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This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Forbidden Fruit, the Forbidden History podcast extra. In our last episode, we heard about the women brawlers of Georgian London who risked life and limb in underground bare-knuckle prize fights.
In this episode, we're going to explore the incredible stories of famous female fighters throughout history, specifically boxers and their contribution to the legitimization of their sport. From the first superstar British woman fighter, Lady Bare Knuckles, in 1720s Georgian London...
to British boxer Nicola Adams taking home the world's first Olympic women's boxing gold medal in the London 2012 Olympics. This is Fight Like a Girl: A History of Women's Boxing Legends. It's 1722 in Georgian England and in a June issue of the London Journal is the following entry:
I, Elizabeth Wilkinson of Clerkenwell, haven't had some words with Hannah Hayfield and requiring satisfaction. Do invite her to meet me on the stage and box me for three guineas. The reply comes in the following issue.
I, Hannah Highfield of Newgate Market, earing of the resoluteness of Elizabeth Wilkinson, will not fail, God willing, to give her more blows than words. She may expect a good thumping. Later that month, they take to the stage. Hannah receives a vicious thrashing and Elizabeth emerges victorious.
Elizabeth would go on to win another fight that year, winning in a speedy 22 minutes, defeating a fishwife named Martha Jones. Her career takes off, and she soon earns the title European Championess. Elizabeth trains and runs her own boxing sessions on Islington Road in North London at James Figg's Fighting Gym, the first legitimate one in the country.
She would later go on to marry her promoter and fellow boxer, James Stokes, and the two would challenge other mixed-gendered couples, fighting side-by-side in the ring, with Elizabeth fighting the woman and James fighting the man. Elizabeth fights in a whopping 45 matches throughout her decade-long career and goes completely undefeated.
The last documented mention of her is in 1733, in another promotion for one of her matches. As explored in our main episode, it isn't entirely unusual to see women's fights during the Georgian era. But as we'll see, the legality and acceptance of women's boxing throughout history is a constant battle.
With the onset of the Victorian age, new restrictive social expectations are placed upon all of society, and especially women. And by the mid-19th century, women's fighting dwindles to almost nothing, eventually being banned in 1880. Fighting becomes exclusively a men's sport. Even for male boxers, however, their fights have to go underground.
Across both the UK and the US, the sport is of ambiguous legality. Fights are often held at gambling venues and almost always broken up by police, with riots being a regular occurrence.
Boxing continues to struggle for legitimacy in the early 20th century, but there's huge change when in the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri, both men and women's amateur boxing is included as a demonstration sport.
Men's boxing is accepted into the Olympics right away and features in every event from then on. It takes over 100 years, however, for women's boxing to receive the same inclusion. Despite boxing being largely prohibited for women throughout the 20th century, many trailblazing female boxers fight against the social norms. The first is the mythical Polly Burns.
Polly is born in 1881 to an old circus family from Lancashire, England. Her mother tragically dies in a trapeze act, and her father remarries into the famous fighting Faircloth family.
It's fair to say Polly's new connections have an impact on her. At 16, she fights her first match. She boxes men in booths at touring fairs and also performs as a strong woman. She is said to be the lady who holds up donkeys with her teeth. With women's boxing still outlawed in Britain, Polly flies to Paris in 1900 to fight the U.S. Women's Champion, Texas Donovan.
With Texas failing to show, Polly is crowned world champion. Polly lives in poverty towards the end of her life in Dublin, Ireland, selling her story to tabloid newspapers. With so little record of her career, her story is as much legend as it is history. Another trailblazing British fighter of a similar era is Annie Newton. Annie is born in 1893.
Being a sickly child, her uncle, renowned boxer Andrew Newton, teaches her the sport as a way of improving her health. She ends up exceeding expectation, and Andrew incorporates her into his traveling act. Annie boxes both her brother and uncle on stage, and would go on to spar other men in various spectacles.
Losing two husbands in the First World War, Annie has to provide for her only daughter and teaches boxing in her uncle's gym. Inspired by his niece, Andrew sets up the first women's boxing club in Islington, London. Interestingly enough, the same region of the city where Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes once trained and taught.
In 1926, Annie is set for an exhibition match with another female fighter, Madge Baker. But it causes a huge public uproar. The Home Secretary at the time, Sir William Joynson Hicks, is amongst those outraged. He states, "...the legislator never imagined such a disgraceful exhibition would have been staged in this country."
Eventually, this match and the women's boxing club is banned by the council. Despite the setback, she is not deterred. In a news article from the time, she says, "While I may not see it, or you either, the day will come, like it or not, when the world will see women in the ring." At the same time, across the channel, another path is being paved.
In Paris, Emma Chambers Maitland is performing at the Moulin Rouge in the first African-American theater group to appear there in a dance review called "Tea for Two." Once her contract finishes up, her and a fellow dancer, Aurelia Wielden, set off on their own, styling their performance as the "Tea for Two" girls, which, interestingly, includes a performance of three rounds of boxing.
Emma had traveled from Washington to Paris after her husband had suddenly died of tuberculosis, less than a year after their marriage. Left alone to raise their only daughter, she had changed careers from teaching to dancing to make a living for them both. Whilst on tour in Europe, performing at the home of an Irish aristocrat, she had to strongly rebuff his unwelcomed advances.
Surprised by her own strength, she was inspired to pursue fighting. Returning to the States, she trains with former heavyweight boxer Jack Taylor, known as the Nebraska Tornado. She goes on to fight competitively with other female fighters from Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. She is eventually billed as the lightweight female boxing champion of the world.
After retiring, she continues to have an ever more incredible life as a bodyguard, gymnastics teacher, and eventually nurse. She would later retire and pass away on Martha's Vineyard, an island just south of Cape Cod in 1975. In Yorkshire, England in 1944, a boxing legend is in the making.
Barbara Buttrick, a rambunctious 14-year-old, walks into her family home with muddy shoes, and her mother tosses her an old newspaper to wipe them with. In the pages, she finds a story about Polly Burns, the trailblazing turn-of-the-century prizefighter. Lighting something within her, Barbara buys herself her own boxing gloves and a book on self-defense.
She moves to London where she finds a teacher, working by day as a typist and training every evening. Barbara fights in boxing booths that tour the country, inviting anyone of any gender to fight her. With officials in the UK refusing to recognize her and tired of dodging the law, Barbara moves to the US to fight competitively.
Her and her opponent, Phyllis Coogler, win the first female boxing licenses in Texas, and their resulting battle would make Barbara world champion. Standing at only 4'11", with a formidable left jab, she earns the title "The Mighty Adam of the Ring." She sets a career record of 30 wins, one draw, and one defeat.
That single defeat comes in 1954 against Joanne Hagen in the first ever women's professional boxing match to be broadcast on national television in the US. She becomes a boxing legend and establishes the International Women's Boxing Federation in 1989.
The 1990s bring massive change to the world of women's boxing, with many important women helping in the fight of making the sport legal in both the UK and the US. One of the biggest moments is when 16-year-old Dallas Molloy sues the USA's boxing governing body for denying her a license due to her gender in 1993.
She wins her case, and subsequently, USA Boxing is forced to lift its ban on female fighters. Across the pond, things are still yet to progress. But one woman is about to change everything. In 1994, Jane Couch, 26, is sitting in her living room at home in Fleetwood, North England. She studies the fading bruises and scabs on her knuckles.
These from yet another one of her street brawls. She knows something needs to let up. These very fights had gotten her expelled from school when she was 16, and recently put her in jail for three months. For the past ten years, all she's known is booze, drugs, and punches.
On the TV, a documentary starts. It's about a match between two female boxers in the US, the American fighter Christy Martin and Ireland's Deirdre Gogarty. Jane is enthralled. Only the next day, she goes down to her local gym, only to discover that women's boxing is illegal in the UK.
She persists and begins training with local male fighters. Her first official bout, she wins against a local policewoman. She earns 58 pounds and feels a sense of reckoning. Only two years later, now nicknamed the Fleetwood Assassin, she flies to Copenhagen to fight big-name French boxer Sandra Geiger for the welterweight world championship.
At her hotel, she goes down to reception to receive her food vouchers. "Sorry, these vouchers are only for the fighters," she's told at the desk. "I'm boxing for the world title," she replies. There's a pause. "These vouchers are only for the male fighters." Jane would go on to win the championship, but not without a fierce fight from Giger. They're both sent to hospital following the match. Jane returns home, expecting a rightly deserved hero's welcome.
But there's nothing. Even dedicated boxing magazines don't bother to mention her. Determined to make a change, Jane challenges the UK's boxing governing body, who refuses to issue her a license. They genuinely claim that periods make women too emotionally unstable to box.
Jane and her legal team drag them through the courts, and she wins her case in 1998, overturning a 116 years long ban. After the trial, on the steps of the courthouse, her representative turns to her and says, "I don't want to tell you this, but your fight is just beginning." And sure enough, the tabloids tear into Jane, calling her a freak and derogatively labeling her as a lesbian.
No British promoter in the country will engage with her. And just like before, she is forced to fight abroad for legitimacy. There's rarely any prize money, and she has to pay for her own hotels and flights. She goes on to win the world championship five times. In 2008, only a decade after she was legally allowed to box, she retires and is awarded an MBE for her services to women's boxing.
She continues to live out of the spotlight, residing peacefully with her partner Brian and occasionally popping into her old gym in Fleetwood to inspire the teenage girls boxing there. Despite being a pioneer for the sport, she has suffered heavily for it. The bruises may have faded, but she still works to heal the mental wounds boxing left and promotes others to do the same.
Finally, in August 2009, the International Olympics Committee decides women's boxing will make its official debut at London 2012, 108 years after the men's was instated. Almost fittingly, it's British boxer Nicola Adams on home soil who wins gold in the very city where Lady Bare Knuckles once fought 300 years before.
Nicola is the first winner of a Women's Boxing Olympic gold and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to win an Olympic boxing gold medal. She would later be awarded an MBE, then an OBE for her services to women's boxing. In her Olympic victory speech, she acknowledges Jane Couch and the many women before who paved the way for her victory.
Women's boxing has continued to grow ever more over the last decade, with matches now headlining Madison Square Garden and making front-page sporting news. It has been a long fight over the centuries to get to this point. The stories of these incredible, primarily working-class women show testament to how brutal it truly has been. And this has only been the smallest snippet of the story.
From the gritty back streets of the Georgian London slums to sold-out stadiums and Olympic stages, these women have shown decade after decade what it truly means to fight like a girl.
This is an audio production by Like A Shot Entertainment. Presented by Bridget Lappin. Executive Producers Danny O'Brien and Henry Scott. Story Producer Maddie Bowers. Assistant Producer Alice Tudor. Thank you for listening.
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