Blood on the Sawdust: The Brutal World of Victorian Boxing
Episode Overview In this 9th Anniversary Special, we step out of the West End drawing rooms and into the blood-flecked, sawdust-covered floors of 19th-century “Fancy” public houses. Inspired by the depiction of East End street culture in A Thousand Blows, this episode explores the history of Victorian boxing—from the illegal bare-knuckle bouts of the Regency era to the gentrified, gloved sport codified under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.
We examine how prizefighting evolved from a brutal survival strategy into a national obsession, the legal cat-and-mouse games played across county lines, and the medical and physical toll extracted from the fighters. We also dive into the remarkable life of international combat instructor Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery and uncover the overlooked history of 19th-century female prizefighters.
Sources & Footnotes
Academic Articles & Published Journals
Anderson, Jack. “The Right to a Fair Fight: Sporting Lessons on Consensual Harm.” New Criminal Law Review, vol. 17, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–75.Betts, John Rickards. “Sporting Journalism in Nineteenth-Century America.” American Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1, 1953, pp. 39–56.Brayne, Hugh, Lincoln Sargeant, and Carol Brayne. “Could Boxing Be Banned? A Legal and Epidemiological Perspective.” BMJ, vol. 316, no. 7147, 1998, pp. 1813–15.Burnett, John. A History of the Cost of Living. Penguin Books, 1969, pp. 219–220.Cone, Carl B. “The Molineaux-Cribb Fight, 1810: Wuz Tom Molineaux Robbed?” Journal of Sport History, vol. 9, no. 3, 1982, pp. 83–91.De la Cova, Carlina. “Cultural Patterns of Trauma among 19th-Century-Born Males in Cadaver Collections.” American Anthropologist, vol. 112, no. 4, 2010, pp. 589–606.Di Méo, Grace. “Women, Gangs, and Criminal Networks: A Social Network Analysis of the Forty Elephants Gang.” Social Science History, vol. 50, 2026, pp. 1–25.Early, Gerald. “The Black Intellectual and the Sport of Prizefighting.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 1988, pp. 102–17.Godfrey, Emelyne. “Urban Heroes versus Folk Devils: Civilian Self-Defence in London (1880–1914).” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, vol. 14, no. 2, 2010, pp. 5–30.Gorn, Elliott J. “John L. Sullivan: ‘The Champion of All Champions’.” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 62, no. 4, 1986, pp. 614–33.Gorn, Elliott J. “The First American Championship Prizefight.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 7, no. 1, 1992, pp. 19–23.Huggins, Mike. “Reading the Funeral Rite: A Cultural Analysis of the Funeral Ceremonials and Burial of Selected Leading Sportsmen in Victorian England, 1864–1888.” Journal of Sport History, vol. 38, no. 3, 2011, pp. 407–24.Juengel, Scott J. “Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 25, no. 3, 2003, pp. 91–110.Kerr, Douglas. “The Straight Left: Sport and the Nation in Arthur Conan Doyle.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 38, no. 1, 2010, pp. 187–206.McCrory, Paul. “Boxing and the Risk of Chronic Brain Injury.” BMJ, vol. 335, no. 7624, 2007, pp. 781–82.McLeod, Hugh. “The ‘Sportsman’ and the ‘Muscular Christian’: Rival Ideals in Nineteenth-Century England.” Gender and Christianity in Modern Europe, edited by Patrick Pasture et al., Leuven University Press, 2012, pp. 85–105.Monstery, Thomas Hoyer. Self-Defence for Ladies and Gentlemen: A Nineteenth-Century Treatise on Boxing, Kicking, Grappling, and Fencing with the Cane and Quarterstaff. Edited by Ben Miller, Blue Snake Books, 2015.Moore, Louis. “Fit for Citizenship: Black Sparring Masters, Gymnasium Owners, and the White Body, 1825–1886.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 96, no. 4, 2011, pp. 448–73.Obi, T. J. Desch. “Black Terror: Bill Richmond’s Revolutionary Boxing.” Journal of Sport History, vol. 36, no. 1, 2009, pp. 99–114.Oswell, George E. “Antedatings of Some Prize-Fighting Terms.” American Speech, vol. 32, no. 2, 1957, p. 155.Reynolds, Margaret. “‘In Chancery’ Again: Dickens and Prize-Fighting.” Dickens Studies Newsletter, vol. 14, no. 2, 1983, pp. 48–50.Ross, Ellen. “‘Fierce Questions and Taunts’: Married Life in Working-Class London, 1870–1914.” Feminist Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, 1982, pp. 575–602.Ross, Macintosh. “The Boxing Boys in Blue: Gloved Sparring and Bare-Knuckle Prizefighting in the Union Army, 1861–65.” Journal of Sport History, vol. 44, no. 3, 2017, pp. 438–55.Ryan, James Emmett. “Fight Club, 1880: Boxing, Class, and Literary Culture in John Boyle O’Reilly’s Boston.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 54, no. 4, 2020, pp. 706–36.Sandhu, Sukhdev. “London Calling.” AA Files, no. 49, 2003, pp. 50–56.Siegler, J. “The Dangers of Boxing.” BMJ, vol. 307, no. 6900, 1993, p. 379.Standen, Jeffrey. “The Manly Sports: The Problematic Use of Criminal Law to Regulate Sports Violence.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 99, no. 3, 2009, pp. 619–42.Wood, Michael T. “Review of Prizefighting and Civilization… by David C. LaFevor.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, vol. 37, no. 3, 2021, pp. 479–81.Legal Cases Cited
R v Billingham (1825)R v Perkins (1831)R v Hunt (1845)R v Coney (1882)Digital & Regional Archival Sources
Chevallot, Isabelle. “18th and 19th Century Fight Club: The Beginnings of British Boxing.” Guildhall Library Blog, 2014.Cox, Sarah Elizabeth. “A Quick Note on A Thousand Blows, Black Boxers in 1880s London, and ‘Woke History’.” Rediscovering the Wrestlers and Boxers of Late-Victorian London, 2025.Faith-Kelly, Killian. “The True Story of A Thousand Blows‘ Boxing Behemoth Sugar Goodson.” British GQ, 2025.Shrivenham Heritage Society. “The Prize Fights at Acorn Bridge.” Shrivenham Heritage Archive, Access Date May 2026.WBAN Member Archive. “Hattie Leslie vs. Alice Leary: The Prizefight That Sent Victorian Era Buffalo into an Uproar.” Women Boxing Archive Network.The post 9TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL 2026 “Put ’em up!” appeared first on AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST.
