Box, don’t fight
A.S. Harnet, ‘Men’s Club in Connection with Holy Trinity Church, Shoreditch – A Boxing Match’ in ‘The Graphic’, 19 October 1889.
In 1880, the British Amateur Boxing Association was founded with the motto, ‘Box, don’t fight’, and with this in mind, social and religious reformers encouraged the establishment of boxing clubs in working-class areas. The violence of the street, it was thought, could be redirected into the gym, bringing the public school ideal of Muscular Christianity into poor neighbourhoods.
In his 1889 study of East London, Walter Besant recalled the success of a church boxing club in Shoreditch, and urged readers who ‘think that this is not the ideal amusement for a clergyman’ to think again. In fact many churches and later synagogues ran gyms and supported fighters. The close involvement of organisations such as the Boy Scout Movement, the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and Boys’ Town in amateur boxing forms the basis of many fictional (as well as true) boxing stories well into the twentieth century. The ‘boxer-and-the priest’ movie did particularly well during the 1930s.
Needless to say, Hollywood notwithstanding, boxing did not always succeed in ridding the streets of the devil. In his book on the Kray twins, John Pearson describes their early, highly successful, boxing careers in the London East End of the 1950s. Their father, he writes, ‘thought that boxing would be the making of the twins, give them the discipline they needed, take them off the streets and give them something other than mischief to occupy their minds.’ As amateurs, the twins won every bout they fought, and at the age of sixteen, they turned professional. But soon afterwards, Pearson notes, ‘the street violence they were involved in mysteriously increased as well.’
This image is from UCL English lecturer Kasia Boddy’s new book ‘Boxing: A Cultural History’, which is published in May 2008 by Reaktion Books.
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