Going to a Fight, Isaac Robert Cruikshank, 1819

Curious Sporting Advertisement

A Picture of the Fancy going to a Fight at Moulsey Hurst, (measuring nearly 14 feet in length) containing numerous Original Characters, many of them Portraits; in which all the Frolic, Fun, Lark, Gig, Life, Gammon and Trying-it-on, are depicted, incident to the pursuit of a Prize Mill: dedicated, by permission, to Mr Jackson, and the Noblemen and Gentlemen composing the Pugilistic Club… Throughout the Picture, not a Pink has been overlooked, nor an Out-and-Outer forgotten: the whole forming ‘A bit of good Truth!’

Sporting Anecdotes, Philadelphia, 1822.

This was how the sporting journalist and raconteur Pierce Egan chose to describe Robert Cruikshank’s Going to a Fight to the American readers of his journal Sporting Anecdotes in 1822. The print had first appeared in England three years earlier and was the latest in a long line of collaborative projects between Egan and the elder Cruikshank. Egan had known Robert and his younger brother George since 1812, when he had employed both young men to provide illustrations of famous pugilists to decorate the early editions of Boxiana. A friendship seems to have been formed, spurred on no doubt by a shared love of carousing, gambling and sports. It’s may be possible that the Cruikshanks even saw something in Egan which reminded them of their late father Isaac, a man who had felt equally at home in low taverns and gambling dens. The journalist was also something of a minor celebrity in sporting circles, so much so that it was said that his “presence was understood to confer respectability on any meeting convened for the furtherance of bullbaiting, cockfighting, cudgeling, wrestling, boxing and all that comes within the category of ‘manly sports'”. Egan would therefore have been able to introduce his young friends to the leading boxers of the day and ensure that they could rub shoulders with aristocratic followers of the ring and the turf as easily as they could with the denizens of a St Giles drinking pit.

Going to a Fight was evidently conceived as a joint project between Egan and Cruikshank Senior. Robert provided the artistic skills necessary to convey the anticipation and excitement of a big prize fight, while Egan used his knowledge of the sport to write out a detailed key explaining the narrative behind such a lengthy composition. It also seems safe to assume that Egan was also behind the plan to include portraits of well-known followers of the sport in the design, ensuring a ready audience for the finished print among London’s well-to-do sports fans. The decision to portray a real fight, which had taken place on 3rd April 1817, and the endorsement of John Jackson’s Pugilistic Club also helped convey a sense of realism and authority upon the project. Going to a Fight was published by the company of Sherwood & Jones on September 1st 1819 and issued in two formats – either packaged in a custom-made mahogany box from which the print could be gradually unreeled, price 14s plain and £1 coloured, or it could be cut into lengths and mounted in a frames at a cost of £1 12s plain and £1 18s coloured.

But without further ado, let’s join Mr Cruikshank and Mr Egan as they prepare to take us off to Moulsey Hurst to enjoy a bout between the acclaimed London-Irish boxer Jack Randall and his opponent Richard West, otherwise known as West Country Dick.

We arrive in Regency London on a warm spring evening in 1817 and are immediately ushered into the Long Room at the rear of the Castle Tavern in Holborn. The Castle was home to London’s boxing fraternity and boasted a prize ring of its own. Tonight the barroom is crowded with the raucous members of the Daffy Club, a society formed under the leadership of Mr James Soares and dedicated to the enjoyment of the twin pleasures of drinking and sports. The members gather around the table and over tumblers of ‘daffy’ (gin), begin to discuss and place bets on the outcome of tomorrow’s fight. Behind them on the walls are arrayed portraits of other famous pugilists, including Mendoza, Humphreys, Jem Belcher and even Jem Belcher’s dog, Trusty, who was himself a champion of the dog-fighting rings and thus considered worthy of a place among such august company.

With a few mugs of gin in our bellies and our bets safely recorded in the Club’s book, we move on to morning of the big fight itself. The common at Moulsey Hurst is well-known venue for prize-fights and cricket matches but it lies about 15 miles to the south-west of London and an early start will unfortunately be necessary to secure a decent pitch by the ring-side. The roads out of town are thronged with traffic and we see smartly liveried coaches competing with modest gigs and the wagons of tradesmen, to be the first through the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner and off onto the open road. Numerous pedestrians walk along by the roadside, some are also setting out early with the intention of watching the fight, while others are intent on taking the opportunity to make a profit, by fair means or foul, from the crowds. As we near the turnpike, we notice a pair of effeminate dandies mingling with the crowds. Unfortunately, they appear to be so deeply engrossed in a conversation about the merits of buff-coloured breaches or some such nonsense, that they’ve failed spot a young urchin who has snuck up on them and stolen their pocket books. Further down the road we come across another member of the maligned dandy species, being given a short, sharp, lesson in manliness by a gang of roughs. It appears as though this foppish fellow will have to colour-coordinate his cravat with a black-eye when he gets dressed tomorrow.

We drive onwards, past Hyde Park Barracks and out into the open country surrounding London. Past dust carts laden with rubbish, farmers driving their cows to market and even a group of fellow travelers who have fallen into an argument and are brawling at the roadside. The roads are packed and the air is thick with dust. As we fly by market gardens, commons and farmland, we pass overladen carriages which have collapsed under the weight of so many passengers, accidents involving the notoriously dangerous phaeton carriage and all manner of other traffic. Indeed, it seems at times as though all of London has upped-sticks and left town for the day. As we arrive in the town of Hampton we pause briefly and join the large crowd of boxing enthusiasts who have stopped to wet their whistles at the Red Lion Inn in the market square. Feeling suitably refreshed, we resume are journey with renewed vigour.

The spirits of our fellow travelers are evidently up by the time we reach Bushy Park and we join a number of carriages and gigs in a hell for leather dash across the open parkland for the banks of the River Thames. On arriving there we wait patiently to scramble aboard one of the many small boats and barges that will finally carry us all across the river onto the hallowed sporting turf of Moulsey Hurst.

We make our way across the field, past the circle of wagons which has been drawn up to act as a viewing platform for those standing near the back and through the huge crowd that is gathered around the makeshift boxing ring. From here we have a perfect view of the proceedings and can clearly see the noted members of the Pugilistic Club, dressed in their distinctive uniform of blue coat, yellow waistcoat and specially commissioned ‘PC’ buttons, taking up their places at the ringside. The members of the Club are able to confer this honour upon themselves as both the organisers of the fight and the providers of the twenty-five guinea prize pot which will be awarded to the victor. The umpires arrive next and take up their positions at opposite corners of the ring. And finally, here come the fighters.

Tents selling beer, spirits and other refreshments have been pitched on the common since the morning and consequently the crowd is already thoroughly well lubricated by the time the fight starts at 2pm. A raucous wave of cheers, hoots and catcalls greets the boxers as they emerge onto the field, accompanied by their seconds and a bottle-carrier who will provide water, or whatever other restorative liquids are required during the course of the bout. The cheers are justified, Randall and West Country Dick are highly rated fighters and both are hitherto undefeated. Randall is the more experienced of the two but Dick has quickly acquired a reputation for both his stoicism and a deadly right-hand. It looks as though we’re in for a good fight.

The fight begins in earnest immediately and from the outset it is clear that Randall is the superior of the two boxers. He goes in close, steering clear of Dick’s dreaded right-hook and keeps his opponent on the ropes, sending him down in the second round with a fierce blow to the head. Randall and West Country Dick go at it in a spirited but inconclusive fashion for a further four rounds, until Randall suddenly catches hold of Dick’s throat and delivers a rapid succession of blows to his face, sending him tumbling to the ground in a shower of blood and prompting roars and cheers of “Bravo Paddy!” from the crowd. The West Country lad is stunned for a moment but proves his reputation for bravery is well-founded by rising to his feet and proceeding to battle on for a further seventeen rounds. It’s a valiant effort but the outcome now seems to be something of a foregone conclusion; Dick lands a few keen blows to Randall’s face and body, knocking him down on a number of occasions but is otherwise being comprehensively out-fought. The fight is finally called to a halt in the twenty-third round, when Randall lands a thundering upper cut in Dick’s stomach, which leaves him rolling on the floor winded and gasping for breath. The umpires declare the Irishman the winner and when West Country Dick is finally helped back to his feet, the two men shake hands and leave the ring.

Jubilation and scorn in equal measure from among the crowd! The wooden scaffold carrying the betting stall is immediately overrun by the ebullient followers of Jack Randall, while West Country Dick’s fans console themselves with another mug of ale as they contemplate the long walk home to London. The day isn’t over just yet though, and Moulsey Hurst now takes on something of the atmosphere of a country fair. For those sporting fans whose appetite for blood has still yet to sated, there is a bull-baiting contest taking place in one part of the field. A prize bull is tethered to a chain in the ground and then set on by a specially bred bulldogs. The winner, being the owner of the dog which can hang onto the angry bull’s snout for a sufficiently long amount of time, will be awarded with a dog collar cast from solid silver. We linger by this scene for a few moments but turn to leave just as the poor old bull is fortunate enough to exact its vengeance on a dog and its owner who have strayed too close. With the sun slowly setting behind us, we join the tired but thoroughly happy crowds on the road back to town.

Our old friends the Daffys have declared tomorrow to be the “settling day” for the fight and that members will convene at the usual time and place to settle their bets over a drink or two. The business of settling day is always transacted at Tattersall’s horse auctioneers, which is located just off Hyde Park Corner. We arrive there on a fine afternoon to find that a sale of prime bloodstock is already underway and various Daffys are to be found lounging around the elaborate neo-classical water pump in the centre of the courtyard. Money changes hands, drinks are drunk and yesterday’s fight is picked over in detail by these aficionados of the ring. And it is unfortunately here, in the convivial surroundings of Tattersall’s, that we must finally part company with the Daffys, Robert Cruikshank and Pierce Egan, leaving them to enjoy what’s left of a pleasant spring day in Regency London.

Thomas Rowlandson, The Prizefighters, 1806

If you happen to have £5,000 burning a hole in your wallet at the moment, you may be interested to know that this fantastic watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson will be going under the hammer in London in a couple of weeks time. It’s signed and dated 1806 and was later used as the basis for a print entitled Description of a Boxing Match, which the artist published on his own account in  June 1812.

“A truly British art”, Images of pugilism in Georgian caricature

Thomas Rowlandson, Description of a Boxing Match, 1812

BRITONS then who boast themselves Inheritors of the Greek and Roman Virtues, should follow their example, and by encouraging Conflicts of this magnanimous Kind, endeavour to eradicate that foreign Effeminacy which has so fatally insinuated itself among us, and almost destroy the glorious spirit of British Championism, which wont to be at once the Terror and Disgrace of our Enemies.

– Handbill for Broughton’s Amphitheater, 1747.

It was with rhetoric such as this that the retired boxing champion Jack Broughton sought to persuade the young gentlemen of London to come forward and receive tuition in the “manly art of boxing” at the training academy which he had founded on Oxford Road in 1743. Boxing was already undergoing a process of cultural transformation by the time Broughton published his advertisement and ultimately this was to see the sport elevated from the realms of the street brawl and the circus tent to sit alongside hunting, riding and fencing, in the pantheon of sports enjoyed by the wealthiest members of Georgian society. Boxing’s appearance in satirical prints during the long eighteenth-century therefore reflects both the growing awareness and popularity of the sport among the middling and upper-class customers of London’s print shops and also tells us something about contemporary notions of politeness, class and gender.

The origins of boxing as a spectator sport lay in the prize-fights that formed a staple part of the entertainment typically offered by the summer fairs and backstreet gambling dens of late seventeenth century England. These fights would usually take place alongside other violent spectacles, such as cock-fighting and bear-baiting and were often split into several different rounds in wrestling and bare-knuckle boxing would be mixed with armed combat featuring sticks, knives and even broadswords. The levels of violence in these early fights was exceptional by modern standards but rarely proved to be fatal, with matches typically coming to an abrupt halt once blood was drawn. The German traveller Zacharias von Uffenbach recalled that a fight between two men at the Bear Garden in Hockley in 1710 was stopped when one of the participants received a blow to the face “with such force that one could hear the sword grating against his teeth” and “not only the whole of his shirt but the platform too was covered in blood.”

The use of weaponry was to remain a common, even dominant, feature of the prize-fight until well into the eighteenth-century and in some cases fighters were given more recognition for their skills with the blade than they were for their abilities as a boxer. For example, the advertisements which Hogarth produced for the prize-fighter James Figg (1695 – 1735) neglected to mention Figg’s abilities as a boxer and yet he was famous for having won all but one of the 270 matches he fought. It’s an omission which reflects the attitude of Figg’s wealthy patrons towards a sport which was still largely seen as being the sole preserve of the lower classes. One contemporary pamphleteer summed these views up by asserting that gentlemen should avoid mixing with the “meanest rabble” at boxing matches and argued that the strength and hardiness of the boxer was little more than a reflection of his lowly station in life. Attitudes such as this were beginning to change though and by the middle of the 1740s armed prize-fighting had largely fallen into abeyance, thanks to the rise of a new cultural phenomenon based around the philosophy of the polite. Politeness dictated that differences should be settled between gentlemen in a fair and civilised fashion and its advocates became vocal critics of excessively violent practices such as dueling and armed prize-fighting. These criticisms hinged on both a humanitarian criticism of the use of potentially lethal force and a moral argument which said that it was unfair to expect amateurs to risk their lives in armed fights against trained professionals. It was, remarked one critic of duelling,  “base, for one of the sword, to call out another who was never bred to it, but wears it only for fashions sake”.

Boxing was to survive and flourish precisely because it could be accommodated within the sphere of the polite entertainment. This was achieved during the course of the 1730s and 40s by the gradual introduction of rules and proscribed techniques that were designed to ensure fair play and limit excessive brutality. As enthusiasm for this more refined form of pugilism began to grow among the middling and upper classes, boxing venues slowly migrated from the rural margins of London to the fashionable heart of the city. Other concessions to the tastes of a wealthier class of boxing fan included the introduction of boxing gloves, or ‘mufflers’, designed by Broughton to protect his genteel pupils from “the inconveniencey of black eyes, broken jaws and bloody noses.” By the early 1750s even those who continued to criticise boxing were willing to grudgingly acknowledge that it was “infinitely more characteristic of Old English prowess, and less destructive of human life” than duelling or the prize-fights of the previous generation.

By the 1780s the patronage of the Prince of Wales, as well as the utilisation of print to bolster the popularity of champion boxers such as Daniel Mendoza and Richard Humphries, raised boxing to new heights of popularity. This prompted an influx of aristocratic fans and patronage into the sport, with various Dukes and Lords conferring handsome stipends on their preferred champion as a means of securing the substantial amounts of money that were now being wagered in West End boxing clubs. Participation levels also rose among the upper classes, with the Daily Universal Register despairingly questioning whether “black eyes and bloody noses will shortly… replace patches and dimples in all beautiful countenances” and other newspapers rushing to publicise accounts of fights featuring aristocratic pugilists such as the Earl of Barrymore. The elevation of boxing to the status of an elite sport during the final years of the eighteenth century even prompted some entrepreneurs to try hosting staged fights which conformed entirely with aristocratic principles of politeness. In 1791 when Daniel Mendoza opened his own boxing school in the Strand he informed his would-be patrons that “the manly art of boxing would be displayed, divested of all ferocity, rendered equally as neat and elegant as fencing [and] conducted with the utmost propriety and decorum.” One businessman even took this a step further by opening an exhibition near Leicester Fields where visitors could pay to watch stage-managed fights which were paused in order to allow a commentator to explain the techniques being used to the audience. This process of gentrification was ultimately responsible for the gradual decline of the original tradition of bare-knuckle boxing, which was to begin a slow retreat back to the underground during the nineteenth century.

While the encroachment of the middling and upper classes into the world of pugilism may have curbed some of the excesses of the earlier prize-fights, boxing was to retain a resolutely proletarian image throughout the period and the blurring of otherwise rigid class lines which occurred at boxing matches was to become a reoccurring theme within contemporary satire. This social fluidity was not always presented in a positive light and a number of the earliest prints to feature boxing present an ambivalent or even hostile view of the upper class male who goes ‘slumming’ among the crowds at a fight. Peter Griffin’s The Bruiser Bruis’d: Or, the Knowing-Ones Taken-in (1750) for example, sneers at the wealthy young “coxcombs” opt for the unseemly spectacle of the boxing match over the glory of the field of battle at “Quiberon and Fontenoy”. While Louis Philippe Boitard listed boxing alongside swearing, gambling and “ogling” in the list of vices that are eroding the morals of the British gentleman in The Present Age (1767).

By the 1780s boxing’s integration into the world of aristocratic male entertainment had become so complete at to make further arguments about the possible dangers associated with the distortion of class boundaries effectively redundant. Caricatures of the late Georgian period therefore tended to unreservedly celebrate the egalitarian nature of boxing as a reflection of the liberties enjoyed by British subjects. Thus we see The Prince of Wales and a butcher linking arms to carry the victorious Richard Humphries off the field in Johann Ramberg’s The Triumph (1788) and a dispute between a peer and a humble tradesman being settled by a fight in William Dent’s Lord B___ boxing a butcher at Brighton (1791). This favourable view of boxing probably reached its apogee during the Regency era, when George and Robert Cruikshank produced a wealth of prints which revel in the mixing of high and low culture at boxing matches. Robert Cruikshank’s beautiful Going to a Fight (1819) for example, the liveried carriages of the rich can be seen running alongside open wagons carrying a parties of dustmen to see a fight. Similarly, the illustrations that Robert and his brother George produced for Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1820-21) show a trio of fashionable young swells receiving lessons in pugilism and carousing with retired prize-fighters.

Boxing prints also reveal something about contemporary notions of gender and the different cultural spheres that men and women were thought to occupy in eighteenth-century society. The popularisation of the sport coincided with a sudden shift in attitudes towards the playful transgression of gender roles which had characterised elite social activities during the middle decades of the century. In the wake of the disastrous loss of the North American colonies, the effeminate male ‘macaroni’ and the lady who indulged in the masculine, military-inspired, fashions of the late 1770s, were pilloried by caricaturists as symbols of national decline. Isaac Cruikshank’s St George & the Dragon & Madlle riposting (1787) reflects the mood of the times in showing the Price of Wales being reduced to tears after a scuffle with the transvestite Chevalier d’Eon. The practice of pugilism was therefore increasingly seen as a cultural antidote to the corrosive influence of dandyism and a robust physical assertion of the masculinity and marital prowess that Britons believed had made their forebears great. As Pierce Egan was to write in the introduction to his history of the sport, it was necessary for the country as a whole to encourage its men to engage in activities that “tend to invigorate the human frame, and inculcate those principles of generosity and true courage, by which the inhabitants of the English Nation are so eminently distinguished above every other country… by a native spirit, producing that love of country, which has been found principally to originate from… vulgar Sports! John Smith’s caricature Boxing made easy or Humphreys giving a lesson to a lover of the polite arts (1788), also offers a perfect summation of the juxtaposition between the heroically John Bullish figure of the pugilist and the pathetic form of the Frenchified fop. 

Fights between women were also generally looked on as a gross distortion of accepted gender norms and although some contemporaries were willing to grudgingly acknowledge the existence of such practices, they often went to great lengths to point out that they remained confined to the disreputable margins of society. The author of an account of the fight between two women that was held in the yard at the rear of the Crown Inn in Cranbourne Alley in 1803 for example, sought to extinguish any pangs of sympathy his readers may have felt by loftily informing them that “the two females (we cannot call them women)” were residents of the slums of St Giles and well-known to the local magistrates. This is a view which is echoed in caricatures such as An Engagement in Billingsgate Channel, between the Terrible and the Tiger, two First Rates (1781) and Rowlandson’s depiction of a fight between two “drabs” in the Miseries of London (1807-08) series, which both stress the both the physical ugliness and lowly status of the fighting female. 

Finally, the most common reference to boxing in caricature prints was as a metaphor for the conflicts that characterised domestic politics and international affairs throughout this period. One of the earliest references to pugilism in graphic satires was A Political Battle Royal Design’d for Broughton’s New Amphitheatre (1743), which shows the various parliamentary factions preparing to slug it out in order to settle the matter of Walpole’s succession. This humorously reductive view of British politics was to remain a constant theme in English caricature throughout the eighteenth century and beyond and was to feature in political prints produced by Richard Newton, William Dent, Isaac Cruikshank and William Heath, amongst others.

The pugilistic motif also appears frequently in prints dealing with foreign affairs and particularly those produced between 1793 and 1815, when the British love of boxing was often seized upon by patriotic writers as being symbolic of the embattled nation’s struggle against a France and her allies. The writer William Oxberry’s introduction to the 1812 essay Pugilistica modestly suggested Britain’s love of boxing “demands the Admiration, and Patronage of every free State, being calculated to inspire manly Courage, and Spirit of Independence – enabling us to resist Slavery at Home and Enemies from Abroad”. A view which is reflected in prints such Olympic games or John Bull introducing his new ambassador to the grand consul (1803) Boxiana- or- the fancy (1815). Indeed, by the time William Heath sat down to engrave Non intervention or the peaceable appearance of Europe (1831) the figure of the pugilist had become conflated with that of John Bull himself.