Bruisers and bare knuckles: the brutal world of Victorian boxing

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary: "Bruisers and Bare Knuckles: The Brutal World of Victorian Boxing"

Episode Overview In the February 21, 2025 episode of the History Extra Podcast titled "Bruisers and Bare Knuckles: The Brutal World of Victorian Boxing," host Ellie Cawthorn delves into the gritty and exhilarating world of Victorian-era boxing. Featuring an in-depth interview with Sarah Elizabeth Cox, the historical boxing consultant for the newly released Disney and Hulu series "A Thousand Blows," the episode uncovers the raw realities, societal impacts, and colorful personalities that defined boxing in 1880s London.

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Introduction to Victorian Boxing

Ellie Cawthorn sets the stage by highlighting the allure of Victorian boxing, emphasizing its widespread popularity across different social strata. The episode is inspired by the new television series "A Thousand Blows," which transports viewers to the boxing rings of Victorian London.

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Interview with Sarah Elizabeth Cox: Background and Connection to the Show

Sarah Elizabeth Cox introduces herself as the historical consultant for "A Thousand Blows." She explains her role in ensuring the show's historical accuracy and her personal fascination with Victorian boxers Alexander Monroe and Hezekiah Moscow. Sarah mentions, “I was the historian who... researched them around six years ago and they've now been incorporated into the show with characters that are not the real Hezekiah Moscow and Alec Munro, but are based on them” (04:10).

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Victorian Boxing in the 1880s: Prize Fighting vs. Regulated Boxing

Sarah delves into the distinction between prize fighting and regulated boxing during the 1880s. She explains that prize fighting was typically bare-knuckle and fought for substantial monetary rewards, often conducted illegally to avoid police crackdowns. In contrast, regulated boxing adhered to the Queensberry Rules introduced in 1867, which mandated the use of gloves and established structured rounds.

• Prize Fighting: Often took place in secluded areas like marshes or fields to evade law enforcement. Despite legal restrictions, it remained rampant, with Sarah noting, “there is prize fighting happening absolutely everywhere” (04:22).

• Queensberry Rules: Introduced gloves, three-minute rounds with one-minute breaks, and prohibited wrestling tactics. Sarah describes them as “making the game safer, it makes it more gentlemanly” (08:49).

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Popularity of Boxing and Its Societal Impact

Boxing's immense popularity stemmed from its accessibility and its role in both entertainment and personal discipline. Sarah points out, “It was something that could keep these poor kids out of criminality as well” (11:53). The sport attracted individuals from various backgrounds, including tradesmen, publicans, sailors, and immigrants from the Caribbean.

• Community and Support: Despite the harsh realities, there was a strong sense of community among boxers. Sarah mentions, “there are constantly benefits being held as fundraisers for boxers in need” (19:41).

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Key Figures and Notable Matches

Sarah highlights several prominent figures and matches that left a significant mark on Victorian boxing:

• Jem Smith: The English heavyweight champion known for his traditional bare-fist fighting style. In a pivotal 1888 match against Peter Jackson, Smith was disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct, an event that Sarah describes as “an absolute shambles and a fix and a fraud” (24:47).

• Peter Jackson: A charismatic and handsome black Australian boxer who became a sensation upon his arrival in the UK. Despite his popularity, Jackson, like George Godfrey before him, was barred from competing for the world championship in America due to racial segregation.

• Sugar Goodson: Known for his infamous 1882 bare-knuckle fight in a chapel, which was sensationalized by the press for its scandalous setting and the involvement of undercover police. Sarah recounts, “the entire thing is described in the press. It's massive” (22:14).

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Women's Involvement in Victorian Boxing

While women's boxing was rare and often viewed as a novelty, Sarah sheds light on pioneering female boxers who defied societal norms:

• Billy and Mrs. Noon: A husband-and-wife boxing duo from Birmingham who performed in public, blending entertainment with combat.

• Sisters Mills (Violet and Rosalind Mills): Described as muscular maids, they toured with showmen like Alf Ball, performing boxing acts that challenged contemporary gender roles. Sarah notes the confusion some viewers have about the presence of black individuals in Victorian London, clarifying, “there were at least around a dozen black male boxes active just in the 1880s” (28:19).

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Accuracy of the TV Show Representation

Sarah assesses how well "A Thousand Blows" captures the essence of Victorian boxing:

• Setting and Atmosphere: The show accurately portrays the Blue Coat Boy Pub, a real establishment managed by Punch Lewis. The set design effectively recreates the vibrant and chaotic environment of boxing nights.

• Character Depiction: While the show takes creative liberties, especially with characters like Sugar Goodson, it maintains the historical spirit. Sarah appreciates the show’s portrayal of the transition from bare-knuckle fighting to regulated boxing, describing it as a “messy changeover period” (31:50).

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Conclusion

The episode concludes by acknowledging Sarah Elizabeth Cox's contributions to both historical research and the television series. Listeners are encouraged to explore more about Victorian boxing through Sarah's website and additional resources provided by the History Extra team.

Ellie Cawthorn wraps up by directing listeners to a video on the History Extra YouTube channel that explores the real history behind "A Thousand Blows," ensuring that the rich history of Victorian boxing continues to engage and educate audiences.

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Notable Quotes

• Sarah Elizabeth Cox: “There is prize fighting happening absolutely everywhere” (04:22).
• Sarah Elizabeth Cox: “It was something that could keep these poor kids out of criminality as well” (11:53).
• Sarah Elizabeth Cox: “The entire thing is described in the press. It's massive” (22:14).
• Sarah Elizabeth Cox: “there are at least around a dozen black male boxes active just in the 1880s” (28:19).
• Sarah Elizabeth Cox: “If it's not accurate, is it at least feasible?” (31:50).

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Timestamp References

• 04:10 – Introduction of Sarah Elizabeth Cox and her connection to "A Thousand Blows."
• 04:22 – Discussion on prize fighting prevalence.
• 08:49 – Explanation of the Queensberry Rules.
• 11:53 – Popularity and societal impact of boxing.
• 19:41 – Community support among boxers.
• 22:14 – Sugar Goodson's notorious chapel fight.
• 24:47 – Jem Smith vs. Peter Jackson match details.
• 28:19 – Women's boxing and racial diversity in Victorian London.
• 31:50 – Accuracy of the TV show representation.

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For more detailed insights into Victorian boxing and the making of "A Thousand Blows," visit grapplingwithhistory.com and explore additional content on the History Extra YouTube channel.

Transcript

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[Ellie Cawthorn]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Men fighting pumas, bust ups in sacred chapels and a pair of sisters who could pack a punch in Victorian Britain. Boxing offered up edge of your seat entertainment to all levels of society. A new show called A Thousand Blows lands on Disney today and it transports viewers back to the ringside in Victorian London. So for today's episode, I spoke to the show's historical boxing consultant, Sarah Elizabeth Cox, to uncover some of the extraordinary real stories that inspired the drama.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

A new show, A Thousand Blows, is launching on Disney and on Hulu in the us. So we thought that this was a perfect chance to delve into the world of Victorian boxing, because this is one of the central premises of the show is what it focuses on. Sarah, before we get into this world, can you tell us a bit about your connection to the show?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Hi. So I am the boxing consultant, one of the historical consultants on A Thousand Blows, alongside Halley Rubenhold and Professor Matthew Smith as well. And, yeah, I worked across two years worth of episodes for the show, advising them on historical accuracy. And for me, my main connection actually to the show is with the two Jamaican boxers that it is about, really, Alexander Monroe and Hezekiah Moscow. I was the historian who, and I hate this phrase, but kind of discovered them, researched them around six years ago and they've now been incorporated into the show with characters that are not the real Hezekiah Moscow and Alec Munro, but are based on them.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Fantastic. And your research focuses on the 1880s in particular, and this is the era that we see brought to life in the show. Why was this such an interesting time for British boxing?

[Samsung Advertiser]

So the 1880s, it's really interesting. If you said, particularly to an American fan of boxing history, the 1880s is under researched and under looked, they'd call you an idiot. It's certainly not. This is the era of John L Sullivan. He's the world heavyweight champion. You know, he's formidable in the ring, but he's an incredible personality. A celebrity, a terrible drunk, a horrible racist, but a real personality. And when you read boxing histories, you get the 1880s in there, but it's always the American 1880s. And I started my research actually with wrestling and I moved into boxing because many of the wrestlers I was researching were also boxers as well, in Lond, London in the 1880s. And I thought, why is no one researching these guys? There didn't seem to be much out there at all about what was happening in London. It's a really, really interesting time for boxing in Britain. Right at the start of the decade, 1880, the Home Secretary issues a directive to magistrates to crack down on prize fighting. Prize fighting and boxing sounds like it's going to be the same thing. I mean, the real difference is prize fighting was usually bare fist and it was done for money. It illegal betting on it was illegal. And boxing is the art of boxing itself, usually with the gloves and in a more regulated manner, usually for small cash prizes or a trophy, a medal, or for the love of it. So there's this directive to crack down on prize fighting. And then what you see over the decade is absolutely relentless newspaper headlines saying, the revival of prize fighting, yet another prize fight. There is prize fighting happening absolutely everywhere, usually out in some marshes, in a field in Kent or somewhere on the outskirts of London, all over the country. 1:00am you know, to try and avoid the attentions of the police. But there is a crackdown on it. They are constantly getting busted by the police. The punishments aren't usually severe enough to stop it. That's the thing. That's why it keeps happening. It would be something like a small fine for people. By participating, organizing and watching, watching it as well. You'd be done for aiding and abetting. But back in London, you've also got, around 1880, the formation of the Amateur Boxing Society. In 1885, the formation of the Professional Boxers Society, which was mockingly called, I think, the Battered Bruisers Benevolent Fund in the press. And you have boxing absolutely everywhere. In pretty much every pub, particularly in East London, there is a boxing saloon, a bat room where there's boxing taking place. There are clubs across the West End and in central London. Boxing's massive. As I said, we don't have these celebrities, really. But one of the reasons I really liked looking at this era is the characters that are there. They're very ordinary men. They have these really, really interesting lives outside the ring. I'm looking at their criminality, and it's bad in a lot of cases, looking at their families, looking at their. Yeah, just their boxing careers, but their lives outside the ring as well. So we've got these really interesting people that I kind of obsess and fall in love with a little bit.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Well, I definitely want to ask you about some of those characters later on. So we've got this division then, between prize fighting, as you say, with bare knuckle and boxing. Can you tell us a bit more about the ways that these two things were viewed?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Yeah, absolutely. So you had the Queensberry rules introduced in 1867. And, you know, they're flexible. They are considered flexible by boxers. During this period, prize fighting is criticized in the press. And the way that the press view it is not necessarily the way that the boxers themselves viewed it. The people that went to watch it viewed it. So you have to take quite a critical view there. The way most of the press, national newspapers, regional newspapers, some of the sporting newspapers, apart from perhaps the Sporting Life, the way they view it is as barbaric, a hangover from a distant past that civil civilized society will have nothing to do with anymore. These bare knuckle fights, they would go on for sometimes three hours, sometimes a hundred, 110 rounds with bare fists. So you can imagine, yeah, it would have been barbaric.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

And just to remind us, what are the Queensberry rules?

[Samsung Advertiser]

I mean, the main ones are boxers should be wearing gloves, heavily padded gloves, not the kind of almost like small skin gloves or two ounce gloves which were also commonly used at the time. And the main thing is it's three minute rounds with one minute between each round. And you don't fight for endurance in the way that you do in a prize fight under London prize ring rules. So you are not going and going and going for three hours until someone's on the floor unconscious. There are other rules as things like the size of the ring is stipulated, but one of the other main ones is that you don't use wrestling tactics like hip tosses or buttocking, which you would often have seen in bare knuckle fighting. And actually why a lot of wrestlers at the time were good boxers as well. So for a lot of people, this is fantastic. This is a step forward. It makes the game safer, it makes it more gentlemanly for other people. It is, I think you would call it, I say, like dumbing down the sport, it's making it less manly. It's considered noble to fight with the fists and not with the gloves. So there's this real diversity of opinion. Jem Mace, who was a British boxing champion in the 1860s, he's very much around still in the 1880s. In fact, he actually boxed until 1903 or 1904, when he was in his 70s, a few years before he died. But he is really keen on using the gloves and moving away from the past and the sport that he would have grown up with, fighting barefist. So it's really interesting to see the newspaper coverage of prize fighting at this time. It's described as barbaric. It's described as something that only the lowest of the low, the poorest of the poor, were doing.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

I was going to ask you, with this division between bare knuckle and fighting with gloves, is it as simple as a class division?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Yeah, absolutely not. Because the purses that are being offered, the prizes for bare knuckle fighting, prize fights are sometimes massive. Now, where's that money come from? That's come from gentlemen who want to watch two men fight for three hours and pay handsomely to do so. I don't think it was a case of the roughest of society wanted to watch. You know, there was men of all classes that did as well. One of the interesting things is, despite this crackdown in the law and the fact that prize fighting is illegal, the Prince of Wales, the Queen's son, we know him to have been a fan. We know him to have been a fan for many decades. And then in 18, I think it's 1887, he organizes his own meet and greet with John L Sullivan when he comes to the uk, and with Jem Smith, who is the English champion at this time. And Jem Smith is a prize fighter. He's a man that was always much more comfortable fighting bare fist. And he's sort of considered the last of the English barefist champions, really. He organises this meet and greet, a night of private boxing for him and his friends, and completely undermines everything that newspapers have been trying to achieve for years, which I was just. Yeah, I just find that really interesting.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

So I think you painted a great picture of how popular boxing was, but what do you think made it so popular?

[Samsung Advertiser]

That's an interesting question. I think, for men of a certain class, watching poor men beat each other up was. I mean, we do it, we still love boxing today. We see, you know, the. The huge amount of money that Saudi Arabia puts into paying for boxing shows. Right. There's certainly a sort of a. A class divide there. I mean, it's a sport as old as time. Men have always fought each other and other people have always wanted to watch them. I think participating in boxing has always been popular because it doesn't cost any money. It's something that poor kids can do with their hands. Right. It's a sport that really instills, when you're training, discipline, respect. You have to respect your opponent, you have to respect yourself. It's a really, really tough sport. Physically incredible cardio workout to box for 30 minutes, letting three hours out in a field in Kentucky. So it's popular in that regard. What was really interesting, certainly in the 1880s and more so in the 1890s, is a rise in boxing and a Christian mission. Boxing brought you closer to God because it made your body stronger and made your mind stronger as well, and it kept you on the straight and narrow. That's a really interesting contrast with the way prize fighting is seen as a vice. And all the betting and the booze and the criminality that was associated with it. So boxing's popular amongst criminals and it's popular amongst godly young men. It was seen as something that could keep these poor kids out of criminality as well. So popular with all walks of life in that regard. It was very fashionable for wealthy men. Some of them would have gone to sort of boxing clubs, like group classes, in the way that you had boxing clubs in, in the pubs in East London. What was more fashionable was to have a private tutor, so you would go to his private rooms or he would come to you and you'd spar with him or with a friend. That was considered a civilised and fashion for men at the time.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

And I guess, does it fit into this wider scene in Victorian London, at least of entertainment and the music hall and pubs and all of that? It's part of that scene, right?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Yeah, absolutely. I think certainly you see over the course of the 1880s, a shift in boxing being a sport to an entertainment. Certainly with wrestling as well, actually, what you start to see is boxers who perhaps in the early 1880s, mid-1880s, are boxing in kind of, you know, maybe pub competitions. They start doing music hall, sort of like an installation. They might be there for a week, they'll be there for five days and they'll box three rounds, three times a day. At certain times of day, women were encouraged to go and watch them. They were handsome, muscly, shirtless men. They were boxing to show their form, to show the skill of it, not for money. They were kind of just sparring exhibitions and that does that moves into that music hall space. You start to get boxing themed sort of comedy skits and things like that as well. Which is something actually the real Hezekiah Moscow, who's the character that Malachi Kirby plays in A Thousand Blows? That was something that he moved into in 1890. So it's really, at this point, 1880s, the growth of the music hall, there is just this appetite for entertainment. Poor people were still poor, but most working men had slightly more money and slightly more time than they might have done previously. And they wanted to be entertained, they wanted to be entertained cheaply and they wanted novelty really as well. Well, you start to see things like boxing kangaroos and boxing pumas and boxing bears wrestling bears wrestling pumas. Lots and lots of animal taming. I mean, you look through newspapers from this period for the kind of wanted ads, and there are dozens and dozens of music halls calling out for lady boxes, dwarf boxes, animal tamers, you know, just whatever the latest novelty was. It is really interesting when you think of this attitude that they had about boxing being barbaric and the attitude that, you know, violence wasn't noble, it wasn't desirable. And then you see things like the East London Music hall, buying a giant crocodile and doing live duck feeding shows. That was okay. Boxing a puma was all good fun. Wrestling a donkey. They were desperate for novelty and desperate to be entertained and escapism from, I think, what would have been, you know, quite difficult lives for a lot of people. Get the Angel REEF Special at McDonald's. Now let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and the drinks. Sound good?

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[Podcast Listener]

Yeah.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

I wonder now if we could talk in a bit more detail about the boxes themselves, whose lives you've looked at. What kind of people became boxers? And I'm talking here about the people who really hit the big time.

[Samsung Advertiser]

Most of the boxers that I've looked at who are people who have the majority of their careers over the 1880s, they come from all walks of life. They are sometimes tradesmen, carpenters. There's a lot of publicans or people that go into being publicans. I look at a lot of the immigrant boxes that start to arrive in London around the early 1880s. They are usually either black Americans and North Americans or from Jamaica or Barbados bados. So the Caribbean and they, I mean some of them have really really interesting. They have a day job and a night job where they might say, like Hezekiah Moscow, be a lion and a wolf and a bear tamer by day and a boxer by night. Alec Monroe, who is also in A Thousand Blows, the real Alec Monroe, he's described as a mariner. Most of them are sailors, mariners when they arrive in the uk. He, I think, also went into lion taming as well. Jack Davenport, who's one of my favorites, he's a black American. His sort of origins in why he arrived in London, I don't know. But he becomes barber, he becomes a Soho nightclub bouncer, he's a boxer by day. He is also a shockingly violent man and a thief who lures men into situations with a female friend and then robs them. He is multifaceted. You very rarely see, for example on the census in 1881, on the 1891 census, you very rarely see boxers who list their job title as professional boxer very occasionally, but it's rare. They will usually have their day jobs. Jem Smith. Smith, who is the English champion across most of the 1880s, English heavyweight champion. I think he hauled wood on the docks, developed his muscular physique through that and then turned to boxing at the age of sort of 20.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

So for most people it's a kind of side hustle then, from the sounds of it. But could you get rich from that.

[Samsung Advertiser]

Side hustle at this point? No. Most boxers do not get rich from boxing in London. Certainly in America. That's where the prize money's at at the moment. In England they have all got day jobs. The money probably mostly came from sort of training, being a coach, but most people were working full time jobs as a pub landlord or other occupations. The prize pots were tiny here for a big championship match, maybe sort of £200 up to maybe £1,000, which sounds like a lot. But those matches came along very rarely for only a handful of people. It wasn't an era where there's a huge amount of money. There are certainly gentlemen bankrolling some of these fights. As we said before, they pay for the privilege of watching it. They bat their favourites. So they kind put up the money for their training camps and for the prize money for competitions. You see a lot, there's a lot of boxing, there are a lot of tournaments happening and for example, say 10 men will enter a competition over two days at someone's pub. The prize money will be a silver trophy or maybe £5, something like that. So yeah, it was really difficult. It wasn't something that you could really get rich off. You see, certainly for the boxers that I've looked at who survived and a lot of them die young, those that survived and who weren't in prison, they often have pretty sad endings. They stop boxing maybe in their mid-30s, late-30s, early-40s, and it can often be downhill from there. There are men who ended up in asylums, there are men that ended up in prison, people that really, really struggled. One thing I found really interesting, and you probably won't see this side of things in A Thousand Blows, is how supportive I think what we would call the boxing fraternity was at this time. So particularly after the formation in 1885 of the Professional Boxing association, but before this as well, there are constantly benefits being held as fundraisers for boxers in need, someone who's maybe had an injury or an illness for widows. You know, when a boxer dies in later years, boxers who are sort of long retired and been forgotten, they might be held a benefit to fundraise for them. So there's this real community spirit where everyone chips in and everyone supports everyone else in their time of need. It's a really, really interesting community.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

You've highlighted some really interesting characters in the scene, but what about some moments? Were there any particularly dramatic matches or incidents that we should know about?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Ooh, there's weird and then there's dramatic and then there's important.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Oh, we like all of those.

[Samsung Advertiser]

Sugar Goodson. So Sugar Goodson is the character that Stephen Graham plays in A Thousand Blows. The real Sugar Goodson was very different and was 25 years younger than Steven Graham. But Sugar Goodson, he wasn't a big celebrity, he wasn't a major player. What he is best known for is in 1882, he had a bare knuckle fight in a chapel. Well, it's long debated whether it was a bare knuckle fight. It was prosecuted as such, but they claimed that they wore gloves. What I think probably happened was that they were wearing kind of a skin glove, a really, really small pair of gloves that didn't really protect the hands or the face at all. But this fight in a chapel takes place right in the center of London and is busted police. There were undercover police in the room. The entire thing is described in the press. It's massive. It's a huge press story because of the novelty of these scoundrels fighting in a church. There is betting on a communion table. Absolutely shocking.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Blasphemous.

[Samsung Advertiser]

Yeah. And you can kind of. Oh, I mean, I would have. You know, there's no photos from this period, there are sketches that appeared later on in the newspapers. The appetite for reading about this fight was really huge and it was really talked up as much worse and much more scandalous than it it actually was by the police, the prosecutors and then reported in the press. Sugar Goodson, I don't think he knew it was all set up, but I have a feeling that the match itself was set up. Interestingly, the organisers, only one of them is arrested and the others manage to escape despite the room being full of police. It's a real novelty and people were talking about this match in the 1930s. Fifty years later, Oldboy's reminiscing about it and Sugar Goodson is forever connected to this fight years and years afterwards. In terms of matches that are important in the 1880s, I would say one of the most important is probably Jem Smith, the English champion against Peter Jackson in 1888. Peter Jackson, well, he was the black champion at the time. He'd recently beaten George Godfrey, who was the black champion for most of the 1880s. Peter Jackson was a 6 foot 1 and a half Australian, was originally from the what was then the Dutch West Indies. He was incredibly handsome. He was a real celebrity when he arrived in the uk. Peter Jackson was never able to fight for the world championship in America, despite desperately wanting to. George Godfrey before him as well, actually never able to fight for the world championship because John L Sullivan, the world champion, wouldn't fight a black man for the championship. And that is why we have these segregated championships at the time.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

And in Britain at the time, fights wouldn't be segregated, Is that right?

[Samsung Advertiser]

No, no, absolutely not. And in America they weren't either. Black men fought white men all the time, but they didn't fight them for the world championship. In England there is no segregation at this point. We later on in early 20th century, we do have a colour bar for championships that is introduced at this point. We don't. And technically we could have had a black American English champion at this point. Jem Smith, he didn't have a huge number of professional fights actually. I don't think apart from Peter Jackson, he didn't fight any other black men in England or America. We have a dearth of heavyweights. That's the problem during this period. English men are tiny and most of the bat fighters and the white fighters, they're all tiny. There is not a huge heavyweight division here. Jem Smith was 5 foot 8 and a half and 12 and a half 13 stone, you know, and he is one of the biggest men that we've got. But yeah, in 1888 he fights Peter Jackson in front of an audience who are largely sort of middle and upper class. This is a real occasion. The fight is for sort of £1,000 and Jem Smith messes up. He is a thefis fighter, as I've said before me was always much more comfortable with the old style. Peter Jackson very much isn't. And a couple of minutes into the fight Smith sort of trips his heel like a, like a sort of a wrestling tactic and he's disqualified and the match is over. It is just decreed in the press as an absolute shambles and a fix and a fraud and Smith probably got hundreds of pounds for that performance and it was kind of a bit of a turning point for people. I think they were not impressed. He's not well regarded in the press at all actually, before or after that. But yeah, Peter Jackson was just an absolute sensation when he arrived here. There are the beautiful photographs of him taken at that time and you can absolutely see why he was a sensation. There's some really fantastic press coverage in the lead up to this match about Jem Smith and Peter Jackson's training routines and their diets, which is something I love looking at from this period. My dream would be to have a kind of super size versus super skinny style reality TV show where we give a bunch of young men the Jem smith diet from 1888. Breakfast would have been sherry and an egg and this is a weight loss diet, remember. So Smith is usually cutting and he's trying to get into shape for a match. He five foot eight and a half, he tended to get to about 16, 15, 16 stone in between matches and he was always trying to get down to 13. Sherry and an egg for breakfast. There was usually a cup of tea, something like a chop and a pint of beer for lunch, champagne in the afternoon. I think on one day he had five different types of booze. Lots and lots of cardio, lots of running, lots walking, lots of punching the bag, lots of hanging out, playing billiards with his mates, a bit of swimming. Jem Smith loved to swim. He trained often in Brighton so he went down swimming in the sea and yeah, pretty sure he would have been half cut by the middle of the morning. It wasn't what you would see today as a professional boxers training diet. Lots of greenery, lots of meat, sort of high protein diet just with booze instead of protein shakes in between.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Maybe not to be recommended today then. You've spoken a couple of times in our conversation about the love of novelty and how boxing fulfilled that. One thing you mentioned that I want to pick up on is women boxers. Were they just a novelty or was there any more seriousness invested in women's involvement in the sport at this time?

[Samsung Advertiser]

So women boxers, over the course of the whole Victorian period, actually back into the Georgian period, you do get prize fights between women, sort of organized prize fights between women. Not a lot, but they are out there. There's been some fantastic research on this. I look, as a said, particularly at the 1880s and I don't see that here. I don't think I've ever. And I've not found an organized prize fight. You will get certainly reports of two women drunkenly brawling in the street, but nothing that you would consider boxing. What you do start to see is, yeah, like a novelty, like a burlesque type of boxing performance by women. We have Billy and Mrs. Noon. They're some of my favourites. They're from Birmingham. Billy Noon was a boxer. His wife was a boxer who boxed him and occasionally other men when he was injured. I think he started off as a proper boxer and kept getting injured and he sort of was using this as a way to stay in the game. So I think both of them were sort of five foot tall, seven stone, and they performed a husband versus wife boxing act as a kind of an interval performance. You start to see boxing entering the music halls and you'll have women like Selena Seaforth and Alice Daltrey who performed box boxing skits. They're billed as things like Lady Boxing Champion of the World in the press and in the advertising for their shows. But of course they're not, that's just their advertising. The two most interesting lady boxes in this period are the Sisters Mills. I am fascinated by these women and I am into about year five of researching them and I still don't know their real names. Violet and Rosalind Mills. They were builders of Sisters Mills or the muscular maids from Mexico. They were probably not from Mexico. They are clearly. I've only seen a sketch which I think is based on a photograph, but I've never seen the real photograph. They are clearly black women. They are described as Creole sometimes. They could have been perhaps mixed heritage. Sometimes described as black, sometimes described as Mexican. They toured with Alf Ball, who is another one of my favorites. Alf Ball is best known as. Well, he's a traveling showman and he's best known for his touring moving picture show, his bioscope in the early 1900s, back in the 1880s, he's a boxer. He also tours with a boxing Booth up and down the country. He's based in Deptford, but he travels around and he tours with novelties like lady boxes, boxes with dwarfism. He also later fights a puma himself. But the Sisters Mills are fascinating. They appear in about 1888 and they disappear again a couple of years later from boxing listening, sort of two years later. I know they toured with alf. I know they performed a few times in London. They're at the Sebright Music Hall. They're in New Cross at the big public entertainment hall there. And then they just disappear. And I have never ever been able to find out their real names. I mean, they might not even have been sisters, but they are so interesting. And an interesting response, actually to A Thousand Blows from some commenters on Instagram, YouTube has been this confusion about black people being in London. Oh, they're the same. No, there were not that many black people in London and that is nonsense. Not only were there, at least, I would say probably around a dozen black male boxes active just in the 1880s and just in eastern sort of central London. There are also black women boxes. You know, there are black entertainers in the music halls. There are black entertainers who were also boxers. So there's a lot to talk about there.

[Sarah Elizabeth Cox]

Yeah, absolutely. And in general, how well do you think that A Thousand Blows captures the spirit of the boxing scene at this time?

[Samsung Advertiser]

Well, I'm the boxing historian on the show, so a lot of my work was advising on, you know, what was actually happening at the time and what's happening in the show. And if it's not accurate, is it at least feasible? One thing you'll see, particularly in episode one and two, is the Blue Coat Boy Pub. We know that was a real pub that was opposite Spitalfields Church, Christchurch. Spitalfields. The road that it's on is not there now, so it's roughly opposite where the front doors would have been in the show. It's in Wapping. But yeah, it's a real pub. It was run by Punch Lewis, who's a real person and he's played by Daniel Mays in the show. And the boxing nights were managed by the Goodsons, Sugar and Treacle Goodson. What you see in the show, though, is Sugar Goodson takes on all comers, Treacle Goodson takes on all comers type boxing tournament where 10 different men on the night will pay to enter the ring with Goodson and see if they can beat him. And of course, none of them do. You didn't really get that in 1880s London. You kind of did with wrestling, certainly. And you might have done a little bit the sort of boxing booths that toured the fairgrounds. People like Alf Ball, they're kind of in house fighter, maybe taking on a few challenges. I mean, that is definitely sort of more of a wrestling format than a boxing format. But it's really fun to watch. It sets the scene really nicely. I think what it does show really nicely is that this is a key turning point in the gloved boxing versus bear fist prize fighting story. It's not a linear, there's no cutoff point. I think as I explained, it's just messy. There is also sorts of boxing happening all over the place. People sticking to some of the Queensberry rules, but not others. Boxers who were barefist boxers sometimes and glove boxers other times. There's not really like a divide. There's not a key moment where it all stops and changes over to the other. There's not a divide necessarily between the types of men that did barefist boxing and that did regulated boxing. And I think A Thousand Blows shows that really well, this kind of messy changeover period of people wanting to stick to the old ways. But there's a. There's a desire to move on and yeah, I think it's fantastic. I think the atmosphere that's created in the Bluecoat Boy. We don't really know what it looked like. We know that there was a sort of a balcony type, top tier and that it was sort of adjoining or at the back of the Blue Coat Boy pub. So not in the pub itself, a separate room. And the way that it has been designed, I think by the set designers is fantastic. I had a hand in. In the costume choices. We see a lot of photos from this period posed in studios of boxes in that typical pose with their hand up, bare chested. And they'll be wearing white tights and there's this sort of. I think you would assume that they all wore white tights. That wasn't the case. They were all flashy dresses, purple knickerbockers, you know, black tights, tights with patterns, colourful silk scarves around the waist, which were kind of almost like a merchandise that you could buy for your favourite box so you could get painted or hand sewn big handkerchiefs for your favourite fighter. Like you might put a poster up today. It was a lot more colourful, I think. And I think a thousand posts are really fantastic job of showing that.

[Ellie Cawthorn]

That was Sarah Elizabeth Cox speaking to me, Ellie Cawthorn. Sarah is the historical consultant on A Thousand Blows, which landed on Disney plus today, and you can find a video exploring the real history behind the show on our YouTube channel, History Extra. And for more on boxing and wrestling in 1880s London, check out Sarah's website, grapplingwithhistory.com thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.

[Samsung Advertiser]

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