Curiosities of civilization : reprinted from the "Quarterly" & "Edinburgh" reviews / by Andrew Wynter.
- Andrew Wynter
- Date:
- [between 1860 and 1869?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Curiosities of civilization : reprinted from the "Quarterly" & "Edinburgh" reviews / by Andrew Wynter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![have their cases stated at the office. * * The fees are only Is. delivery or sending your case, and Is. more on re-delivenng that aud the opinion'upon it, being wl,at is thought sufficient to defray the necessary expense of servants and office-rent.—^atto-, December 16, 1(10. To pass, however, from tlie keen weapons of the brain to those of the flesh, it is interesting to fix with some tolerable accuracy the change which took place in the early part of the eighteenth century in what might be called the amusements of the fancy. The noble art of defence, as it was termed, up to the time of the first George seems to have consisted in the broad- sword exercise. Pepys describes in his Diary several bloody encounters of this kind which he himself witnessed ; and the following advertisement, a half-century later, shows that the skilled weapon had not at that time been set aside for the more brutal fist :—^ A Tri/al of Skill to be performed at His Majesty's Bear Garden in Hockley-in-the-Hole, on Thursday next, being the 9th instant, betwixt these following masters :—Edmund Button, master of the noble science of defence, tvko hath lately cut down Mr. Hasgit and the Champion of the West, and 4 besides, and James Harris, an Herefordshire man, master of the noble science of defence, who has fought 98 prizes and never ■was worsted, to exercise the usual weapons, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon precisely.—Postman, July 4, 1701. The savage character of the time may be judged from this public boast of Mr. Edmund Button that he had cut down six men with a murderous weapon. We question, however, if the age which could tolerate such rufiianism was not exceeded by the change which substituted the fist for the sword, and wit- nessed women entering the ring in the place of men. Some of the earliest notices of boxing-matches upon record, singularly enough, took place between combatants of the fair sex. In a public journal of 1722, for instance, we find the following gage of battle thrown down, and accepted :— rjHALLENGE. — I, Elizabeth Wilkinson, of Clerkenwell, ^ having had some words with Hannah Hyfield, and requiring satisfac- tion, do invite her to meet me u])on the stage, and box me for three guineas; each woman holding half a crown in each hand, and the first woman that drops the money to lose the battle. Answer.—I, Hannah Hyfield, of Newgate Market, hearing of the resoluteness of Elizabeth Wilkinson, will not fail, God wilUny, to give her more blows than words, desiring home blows, and from her no favour: she may expect a good thumping!](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20401309_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
