitled The Lady Boxers, along with Miss Lucie Warner, Miss Adele Neilson of Norway, Mlle. Alice Fleury of Belgium, and a “Miss Vera Caine [of England], who introduces a ball-punching exhibition.” In the tradition of many variety theater boxing shows, Carpentier also issued “a challenge to any lady of her own weight . . . in the world.”[45] The show was noted in September of 1914 as having been put “together by Gus Onlaw, a well-known French sportsman.”[46] Carpentier also occasionally boxed local male fighters in three-round sparring matches and was known to have sparred with Charlie “Ripper” Matthews and Jack “The Fighting Barber” Matthews in October of 1914.[47]
The year 1915 also saw Carpentier make appearances in theaters in England in the lady-boxing show and against other male opponents. One such show included a three-round sparring contest with a local Newcastle boxer named Nichol Brady and, in the second show of the day, in a bout with fighter Jim Berry, “the leading bantam-weight” from Dinnington.[48] The Lady Boxers show did continue to appear, though the newspapers advertisements no longer featured the other fighters in the troop so it is difficult to ascertain if all of the same women were still part of the act. One notice, however, from June 1915, showed the troop intact and also made special mention of Alice Fleury as having “won numerous contests at the Moulin Rouge in Paris.” She was also said to have issued a challenge to all comers in her weight class. The notice for the show made an inference as well of the impact that the Great War, as it was known then, was having on women.
Through the general replacement of men by members of the “gentler” sex, the exhibition of boxing . . . by sports-women . . . last night was not quite as great a novelty as it might have been in normal times, but it is sufficiently novel for the occasion, and the spectacle, if not exactly edifying, was rather attractive.[49]
Not two weeks before, the Aberdeen Evening Express had run a commentary on an advertisement that had made that precise point:
“Boxers (experienced females) wanted.”—“Daily Chronicle.” Bombardier Wells is stated to have rejoined the army, and his brother-pugilists should now have no hesitation in following his lead since there are experienced ladies ready to fill their places in the ring.[50]
If the war was beginning to have an impact on the place of women in Great Britain and likely in France, the United States, as a noncombatant state and firmly isolationist in this period, could not count on the war as having an effect on the perception of women and the roles they could enact as yet. For female boxers in Britain, however, the connections were certainly being made between “male roles” and the allowance for women to begin to “stand in” for their male counterparts in what had been thought of as highly masculine endeavors such as boxing.
By 1916 advertisements for Carpentier’s female boxing troop seemed to dry up, although Vera Caine, who had a punch-bag act, continued on in her own right. Other women plying the boards as lady boxing champions in England at that time included Madge Young who brought down the house nightly with her blindfolded boxing exhibition. Miss Billie Wells also began to make a name for herself and by 1918 had an act that included “singing, dancing, comedy and boxing.”[51]
Back in the United States, boxers such as Myrtle Havers, a seventeen-year-old from Flint, Michigan, born in December 1894, were making a name for themselves. Havers was best known for knocking out Mabel Williams. At twenty-two, Williams, originally from Grand Rapids, was renowned as the best female boxer in Michigan until she was put “into dreamland with a stiff upper cut after having severely punished Miss Havers in the early part of the seventh round,” leaving her with enough bruising on her right eye to close it. The women had
been scheduled to fight a ten-round girls’ championship bout.[52] It is said “friends of the winner picked her up on on their shoulders and decorated her with the club colors pink and white.”[53] They also “sent to Chicago for a bronze medal emblematic of the girls’ boxing championship of the state.”[54] News of the fight was published as far afield as England and Australia.
By 1910, Havers had already begun work as a leatherworker in an auto factory. There is no word on how she got into boxing or whether she continued on in her career. She otherwise continued to hold jobs in the auto industry, including working as a machinist, before becoming a beautician in the late 1920s. She continued to live in and around Flint for the rest of her life, before passing away in 1971.
Another boxer who gained notoriety in the period was Helen Hildreth. She boxed on the vaudeville stage from about 1916 to 1921. Her main sparring partner was John (Johnny or Jack) Atkinson. Both weighed about 105 pounds and the pair put together a three-round boxing act that excited audiences with Hildreth’s evident “science.”
Hildreth, a widow (though not much is known about her marriage), was said to have come to boxing after a bout of poor health, although in an interview she gave in 1918, she claimed to have been in a railroad wreck. According to another press account, after getting herself to the gym, she developed a gradual interest in the sport through bag-punching and light sparring with her brother. She also claimed to have studied boxing with Billy Grupp at his boxing club in West Harlem.
Aside from boxing with Atkinson, Hildreth’s exploits in the sport in 1916 and 1917 included private exhibition sparring sessions with the likes of “Benny Leonard, lightweight champion; Pete Herman, bantamweight champion; Kewpie Ertle, former bantamweight champion; and Johnny Dundee.”[55] Her act was often billed under the title Helen Hildreth & Co. and noted her as the “‘Champion Lady Bantamweight Boxer’—the only woman to ever publicly box before a licensed Boxing Club.”[56] The fight alluded to in the advertisement was the boxing match that wasn’t—her fight at the Grupp Athletic Club on West 116th Street in New York, for which she became most well-known.
A History of Women's Boxing Page 12