Boxing for exercise may have been approved to a certain extent for young women near the turn of the century, but fighting as a career remained on the margins of respectability. In California, a liberally inclined state even then, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article praising a young boxer, Miss Cecil Richards, as both a skillful and ladylike fighter.[83] The paper describes Richards as rivaling a Flaubert novel, portraying her healthy, slim figure and rosy complexion as the epitome of feminine beauty. The article primarily focuses on how lovely Richards was and suggests that boxing might become more socially acceptable if women like her would step into the ring—or at least it might not be as disgusting a spectacle if the fighters were attractive. Richards confessed to the paper that the reason she became a boxer was to make money, the same reason why anyone chooses a profession. Perhaps Californians were less judgmental about how young ladies spent their time than the social circles in New York and Boston. For Richards in 1897, boxing was as good a job as any, and spectators seemed to agree.
This article acts as a microcosm of the attitude toward female fighters at the turn of the century. The general public was fascinated, especially by shapely young girls performing in the ring; however, there remained the cultural stigma that boxing could be morally, socially, and physically corrupting. The divisive perspectives on female pugilists prevailed long into the twentieth century, but boxing, wrestling, and other fighting sports would only grow in popularity and practice, as we will see.
1. Detroit Daily Free Press, 3 August 1856, 2.
2. Little Rock Daily Gazette, 31 October 1865, 6.
3. Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 59.
4. Gorn, The Manly Art, 67.
5. Daily Evening Bulletin, 19 October 1866, 3.
6. Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1869, 2.
7. Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1869, 2.
8. Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1869, 2.
9. Linda Setnick, Victorian Fashions for Women and Children (Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 2012), 13.
10. Harvey Green, The Light of the Home (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 114.
11. Cincinnati Enquirer, 15 September 1874, 8.
12. Cincinnati Enquirer, 15 September 1874, 8.
13. Cincinnati Enquirer, 14 July 1880, 2.
14. Most websites point to this article as the originator of the (incorrect) information about the 1891 wrestling match between Alice Williams and Sadie Morgan. See http://www.fscclub.com/history/sonntag-pic2-e.shtml.
15. Washington Post, 28 April 1891, 4.
16. Washington Post, 28 April 1891, 4.
17. Gorn, The Manly Art, 67.
18. National Police Gazette. Available online at http://www.policegazette.us/ (accessed 30 May 2013).
19. National Police Gazette, 1 March 1884, 3.
20. National Police Gazette, 17 May 1884, 13.
21. Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Journal and Messenger, 31 March 1882, Col. G.
22. Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Journal and Messenger, 31 March 1882, Col. G.
23. Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Journal and Messenger, 31 March 1882, Col. G.
24. Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Journal and Messenger, 31 March 1882, Col. G.
25. National Police Gazette, 30 March 1895, 6.
26. National Police Gazette, 17 May 1884, 13.
27. National Police Gazette, 25 October 1884, 13.
28. Atchison Daily Champion, August 30, 1888, 1.
29. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
30. Omaha Daily Bee, 28 December 1887, 2.
31. Omaha Daily Bee, 28 December 1887, 2.
32. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
33. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
34. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
35. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
36. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
37. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
38. Woman’s Tribune, 18 August 1888, 1.
39. Washington Post, 24 October 1898, 8.
40. National Police Gazette, 18 September 1890, 6.
41. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 July 1888, 2.
42. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 July 1888, 2.
43. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 July 1888, 2.
44. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 July 1888, 2.
45. Daily Inter Ocean, 17 September 1888, 2.
46. National Police Gazette, 3 October 1888, 10.
47. Daily Inter Ocean, 17 September 1888, 2.
48. Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 September 1888, 1.
49. Chicago Tribune, 6 October 1888, 9.
50. National Police Gazette, 18 September 1890, 2.
51. Salt Lake Herald, 28 December 1882, 7.
52. Cincinnati Enquirer, 19 December 1889, 2.
53. Cincinnati Enquirer, 19 December 1889, 2.
54. Cincinnati Enquirer, 19 December 1889, 2.
55. Cincinnati Enquirer, 29 December 1889, 2.
56. Cincinnati Enquirer, 29 December 1889, 4.
57. Cincinnati Enquirer, 29 December 1889, 4.
58. Cincinnati Enquirer, 5 January 1890, 2.
59. Cincinnati Enquirer, 5 January 1890, 2.
60. Jonathan C. Meakins, “Typhoid Fever in the 1890s and 1930s,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 42, no. 1 (January 1940) : 81–82.
61. Milwaukee Sentinel, 25 September 1892, Col. B.
62. New Hampshire Sentinel, 2 December 1891, 3.
63. New Hampshire Sentinel, 2 December 1891, 3.
64. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 22 November 1891, 20.
65. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 22 November 1891, 20.
66. Boston Herald, 10 April 1894, 8.
67. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 January 1941, 44.
68. Boston Herald, 10 April 1894, 7.
69. National Police Gazette, 28 October 1893, 10.
70. National Police Gazette, 27 January 1894, 10.
71. Atchison Daily Globe, 17 July 1893, 2.
72. Atchison Daily Globe, 17 July 1893, 2.
73. National Police Gazette, 24 September 1892, 11.
74. National Police Gazette, 24 September 1892, 11.
75. Los Angeles Times, 11 November 1894, 19.
76. Los Angeles Times, 11 November 1894, 19.
77. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 February 1899, 13.
78. Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 February 1899, 13.
79. Washington Post, 17 January 1897, 24.
80. Washington Post, 17 January 1897, 24.
81. Washington Post, 17 January 1897, 24.
82. National Police Gazette, 21 August 1880, 6.
83. San Francisco Chronicle, 30 January 1897, 9.
Chapter 3
Fighting as Spectacle
In 1904, the New York Times published a rather hilariously condescending article, “And Now It’s the Boxing Girl,” about the newest fad amongst young women. It assures readers that boxing would remain a man’s sport and that women would never “invade the ringside. Heaven forbid!” Young women could practice the “science and skill” of boxing, “with all the brutality left out.” And, of course, like many fitness articles assert today, the piece relates that boxing is great exercise—its ultimate appeal to the new “it girl,” who apparently longed to squeeze into tight-waisted frocks.[1]
Most of the advice in the article is condescending and, at times, ludicrous, but the first set of instructions for young women, following a guide outlining proper boxing attire, explains the importance of wearing gloves. Six-ounce gloves were standard at the time, which was vastly different than the sixteen-ounce gloves now standardized by most boxing facilities. In fact, the six-ounce gloves are incredibly small and hard, since they are constructed from leather. Luckily, according to one boxing master interviewed for the piece, women were lousy at boxing because they were too excited and not calm or cool enough to fight. Thus, the new “boxing girl” boxed only for the thrill of the sport or the ability to boast to her friends
; however, this boxing instructor believed that nervous women, whom, he says, are always thin, should not box, because it is too strenuous. Instead, boxing should be reserved for the “overweights, for the sluggish, phlegmatic women who take on pounds faster than they can let out the seams of their clothes.”
The patronizing tone of the piece is obvious, but it happens to contain a few gems regarding the structure of some of these twentieth-century boxing gyms. The standard length of a round between men was three minutes, while women fought for two. In addition, men took one minute of rest between rounds, just like today, but women were given three minutes of rest between the two-minute rounds. This rest was ostensibly intended to revive the stout woman between rounds, although she was not allowed to go near an open window or the water cooler. As the author explains, this three minutes of rest would feel far shorter than the two minutes of hard work in the ring.
Sporting Women
The twentieth century could be considered the beginning of the modern sports craze. Women’s activities expanded significantly in the early twentieth century, as sports and exercise became more socially acceptable, due in part to the support of several upper-class women. In 1894, Lady Greville published Ladies in the Field, a guide to women’s sports that includes contributions from Lady Boynton and the Duchess of Newcastle.[2] The text discusses ten female-appropriate activities, including riding, hunting, cycling, and various types of shooting, including kangaroo and tiger hunting. Greville claims that sports can improve one’s spirits, since ladies enjoy the bracing air of the refreshing outdoors just as much as gentlemen. She writes that riding, specifically, improves the appetite and makes “black shadows and morbid fancies disappear from the mental horizon,” perhaps referencing the trend of hysteria amongst middle- and upper-class women.[3] Hysteria was a common medical diagnosis in the nineteenth century for women suffering from mental psychosis or women who wanted to live outside of the patriarchal structure.
Greville anticipated the type of criticism that would almost certainly accompany the promotion of sports amongst upper-class women by choosing sports that reinforced gendered norms and did not make a woman less feminine. Her position in the aristocracy situated her arguments within a specific and socially defined group because the upper echelons of society had different rules than the middle and, especially, lower classes. But her book normalized the desire for women to take part in physical activities, retrieving the female body from the fainting couches of the nineteenth century and releasing them to some semblance of freedom in the new century.
Of course, in England, aristocratic women were only encouraged to engage in activities befitting their social position, for instance, hunting and riding. Women in the middle classes were under less pressure to conform to certain social codes. At the turn of the century, doctors began encouraging young women to exercise to maintain their health and improve the strength of the American and British “races.” Furthermore, this time period saw leisure and play as normal parts of modern life. Walking, hiking, and calisthenics became widely practiced by all classes (with the exception of the British aristocracy, to a certain extent).
Health Is Beauty, Ugliness Is a Sin
In 1902, Bernarr Macfadden, a well-known editor who published the type of magazine that we are familiar with today, produced a new periodical focusing on female beauty and health. The magazine, entitled Woman’s Health and Beauty, promoted female strength and beauty through physical and mental development. The first edition includes articles on how to increase one’s bust size through strength training; a lesson in fencing; tips on how to improve sleep; information on how to combat invalidism in young girls; as well as an advice column covering such topics as menstruation, drug addiction, and weight loss.
There is something quite modern about this magazine, which is now more than one hundred years old; it reads like an Edwardian-era Self magazine, although the second edition features a rather hilarious article about how to train a baby girl, which includes exercises for her to do, including a type of pull-up that seems incongruous with the type of child-rearing advice one would see in Self today. This British magazine may have been a bit overzealous in its columns about training children, but the publication offers good advice about certain topics. Women were encouraged to exercise more and get outside and prize strength rather than frailty. Women’s Health and Beauty provides step-by-step instructions on how to properly fence, lift weights, do gymnastics, and stretch. While a majority of the British may have been willing to accept Macfadden’s council of physical health, they were not disposed to treat female boxers as harmless eccentrics in the way that they had done one hundred years earlier.
In the late nineteenth century, American men and women began weight lifting using tools like the Indian clubs, which were weighted sticks, to perform movements that increased strength and flexibility. Roller-skating, tennis, and golf were wildly popular activities for women, all of which required specific gear and clothing, making these particular sports reserved for the middle and upper classes. But the most popular sport to arise in the early twentieth century was bicycling, although it initially created scandal amongst critics that women would be physically and morally corrupted. Women could not ride sidesaddle, so the implications of a young woman straddling a bicycle seat suggested that a woman’s genitalia could be damaged or excited, both alarming prospects. Bicycle manufacturers eventually updated the design to accommodate women’s skirts over the bar, which explains why women’s bikes are dipped in the middle, while men’s have a high bar.[4]
Cycling offered opportunities for young courting couples to spend time together, away from the prying eyes of overly protective guardians and meddling parents. Cycling races also became popular, but the bicycle was initially a mode of mobility and freedom, rather than a mode of competition. The first modern Olympic Games took place in Athens in 1896, and four years later, in 1900, in Paris, women joined in the competition. Cycling was one of many sports in the first modern Olympic Games, although women would not compete in cycling events until much later.
Wrestling was part of the first modern Olympic Games, and boxing became part of the Olympic program in 1904. Both sports maintained their popularity in American culture, even though matches still took place amongst the seedier stratas of society. For women, the early twentieth century was, surprisingly, a good time to compete in boxing and wrestling. It was not until both sports gained governing bodies that women were officially banned from competing.
During the early part of the twentieth century, boxing and wrestling matches primarily occurred on the traveling circuit, at circuses and carnivals. Unfortunately, the legacy of boxing as a sideshow would continue throughout the twentieth century, and even today, as fighting sports are sometimes referred to as “freak shows” by critics; however, with the dawning of the new century, performing in traveling circuses was considered a way to make a good living for some people, especially immigrants. And while some classes of society may look back at these carnivals as demeaning spectacle, plenty of performers have fond memories of that bygone era.
She's a Knockout! Page 12
