A History of Women's Boxing

by Malissa Smith

  14. Eddie Brietz. “Sports Roundup,” p. 9. [Fultonhistory.com]

  15. “Pasadena Books Woman Referee.” Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 9, 1940, p. 24. [Google News]

  16. Cecilia Rasmussen. “L.A. Then and Now: First Women Boxing Referee Rolled with Punches.” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2006, p. B2. [ProQuest]

  17. Jeff Moshier. “Playing Square.” Evening Independent, June 6, 1940, p. 10. [Google News]

  18. Cecilia Rasmussen. “L.A. Then and Now: First Women Boxing Referee Rolled with Punches.” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2006, p. B2. [ProQuest]

  19. “Woman Referee Retires.” New York Times, June 1, 1940, p. 16. [ProQuest]

  20. Milwaukee Journal, January 30, 1943, p. 16. [Google News]

  21. Josephine Lewman. “‘Boxing for Women Too.’” Youngstown Vindicator, November 8, 1944, p. 8. [Google News]

  Chapter 5

  Boxing in the Age of the

  “Mighty Atom”

  She is a girl who really likes to fight and we can’t keep her out of the gymnasium.

  —Mickey Wood, owner, Mayfair Gymnasium, April 7, 1949[1]

  Barbara Buttrick, popularly known as “The Mighty Atom of the Ring,” was a British boxer who took up the gloves in the late 1940s. She became representative of the new post–World War II female boxer who held her own in the gym and went her own way in finding opportunities to ply her trade—whether performing in a carnival sideshow, in the back lot of a feed store, or in an actual arena. Buttrick came to the United States in the early 1950s and, along with other pioneers such as Phyllis Kugler and Jo Ann Hagen, forged a career as a professional fighter, retiring with a claimed record of thirty wins, one loss, and one draw.

  The 1950s and 1960s became an era when boxers pushed at the strictures against female boxing in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. Along with Kugler, Buttrick was able to gain a license to box professionally in one of the states—Texas in 1957—something that hadn’t happened in the United States since the early 1920s when Mlle. La Mar was licensed to box in New Jersey. (A sanctioned fight in West Virginia was fought in June of 1950 between Jo Ann Hagen and a Chicagoan named Nancy Parker, though it is unclear if they were issued formal licenses to fight.)

  These boxers of the 1950s joined the many women who were staying in the workforce regardless of the entreaties to stay at home to raise a family. And while many women were forced to trade in their blue-collar war-related factory jobs for more traditional pink-collar work as secretaries or shop girls, boxing women—and their close cousins, “lady” wrestlers—were staking a claim for legitimation and acceptance.

  Wrestling, in particular, grew in popularity with regular circuits and fighting opportunities for women. Despite the seeming acceptance of “lady wrestling,” however, boxing remained out of reach as a sustainable professional venture for at least one of the “old” reasons: The male domain of boxing was unsuitable for women. Professional female wrestling matches on the other hand were viewed as entertainment and not as brutal sport. In an attempt to rectify the barely visible impact of “girl” gloved fighters on the boxing scene, promoters and trainers like Belle Martell put their considerable talents toward developing a new generation of women to fight on legitimate amateur and professional fight cards, unfortunately without a lot of success.

  Even though regular employment as fighters was hard to come by, these women continued to train and work in and around boxing. Ofttimes they were isolated figures in the boxing gyms of the day where they kept their skills sharp and earned the respect of their male counterparts, however begrudgingly. In the United States in particular, it also meant riding the wave of gender expectations that pushed at domesticity. However improbably, cracks in the veneer were shining through as more and more women entered the labor force—including boxing women who continued to make gains in the sport as promoters, trainers, managers, boxing gym managers, and officials.

  Barbara Buttrick: The “Mighty Atom” of the Ring

  At four-feet, eleven-inches tall and weighing just nintety-eight pounds, Barbara Buttrick, known variously as “Battling Barbara” and “the Mighty Atom of the Ring,” could very easily have hidden behind a free-hanging heavy bag and never have been noticed. What she lacked in physical stature, however, she more than made up for in hard work, grit, heart, and determination—all the attributes necessary to ply a trade as a boxer inside the velvet ropes of the boxing ring. She was also not unlike her moniker, a force to be reckoned with in a tiny package: hard charging, combustible, and mean when she needed to be.

  As a “mighty atom” she was also something more: a postwar woman unafraid of taking the hard road and equally unapologetic about the path she chose to get there. Nor did anything in her makeup align her with the flighty images of powder-puff girls in boxing costumes that permeated popular images from the 1930s. She was a Rosie the Riveter in boxing gloves: ready to take charge with fists of steel whether fighting women or men despite her diminutive size.

  Barbara Buttrick was born in March of 1930. She was the only child of a shopkeeper and his wife who raised her in the village of Cottingham in Yorkshire, England, northwest of the city of Hull. The family home was on 18 Linden Avenue—a street barely three blocks long. Her home, like the others on her street, was a two-story semidetached brick house with a large back lot and fronted by a small garden. Across the street was a row of trees that bordered the narrow grassy wedge between it and the main railway line.

  Always “sporty” (in the parlance of the time), Barbara Buttrick’s interest in boxing began by chance when she was fifteen years old. Coming into a friend’s house after playing soccer, her friend’s mother handed the girls pieces of the newspaper, admonishing them to wipe the dirt from their shoes before tracking it into the house. What caught Buttrick’s attention, however, was not whether she’d managed to remove all of the offending mud but an article featuring a story about the women’s champion boxer Polly (Fairclough) Burns, purportedly entitled, “Polly the Champ.”

  What intrigued Buttrick were Polly’s stories of having boxed men in the fairground boxing booth shows that made their way up and down the countryside following the age-old circuit of fairs that had dotted Britain for centuries. Thoroughly enthralled by what she had read, Buttrick dropped the idea that had been percolating in her head to start an all-girls soccer team in favor of taking up boxing.

  Speaking about it years later, Buttrick said that she got a book entitled The Noble Art of Self-Defense, written by the champion flyweight Jimmy Wilde—to whom she was later compared—and began teaching herself to fight with a punching bag she set up in the backyard. She also wrote to Polly Burns who responded to her and noted that since there weren’t very many girls fighting, it would be hard to get onto boxing cards. Buttrick wrote to other fighters, and even the Boxing News, but the replies were even more discouraging.

  That didn’t stop Buttrick, however, and as she improved her boxing know-how, she began sparring with the neighborhood boys and any girls when she could. It was in those early fights that she developed a good chin and learned how to give up weight and height—becoming more and more skilled as a counterpuncher in the process, a trademark of her later success in the ring. She also received encouraging support from Len Smith, a young former bantamweight amateur boxer (and her future husband), who was of the opinion that if she wanted to box, she should.

  What was also clear was Buttrick’s commitment not only to learning the sport but to having a career as a fighter, so much so that she’s been quoted as saying, “My mum used to look at our family tree to find where it [the boxing] came from.”[2]

  When Buttrick turned eighteen, she managed to win her parents’ permission to go south to London to train at Mickey Wood’s Mayfair Gymnasium (and Tough Guys agency), arranged by Len Smith. Soon after her arrival, she got a job as a secretary where she typed by day. After work, she went to the Mayfair Gymnasium on Great Portland Street near the Baker Street tube and worked out for three hours befor
e making her way to her room at the YMCA in Bloomsbury. She mostly trained with Len Smith at the beginning. At 118 pounds, Smith was a fitting size and weight for her to spar with as she began learning the finer points of how to box. She also received instructions from the well-known veteran trainer Wally May on the nuances of the fight game.

  It was Buttrick’s perseverance and skill that brought her to the attention of the Mayfair Gymnasium’s owner, Mickey Wood, who signed her on as a “tough girl.” Wood, the former British lightweight wrestling champion and a commando instructor during World War II, ran a stunt school and talent agency based in his gym, and taught various fighting techniques and such feats as how to jump from a moving car and other action-oriented stunts for the movies.

  No doubt Wood’s theatrical background in combination with Buttrick’s evident skill and unrelenting desire to pursue professional boxing led them to introduce Buttrick to the sporting world in October of 1948—a mere three months after her arrival in London. It was Buttrick’s intention to box as a professional, and Wood was only too happy to assist her by bringing in the press to garner as much publicity as possible.

  So successful was her introduction to the denizens of London’s Fleet Street, she received press attention all over Great Britain and as far away as Australia and the United States. In one article that ran on October 12, 1948, a photograph of Buttrick showed her in a boxing stance with a caption that read she was “prepared to accept any challenge from an opponent in her own weight [class]” and that “when fully trained,” it was her desire “to start a boxing club for women only”[3] as “England’s first woman professional boxer.”[4]

  The response was equally well reported, most notably with a series of articles about three women in Australia who were training to meet Buttrick’s challenge. One story that ran in the Hull paper in her native Yorkshire noted that Buttrick had received “three offers from Sydney.” The women were introduced as “Fay Lynch (18), 114lb., 5ft. 3in; Pat Bailey (17), 112lb., 5ft. 2in.; and Cath Thomas (18), 117lb. 5ft. 4in.”

  The article also quoted Buttrick’s mother who upon hearing of the challenge said, “I have told her she is not to box in public. Boxing is only a hobby for her.”[5] Clearly mother and daughter had different ideas.

  Meanwhile an Australian paper reported that the women were feasting on “oysters and underdone beefsteaks—and drank 6 pints of milk.” The three fledgling pugilists were also reported to “train 3 periods a week at home.” Fay Lynch further described their training regimen, stating, “We run, skip, use both the punch-ball and punch-bag, shadow box and spar.” The article gave every indication that Lynch, under the tutelage of a “well-known Sydney trainer,” was as serious about boxing as Buttrick. “We try to eat and live like professional boxers,” she was reported as having said. “We don’t bother about feminine fashions, but stick mostly to a sporting style of dress. But we use lipstick and powder.”[6]

  A British account opined, “The Sydney girls use lipstick and powder as a concession to convention,”[7] with both papers also reporting Fay’s comment that they all wished they’d “been born boys.”

  Arrangements to bring the three young women to England could not, however, be finalized. Of the three, Cath Thomas became the most dedicated to boxing and had the temerity to box a man in an exhibition fight in December of that year in Fairfield, on the outskirts of Sydney. Her exploits, while applauded in some circles, invoked the ire of the authorities and she was “banned from giving public performances in New South Wales . . . by state officials.”[8] Her promoter, Stan Easton, who had been planning a bout for her in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby, was also told to desist.

  Speaking of it to the press, Thomas said, “I’ll never give up fighting now that I’ve broken into the game. They can’t stop me boxing in my home-made ring.”[9]

  Thomas kept to her word and continued to defy the ban, fighting at smokers in and around the Sydney area. By February 1949 it was claimed that she had fought a total of “14 fights against men, for five knockouts, two technical knockouts and five wins on points. She has been knocked out twice,” all of which gave her a 12-2 record.

  She also reiterated her defiance of the ban and said, “I will take on anyone between 8.6 and 9.0 [stone]. They can forget I’m a woman and hit as hard as they like. I like them to hit me first. It seems to rouse me.”[10]

  February 1949 marked another flurry of press coverage for Buttrick, including a newsreel piece that played in the theaters throughout Britain.[11] She was also booked to perform a boxing bout on stage at the Kilburn Empire Theater on March 7, 1949, against the London-based middleweight Bert Saunders.

  Reacting to the news, the Variety Artistes’ Federation (VAF), a theatrical trade organization, in an unprecedented act moved to have the other entertainers slated to appear on the same bill boycott the show. The VAF’s general secretary, Lewis Lee, in calling for the action stated he felt the show would be “degrading to the best interests of society, public entertainment, the boxing profession and womanhood.”[12]

  Mickey Wood, who had been instrumental in promoting the fight and had by then become a fierce defender of Buttrick’s right to fight, said, “There are women lion tamers, snake charmers, trapeze artistes. Why should not this girl box?” Finishing up his comments, he added, “She lives for boxing. In seven months she has trained two hours a day without any injury.”[13]

  VAF next issued a letter to the theater’s manager, Nat Tennens. According to one press account, the letter expressed VAF’s “repugnance and opposition” to the show and threatened “appropriate action [would be] taken to prevent the presentation.”

  Tennens, standing his ground, said, “The VAF are in a difficult position, for they are trying to be dictators, censors and trade unionists at the same time. The Lord Chamberlain had no objections to Barbara appearing, nor have the LCC [London County Council] or the police.”[14]

  He was also quoted as saying, “I see no more harm in displaying the skill of a girl boxer than in staging strip tease acts, nudes, and adagio dancing in which girls are flung about in an undignified manner.”[15] Equating a young woman’s boxing demonstration on stage to snake charmers and trapeze artists was one thing, but equating it with a “girlie” show appeared to push the boundaries of the exhibition he was touting into another realm entirely and would hardly have helped his cause.

  Within a few days, Tennens received notification from the LCC that his theater-operating license would likely be revoked if he allowed the performance to continue—a not unexpected outcome given the negative publicity and the notion that Buttrick’s show was “indecent” at best.[16] The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) also warned Bert Saunders of possible punitive actions if he were to appear on stage with Buttrick. Tennens, complaining that he’d had booking orders from all over the country, had no choice but to cancel the boxing match against Saunders; however, when it came to Buttrick, he told the world that she would still perform “an exhibition of training, shadow boxing and punchball work.”[17]

  Subscribing to the theory that when life gives you lemons make lemonade, Tennens took the tact of advertising the ban as a way of putting more theatergoers in the seats. The headline of the advertisement for her one-week engagement read “Battling Barbara Buttrick/The Girl Boxer Banned By The Variety Artists Federation,”[18] and in true boxing tradition, her act was the “main event,” appearing last on the bill.

  Tennens himself took to the stage to introduce her to the audience. Standing under a spotlight, he gave an oration on the important role that women played during World War II, followed by a further speech on how it was wrong to keep women out of the boxing ring. When he was finished, he motioned Buttrick to join him to fanfare and a drumroll.

  Buttrick walked out from the wing wearing all white, and after clasping her hands in the air toward the audience, removed a silk boxer’s robe. Underneath she wore a white cardigan sweater and white silk boxing shorts with a side stripe. Even her hair sported a white ribb
on. After acknowledging the applause, Buttrick got right to work skipping rope to music and working out on a spring ball before a heavy bag dramatically descended from the ceiling, at which point Tennens shouted out, “The terrific punch of this little girl is estimated at over 700 pounds.”[19] Completing several minutes on the heavy bag and some minutes on the speed bag, her act finished in a wash of green light as she shadowboxed around the stage.

  The notices the next day also left no doubt that the public missed out when her sparring match was canceled. Commenting on her shadowboxing, one reviewer wrote, “She showed remarkable speed and good footwork.” She was also quoted as telling the audience, “Unfortunately I have been prevented from meeting an opponent, but I hope my exhibition has entertained you.”[20] The audience’s rousing applause certainly gave every indication that she had.

  The week at the Kilburn Theater aside, Buttrick was dead set on competing. A “secret contest” between Buttrick and an unnamed female boxer from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, was announced to the press and set for late April 1949 at an undisclosed location in London. To keep the mystery going, the press also reported that a small audience of invitation-only fight fans would be in attendance.

  In preparation for the fight, Buttrick—who had just turned down an offer “to tour with a London production” because they would not let her spar—traveled back up to Cottingham with Len Smith to train. Met at the train station by the local press, Smith, when asked how Buttrick was doing, told the Hull Daily News reporter that after “nine months” at the “Mayfair Gymnasium . . . [she] was shaping well.”[21] Smith also mentioned that she would be working on her plans to help other women who wanted to box, and would be looking for a possible space to open a women’s boxing club as well as weighing other opportunities including an offer from a promoter in New York.