OT: 19thC Boxing. Popular with the Upper Class?
 

I believe a few people on the forum collect early boxing. I know little about it. Question..Was late 19th Century boxing a spectator sport popular with the upper class?

I picked up a boxing tournament program from 1891, and on the back of the program is an ad for Timing Watches. What I found interesting is the most expensive watch sold for $300 (the watch pictured in the ad) - a lot of coin for 1891. That's $8,000 in today's dollars. I realize certainly not unusual today to have an $8K watch, but pretty high priced to adverise in a program.

Curious as to what who this was marketed to. These are Timining Watches, and not jewelry, so I wouldn't suspect your wealthy socialite or industrialist watching the pugalist boughts. I wouldn't suspect most athletes and trainers would want to use an $8K watch for everyday use. This same jeweler made medals and athletic prizes, so maybe this was most intended as a high-end prize/award.

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Joe,

I read a few books on the history of boxing. Around the date of your publication, boxing was illegal in most places. Yet it had appeal to a wide range of society, including the upper class. There are historical accounts of John L. Sullivan, the last of the heavy-weight bare knuckle champions and the first heavy-weight gloved champion, going on boxing tours in England where he performed for British royalty. Some of the exhibitions were held in very upper-class venues, as posh theaters, all the while being illegal. The adoption of the Queensberry Rules served to help dignify boxing as a "sport." There are accounts of spectators wearing tuxedos to boxing matches at this time in history. So I presume the watch company saw the potential of marketing to this segment of society, as counter-intuitive as it seems.

Paul

Thanks Paul. That's good information. Here's an engraving from a publication much earlier in the 19thC depicting the aristocrats indulging on boxing.

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Boxing has some incredible history and it was defiantly popular in the England during the 1840s and 1850s with the upper class. When many people started coming to the U.S. from Europe that popularity carried over to the upper class and lower class. Joe is right boxing was illegal in many areas, but New England and some cities like New York and Philly found ways around that – especially paying off police. By the 1880s-1890s many of the larger cities in the East Coast had some form of legalized boxing and just like baseball, ads started to show up in Newspapers, Magazines and books. In some areas of the country – Boxing was just as popular as baseball through the 1930s. I think someone named Babe Ruth changed all that and by that time baseball was America’s pastime anyways, but boxing was still very popular for many years after that. I really think as boxing moved through the United States past those years and beyond it was more popular with the lower class. I just think in some cases ads are going to get around no matter the audience. There is no question they must have been targeting a fan base that was expecting to be at this event – cool info.

Any names listed on the tournament program? You'd be surprised at some of the boxers that turned up in some of these nondescript looking Athletic Club programs.

I once picked up a small program & ticket stub from a club in Massachusetts on a whim at an antique paper show, and when I got home and did a little research, found out it contained two of the earliest fights in the career of Hall of Famer "Barbados" Joe Walcott.

He was identified only as "Walcott" in the program.

Many fighters also had a "ring name" Heavyweight Max Baer killed a boxer in the ring. The boxer went by the name "Frankie Campbell." In fact, he was the brother of Dolph Camili of the Dodgers.

Dave, there are about 70 names listed across all the weight classes. I'll post a few pics in case you or anyone else recognize any names. Here is the first pic and Ill put others in another post. Thanks.

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Interesting. Thanks for posting that.

No big names from what I can see, but Tim Murphy and Mike Leonard had decent pro careers with some very good opponents. Jack Van Houten fought Frank "The Coffee Cooler" Craig at one time also.

Interesting, thanks Dave. You've peeked my interest on researching this more. I know nothing of Boxing, and aside from some old gloves and a couple T218 cards, this is my only piece. I bought it really because of the Spalding adv, and it was 19th Century ephemera - and for $1, why not :).

Where would be a good place online to research names? Is there a decent record of boxers dating back that far? Googling a couple other names I saw a couple names were noted as managers at some point.

boxrec.com

Incredible recordkeeping on thousands of boxers over the ages.

I have three hardbound British magazine collections from 1822-24 'Annals of Sporting and Fancy Gazette' that document even the most trivial boxing match in any part of England. They cover all sporting events, but particularly cricket, boxing and hunting. Given that boxing is given seeming equal status to the other two sports, I'm thinking it was popular with the upper class (who would have been into hunting and cricket), at least in England.