Besides, if bull-baiting was given up, the characteristic of our British dogs, so classically celebrated in the Augustan age of literature, would be totally lost. Claudian says: ‘Magnaque taurorum fracturæ colla Britannæ.’ Symmachus mentions seven Irish bull-dogs: ‘Septem Scottici canes,’ as then first produced in the circus at Rome, to the great admiration of the people.’”
General Gascoyne considered it an amusement which the lower orders were entitled to; and it was “with regret he observed a disposition in many of the members to deprive the poor of their recreations, and force them to pass their time in chaunting at conventicles.”
Then the gentle William Wilberforce rose, and rebuked the former speakers, telling them that he thought the subject had been treated with too much levity. “The evidence against the practice was derived from respectable magistrates. From such evidence he had derived a variety of facts, which were too horrid to detail to the House. A bull—that honest, harmless, useful animal—was forcibly tied to a stake, and a number of bull-dogs set upon him. If he was not sufficiently roused by the pain of their attacks, the most barbarous expedients were hit upon to awake in him that fury which was necessary to the amusement of the inhuman spectators. One instance of the latter kind he would state. A bull had been bought for the sole purpose of being baited; but, upon being fixed to the stake, he was found of so mild a nature that all the attacks of the dogs were insufficient to excite him to the requisite degree of fury; upon which those who bought him refused to pay the price to the original owner, unless he could be made to serve their purposes: the owner, after numberless expedients, at last sawed off his horns, and poured into them a poignant sort of liquid, that quickly excited the animal to the wished-for degree of fury. When bulls were bought merely for the purpose of being baited, the people who bought them wished to have as much diversion (if diversion, such cruelty could be called) as possible, for their money. The consequence was that every art, even fire, had been employed to rouse the exhausted animal to fresh exertions, and there were instances where he had expired in protracted agonies amidst the flames. It had been said, that it would be wrong to deprive the lower orders of their amusements, of the only cordial drop of life which supported them under their complicated burthens. Wretched, indeed, must be the condition of the common people of England, if their whole happiness consisted in the practice of such barbarity!”
Sheridan joined Wilberforce; but the Bill was thrown out by 64 to 51; and the practice of Bull-baiting was only declared illegal in 1835, when it was included in the Act against Cruelty to Animals, 5th and 6th William IV., cap. 59.
There was yet another brutal sport, not wholly unconnected with money and betting, which was then at its apogee, and that was Prize-fighting. This decade was at its Augustan period, when the ruffians, who mauled each other for lucre’s sake, were petted and fêted as much as ever were the gladiators in the time of Rome’s decline—the names of the pugilists then living being those of the greatest renown in the history of the prize ring. Even people who are not tainted with a love of the “Noble Art of Self-defence” must have heard of Jem Belcher, John Gully, page to George IV., and M.P. for Pontefract; Dutch Sam, Tom Crib, and his black adversary Thomas Molineaux; these names are as familiar to every schoolboy as those of the Homeric heroes. It was an age of muscle, not of brains; and the use of the fists was encouraged as the arbiter in disputes which nothing but a little blood-letting could appease, in preference to the duels, or to that utter abhorrence of all Englishmen—the knife.
Doubtless, boxing is commendable in many ways, and should form part of every man’s physical education, not only to the great advantage of his muscular system, and consequent good health, but, should occasion ever require the use of his fists, he is armed at once with weapons in whose use he is well trained; but that is very different from two men, possibly very good friends, spending long months in getting themselves in the best possible physical condition for pounding each other into a mass of bruised jelly, in order to put some money in their pockets, and afford sport and amusement to a parcel of debased brutes, whatever their social position might be.
The Prince of Wales in his younger days was, to a small extent, a “Patron of the Ring,” i.e., he once went to a meeting which took place at Smitham Bottom, near Croydon, on June 9, 1788, where he saw three fights, one between the celebrated John Jackson—whose beautiful tomb is in Brompton Cemetery—and Fewterel, of Birmingham; and, on Jackson’s winning, he sent him, by the hand of his friend, Colonel Hanger, a bank-note. The next fight was between Stephen Oliver, nicknamed “Death,” with a Jew, named Elisha Crabbe, which ended in “Death’s” defeat; and the third encounter was between two outsiders.
Again he was present at three fights which took place on the Brighton race-course, on August 6, 1788. In the third—which was between Tom Tyne, “the Tailor,” and Earl—Tyne hit his opponent a sharp, left-handed blow on the side of the head, which drove him against the rail of the stage. He fell insensible, and expired very shortly afterwards. The Prince of Wales openly expressed his determination to never again witness a prize-fight—and this he kept—also to settle an annuity on Earl’s widow and children; but history is silent as to whether this was ever carried out.
Of course, then as now, the better-thinking portion of the nation discountenanced these blackguard exhibitions, which were mainly supported by the “fast” set of that day—the Jerry Hawthorns and Corinthian Toms of the next decade. It is refreshing to read such paragraphs as the following:
Morning Post, January 11, 1808: “Prize Fighting. We are happy to hear that there is some prospect of this most disgraceful and mischievous practice being put an end to by the interference of the Legislature. The consequences resulting from it become every day more and more serious, and, without a vigorous effort to terminate the evil, we may shortly expect to find numerous families reduced to the extremes of poverty and wretchedness, in consequence of those who have hitherto supported them by their industry having given themselves up to idleness and blackguardism, by entering the foul ranks, and becoming the constant associates of prize-fighting vagabonds.”