Bare knuckles and claret.
The martial art that is never talked about, and a family connection. Bare-knuckle fighting, the English tradition.
Two brothers walked into a pub… it sounds like a joke, but this was no laughing matter. Very soon, blood would be spilt.
The pub was in the Elephant and Castle area of London, and the year was 1891.
If the brothers were asked what they did for a living they might have described themselves as ‘navigators’, otherwise ‘navvies’; these were the labourers who built the great Victorian railways. Historians tell us that navvies had a bad reputation for rough and violent lifestyles. The Irish navvies were blamed for their roughhousing, fighting and drinking, but this is not accurate, it just follows the English prejudicial narrative of the time. In fact, it was the English navvies who were more inclined to be free with their fists and drinking themselves into a stupor.
Navvies in 1890.
The two brothers were Henry Parmenter aged 29 and his brother Edward aged 21, Englishmen, boys from Essex. They had moved into the city to work on the extensions of the London Underground railway. Henry was the shorter of the two at about six feet. The only other patrons of the pub were eight young men who hung around the bar. They must have been puzzled by the entry of the two tall men, and even more so when Edward pushed the bolt on the door, effectively locking them all in there.
The story is that the eight men were members of a street gang, known as ‘corner boys’ who took pleasure in intimidating and terrorising ordinary people trying to go about their daily lives. The police had done nothing about them, they were a law unto themselves.
Henry and Edward had made a decision to be the agents of natural justice. And without much of an introduction Henry went to work. Edward just stood barring the door confident that his brother was going to have no difficulty beating the living daylights out of the eight men. And so it came to pass.
Only afterwards did the police feel a need to talk to the brothers about the carnage at the pub, but this was only to thank them for doing what they were not able to do themselves.
Henry Parmenter was my great grandfather.
This was not the end of Henry’s pugilistic experiences; but more of that later.
Henry George Parmenter 1862 - 1946.
The British bare-knuckle tradition.
Of course, the history of the art of boxing goes back centuries and in England it was taught as an art, often alongside skills of defence with weapons (cudgels and the sword). Crucially, it featured at all levels of society, from Lords to labourers.
But for boxing, the bare-knuckle format was the original available model to follow; gloves came much later, (in 1743 the famous pugilist Jack Broughton invented the use of what were called ‘mufflers’). Boxing as an art was adopted by the English Toffs as a way into the world of ‘manliness’, the ‘Mad Bad’, Lord Byron was an enthusiastic boxer (gloved version) in the early 19th century.
It is recorded that the first official English boxing match was as early as 1681, organised by the 2nd Duke of Albemarle between his butler and his butcher. My guess is that wagers were involved; as far as I know there is no record as to who won in this seemingly gladiatorial event.
Actually, James Figg (c1700 to 1734) became the first official English boxing champion in 1719. Figg must have been an amazing character, for in his relatively short life he was able to monetise his talents by setting up a business teaching his skills, both empty handed and weaponed. He fought many contests with fists, swords and quarterstaffs, even fighting two on two, shoulder to shoulder with other masters of the arts; not even tag teaming, a format that has never been seen since.
It took a long time for weight divisions to develop. The best fighters were what would be considered the middle weights today as they had sufficient strength and were not encumbered by size.
Initially there were very few banned techniques; wrestling and grappling were actively encouraged; not that much different from MMA today (except MMA has a whole catalogue of rules that didn’t exist in the 18th and 19th century).
Although the idea of ‘rounds’ did develop, there seemed to be very little limit on how many rounds should feature in a match. The record is 276 rounds, which resulted in a fight lasting four and a half hours; this was between Jack Jones and Patsy Tunney in 1825 in Cheshire.
What people don’t realise is that more fighters retired through damage to their hands than to their heads. This was despite the fact that they are said to have tried to ‘pickle’ their hands in brine, vinegar or even urine to toughen the skin.
There is little doubt that these were incredibly strong men, with bodies hardened by extreme physical labour, for example, the navvies. Champion, Jem Mace was a blacksmith’s apprentice, he was 5 foot 9 inches and 80kg and won English middle weight and world heavy weight championships in the 1860’s and 70’s.
Henry’s last known and possibly only formal bout.
My great grandfather left London and travelled north to find work. Originally intending to meet with his brother Alfred, who was working on the Manchester Ship Canal; he settled instead in a village in the north Nottinghamshire coal field, working as a miner. The family story is that some time late in the 1890’s he engaged in an organised bare-knuckle fight in the yard behind the Angel Inn Mansfield Woodhouse. This was a grudge match against ‘a red-haired fellow’ named McDonald. The fight went on for many rounds and Henry emerged as the winner.
He did consider himself quite the expert when it came to boxing. My great aunt told me that she remembered one afternoon standing next to him as he leaned on the kitchen mantle looking out of the window at two men, neighbours, settling a dispute by fisticuffs, scornfully he is supposed to have said, “look at them, playing at it”.
Henry in his older years, in Lincolnshire visiting his daughter.
The time of my great grandfather was well after the zenith of the art of bare-knuckle pugilism in the UK (and USA). By the 1860’s the money that was always part of the game, either through betting or the fighter’s purse, had soured and corrupted the sport; the ‘prize’ or the ‘fancy’ had got a bad reputation, but ironically not for its violence but for its venal underbelly. Clearly, there was a growing tide of moral indignation as people were starting to wonder about the logic of two men beating each other to a pulp in the ring. In England an 1882 court case decreed this type of boxing as an ‘assault occasioning actual bodily harm’ despite it being consensual between both combatants. That, plus police raids, essentially outlawed the whole bandwagon and it slipped into the underground; where it still resides. Although what the early 19th century sports writer Pierce Egan described as, ‘the sweet science’ hardly resembles that today (it can be found on YouTube, but it’s not for the squeamish).
Here is a very rare glimpse of how things looked in 1894. The Mike Leonard, Jack Cushing fight, bare-knuckles in the USA, caught on film by the Edison company.
Bare-knuckle boxing remained a part of the more feral side of working men’s culture; the side where respect for the law was for other people. Probably embodied in its more sanitised version in the 1960’s by people like the gangster Kray twins in London’s East End; it is not a coincidence that the brothers were devotees and practitioners of boxing.
I am convinced that the ‘art’ and the ‘science’ that it contained was nurtured and advanced through the development of gloves, and it can be seen at it’s highest quality through watching the past performances of people like Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran and even Prince Naseem Hamed. Although, some would make a convincing argument that the invention that was meant to protect boxers from injury, the boxing glove, actually made things worse and had the potential to create catastrophic brain damage. In the bare-knuckle days repeated hits to the head (as seen in gloved boxing) would cause a different kind of damage, often to both parties. I wonder, was defence better in the bad old days? I don’t know, as the skill levels (and the evidence) were not easily comparable.
Picture credits:
Cribb vs Molineaux 1811; Wikimedia.
Navvies in 1892. National Railway Museum.
For anyone who doesn’t understand the reference to ‘claret’ in the title; ‘claret’ (as red wine) is a very English way of referring to blood. I have on my bookshelves a book about bare-knuckle fighting called, ‘Claret and Cross-buttock, or Rafferty’s Prize Fighters’ by Joe Robinson. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Claret-Cross-buttock-Raffertys-Prize-Fighters/dp/0049200488
(Cross-buttock, refers to a type of wrestling throw used in the ring).
If you want an atmospheric taste of the London tradition of bare-knuckles (in location only), visit the amazing London pub, the Lamb and Flag, which, because of its involvement with the ring and fighting, was sometimes called, ‘The Bucket of Blood’. It’s on Rose Street near Covent Garden, but for full effect, approach it from Floral Street.