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From Stranger Things to communist cars: why we can't resist nostalgia
In our politically unstable modern world, the allure of retreating into memories – sometimes mirages – of bygone eras seems to have grown. Six historians explore how this tendency impacts our historical understanding
“The nostalgia that Stranger Things evokes is complicated” The first thing to remind ourselves is that our view of the past is definitely shaped. The way that we understand history is translated, constructed, created for us in multiple ways – the majority of which have very little to do with the actuality of what happened. We imagine and dream history across culture, making versions of it that comfort us and accord with our world views. Film, television, games, adverts, heritage spaces, novels – they all enable us to inhabit other times, to form our sense of memory, to consume the past. Nostalgia is simply one of the ways that we access these feelings of pastness. It is incredibly powerful because of its appeal to emotion beyond rationality. It is a way of connecting with the historical that ignores order and authority – and historians underestimate it at their peril. Nostalgia has become a keynote for contemporary collective memory. Global populist politics are shot through with a dangerous nostalgia for a claimed glory that has been seemingly squandered. This is not new, but it is newly dominant. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2WX7XXY-CMYK-12a5f8b-e1772530438298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A poster for the TV show Stranger Things, showing four children on bikes on a long road with a yellow line down the middle. They are all looking towards a red, cloudy sky" title="The hit series Stranger Things is “a confection of an imagined 1980s”, says Jerome De Groot, enjoyed by an audience of whom many have “no memory of the eighties other than a cultural hangover of tropes and clichés” (Image by Alamy)" /> In the television series Mad Men (2007), Don Draper cynically uses the past to sell product, observing: “Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent.” Memories of the past can be manipulated. The biggest English-language show worldwide in 2025 was Stranger Things, a confection of an imagined 1980s – Spielberg, Nike, Kate Bush and the Cold War melded to present a version of the decade. Yet the nostalgia that Stranger Things evokes is complicated. Much of the show’s target audience has no memory of the eighties other than a cultural hangover of tropes and clichés. The eighties it recollects is itself rooted in a view of 1950s US small-town life. The nostalgia at work here is culturally performative, sold as an expression of algorithmic power rather than actual choice. No one remembers in a neutral way; everyone’s version of the past is a translation enabled by culture. Nostalgia is delicate, but this fragility is a kind of pure experience – even if it is prone to commodification. Jerome De Groot is professor of literature and culture at Manchester University, and author of Double Helix History (Routledge, 2022) “Nostalgia is one of history’s greatest promoters” Nostalgia seems to be everywhere – so much so that some people argue there’s something specific about the 21st century that prompts nostalgia. But it has been around, in one form or another, for centuries – and it has profoundly shaped our relationship with the past. The term ‘nostalgia’ was coined by a Swiss physician in the late 17th century. At the time, it was deemed a disease – a kind of pathological homesickness. It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that it morphed into its more familiar form: a longing for a bygone time rather than a distant place. Since then, nostalgia has been our constant companion, becoming rife in popular culture, journalism and political commentary in the 20th century. The 1970s has even been dubbed the “second-hand seventies” for that reason. Psychologists have also studied nostalgia’s prevalence, arguing that it’s experienced by pretty much everyone, all of the time. Though some people might be more or less prone to the feeling, nostalgia is a core human experience with distinct evolutionary advantages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-3259343webready-3771e14-e1772529840639.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph showing a large group of children playing on a roundabout in a playground. Some adults stand to the right, watching over them. Behind them all are some large brick walls and a few high rise buildings" title="Children play on a roundabout in a London housing estate, 1973. Thanks to nostalgia in popular culture and media, that decade has been dubbed the “second-hand seventies”, notes Agnes Arnold-Forster (Image by Getty Images)" /> Broadly, nostalgia can be divided into two types: personal and historical. The first is the nostalgia you feel about your own life; the second is nostalgia for some period in the past that you haven’t yourself experienced or lived through. Read more | Swings and roundabouts: a history of Britain's playgrounds It is the latter that poses the most problems. In political life, it is often lambasted as the emotional driver behind rightwing populist movements. Academic historians also take issue with this brand because it paints a sentimental and often inaccurate portrait of the past, and advocate detached, dispassionate and objective investigation. Yet not only is it impossible to quell nostalgia’s influence, that also shouldn’t be the goal. Nostalgia is one of history’s greatest promoters. And history is not just an academic enterprise. It is a vibrant ecosystem of period dramas, battle re-enactments, museums, documentaries and genealogists. Nostalgia might not be the only thing that draws people to the past – but where would this ecosystem be without its seductive emotional force? Agnes Arnold-Forster is chancellor’s fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and author of Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion (Picador, 2024) “Today, nostalgia speaks in a different idiom, in ALL CAPS and acronyms” Nostalgia, as the old joke goes, isn’t what it used to be. Twenty years ago, the term was popularly associated with the embattled citizens of eastern Europe, who retreated from the shock of market capitalism into a cosy world of Trabants, Lenin statues and the evocative smell of communist-era pickle jars. Appropriately enough, it was the Russian-American scholar Svetlana Boym who came up with the era’s most perceptive analysis of nostalgia. For her, the pull of a “restorative nostalgia” – a longing for a home or homeland that has never existed – was always at play in the nationalist fantasies of the right as much as it also shaped people’s memories of communism. Today, nostalgia speaks in a different idiom, in ALL CAPS and acronyms – MAGA, MEGA, ‘Take Back Control’ – but Boym’s warnings still ring loud and clear. Here, a look at recent history can be helpful. Nostalgia for a fantasy of imagined racial homogeneity is hardly a new force in British politics. Keir Starmer’s unconscious echoing of Enoch Powell’s noxious rhetoric (in 2025 the PM said Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”, a phrase he later expressed regret for using) highlights how the spirit of Powell is animating contemporary political discourse. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-2233375765webready-490da1a-e1772529952548.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing twelve tall lampposts in a line, each with a single England flag on them, blowing in the wind" title="The English flag flies from lampposts in Sheerness, 2025. The way Britons express nostalgia has changed a great deal over the past 20 years, argues Benjamin Jones (Image by Getty Images)" /> In my field, modern British history, a number of analysts have diagnosed ‘imperial nostalgia’ as an underlying cause of the Brexit-era lurch to the far right. I wonder if this is quite right. Though we might accept that some nationalists dream of resurrecting the British empire, most people’s feelings regarding our imperial past are probably messier and less coherent. Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argued two decades ago that, rather than acknowledging the complexities of empire, the British instead retreated into “postcolonial melancholia”. Imperial pride was expressed just as colonial violence was denied. We need a cure for such morbid symptoms. Migrants – the enslaved, the indentured, the impoverished, more rarely the privileged – made empire and re-made Britain in turn. Clear vision is required to understand this past; rose-tinted lenses will only obscure our view. Benjamin Jones is author of The Working Class in Mid Twentieth-Century England (Manchester UP, 2012) “German Democratic Republic nostalgics are a minority, but a growing one” When Boris Johnson visited socialist East Germany months before reunification in 1990, he was “amazed at how far behind West Germany” it was: a land “of strange little cars with two-stroke engines and fake coffee”. Most East Germans agreed, keen to swap those “strange little” Trabant cars for VWs, and to leave behind the dictatorship and its make-do economy. Today, things are changing. Cars made in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are seeing a revival. Restored Trabants fetch up to 7,000 Euros – close to the sum paid when new. Though half of owners are over 60, thousands are under 30, born long after the last Trabi left the factory. This fits into a wider trend of GDR nostalgia, or Ostalgie. In 2019 – 30 years after the Berlin Wall fell – a survey found that 10 per cent of East Germans wanted the GDR back. When the newspaper Nordkurier asked the same question recently, it was nearly a quarter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1555920290webready-0db3990-e1772530085287.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of several small, colourful cars parked together, in front of a large building with a central circular tower and pointed rooftops" title="Trabant cars in central Leipzig, East Germany in February 1990, shortly before that state’s reunification with West Germany. A resurgence in the brand’s popularity reflects nostalgia for the certainties of communist rule (Image by Getty Images)" /> GDR nostalgics are a minority, but a growing one. Ask them why, and most cite not socialist convictions but a feeling that life was simpler during the Cold War. The present, with its wars, economic uncertainty and rapid technological change, can feel frightening. So the small world of the GDR appears reassuringly predictable, irrespective of the Stasi’s omnipresence. The Trabi embodies this paradox: it’s a tiny, underpowered car but one that anyone can repair and on which families relied for decades. West Germans aren’t free from nostalgia. With the rise of the far right, unstable coalitions and economic pessimism, many reminisce about the postwar era and its political stability and economic miracle. West Germany was no dictatorship but it was staunchly conservative, initially limiting opportunities for women and social mobility. There is no moral equivalence, but Westalgie also views history through a soft filter. Read more | Life in East Germany: the cultural evolution behind the Iron Curtain In our uncertain times, the pull of Cold War nostalgia is seductive. Historians must stay the course of academic rigour and integrity, providing a much-needed lifeline of solid analysis until calmer days return. Katja Hoyer is a historian, journalist and visiting research fellow at King’s College, London. Her forthcoming book is Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe (Allen Lane, May 2026) “The ‘nostalgia’ label is often applied indiscriminately to almost any period film” As Agnes Arnold-Forster concludes in her recent historical work on this “dangerous emotion”, there are “many nostalgias”, not just one, so assessing whether it shapes our view of the past depends on context and specific detail. Of course, we should be concerned by nostalgia’s role as a social and political emotion – the contentious yearning for an idealised ‘lost’ place or past. Its potential for manipulation demands particular scrutiny in relation to histories, collective memory and public understandings of the present as well as the past. These are no idle fears in our present times. When it comes to period films, historical media genres and their audiences, I would question how much nostalgic pleasures and practices really tell us about the public’s relationship with British history. The ‘nostalgia’ label is often applied indiscriminately to almost any period film or media text, regardless of its genre or intentions, and also to audiences. This issue was a core motivation for my 2011 empirical study Heritage Film Audiences. Even the (few) respondents who expressed acute nostalgia were self-reflective on the subject. “We would not really swap our comfortable modern lifestyle for those days,” wrote one. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1319979896webready-5db6466-e1772530181978.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a person's hands holding an old photo of a woman in a high necked dress holding a small child in a white dress. Behind the photo are several others strewn across a desk and an open laptop with a family tree on it" title="Popular factual television programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are? can act as a bulwark against idealised versions of the past, contends Claire Monk (Image by Getty Images)" /> The first two decades of the 21st century brought an unprecedented new wave of accessible public history, from free digitised resources (such as Old Bailey Online) via the rise of online family history to innovations in history television that engaged audiences with fact-based histories, primary sources and historical methods. The BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, launched in 2004, has now run for 22 seasons. Channel 4, particularly during the late Hamish Mykura’s tenure, excelled in innovations in primary-source-based historical drama and drama documentary. The series Georgian Underworld (2003) and City of Vice (2008), on the formation of the Bow Street Runners, were notable. However, the future of engaging public-history media for British audiences rests on institutional factors, not least the future of UK public-service broadcasting itself. Claire Monk is professor emerita of film and film culture at De Montfort University “In contemporary politics, nostalgia is playing a powerful role” Nostalgia is neither inherently good nor bad. It helps us connect to the past, remembering friendships, experiences, places. It can help us work through regrets, offering insights that benefit us in the present. But nostalgia can produce sentimentality based on mischaracterisations of how things once were, painting the past in rose-tinted hues that bear little resemblance to historical reality. Either way, it produces very strong emotions. And in contemporary politics, nostalgia is playing a powerful role. We are seeing a surge in far-right nationalism, not least in the UK. Nostalgia feeds into this, weaponising ‘great’ moments in the past. These are taken selectively from British imperial history, evoking, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall puts it, “the fantasy of a late return to the flag, family values, national character, imperial glory and the spirit of Palmerstonian gunboat diplomacy”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-526776478webready-1b1f2a8-e1772530266615.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A 17th‑century coastal scene showing a large group of men, women, and children gathered on a shoreline as they prepare to board ships. Several sailing vessels wait offshore, with small rowboats ferrying passengers to them. People wear cloaks, bonnets, and wide‑brimmed hats typical of the period. Behind them, cliffs rise to a fortified stone building overlooking the harbour. The mood suggests a significant departure or migration" title="A coloured engraving shows Huguenot refugees landing at Dover after toleration of Protestantism ended in France in 1685. Contrary to a populist narrative invoking false nostalgia, “Britain was never a homogeneous nation”, notes Anamik Saha (Image by Getty Images)" /> As Benjamin Jones notes, Paul Gilroy described this turn as “postcolonial melancholia”. The issue is not only how nationalists refabricate moments from history for their own ends, but also how they bind them to strong feelings of nostalgia. Crucially, Gilroy highlighted the racial dimension of this longing for a Britain before postwar immigration from the former colonies, when life was supposedly simpler, more peaceful and more homogeneous. Read more | Catholics vs Huguenots: your guide to the French Wars of Religion Postcolonial melancholia relies on a wilful amnesia about the past. Historians show us that Britain was never a homogeneous nation free from internal conflict. It has experienced waves of immigration over many centuries, following a familiar pattern: immigrants are initially met with fear and distrust before becoming naturally absorbed into British life and identity. Yet this is buried in popular representations of British history. Historical precision now struggles against nationalistic nostalgia that paints Britain’s past in broad, brutal strokes, obscuring important histories for political ends. Good history can salve postcolonial melancholia, helping the nation face and work through the troubled elements of its past. Anamik Saha is professor of race and media at Leeds University, and author of Race, Culture and Media (Sage, 2021) This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
London 1908 was the weirdest Winter Olympics in history – and here's why
Boxing and football? In a Winter Olympics? In October? Held in 1908, the first-ever winter games was an experimental affair. But, writes Martin Polley, it was one that sowed the seeds for future – and snowier – competitions
“Outside dirty, slushy streets, a melancholy drizzle and a muggy, uncomfortable atmosphere suggestive of nothing more remote than the crisp, keen, invigorating air that is associated in everyone’s mind with the sport of skating.” This editorial, published in Sporting Life, was far from a sparkling endorsement of the first-ever Olympic skating event. But then this was far from a typical Olympics. In fact, the inaugural Winter Olympics, held in London in 1908, would be unrecognisable to modern eyes familiar with today’s four-yearly snow-and-ice spectacle. Yet it forged the way for what’s now become a major fixture on the international sports scene, the latest iteration of which – Milano Cortina 2026 – is being staged across Lombardy and north-eastern Italy this February. The figure-skating event introduced in such dismal terms by Sporting Life was held in the Prince’s Club, Knightsbridge, and was part of a larger ‘winter’ programme staged in Britain as part of the fourth modern Olympic Games. Those games would witness a number of innovations, some of which today sound odd or even faintly ridiculous – motorboat racing or bicycle polo, for example. Other experiments stuck, though. The 1908 games saw the concept of national teams first formally introduced, while the distance for the Marathon that the London organisers used went on to become the standard for the race. And like these other innovations, the winter programme left a long-lasting legacy. Though it was another 16 years before Olympic organisers staged a full Winter Olympics, it was the British Olympic Council (BOC) that first put an ice-based sport on the programme, and which first organised an event called the Olympic Winter Games. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1236365554webready-ddcdecb-e1770899425786.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A postcard depicting a large white, circular stadium in London. It is surrounded by free spaces and in the background, Big Ben and the houses of parliament stand. The sky is pink and blue" title="The Great Stadium at what’s now White City was the first purpose-built Olympic arena (Image by Getty Images)" /> Organisational feat London took on the 1908 Games in late 1906. In less than two years, the BOC pulled off an enormous organisational feat. It scheduled a fortnight of sports in July, centred on the world’s first purpose-built Olympic stadium at the Franco-British Exhibition Grounds in Shepherd’s Bush, known at the time as the Great Stadium (or just the Stadium), later as White City. Other events – from sailing and rowing to shooting and polo – were held at venues in London and farther afield. London’s Winter Games was conceived as a distinct programme involving six disciplines. Four were team games – football, hockey, lacrosse and rugby – that were played between September and May in Britain, and thus considered winter sports. The fifth was boxing, added to the Olympic programme too late to be held in July. The sixth was figure-skating – the sport that gave the programme a genuinely winter flavour, and which made this experiment a forerunner of the Winter Olympics that started in earnest in 1924. From its first meeting in December 1906, the BOC comprised representatives from numerous disciplines, including two people from snow and ice sports: W Hayes Fisher of the National Skating Association (NSA), and Edgar Syers of both the Ski Club of Great Britain and the Figure Skating Club. They joined counterparts from the Football Association and the Rugby Football Union. That first meeting discussed “the possibility of holding Olympic Skating Competitions in the winter of 1907–08”. By March 1907, the Amateur Hockey Association (AHA) had joined the committee, the English Lacrosse Association had been invited, and the BOC agreed to stage “a cycle of winter sports [as] an integral part of the Olympiad”. The meeting minutes don’t explain this decision. At that time, just over a decade after the first games under the auspices of the IOC was held in Athens in 1896, the Olympics was still a novelty without any fixed programme; local organisers were relatively free to shape the schedule. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/0720506webready-d570ad7-e1770900127137.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a large crowd of men standing looking in the same direction. To the right of the crowd, some brick building stand, and there are some children standing on one of the roofs, looking out over the crowd" title="Competitors prepare for the marathon at the Athens Olympics in 1896. When the games reached London 12 years later, they were still a novelty with no fixed schedule (Image by Topfoto)" /> The BOC, led by sportsman and politician William Grenfell, Lord Desborough, wanted to use the Olympics to showcase British sport in the round. In his younger days, Desborough had been something of an archetypal Victorian amateur sportsman, and he had served as an MP before entering the House of Lords in 1905. With his sporting credentials and political networks, he was perfectly placed to drive the Olympic project. He led fundraising schemes, chaired the BOC, organised banquets, and delivered speeches to garner maximum publicity for the Games. Read more | Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: 5 ways Victorians spent their free time The winter programme was a crucial part of this project, intended to ensure that the Olympics would achieve more than they would if they finished in July. What’s more, the Franco-British Exhibition – the organisers of which financed the London Olympics – did not close until 31 October. Having extra sport in October would bring in more paying customers to the exhibition. International ambition There was also an international imperative. From Desborough’s idealistic perspective, the inclusion of winter sports ensured an extension to what he called, in his speech at a banquet for competitors, “the great idea of the Olympic Games”: that they could “draw together, not in a small sphere, but in the larger sphere of the world’s politics, the nations of the world… through the idea of friendly competition”. The BOC hoped that the team sports would inspire entries from overseas, and give the Winter Games an international profile. Rugby already had a significant following in South Africa and Australia, both of which sent teams to the summer Games. The Olympics were for amateurs only, and rugby union broadly conformed to this culture. Football and hockey were both growing as amateur sports in many European countries, as was boxing. Skating, an amateur but socially elite sport, could draw from many European nations. Lacrosse was the outlier, with a smaller reach, but the organisers hoped at least for a Canadian entry and some British representation. The fact that countries were able to send teams at what Desborough described as “an inclement time of year” added to the value of the winter project. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1304204webready-bf6df5e-e1770900245969.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of men running along a field, holding hockey sticks. To the right, there are two men wearing pale shirts with black shorts and long black socks. To the left, there are two other men dressed in all white, with black socks" title="England take on France in the first round of the field hockey tournament, winning 10–1. They went on to victory over Ireland in the final (Image by Topfoto)" /> As preparations progressed in 1907, the BOC planned to stage the Winter Games at Easter of the Olympic year, then settled instead on two weeks in October 1908. Of the six sports included, competitions in hockey and skating had not been held in the previous three Olympics. Football had appeared in the previous two, rugby had featured at Paris 1900, and boxing had made its debut at St Louis in 1904. The innovation, then, lay both in some of the sports and in packaging them as a winter programme. The Olympic Winter Games of 1908 opened on 19 October. First up was football, with matches held at the Stadium; Great Britain won the six-team tournament with a 2-0 victory over Denmark in the final. In between football matches, the Stadium hosted a two-team lacrosse event in which Canada beat Britain. In the two-team rugby tournament, Australia ran out winners over Britain. The action then moved to the Northampton Institute in Clerkenwell on 27 October for the boxing tournament. Two days of skating began at Prince’s on 28 October, followed by the six-team hockey tournament at White City. The Games ended on 31 October with the hockey final. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BL0000560190810280590009boxingwebready-e8211dc-e1770907962273.jpg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="A black and white photograph of a large boxing ring, with one man on all fours on the ground, while another man stands over him. Surrounding the ring is a large crowd, all sat down looking towards the ring. There are white posters and signs around the sides" title="English boxer RK Gunn defeats his French opponent in a featherweight bout in 1908. He was one of the five British pugilists who took all of the top medals in that sport at the Winter Games (Image by British Library)" /> Think rink It was, of course, the skating that gave this programme a winter feeling, away from the muddy pitches at White City. The BOC hired the Prince’s Club, London’s only all-year private rink, for several weeks in October, allowing competitors to practise ahead of the two-day event. Spectator tickets were expensive – £2 2s (well over £200 today) for a two-day pass, or £1 1s for one day – but they sold well, and there were full houses throughout the competition, perhaps because it attracted some of the biggest names in the sport. There was Ulrich Salchow of Sweden, who won gold in the Gentlemen’s Individual, and Nikolai Panin of Russia, winner of the Special Figures. They were joined by Britain’s leading female skater, Florence ‘Madge’ Syers. She won the Ladies’ Individual event and, partnering her husband and BOC member Edgar, took bronze in the Pairs. These Olympic medals rounded off a stellar international skating career in which she had won British and World titles. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-881629540webready-3559007-e1770899596586.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A gold medal depicting three naked people: one man standing in the middle and a woman each side of him, placing a wreath on his head. On the bottom left, the words OLYMPIC GAMES are written. On the opposite side, the words LONDON 1908 are there" title="A gold medal from the London games of 1908, which saw a number of Olympic innovations (Image by Getty Images)" /> The relatively low turnout of countries in the team sports rendered some of the games sadly one-sided, as seen most clearly in the early rounds of the football. Bohemia and Hungary withdrew at a late stage, so France entered A and B teams to make up the numbers, competing alongside Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. France B lost 9–0 to Denmark, while the same opponents hammered France A 17–1 in the semi-final, before Britain took gold. With rugby and lacrosse attracting only two teams each, these tournaments comprised just finals. The Australian rugby team happened to be in Britain at the time anyway, so simply added the Olympics to its schedule. A British tour of Australia and New Zealand that year prevented the main team from competing, so the BOC designated the county champions, Cornwall, as Britain’s representatives. Australia won 32–3. Hockey attracted only Germany and France from overseas, so the AHA split Britain into its four constituent nations (at the time including Ireland as one entity) for the tournament. England beat Ireland 8–1 in the final. In boxing, 32 of the 42 fighters were British; the other 10 included representatives from Australia, Denmark and France. All five of the gold medals went to Britons. Skating was the most international event, with entrants from Britain, Argentina, Germany, Russia, Sweden and the US. Read more | From Hollywood to war heroes: 10 Olympians who were more famous outside sport In the gold medal tally for the Winter Games, Britain came top with eight, followed by Australia, Canada, Germany, Russia and Sweden with one each. Frosty reception This pioneering Winter Games programme had a mixed reception. Crowds at the stadium events were small, with fewer than 3,000 watching the rugby final and 2,000 at the football (in a venue that had held more than 80,000 back in July). Tickets in the uncovered sections were available for only 6d (about £3 today), but most matches were held on weekdays and in bad weather, which did not help attract spectators. Boxing and skating, both held indoors, fared better. Most newspapers, both general and sporting, were interested throughout, with the Daily Mirror leading the way. It offered updates on all of the competitions throughout October, and ran action photographs that ranged from the Canadian lacrosse team in training to portraits of the Olympic boxing champions, and action photographs from the skating and the team games. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL294984webready-d9b66c6-e1770899858122.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a large group of men dressed in white shorts and white jumpers with a maple leaf reading Canada on the front. They are all holding lacross nets up in the air and cheering. In the background to the right is a man dressed in a long black coat and a bowler hat" title="Canadian lacrosse players cheer their defeated opponents, Great Britain, after the Olympic final. They were the only two teams involved in that competition (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Sporting Life also excelled, running interviews, previews, fixture lists, ticketing news and match reports. Other papers and magazines, including Country Life, The Field, the Daily Mail and the Athletic News, gave the Winter Games coverage in the form of previews, reports and, in some cases, action photographs. Local newspapers carried syndicated stories, ensuring nationwide coverage. Read more | The madcap Paris Olympics: the chaos that nearly derailed the 1900 Games In some cases, the reporting was negative. The Athletic News described the two-team rugby tournament as “an Olympic Fiasco”, and The Field printed the slightly barbed remark that the boxing bouts involved “more fighting than science”. Broadly, though, the press took a positive approach, welcoming this novel gathering of international teams across so many sports. However, at a time when the Olympics had not yet become the centrepiece of world sport, these events were relatively minor elements of Britain’s sporting scene. That status was reflected in some of the press, with fixture lists particularly revealing. So, for example, the football match between Paddington Thursday and Great Eastern Railway appeared just below the Olympic semi-finals in Sporting Life on 22 October. Similarly, The Field’s account of the hockey final ran in the same column as its report of Cambridge University’s match against Beckenham. Lasting legacy The 1908 games were staged long before the idea of legacy figured in Olympic thinking. However, the experimental Winter Games had some lasting impacts. Though lacrosse has not returned to the Olympic programme since 1908, and rugby struggled along only until Paris 1924 (though it was reintroduced in Sevens mode in 2016), the other team sports blossomed after their inclusion at London. The football tournament was the largest of its kind held to that date, and hockey has featured in all but two subsequent editions. Similarly, boxing later became a permanent fixture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-541055111webready-753f687-e1770900377445.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of five men dressed in black uniforms, black hats and black ice skates. Behind them, other men dressed in dark clothing look across the ice rink at them" title="Figure-skaters including Ulrich Salchow (centre), who won numerous World and European titles around the turn of the century as well as Olympic gold in 1908 (Image by Getty Images)" /> It was the skating, though, that helped to create a specifically winter legacy. No ice sports featured at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, but Antwerp’s planners re-introduced figure-skating at their 1920 Olympics. British skater Phyllis Johnson returned at that games – adding the bronze in the Pairs to her silver from 1908 – and Salchow unsuccessfully defended his Olympic title. Antwerp also saw the first Olympic ice hockey tournament. From that point, it was a short step in 1924 for France to organise a programme of snow and ice-sports at Chamonix to complement that year’s Paris Summer Olympics. The IOC formally launched a separate Winter Olympic Games in 1928 at St Moritz in Switzerland. Almost a century on, the 2026 iteration in northern Italy is set to be a sporting behemoth, featuring more than 3,500 athletes from 93 nations. Yet the seeds for this now-global event were sown not on pristine Alpine slopes but in the “melancholy drizzle” of London’s “dirty, slushy streets” in October 1908. Breaking the ice Five athletes who made their mark at London's Winter Games William Grenfell: Channel-crossing chairman The 1st Baron Desborough (1855–1945) was the first chairman of the British Olympic Association, and the head of the British Olympic Council that organised the 1908 Games. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was a talented amateur sportsman in his student days. He twice rowed in the Boat Race against Cambridge, and excelled in cricket, fencing and athletics. His wider sporting adventures included climbing the Matterhorn, rowing across the English Channel in an eight, and swimming across the pool at the bottom of Niagara Falls. Florence 'Madge' Syers: England's ice queen The London-born daughter of a property developer, Syers (1881–1917) had revolutionised the sport of figure-skating by entering the World Championships in 1902 – even though there was no dedicated female class. She came second. Syers advocated for more practical dress for skaters, arguing against “flowing skirts and garden-party hats”, proposing that skirts should be short, falling above the ankle, and narrow. She also decried corsets, explaining that “the waist must be free, so that the muscles of the back may have play, and the body be easily rotated from the hips”. Syers also wrote about winter sports, and competed to a high standard in swimming and diving. Sophus Nielsen: free-scoring Scandi strikerThis famously bow-legged footballer (1888–1963), nicknamed ‘Krølben’ (‘curly legs’), netted a staggering 10 goals in one incredible match – Denmark’s 17–1 win over France A team in the 1908 Winter Games semi-finals. That scoreline has never been matched in the Olympics, and the record of one player scoring 10 goals in a game has been repeated only once. One English sporting newspaper joked that many clubs in the Football League “would be glad of a forward who would shoot at goal 10 times in a match, let alone score 10 goals”. Nielsen played for Denmark again in the 1912 Olympics, and later managed the national team. Tom Richards: lion-hearted wallaby This Australian rugby player (1882–1935), who won the 1908 Olympic gold medal with his team – scoring a try in the final – was described by the Daily Telegraph as “the cleverest forward in the world” for his overall performance in the Wallabies’ 1908–09 tour of Britain. The son of a Cornish migrant to Australia, Richards was one of only two players to have played for both Australia and the British Lions – a fact celebrated by the Tom Richards Cup, named in his honour and contested between Australia and the British & Irish Lions between 2001 and 2025. During the First World War he served with the Australian Imperial Force, fighting at Gallipoli and Arras, and was awarded the Military Cross.Ulrich Salchow: Sweden's skating superstar This all-conquering Danish-born Swedish figure-skater (1877–1949) won numerous World and European titles, most of them in the first decade of the 20th century. Sporting Life described his gold medal-winning performance in the Individual event in 1908 as “an astonishing display [that] combined acrobatics with wonderful power and fascinating elegance”. Speaking at the Olympic banquet on 31 October, Salchow said that it was “quite admirable that the skating competition should have been carried out in such a splendid way in a country where for climatic reasons skating cannot be said to be a national sport”. In 1909, Salchow pioneered a move still named after him, which involves the athlete taking off for a jump on the rear inside edge of the skate on one foot and landing on the outside edge of the other. Martin Polley is professor emeritus in history at De Montfort University. His books include The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage 1612–2012 (Historic England, 2011) This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys
Our ancestors weren’t quite as prudish as we like to think they were. Hilary Mitchell looks at some of the tools past generations have used in the pursuit of sexual pleasure – from steam-powered vibrators to goat eyelids
This article contains explicit descriptions of sex and sexual practices throughout – please use discretion 1. The Hohle Fels phallus Around 28,000 years ago, an effigy of a human penis was left inside Hohle Fels cave, southwestern Germany. Made from fine-grained siltstone, the object was meticulously ground, polished and etched with grooves at both ends. Given its polished surface and true-to-life size, some researchers have suggested it may well have been an early masturbatory aid – or the first-ever dildo, to put it bluntly. However, that was not the artefact’s only possible purpose. When University of Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas J Conard first announced the find in 2005, he suggested that it was also used for knapping flints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1D3GB1X-3e0e6f1-e1764240558215.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man holds a phallus-shaped object in his hands, while a woman points to it. In the background, a group of people are working on excavating the floor of a cave" title="Archaeologists Nicholas Conrad and Petra Kieselbach pose with the Hohle Fels phallus shortly after its discovery in 2005" /> 2. Bread Yes, that’s right. As well as being a staple food in ancient times, bread may also have been used for less salubrious purposes. A passage from the Babylonian Talmud, for instance, contains a description of what should be done to treat a man afflicted by a puncture in his penis. The suggested solution is that a piece of warm barley bread should be placed on the man’s anus to induce ejaculation, proving whether or not the perforation has properly healed. Notably, the ancient Greeks are also said to have used makeshift sex toys known as olisbokollikes: batons of stale bread that were inserted into the anus, using olive oil as lubrication. It may sound far-fetched (and could have just been a rude joke), but the practice is mentioned in the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, compiled in the fifth or sixth century AD. 3. Goat eyelids Texts from ancient China describe penis rings made from a rather unusual material: goat eyelids, often with the eyelashes left intact. These were reportedly used between the third and fifth centuries AD to enhance sexual pleasure and performance by trapping blood within the penis. The elasticity of the goat eyelid was presumably the major selling point, but leaving the eyelashes on suggested they played a part too, potentially providing extra stimulation for both parties. By the 1600s, some Chinese men had upgraded their penis ring technology. These more modern devices were made from materials like jade and ivory, and were ornately carved, often depicting dragons. The dragons’ tongues usually extended to form a protruding nub, which could be placed against the woman’s clitoris to enhance her pleasure during intercourse – a forerunner to today’s clitoral stimulators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1052933946-4c20b47-e1764240604387.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Evidence from ancient China suggests that goats’ eyelids were used to heighten sexual pleasure for both men and women (Image by Getty Images)" title="Evidence from ancient China suggests that goats’ eyelids were used to heighten sexual pleasure for both men and women (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century 4. Apadravya (‘apparatus’) Even if you’re not remotely interested in the history of sex and sexuality, you’ll have likely heard of Vātsyāyana’s third-century AD tome, the Kama Sutra. As well as guidance about living a healthy sex life, the Sanskrit text also extols the virtues of using apadravya (‘apparatus’) to enhance one’s pleasure, describing the use of dildos, penis extenders and other sex aids made of wood, rubber, gold, silver, copper and ivory. Some of the devices are particularly unusual: one is shaped like a flower bud, while another resembles an elephant’s trunk. If that wasn’t enough, the Kama Sutra also contains instructions for creating artificial vaginas made of “hollowed-out pumpkins” and bamboo moistened with oil or ointment. Sounds a bit more effective than bread… 5. The Science Museum’s luxury ivory dildo One of the best-documented early modern sex toys is currently in the care of London’s Science Museum. Labelled “ivory dildo with a contrivance for simulating ejaculation”, the 18th-century device takes the form of an erect penis and includes a small pump and reservoir, seemingly intended to cause fluid to shoot out at an opportune moment. Curiously, the catalogue entry also states that the item was “found in the stuffed seat of a Louis XV armchair, which was in a convent on the banks of the Seine, near Paris”, but how it got there is a mystery sadly lost to the mists of time. 6. George Taylor’s steam-powered ‘Manipulator’ he ivory dildo might have been very novel in many ways, but one crucial thing that it didn’t do was vibrate. So where did the concept of the vibrator come from? The answer, it appears, lies in a steam-powered device from 1869 known as the ‘Manipulator’. Invented by American physician George Taylor, the Manipulator was not a theme park ride as its name suggests, but a large, padded table connected to vibrating ball, which would be positioned against the patient’s pelvic area as they lay on the device. The ball – which was powered by a coal-fired steam engine – provided continuous mechanical stimulation and was described as a “medical vibrating and kneading machine”. The Manipulator was an adaptation of a similar machine created by Swedish physical therapist Gustaf Zander; Taylor merely improved on Zander’s ideas by attaching his ‘Medical Rubbing Apparatus’ to what was, in effect, a stationary steam engine. However, Taylor warned physicians who bought the device that treatment of female pelvic complaints with the Manipulator should be supervised to prevent “overindulgence”. 7. ‘Rubber women’ Rubber, in its natural form, has been known and used for thousands of years, but modern rubber as we know it today was developed much later. In 1839, American inventor Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanisation, a process that made rubber strong, elastic and weather-resistant, paving the way for a wide range of industrial and consumer applications – some of which were later exploited for erotic purposes. Selected accounts suggest that, by the 1850s, manufacturers were producing rubber items that could be interpreted as early forms of sex dolls. These items have been described as ‘rubber women’ or femmes en caoutchouc in French, though they were not explicitly advertised as sex toys. The first mention of manufactured sex dolls in academic literature appears in Iwan Bloch’s The Sexual Life of Our Time (1908), where he claims they were marketed primarily to sailors. However, modern scholarship suggests that Bloch relied heavily on fictional sources and exaggerated advertising, calling into question the book’s accuracy. Given the modern popularity of sex dolls, however, it seems plausible that variations on the theme may have existed in the early 20th century. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/7.Femme-en-Caoutchouc-c16ea73-e1764241535367.png" width="620" height="413" alt="An illustration shows a man holding a rubber woman in his arms" title="A 19th-century French song, La Femme en Caoutchouc (‘The Rubber Woman’), tells the story of a sailor’s ‘relationship’ with a sex doll. The affair does not end well, as indicated by the illustrations adorning this edition of the sheet music" /> Read more | Rich men, reckless affairs and ruined reputations: the scandalous lives of London's 18th-century courtesans 8. Granville’s ‘Percuteur’ Large, steam-powered vibrators like George Taylor’s ‘Manipulator’ were far too bulky and costly for most physicians, so British doctor Joseph Mortimer Granville decided to invent a smaller, spring-driven electromechanical vibrator known as the ‘Percuteur’. After patenting his device in the early 1880s, Granville was adamant that it should only be intended for therapeutic use on men, stating: “I have avoided, and shall continue to avoid, the treatment of women by percussion… simply because I do not want to be hoodwinked… by the vagaries of the hysterical state.” It’s not clear whether fellow doctors heeded Granville’s advice, but it’s important to note that vibrators at the time were viewed primarily as medical instruments rather than sexual devices. Indeed, Dr Carol Queen – curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco – has cautioned against calling these early vibrators ‘sex toys’, saying: “The vibrators were not marketed and sold for this purpose. They were healthcare devices that just happened to cause orgasm if you knew where to apply the vibration… there is no evidence that people who owned or used them knew this… though there’s also no evidence that they didn’t.” 9. Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators Modern butt plugs did not originate as sex toys, but as treatments for a range of ‘rectal ailments’, including constipation and ‘nervousness’. They were first patented in 1892 and marketed as ‘Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators’ from 1893 to 1940. They were sold in sets of four, in increasing sizes, and advertisements and surviving sets show that each dilator had an olive or bullet-shaped tip and a flanged base to prevent full insertion – a shape strikingly similar to today’s butt plugs. The devices were made of rubber, and the instructions suggested they be used with either Dr Young’s Piloment lubricant or Vaseline. Like early vibrators, they were marketed as ‘healthcare devices’, but back then – as now – the human anus contained a great deal of nerve endings, meaning inserting the dilators into the rectum will have caused many ‘patients’ to experience sexual pleasure. To paraphrase Dr Carol Queen, there’s no evidence to suggest that people did use these dilators during sex – but, equally, there’s nothing to say they didn’t. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Credit-CreepyCuteTreasuresEtsyDr-Youngs-Rectal-Dilators-7f08bac-e1764241593117.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A set of Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators. The box’s instructions suggest that the user should keep their chosen dilator inserted for “half an hour” to achieve the best results (Image by CreepyCuteTreasures/Etsy)" title="A set of Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators. The box’s instructions suggest that the user should keep their chosen dilator inserted for “half an hour” to achieve the best results (Image by CreepyCuteTreasures/Etsy)" /> 10. Louis B Hawley’s Patented Penis Stiffener In 1907, US inventor Louis B Hawley sprang into action to quite literally support men with erection problems. Hawley’s patented ‘surgical appliance’ took the form of an external splint to keep the penis erect, with a covering to help hold it in place. Unfortunately, there are no first-hand accounts of how comfortable the device would have been for both parties, though given later patent writers’ critiques about its design being bulky and awkward, it’s probably fair to speculate that the answer may well have been “not very”. However, this early prototype did pave the way for more modern penis ‘stiffeners’, most notably Dr F Brantley Scott’s inflatable device, which was first sold in the 1970s and made up of two inflatable silicone cylinders with a reservoir and pump. That, in turn, led to the advent of surgically implanted and inflatable prostheses, which are still helping people enjoy robust and vigorous sex lives today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10GettyImages-837400890-547dfa0-e1764241628703.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Physicians have long sought new ways to treat erectile dysfunction – including the creation of inflatable prostheses (Image by Getty Images)" title="Physicians have long sought new ways to treat erectile dysfunction – including the creation of inflatable prostheses (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Queen Victoria’s voracious appetite for food and sex 11. Hand-cranked ‘massagers’ The earlier question of “but did people really use these things to masturbate?” raises its head again as we look at hand-cranked vibrators like Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator, which was sold throughout the early 1900s and could deliver 6,000 vibrations per minute. At this time, masturbation was widely viewed as shameful, and ‘obscene’ content was illegal in the US under the 1873 Comstock Act. This meant that vibrators could not be openly advertised as sexual products. However, according to sex toy historian Hallie Lieberman, “it’s impossible to deny that sexual uses for vibrators weren’t known”. The makers of the Bebout Vibrator, for example, made their target market very clear in a 1908 advert, describing their device as “gentle, soothing, invigorating and refreshing [and] invented by a woman who knows a woman's needs”. Interestingly, many of these hand-cranked devices came with dildo-like attachments – though these were ‘officially’ intended to treat uterine complaints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/11-2RX45AW-0c62c65-e1764241663308.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator could deliver 6,000 vibrations a minute – but it was never explicitly marketed as a sex toy (Image by Alamy)" title="Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator could deliver 6,000 vibrations a minute – but it was never explicitly marketed as a sex toy (Image by Alamy)" /> 12. The Oster Stim-U-Lax This scalp massage device, marketed to barbers, promised to deliver “several thousand rotating-patting Swedish-type massage movements per minute” via the operator’s fingers. But it wasn’t only used on scalps. A frank first-hand account by US sex educator Betty Dodgson (1929–2020) describes using an Oster Stim-U-Lax with her lover in 1966, explaining: “One day he was getting a haircut when his barber ended with a scalp massage using a vibrating machine that was strapped onto the back of his hand. Grant got the bright idea that it would be great for sex. On our next date, Grant brought out his new toy for us to try. Although I wasn't all that crazy about getting off on a mechanical device, my motto is to always try everything at least once.” It was, according to Dodgson’s account, extremely effective, and led her to become a keen advocate for vibrators from that point onwards. Dodgson is even credited with helping to bring such sex toys into the mainstream, promoting devices such as the now-ubiquitous Hitachi Magic Wand, first marketed in 1968.
From a lion-taming lightweight to the Muscular Maids: 5 Victorian boxing sensations you need to know about
Sarah Elizabeth Cox introduces the pugilists who punched their way into Britons’ affections during the dying days of bare-knuckle prize-fighting
The lion-taming lightweight How a West Indian warrior became a knock-out success in London’s East End Picture the scene. Two boxers walk out before an uproarious crowd at the Sebright Music Hall in the London district of Hackney and “received a welcome of extraordinary character”. “The house rose en masse when the men appeared on the stage,” declared the Sporting Life of 3 January 1888, “and before they were allowed to place themselves into position, had to bow their acknowledgements over and over again. The place was crammed to suffocation.” The late Victorian era was a boom-time for British boxing. Across London in the 1880s, audiences could watch gloved exhibitions, tournaments and matches every night of the week. And few pugilists drew crowds quite as large as one of the men who stepped onto that Hackney stage back in January 1888: Hezekiah Moscow. Moscow has recently been lapping up the audience’s acclaim once again, in the TV drama A Thousand Blows, inspired in part by his story. So who was this pugilist who made headlines in the 1880s and again in 2025? Instant impact We know that Moscow was born in 1862 in the West Indies – although the 1891 census doesn’t give us any more detail about exactly where – and that he arrived in London at the age of 19. It was then, soon after setting up home in Britain’s capital city, that he began to box. Moscow clearly made quite an impression – so much so that his fellow fighters at the Blue Coat Boy boxing saloon in the impoverished heart of the East End soon started calling him ‘Ching Hook’. This nickname appears to have been inspired both by Moscow’s abilities with his fists and his ethnicity – sporting newspapers from 1882 referred to him as a black Chinese man (we know that east Asian indentured servants were present in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana in the years before Moscow’s birth). Moscow struck up a close friendship with Jamaican mariner and established boxer Alexander Munroe. The two sparred white opponents – and one another – in east London’s pubs and beyond, and Moscow gained a reputation as a talented lightweight fighter. England had no segregated championship for black fighters. But that didn’t stop the growing number of Caribbean-born, African-American and black British boxers based in big cities such as London and Liverpool vying to be acclaimed the (unofficial) black champion. Moscow was occasionally billed as such in the sporting newspapers, and would go on to become a respected figure in the wider boxing world, managing gyms in London and training boxers in the Midlands. Read more | A Thousand Blows: the real history behind the Victorian boxing drama His life outside boxing was equally eventful. As well as a formidable fighter, he was also a lion-tamer, and was hired by the East London Aquarium to perform with lions, wolves, bears and a hyena. This wasn’t without controversy: in 1884, Moscow faced charges of cruelly treating the bears, after an RSPCA inspector observed him striking one with a whip. However, the case was dismissed and the inspector charged with perjury. In 1890, Moscow married Mary Maddin, a white woman, and they had a child whom they named Eliza. However, their relationship would be short-lived. In 1892, a decade after arriving in London, Moscow left his lodgings and vanished. Mary sought an answer to his whereabouts from the boxing fraternity, but her search was in vain. Hezekiah Moscow’s disappearance is shrouded in mystery, but there is evidence that he travelled to New York. The once popular boxer was supposedly spotted in the US city years later by a former friend. He was, so the witness reported, working as a dock guard, “half-starved and friendless”. The rise of the Muscular Maids from Mexico They blazed a trail for female fighters – and the press loved them for it “The fighting fizzle fever seems to be spreading. The ladies have caught it.” So wrote weekly sports newspaper the Cricket and Football Field on 24 March 1888. The “ladies” to whom the paper referred were a pair of black boxers who criss-crossed the countryside fighting in fairground shows. They were known as the Sisters Mills. So, what do we know about these two boxers? In advertising for a performance at Sebright Music Hall in 1888 the Sisters Mills were named as Violet and Rosaline and promoted as “The Muscular Maids from Mexico”. Elsewhere they were described as Creole and black. A Police Gazette woodcut image, published in 1890, shows them to be of shorter stature, sporting boxing gloves and lace-trimmed dresses. Whether they were really from Mexico, or even sisters, is unknown. The pair were promoted by Alf Ball, a top middleweight boxer and travelling showman (see box 3). In the 1880s, the Sisters performed against each other as a novelty act in Ball’s fairground boxing booth. They never fought competitively (Ball would not let other women challenge ‘his’ fighters) but were admired for their skill by boxing reporters. Two years after their first newspaper mention, the Sisters vanished from event write-ups and advertising. We have just flashes of detail about these women – likely England’s first black female boxers – and then they disappear. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain Lights! Camera! Knock-out! How multi-talented Alf Ball turned bare-fist fighting into an art form It was the classic mismatch. In 1889, a travelling showman – weighing in at just 11 stone – stepped into the ring with Peter Jackson, the world black heavyweight champion. The mighty Jackson demolished his opponent in front of a frenzied audience at Astley’s Amphitheatre in central London. But the plucky smaller man – Alfred Ball – still impressed the crowd. In fact, over the course of his life, Ball turned impressing crowds into a way of life. Today, Ball is best remembered as a pioneer of early cinema, wowing audiences in the late 1890s with his presentations using a bioscope (film projector). Yet in the 1880s, he was one of London’s best-known middleweights, with a good claim to being English middleweight champion. Like many boxers of his generation, he competed in bare-fist competitions and gloved matches. He also toured with a troupe of boxers who sparred with each other or took on local challengers. Ball was born in Hull in 1864, the son of a travelling auctioneer. From his late teens he toured fairgrounds with a shooting gallery before moving into the boxing world. In the 1880s, Ball’s pavilion, or ‘Professor Ball’s School of Boxers’, was based in Deptford, London, with the Balls living in caravans among a community of travelling showmen. The 1890s started with Ball performing with rival Alf Mitchell at the Sebright Music Hall, the pair billed as “Muscular Middleweight Marvels” and “Popular Professors of Pugilistic Prowess”. Ball continued to tour with his boxing booth but always had a finger on the pulse of what the public wanted in their entertainment, bringing in female boxers and “the smallest married couple in the world” at fairgrounds and music halls. His shows also featured a boxing “lion”, which was actually a puma. “Alf Ball is too well known to need any introduction,” wrote the Music Hall and Theatre Review on 17 April 1903. “As a showman, Alf Ball has left no stone unturned to provide the public with superior entertainment at a nominal charge.” Ball died in 1926. Today, his great-great grandsons continue to entertain the masses in the Ball name, running Clacton Pier in Essex. In a nod to the past, their arcade contains a shooting range and a boxing machine. Scrapping in the house of God The unholy tale of the middleweight who had a fight in a chapel It was one of the most notorious bouts of the Victorian era. In 1882, a boxer named Sugar Goodson was arrested for taking part in a prize-fight – in, of all places, a chapel. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, bets were laid on the communion table. Goodson is portrayed by Stephen Graham in A Thousand Blows as one of the last relics of the bare-knuckle era, a middle-aged fighter who refuses to conform to the new rules for boxing. There is some truth to the story, although the real Goodson was only 26 at the time the show is set. Born in 1856 off Brick Lane, Goodson started boxing young. In 1881 he was hospitalised with smallpox. In 1882, minus the sight in one eye, he started running boxing nights with his brother Thomas ‘Treacle’ Goodson at the Blue Coat Boy. Then came the scandalous bout in a chapel. Fighting in a church made for juicy newspaper copy. “The fact that the hands of the combatants in the prize-combat are adorned with gloves is not invariably a guarantee that there will not be savage and desperate fighting,” wrote the North Devon Journal on 6 April 1882 after the chapel bout. Read more | Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: 5 ways Victorians spent their free time Following the fight, Goodson and his opponent, Jack Hicks, were charged with “unlawfully committing a breach of the peace by engaging in a prize fight”. The trial was a sensation. Goodson swore he had been wearing proper gloves for the match. He also claimed that the Queensberry Rules – which had come into force in 1867, in an unsuccessful bid to end bare-knuckle fighting – had been followed. The police and press reported otherwise, but Goodson was let off with a warning not to fight without gloves in the future. Two years later he was arrested again for bare-fist fighting in a barn, but he followed a career as a gloved boxer, too. At a compact 5ft 5¾ and weighing 11 stone, Goodson once entered a heavyweight competition while competing as a middleweight. Many boxers of Goodson’s generation had tragic ends, with poverty, alcohol, criminality and brain damage from years of being punched taking their toll. Goodson escaped the worst, becoming a successful publican in the 1890s. When he died in 1917, he left a decent sum of money to his widow. Goodson’s obituaries remembered him as the man who fought in a chapel. A bare-knuckle boozer The champagne lifestyle of the last icon of Victorian boxing There was no boxing board of control in the 1880s – and, therefore, no official titles. But Jem Smith was generally regarded to have been the English heavyweight champion from 1884–91, and the last champion of the bare-knuckle era. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/GettyImages-1277842318-4b52eea.jpg" width="1020" height="681" alt="A muscular man stands topless and in long white trousers, with his arms tensed and fists clenched. Around him, there is writing, including his name JEM SMITH and his titles" title="The muscular heavyweight Jem Smith, pictured in his prime. Smith’s pre-fight training included running, swimming and quaffing a glass of port for lunch (Image by Getty Images)" /> At 5ft 8½ and 13 stone fighting fit, Smith had an extraordinarily muscular physique. Yet he did not defend his title regularly and, like many boxers, had a tendency to pack on more than 50lb between fights. Details of his diet and training regime, published by the Sporting Life newspaper in 1889 while Smith was preparing for a fight against Peter Jackson, make for an entertaining read. A low carbohydrate diet of chops, watercress and eggs will look familiar to athletes today, as will the intense cardio workouts: swimming, running in thick flannels and a balaclava, punching a hanging ball and training with Indian Clubs. However, Smith’s daily liquid intake in the weeks before a big fight – sherry for breakfast, a glass of bitter and a glass of port for lunch, plus champagne in the afternoon with his friends – probably wouldn’t earn a modern coach’s seal of approval. Across his career, Smith was often criticised for his performances or the antics of his supporters. During his well-publicised big-money match with Jackson, Smith was disqualified for using a heel trip, against the Queensberry Rules. In earlier bare-fist bouts, his friends had allegedly interfered in the match. Yet after his death at 68 in 1931, Smith was remembered in newspapers as the last great bare-knuckle champion, a man who fought to keep boxing the way it had been in its ‘golden age’. “The death of Jem Smith, twice champion pugilist of England, is rather a surprising reminder that the days of bare fists and the grass ring are still a matter of memory,” said the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on 12 September 1931. “The battles of his craft… belong to the era of coaches rather than the age of aeroplanes.” Sarah Elizabeth Cox researches the wrestlers and boxers of late Victorian London and was historical adviser to A Thousand Blows, streaming on Disney+. Her first book will be published by Duckworth in autumn 2026 This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Swings and roundabouts: a history of Britain's playgrounds
We all have childhood memories of playgrounds. But what does the evolution of outdoor play in Britain tell us about the experience of being young over the past 200 years? Jon Winder serves up a history of sandpits, bombsites and battles with cars
A pub might seem a strange place to begin a history of Britain’s playgrounds. Yet in June 1858, Charles Dickens delivered a speech at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street that, he hoped, would transform the lives of children across the imperial capital. As the guests dined on seasonal delicacies and fine wines, Dickens gave an impassioned plea on behalf of the Playground and Recreation Society, an organisation that had been established just a few months earlier with the express aim of providing “playgrounds for poor children in populous places”. To the accompaniment of music laid on by the band of the 1st Life Guards, the celebrated author extolled the benefits that having a “playground near to their own dwellings where they knew their children would be safe” conferred on parents. “I venture to assert that there can be no physical health without play; and there can be no efficient and satisfactory work without play; that there can be no sound and wholesome thought without play,” he declared. It was a powerful argument, and one to which Dickens’ audience evidently listened – for, by the end of the following year, the Recreation Grounds Act had made its way into law. Henceforth, local authorities across the land would be allowed to create and own playgrounds for children and young people. It marked a turning point in British children’s access to play. Or did it? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1300568438cmyk-2620726.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph showing. group of children playing in a playground on a concrete housing estate" title="Children play in London’s Lisson Green estate in 1973. Since the Victorian era, playgrounds have been seen as vital to young Britons’ physical and moral development (Image by Getty Images)" /> The new legislation – and Dickens’ high-profile support – could have been a Big Bang moment for the playground movement in Britain. But, despite celebrity endorsement, political backing and widespread publicity, by 1860 the Playground Society had collapsed in a heap. It had amassed considerable debts – largely from putting on extravagant fundraising dinners. More damningly still, it had failed to create a single space in which London’s children could play. Read more | From slums to suburbs: Britain’s council house revolution The movement was hardly in full swing elsewhere, either. While dedicated play space was set aside in Salford and Manchester in the 1840s, unaccompanied children were barred from entering some city parks – notably Saltaire Park in Bradford – altogether. This sorry Dickensian tale contrasts starkly with the state of play in modern Britain. Fast-forward to 2025 and you’ll find more than 26,000 children’s playgrounds in cities, towns and villages across the UK. And while the best efforts of Britain’s great novelist failed to save the Playground Society from financial disaster, today more than £85m is spent on maintaining playgrounds each and every year. No one’s arguing that playground provision in modern Britain is perfect. Far from it. In fact, it’s a live debate as to whether playgrounds remain the best places for our children to be playing in the 21st-century city at all. However, one thing can’t be doubted. And that’s that to tell the story of the British playground is also to shine a light on what it’s meant to be a child in this country over the past 200 years. Pollution and disease Of course, child’s play didn’t begin with the Victorians. Archaeologists have discovered rag balls from ancient Egypt and sculptures of playing children from ancient Greece. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s remarkable Children’s Games (1560) depicts more than 200 children playing in 80 different ways. We know that most Victorian working-class children played outside, often in the streets close to home. Although children and their families faced many difficulties at this time – including overcrowding, pollution and disease – finding places to play and friends to play with was rarely an issue. As more children spent their day in education rather than work, there was also more time to play after school, too. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-3425260cmyk-WL-2ead018.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Two children ride bikes on a fake road" title="Children learn the highway code in a traffic playground in north London, 1947. Playgrounds loomed large in postwar town planners’ thinking – a fact that was reflected in their growing sophistication (Image by Getty Images)" /> And yet social elites and urban reformers increasingly imagined the street as a bad place to play, long before cars were common on British roads. For William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, poor city children had a “miserable subsistence” and their play was “curtailed to the running gutter”. For housing reformer Octavia Hill, children learnt “lessons of evil” while playing in streets and alleys. In response to this growing sense of disquiet, the elaborately named Metropolitan Public Garden, Boulevard and Playground Association was founded in 1882 and became the leading advocate for children’s playgrounds in the late 19th century. But could it succeed where the Playground Society had failed? The association was concerned by the “pale faces, stunted figures, debilitated forms, narrow chests, and all the outward signs of a low vital power” that it saw in urban working-class children. To address these alleged physical imperfections, it set out to create “a children’s playground divided into two portions, one for boys and one for girls, both supplied with gymnastic apparatus” within a quarter of a mile of every working-class home. Strong and healthy children would, after all, create more effective and efficient factory workers, soldiers and sailors. By the early 1890s, the association had spent more than £14m in today’s money on upwards of 50 open spaces, including 20 with children’s gymnasiums. In Southwark, Little Dorrit’s Playground – named after the eponymous star of one of Charles Dickens’ most celebrated novels – cost the equivalent of £2.4m to buy and kit out. Such spaces bore little resemblance to the playgrounds we know today. The separate areas for boys and girls reflected the inequitable gender norms of the time. And they were fitted with equipment that we would probably associate with Olympic gymnastics, including parallel bars, vaulting horses and gymnastic rings. At Spa Fields playground in Clerkenwell, a large gravel area doubled as a parade ground for local army reservists. Whatever the expectations of adults, children seem to have enjoyed using such spaces. On a visit to a playground in 1896, the campaigner Isabella Holmes described a boy “whose clothes were literally dropping to pieces… and he twisted himself about on the handle swings, putting his toes through the handles, and performing all sorts of gyrations which many a well-fed boy, clad in the best of flannels, would have given his all to be able to accomplish”. While children had been busy playing, by the early 20th century adult attitudes to playground design were beginning to change. For the author Annesley Kenealy, writing in 1907, the “pitilessly meagre surroundings” of most children’s gymnasiums did little to protect children from the “unwholesome sights and sounds of a sordid, huckstering, fetid slum street”. Better playgrounds were needed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/12079707-cmyk-WL-dfaf616.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="6 children play in the wreckage of a building. The boy in the front is looking directly into the camera, smiling" title="Children in the rubble of demolished houses in Hulme, Manchester, 1965. One study found that many youngsters preferred to play beyond the playground – even if there was one available to them (Image by Mary Evans)" /> Not fit to fight? Such calls coincided with concern during the First World War about unfit conscripts and juvenile delinquency on the home front. Wartime investigations into the health and wellbeing of mothers and children concluded that a playground close to home was essential for a child’s proper physical and moral development. Voluntary organisations, philanthropists, municipal parks departments and commercial manufacturers all responded enthusiastically in the interwar period. The National Playing Fields Association became an important advocate and funder of children’s playgrounds across the country. With King George V as its patron, and regular funding appeals on BBC Radio, the NPFA had considerable success in promoting the playground cause. This cause was given greater urgency by the growing number of children being killed by cars. In fact, such was the death toll that street play was increasingly regarded as unacceptable. One coroner investigating the death of three toddlers observed that it was “not fair to drivers that parents should allow their children to play in the street”. The NPFA even campaigned against the temporary closure of streets to enable safer play, preferring instead to encourage children into playgrounds. By the 1930s, there were nearly 50 playgrounds managed by the London County Council in the capital, with 26 in Manchester and many more elsewhere. The burgeoning demand for equipment saw manufacturing companies adapt their production lines. The entrepreneur and inventor who had the greatest impact on this development was Charles Wicksteed. Read more | “Leisure was built into the whole shopping experience” | Annie Gray on the history of the high street On the back of earlier commercial success, Wicksteed created a public park in his home town of Kettering in Northamptonshire. Disappointed that so few children visited, he decided to make it a more exciting place to play. And so he designed a raft of products inspired by Edwardian amusement park rides in Great Yarmouth and Blackpool. These included the joy wheel (an early roundabout), the jazz swing (commonly known as a plank swing today), the ocean wave (witch’s hat) and large wooden slides. A progressive liberal, Wicksteed hoped to create healthy, happy and free childhoods. Girls and boys, children and adults were all welcome to play together in the Wicksteed Park playground. Writing in 1929, he suggested that “the poor little gutter-children with all their hardships, playing with mud in freedom, are far happier than many well-to-do children under the perfect control and sad dullness and weariness of a too-much-ordered life”. His playground equipment was designed to be so robust that children could play with it however they liked. And we’re not just talking British children. Soon, municipalities from across the globe were placing orders with the Northamptonshire entrepreneur. In fact, by the late 1930s, Wicksteed’s company had equipped more than 4,000 playgrounds – from South Africa to Hong Kong and Venezuela to the tiny South Atlantic island of St Helena. Wicksteed’s advocacy and wider shifts in social values meant that few playgrounds were segregated by gender by the late 1930s. But playgrounds now looked the same, no matter where they were in the world. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1414384444cmyk-aa9a638.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Children play on a large wooden climbing frame in a park. In the foreground, two children play in a sandpit" title="Children at play in St John’s Wood, 1962. While many playgrounds now sought to promote creativity and self-expression, sandpits (like the one in the foreground) remained a perennial favourite (Image by Getty Images)" /> Natural evolution Back in Britain, swings, slides and roundabouts became an essential feature of efforts to redevelop British towns and cities in the mid-20th century. Slum clearance schemes, including those in Caryl Gardens in Liverpool and Quarry Hill in Leeds, positioned the playground at the centre of new blocks of flats. Sites requisitioned or damaged during the Second World War were also put back into playful use. Paddington Recreation Ground had been repurposed as a municipal piggery during the war, producing more than 300 tonnes of meat. It was reopened in 1948 by Field Marshal Montgomery with manufactured play equipment, a paddling pool and a sandpit. Town planners working on Plymouth’s reconstruction designed a network of more than 100 playgrounds in public parks and on bomb-damaged sites across the city. The playground explosion may have been a big hit with children but, to many adults, it was a little dull. In fact, in the eyes of some commentators, Britain’s new wave of standardised playgrounds – with their uniform climbing frames and stark tarmac surfaces – were “as bleak as barrack squares and just as boring”. A postwar movement of progressive educationalists, landscape architects and artists, headed by Lady Allen of Hurtwood, envisaged a more fulfilling future for Britain’s outdoor play spaces – and it was one that promoted creativity, self-expression and contact with the natural world. As an experiment, bombsites were converted into adventure playgrounds so that children could build with scrap materials, dig in the mud, nurse fires and tend small gardens. Sculptures, decommissioned steam rollers and immobilised trucks were meant to inspire make believe. Commando playgrounds incorporated tree trunks, suspended tyres and concrete pipes to provide “not only a free and varied outlet for energy but a spur to imagination and invention”. Landscape playgrounds had undulations, banks, trees and bushes as a more naturalistic setting for creative play. In a handful of cities, traffic playgrounds provided playful amusement and taught children about road safety. Children’s responses to these play spaces were seldom recorded. Instead, we must look to the work of sociologists in the 1960s and 1970s to get a sense of how playgrounds were used. One study of nearly 6,000 children found that swings and roundabouts primarily acted as a meeting point for friends and play mates, who then went on to play beyond the playground. Another study showed that more children preferred sandpits and paddling pools over manufactured equipment. Overtaken by the car These doubts about the value of the playground were reinforced by events in the later 20th century. Funding cuts meant that local authorities increasingly found it difficult to maintain play spaces. In 1973, Colin James, the bishop of Stepney, felt that many councils had got their priorities badly wrong, suggesting that “it is not through malice or evil intent I am sure, but they have been overtaken by the motorcar and other matters so that play provision has been left behind”. In the 1980s and 1990s, as social housing and state-run industries were privatised, the children’s playground remained a publicly owned and communally funded place for play – although not without its share of problems. Tabloid and broadsheet newspapers reported on the risk of parasitic infection from the snapping pincers of toxocara canis (dog roundworm) and the threat posed by paedophiles. Further funding cuts meant that many playgrounds became derelict, with the journal Play Times even running a monthly award for the worst playground in the country. Read more | What were the games and pastimes enjoyed by Tudor children? National government has rarely been interested in play provision. But in 2008, £235m was allocated to local authorities across England to improve playground provision. Accompanying guidance, called Design for Play, encouraged councils and designers to think more creatively about play provision. However, the implementation of policies of austerity from 2010 saw funding and guidance withdrawn. Despite periods of neglect, the playground remains an everyday feature of British urban life. This is hardly a surprise given our almost universal – and often nostalgic – experience of using them. Children still enjoy digging in sandpits, the rhythm of the swings, and the trepidation of scaling tall climbing structures. But we must not let this nostalgia mask problems with the playground concept. As the campaign group Make Space for Girls has shown, there is still much to do to ensure public spaces are welcoming to all children and young people. The obsession with playgrounds, often tucked away in the corner of a park, might even be seen as a distraction from wider efforts to create child-friendly towns and cities in which children rather than cars dominate our streets. The long history of the playground helps us to understand how we arrived in the present. But it should not stand in the way of efforts to create inclusive and humane urban environments for the future. Ropes, pulls and a joy wheel Five fixtures of the British playground. But which was your favourite? 1. Swings Children and adults have long swung from ropes tied to the branch of a tree, while ingenious Victorian children fashioned rope swings from lamp posts. More formal swings were often a feature of travelling fairs and circuses. In the 1890s, bylaws for Victoria Park in London limited the cost to 1d a go. 2. Roundabouts Roundabouts evolved from an Edwardian amusement park ride called the joy wheel, and were found in both Great Yarmouth and Blackpool from around 1913. The ride was a polished mechanical disc that used high speed and centrifugal force to dislodge its adult riders. Charles Wicksteed marketed a joy wheel from the 1920s. Costing £40 and made from metal tubes, it was self-propelled, smaller and included plenty of places to hold on. 3. Sandpits German educator Fredrich Froebel promoted the use of indoor sandpits in the classroom from the 1820s. Sand first appeared in Victoria Park, London in 1893 when the park superintendent reported “a novel mode of enjoyment has been provided for the little children of the East End in the form of a sea-sand pit which is apparently much appreciated”. 4. Climbing frames Victorian gymnasiums for children and adults included wooden frames that supported ladders, ropes and poles for climbing. Climbing frames really took off from the 1960s as manufacturers experimented with new materials, including Playstyle’s ‘playcubes’ which comprised a series of interconnected plastic polyhedrons. 5. Slides Slides became a common playground feature in the early 20th century. Initially made from wood, they were soon constructed from metal with safety railings at the top. In the 1920s, a grand ‘joy slide’ was installed in St James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, paid for by Arthur Carr, owner of the nearby Peek Freans biscuit factory. Dr Jon Winder is a historian of modern Britain at the University of Liverpool This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The swordplay’s the thing: Henry VIII's Masters of Defence and the thrilling world of 16th-century fencing
Historian Jacob H Deacon explores the thrilling world of 16th-century fencing, where ambition, skill and steel collided
On 21 April 1578, large crowds of men and women flocked to the Bull Inn, one of London’s most popular inn playhouses. Those in attendance, however, were not there to see actors strut upon the stage, but rather to watch skilled swordsmen prove their prowess with weapons in an event known as a ‘prize’. Upon the scaffold stood two men. Both were expert fencers with years of experience – capable of delivering dexterous strikes and parrying or deflecting each other’s blows – and armed with large two-handed swords. One of these fencers, Isaac Kennard, was a junior fencing teacher of the Masters of Defence, a national organisation of fencers and fencing instructors. Isaac held the rank of provost. The other, Gregory Grene, was his senior and possessed the rank of master. If Isaac fought well against Gregory – and then two other fencing masters with a range of weapons – he would graduate from the rank of provost, which he had had held since 1575, and become a licensed master of the Masters of Defence. This advancement was to be his ‘prize’. The two men turned to face each other, saluted, and advanced. They fought vigorously, with the sound of their steel swords ringing in the air as both men earnestly attempted to strike the other. Isaac’s public testament of his martial ability began well. After he had fought six bouts with the two-handed sword against three masters, the masters in attendance – including Isaac’s own master, Richard Smythe – judged him sufficient to continue and begin the second series of combats, this time with the backsword (a single-edged, single-handed sword). During this second round of combats, Isaac was struck by disaster, or rather by the blade of William Mucklowe, one of his opponents. He was summarily dismissed, unsuccessful in attaining the coveted rank of master. Yet Isaac’s hopes were not dashed, for he returned the following week to try again for his master’s prize, this time demonstrating his mastery of the sword and buckler as well as and the rapier and dagger. On his second attempt, Isaac proved a tougher match for his returning opponents. He fought well against Gregory, William, and his third opponent William Joyner, and was finally permitted to call himself a master. A popular pastime Fencing was a popular pastime across England in the 16th century. In 1545, Roger Ascham (future tutor to Queen Elizabeth I) wrote that masters willing to impart their knowledge of swordsmanship could be found “all mooste in everye towne”. But before teaching others how to fight in a fencing school, a fencer was supposed to become a licensed provost or master. These licenses were gained by successfully playing a prize, as Isaac did in 1578. Some fencers, however, attempted to teach without first obtaining a license. This proved troublesome, for many of these unlicensed instructors were judged to have insufficiently taught their students. Licensed masters and provosts lost valuable income to these illegitimate instructors, whose bad teaching also disparaged the profession. In 1540, King Henry VIII granted nine masters and eleven provosts letters patent which granted them the right to enquire, view, and search throughout England, Wales, and Ireland for unlicensed fencing teachers and bring them before justices of the peace. Such troublemakers were fined, and repeat offenders were jailed. This commission from Henry is the oldest-known mention of the organisation that would go on to be known as the Masters of Defence, an organisation which effectively operated as a guild of fencers until the early 17th century. New members of the Masters of Defence joined with the rank of scholar. Once they had been taught how to fight with a range of weapons, including the two-handed sword, the backsword, and the sword and buckler, these scholars could play their scholar’s prize and graduate to the rank of free scholar. Before they could play a prize in public, however, they were required to demonstrate their skill to the four ancient masters – the leaders of the organisation. Many fencers were content to remain as free scholars, but others sought to advance and gain a license to teach others how to use swords, daggers, and staff weapons. After what was supposed to be a period of seven years further training, the free scholar could play his provost’s prize (but in reality, many free scholars gained promotion after a couple of years). Following a successful provost’s prize, and additional tuition, provosts like Isaac Kennard could finally play their master’s prize. Very few members of the Masters of Defence were full-time fencing teachers. Some were servants to the gentry and high-ranking members of the aristocracy such as Elizabeth I’s suitor, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Others worked primarily as craftsmen, as jerkin makers, glovers, and tailors. Some even had military experience. Anthony Ffenruther, who was a fencing master in the 1570s, was a Master of the Gunners at the Tower of London. Another master, Edmond Darcy, had served in Ireland. The most famous fencer? Perhaps the most famous member of the Masters of Defence, however, was Richard Tarlton. Richard was an Elizabethan comic actor who worked for multiple theatre troupes in the 1580s, and was supposedly Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite clown. He even became groom-in-ordinary to the royal chamber, yet still found time to organise fencing schools as some of his students became masters in their own right. The organisation of these schools was strictly controlled, both by the Masters of Defence as well as local and national authorities. Masters and provosts alike had to swear oaths guaranteeing good behaviour. They were forbidden from teaching their art to violent criminals and were not allowed to undercut their fellows’ prices in order to draw more students into their own schools. Further limitations were put in place by the state. A proclamation of 1566 claimed that ‘the encreasse of nombres of parsons taking upon them to teache the multitude of the common people to play at all kynde of weapons’ had led to growing disorder in England’s towns and cities, and so fencing instructors were to be obedient to any orders given to them by governors. Fencing schools were even banned in Cambridge during the latter half of the 16th century, alongside dance schools, dice houses, cock fights, and animal baiting. Those found attending were ordered to pay fines. This legislature was part of a late medieval and early modern attempt to restrict non-working activities to those considered ‘proper’, permitted only in the right time and the right place, so as to curtail what authorities perceived as idle activity. Many writers at the time viewed the sort of fencing taught in these schools as suitable only for civilian violence and not applicable to fighting in wartime, which was more respectable. Prizes as entertainment Despite the restrictions placed on fencing schools, the population of Tudor England flocked at the chance to see fencers cross swords on the stage. The owner of one playhouse which hosted prizes – The Rose – expected his share to be more profitable when hosting prizes than when plays were performed at his establishment. Nor were prizes the only public displays of martial skill staged by the Masters of Defence. On several occasions, they performed exhibition matches for the Tudor kings and queens of England. These bouts, known as ‘challenges’, were fought in front of Henry VIII as well as each of his three children during their own reigns, at venues including Hampton Court and Westminster Palace. These displays of physical skill and violent prowess remind us of the enduring human fascination with the intersection of danger and entertainment. Many of the activities that people enjoy today are not too dissimilar from the entertainments of the past. Just as crowds packed out inns and playhouses to see fencers in the 16th and 17th centuries, so today do audiences fill out stadiums and arenas to see boxing, wrestling, and mixed martial arts events. Indeed, unarmed combat was also popular in Tudor England: wrestling was very popular, and often featured at fairs and market days. The prizes fought by the Masters of Defence can be viewed in two ways. For the combatants, they were a way of becoming licensed fencing instructors, and a good performance could entice potential students into their schools. Audiences were certainly aware of this, but also viewed the prize as a violent spectacle which could become a social occasion. Drinking, betting, and dining all accompanied prize fights. One amateur fencer, the gentleman John North, bought dinner for himself and five friends after going to watch a prize at the Bull in the 1570s. Even though these displays of martial prowess – we can even think of prizes a bit like an exam – were not fought with intent to injure, they were still a particularly violent form of entertainment. Blunted or rebated weapons still had the capacity to seriously injure an opponent if they were struck hard enough, and there is no mention in any sources of prizors wearing any armour or other protective equipment, even though the head was a legitimate target. It is likely, however, that thrusts were forbidden. Not every swordsman, however, agreed with the sort of combat practised by the Masters of Defence. In his 1599 fencing treatise Paradoxes of Defence, the gentleman George Silver observed that “at the single Sword, Sword and Dagger, & Sword and Buckler, they forbid the thrust, & at the single Rapier, and Rapier & Dagger, they forbid the blow”. According to Silver, a good swordsman should be able to both cut and thrust. Ignoring either was an “evill order or custome” which made it hard to make ‘a good Scholler’ of the sword. Jacob H Deacon is a historian of late medieval and early modern martial culture. His research explores fencing, tournaments, and arms and armour. Find him on X @DeaconJH and Bluesky @deaconjh.bsky.social
A Thousand Blows: the real history behind the Victorian boxing drama
From bruisers and cunning thieves to bare-knuckle brawls, the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows offers viewers a ringside seat for the world of Victorian boxing. Ellie Cawthorne speaks to two historical consultants on the show, Hallie Rubenhold and Sarah Elizabeth Cox, to find out more…
A Thousand Blows, the latest historical drama from the mind of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, takes place in 1880s London and follows a cast of characters seeking to carve out a name for themselves in the capital – both through boxing and more nefarious means. But how much of what we see on screen is based on real history? How accurate are the boxing scenes? And was there really a gang of female thieves called the Forty Elephants? **Warning, you may find some spoilers ahead** Are the characters in A Thousand Blows based on real people? From Sugar Goodson and Mary Carr to Hezekiah Moscow, several of the central characters are inspired and named after real people – although, in most cases, the resemblance is pretty loose and the character arcs are largely fictional. On the podcast | Bruisers and bare knuckles: the brutal world of Victorian boxing Was Hezekiah Moscow a real boxer? In A Thousand Blows, Hezekiah Moscow (played by Malachi Kirby) is fresh off the boat from Jamaica with his friend Alec Monroe (Francis Lovehall). And according to the show’s historical consultant on Victorian boxing, Sarah Elizabeth Cox, both Moscow and Monroe were real boxers in this period. The real Hezekiah Moscow arrived in London in the early 1880s, and the 1891 census reveals he was from the Caribbean. However, since his country of origin was simply listed as ‘West Indies’, we don't know if he was definitely Jamaican, as portrayed in the show. In the opening episode, a promise of work as a lion tamer doesn’t turn out as Moscow imagined, and he is forced to turn to boxing to make money. However, the real Hezekiah did in fact have a career as a bear tamer and a lion tamer at the East London Aquarium, while also boxing at night. Kirby’s Moscow speaks Chinese and is described as having a Chinese grandmother. Again, the show’s creators are drawing on aspects of the real Moscow here, who boxed under the name ‘Ching Hook’. “It’s unclear where he got that name, but in the early days of his boxing career, newspapers described him as a ‘black Chinaman’,” says Cox. “We do know that there were Chinese people in the Caribbean when Moscow was born there in the early 1860s, so there's a good chance that he may have been of mixed heritage, but we don’t know for certain.” View Green Video on the source website The real Hezekiah had a decade-long career as a well-respected lightweight and boxing trainer, but in 1892 his story took a strange turn. After walking out on his wife and daughter, Moscow disappeared, never to be seen again. Years later, a fellow boxer told his wife that he had spotted ‘Ching Hook’ working on the docks in New York, penniless and alone. However, the story was never verified. “I’ve never found him on the Ellis Island records, but he could have been using an alias,” says Cox. “So in terms of his life story, the character in A Thousand Blows is loosely based on Moscow and shares his name, but that’s where the similarities end.” Were Sugar Goodson and Treacle Goodson real people? Known as ‘Sugar’ and ‘Treacle’, Henry and Tom Goodson were real people, sons of a haulage man. One theory is that their nicknames may have come from the products they were hauling. Both brothers were boxers, but neither were major champions, says Cox. The family’s real success in the world would come later. “Sugar and Treacle’s sons actually became more popular boxers than the brothers themselves.” Born in the mid-1850s, the real Sugar Goodson would have been around 25 years younger than the grizzled veteran boxer played by Stephen Graham in A Thousand Blows – and had only one working eye. He was best known at the time for an infamous illegal prize fight that took place in a London chapel in 1882. “It’s unclear whether this was a bare-knuckle fight, but it was prosecuted as such,” says Cox. The blasphemous bout was busted by undercover police, and became a massive press scandal. “The idea of fighting in a church, and betting on the communion table was absolutely shocking!” explains Cox. Although Sugar Goodson later became a publican, his trouble-making reputation followed him. He was arrested for another prize fight in a barn in 1884, and had run-ins with the law for assaulting his brother and drunkenly shouting in the street. “I'm not quite sure why Sugar Goodson specifically was chosen for A Thousand Blows (beyond the fact that he's got a really cool name), but there are certainly elements of truth behind Stephen Graham's interpretation of him,” says Cox. “Those aspects of his bad-boy character definitely come out in Stephen's performance.” History's greatest scandals: the Victorians Member exclusive | Take a journey through the backstreets of 19th-century Britain to explore the darker side of Victorian life Listen to all episodes now Was there a real female gang called the Forty Elephants? Outside of the boxing ring, A Thousand Blows takes us back to the murky underworld of Victorian crime, arm-in-arm with a gang of female thieves called the Forty Elephants. But in this era of tight corsets and stifling gender expectations, was there really an all-female criminal gang? Well yes, the Forty Elephants were a real gang, in existence from at least the 1870s, but possibly as early as the 18th century. They were known for perpetrating what they called ‘hoists’ in which they would rob department stores wearing a variety of disguises, even using fake pockets and false arms. Sometimes the Elephants would avert suspicion by pretending to be upper-class women, and at other times, they acted as housemaids, using false references to infiltrate and burgle households. Read more about the real Forty Elephants In the first episode, we see Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) pretending to give birth on the street, while the other gang members pickpocket the watching crowd. And according to Hallie Rubenhold, a historical consultant on the show, this is exactly the kind of stunt the Forty Elephants were known for. “A gang member might follow a well-to-do man down an alley and suddenly start screaming he had tried to rape her. Other Elephants who were waiting in the wings would back her up and threaten to call a constable. Mary Carr would turn to the horrified man and say ‘this will all go away if you give me £50’. If he refused, she would just grab his watch and run.” Read more | Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders? Was Mary Carr a real person? Yes, the “queen” of the Forty Elephants gang was indeed a woman named Mary Carr. She used several different aliases, including Mary Crane, and had a long and largely profitable criminal career, despite various spells in prison. “Her family lived in Lambeth quite comfortably – which goes to show that for some people at the time, crime really did pay,” says Hallie Rubenhold. Unexpectedly for a gang boss, Carr was also a life model for the esteemed painter, Frederic, Lord Leighton. It’s even speculated that she may have been the model for his 1895 painting Flaming June. However, “there’s no evidence that she knew Hezekiah Moscow, so there’s a bit of historical imagination at play there,” explains Rubenhold. Was Victorian London really racially diverse? From Jamaican boxers Hezekiah and Alec to the Chinese landlord Mr Lao, the show presents us with a diverse vision of Victorian London. And according to Hallie Rubenhold, this isn’t just a 21st-century reimagination, but a reflection of Britain’s global empire at the time. “The idea that everybody was white in London at the time is just ridiculous,” she says. “It just simply wasn't the case. The East End was in fact quite diverse. Limehouse, for example, had a significant Chinese population.” As Sarah Elizabeth Cox explains, boxing was not segregated in Britain at this time, and there were several black boxers on the circuit alongside Moscow and Munroe in the 1880s, including the American Jack Davenport and Australian Peter Jackson. Are the boxing scenes in A Thousand Blows realistic? A Thousand Blows is set in the 1880s, and according to Sarah Elizabeth Cox, this was a fascinating era for British boxing. As seen in the show, two worlds co-existed uneasily within the sport at the time. One was respectable regulated boxing, which involved wearing gloves and following the ‘Queensberry Rules’. The other was illegal prize-fighting, fought with bare fists and decried by the press for its brutality. These matches could last for hours and were regularly busted by the police. The character of Sugar Goodson encapsulates this divide between illegal prize-fighting and respectable boxing. He refuses to wear gloves, and we see him duking it out with anyone who thinks they’re hard enough at a pub called the Blue Coat Boy. So, could you really head down to your local boozer to enjoy a few rounds of boxing along with your round of drinks? According to Sarah Elizabeth Cox, prize-fighting was happening on the sly “absolutely everywhere” in Victorian London, and “pretty much every pub in East London had a back room boxing saloon”. The Blue Coat Boy was a real pub in Spitalfields, home to a boxing saloon run by Punch Lewis (played by Daniel Mays), and boxing nights there were indeed run by the Goodson brothers. This ‘taking on all-comers’ type of tournament was more associated with wrestling than boxing at the time, explains Cox, “but I do think that the way the Blue Coat Boy has been designed is brilliant, and the atmosphere that’s created is fantastic”. Cox’s work also helped inform the costume choices. As she explains: “A lot of photos from this period show boxers posing in studios, bare-chested and wearing white tights. “But in the ring, they were in fact often flashy dressers, wearing purple knickerbockers or black tights, with colourful scarves around their waists. It was a lot more colourful than you might assume, and I think A Thousand Blows has done a fantastic job of showing that.” Is A Thousand Blows historically accurate? When you're watching A Thousand Blows, it’s worth bearing in mind that although the details may have been switched around a bit, the real history is just as interesting. As Hallie Rubenhold puts it: “It's always important to remember this is television, so inevitably, it’s not necessarily an accurate representation of what happened. “But the wonderful thing about period dramas like this is that they can be a gateway drug to hardcore history. A lot of the characters are based on fascinating real people and I think there is a lot to be learned from the show about the experiences of women, and black and Chinese people in Victorian London.” Sarah Elizabeth Cox and Hallie Rubenhold were speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full episode ad-free at HistoryExtra.com/podcast A Thousand Blows is available to stream on Disney+. You can sign up to Disney+ for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year now.
James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski delve into strange but true stories from the world of sport, covering Tudor football, Soviet fencing scandals and much more
Humans have been infatuated with sport for thousands of years. But what drove this obsession in the first place? And how did ancient pursuits evolve into the games we know and love today? Jon Bauckham speaks to QI researchers and hosts of the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski about their new book on sporting history, discussing everything from doping to David Attenborough’s impact on snooker. James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski are the authors of A Load of Old Balls: The QI History of Sport (Faber & Faber, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon
Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators
How did gladiators supercharge the rise of Julius Caesar? And why were they seen as sex symbols? As Gladiator II arrives in cinemas, Guy de la Bédoyère tells the story of this brutal form of mass entertainment through six of its most significant (and surprising) moments
Julius Caesar turns death into mass entertainment Of all Roman pastimes, gladiators excite the most fascination and horror to this day – not least because of the sneaking suspicion that, if revived, they would rapidly pick up a fervent following. Yet, ironically, this most Roman of entertainments wasn’t the brainchild of the Romans. That dubious honour goes to the Etruscans, an ancient Italian people that emerged near the beginning of the first millennium BC. Gladiators used to fight in bouts to the death at Etruscan funerals – in short, they served as a form of human sacrifice. The Romans derived many of their customs from the Etruscans. And so it was perhaps inevitable that, as they grew into the dominant force on the Italian peninsula, they would adopt gladiatorial combat with gusto. Decimus Junius Brutus, later a consul, was said to have been the first to lay on a gladiatorial show – in honour of his deceased father, in c264–262 BC. Yet, as was the case with so many aspects of ancient Roman history, the concept of fighting to the death as mass entertainment was profoundly shaped by one Julius Caesar. In 65 BC, Caesar used his position as aedile (junior magistrate) to initiate a programme of public shows to secure, in the words of the historian Suetonius, “the good will of the masses”. He laid on 320 gladiatorial bouts and animal fights – and did so both in his name and in association with the other aedile, Marcus Bibulus, but in a way that ensured it was widely assumed the occasions were all his work. That, of course, was precisely his intention. Curiously, the 320 gladiatorial bouts represented a reduction of Caesar’s intentions. He had organised such a large number that his political opponents in the senate were terrified by the thought of so many armed men in Rome on Caesar’s payroll. And so they passed a law putting a cap on the numbers. The fears were well-grounded. Gladiators supplied muscle for thug politicians in the late Republic. By the 50s BC, when Roman politics was becoming increasingly polarised during the age of the imperators Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, violence was routinely used to further political agendas. In 57 BC, the notorious senator Publius Clodius Pulcher rounded up a gang of gladiators to rush those assembled to vote on a measure. They attacked and killed some of the crowd. In Rome, gladiatorial events later became the preserve of the emperors. The first, Augustus (Caesar’s heir and great-nephew), set the trend with multiple gladiatorial events, involving around 10,000 combatants. It was a sign of things to come. Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since. Listen to all episodes now Spartacus gives his captors the fright of their lives As bizarre as it may appear today, some gladiators were drawn to the profession by the violent glamour, and actually volunteered to lay their lives on the line. The vast majority, however, were there under duress, drawn mainly from the ranks of criminals and prisoners-of-war. That’s not to say that they were thrown into the arena without a second’s preparation. Gladiators often spent long hours honing their martial expertise. Top-notch training may have made for better entertainment but, for the Roman authorities, it involved a huge element of risk. The most famous of all slave revolts was, of course, led by Spartacus, a former soldier in the Roman army who had been enslaved and sold for gladiatorial training at a school in Capua. That training, allied with their leader’s natural intelligence, made Spartacus’s army of professional gladiators a formidable fighting force. It took two years (73–71 BC) and two armies to crush the rebellion, the Third Servile War, followed by the crucifixion of the rebels along the Appian Way (the road from Rome to Brundisium, now Brindisi). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/HM9AW7-170574a-e1731580516558.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A net-bearing retiarius captures a secutor (‘pursuer’), as depicted in a third-century mosaic. Gladiators’ martial skills were used to devastating effect during Spartacus’s uprising of 73–71 BC (Photo by Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A net-bearing retiarius captures a secutor (‘pursuer’), as depicted in a third-century mosaic. Gladiators’ martial skills were used to devastating effect during Spartacus’s uprising of 73–71 BC (Photo by Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Part of the reason that Spartacus’s army proved such an effective fighting force was that gladiators were skilled in the use of numerous weapons, such as swords, tridents and nets. They were also taught to employ a range of defensive equipment, including helmets, shields and guards. There were many different types of gladiator who fought in the arena. One was the retiarius (from rete = ‘net’), who had no helmet and darted about the arena equipped with a net, dagger and trident. The murmillo, armed with a sword and small shield, was named after the Greek saltwater fish mormylos because of the long, high crest on his helmet. The secutor (‘pursuer’) had a plain helmet with two eyeholes and no crest, protecting him from being snagged by the net of a retiarius, and was armed with a sword and large shield. Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome? Gladiator specialisation was based on physical attributes. The most heavily armed had to be strong, while the retiarii needed to be agile and swift. Ethnicity was probably also a factor, because part of the entertainment was role-playing. Gladiatorial bouts were as much about theatrics as violence. That brew of brutality and performance could earn gladiators fame – and the admiration of the opposite sex. “Celadus the Thracian, the gasp of all the girls!” shrieked one piece of graffiti from Pompeii. “Crescens is the lord of the dolly birds!” boasted another. Not only could gladiators win hearts, they could also win their freedom. Some even went on to run their own gladiatorial schools, picking slaves and prisoners for their physique, educating them in the art of combat, and renting them out for shows. As the case of Spartacus proves, it was that education that made gladiators so potentially dangerous. Take the quiz | What type of Gladiator would you be? Mob violence rages through Pompeii over a gladiatorial show In the early decades AD, Emperor Tiberius had to send in two cohorts of soldiers to place Pollentia (now Pollenzo) in northern Italy under martial law. Just for good measure, his troops imprisoned many people, including the town councillors. The reason for these extreme measures was a gladiator show – or lack of it. The people of Pollentia wanted a prominent centurion to stump up the funds to put on a show at the arena. He failed to oblige so the mob killed him and then refused to give up his body until, reported Suetonius, “Their violence had extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-122213209-c1a28a3-e1731580735100.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A fresco from Pompeii depicts a riot in the town’s amphitheatre. Gladiator bouts were banned for 10 years following the unrest (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="A fresco from Pompeii depicts a riot in the town’s amphitheatre. Gladiator bouts were banned for 10 years following the unrest (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> Things got even worse in Pompeii later in the first century AD. The town was home to one of the Roman world’s oldest stone amphitheatres, built around 80–70 BC. Generations of Pompeian magistrates had lined up to compete with one another as impresarios, ingratiating themselves with the population by putting on gladiatorial combat. All that came to an ugly end in AD 59. The problems started when a troublemaker called Livineius Regulus – who had been expelled from the senate – decided to put on a gladiatorial show. Supporters gathered at the arena in Pompeii and so did rival supporters from neighbouring Nuceria. They started hurling insults at each other in a way the Roman historian Tacitus described as being “typical of the petulance of country towns”. Read more | What was Pompeii like before the eruption of AD 79? Unfortunately, the supporters started throwing stones at each other, and then blades were pulled. There being more Pompeians than Nucerians, the Pompeians soon overwhelmed their enemies. “As a result,” said Tacitus, “many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the capital, while a large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents.” Pompeii was severely punished for the outrage. Gladiatorial bouts were banned there for 10 years. As for the troublesome Livineius and his cronies, they were all sent into exile. Nero delights the public by forcing his senators to fight One of the problems with gladiatorial bouts was that there were only so many ways the Romans could be treated to the sight of human beings hacking each other to death. Boredom was inevitable. During the reign of Nero (AD 54–68), the blood and gore had descended into repetitive tedium. Weary audiences watched the brutality barely half-awake. Impresarios trotted out the same old shows. Part of the problem was trying to please fussy audiences. Petronius, Nero’s style guru, had one character in his Satyricon novel moaning about a lousy show in which only old and worn-out gladiators “who would have fallen over flat if you’d breathed on them” were sent out to battle. So bad were they that they were all flogged at the end to punish them for a lack of enthusiasm to fight. Nero’s tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, wrote a letter to a friend recounting how disappointed he’d been by a midday event: “I happened to stop off at a lunchtime show, hoping to enjoy myself with some wit and relaxation, where a man’s eyes can rest at the sight of the death of their fellow men.” Yet it was just the opposite, he lamented. “The fights that used to take place were merciful by comparison. Now any mucking about is set aside and this is just plain murder. The fighters wear no armour, and their entire bodies are exposed to blows – and none of these are wasted.” Read more | Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad? So how could Nero liven up the action? According to Suetonius, one solution was to force “400 senators and 600 equestrians, some of who were affluent and of excellent repute, to compete in the arena. Even those who battled with wild animals and carried out the various service duties were senators and equestrians.” That was one of the reasons many in the Roman crowd loved Nero. He had the common touch. Humiliating the aristocracy was perfect entertainment. Nero wasn’t the only emperor to employ a little creativity when it came to putting on gladiator shows. Domitian (reigned AD 81–96) introduced an extra frisson with bouts between female gladiators, known as Amazons, while in AD 107 Trajan organised 123 days of games. Eleven thousand animals died this time, and 10,000 gladiators fought one another. Excess was becoming an end in itself. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-108547949-1234d24-e1731580838149.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A relief from c40 BC shows men battling animals. As the quest for spectacle grew ever more grotesque, 11,000 animals died in one season staged by the emperor Trajan in AD 107 (Photo by Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" title="A relief from c40 BC shows men battling animals. As the quest for spectacle grew ever more grotesque, 11,000 animals died in one season staged by the emperor Trajan in AD 107 (Photo by Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" /> Around 80 years later, the Roman mob was treated to a new type of spectacle: a gladiator-emperor. Commodus, whom you might remember was the emperor in the movie Gladiator, was in love with the glamour of the arena. He acquired special chariot horses and dressed as a charioteer (as well as living with gladiators). According to the historian Cassius Dio, who witnessed Commodus’s antics, “He would enter the arena in the garb of Mercury, and casting aside all his other garments, would begin his exhibition wearing only a tunic and unshod.” Another historian of the time called Herodian said: “It was easy for him to defeat his opponents in gladiatorial bouts, just by wounding them, because they regarded him as emperor instead of a gladiator, and allowed him to win.” Britannia catches the bug for bloodsports Gladiatorial bouts may have begun life as a niche activity at Etruscan funerals, yet, over the following centuries, they were to spread to all corners of the mighty Roman empire – and that includes to the north-western outpost of Britannia. We know this because the physical remains of amphitheatres have been found in places such as London, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester and Caerleon. The famous Colchester vase depicts two gladiators, Memnon and Valentinus, in action. They were probably notable local gladiators in their day (the late second century). Meanwhile, the Roman villa at Rudston in Yorkshire had a mosaic featuring scenes from the arena, and gladiators are depicted on another at Bignor in Sussex. Read more | Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire? For the most part, amphitheatres of Roman Britain were built by creating turf embankments and digging out the arena. At Cirencester the amphitheatre was formed by digging out and adapting a quarry on the south-west side of the town (by the early second century). Stone walls were used to create revetments, entrance passageways and the arena wall. Despite natural erosion, the earthen embankments still rise to a height of about 8 metres. At Dorchester the amphitheatre was built by adapting a Neolithic henge monument that conveniently supplied ready-made earth embankments around an arena-shaped and sized enclosure. London’s amphitheatre lay close to the fort of the governor’s garrison, and is open to the public today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-501578349-9710fdb-e1731581117800.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The Colchester Vase shows a retarius raising a forefinger in submission to a secutor. An inscription reads: “Memnon Valentinus of Legion XXX” (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="The Colchester Vase shows a retarius raising a forefinger in submission to a secutor. An inscription reads: “Memnon Valentinus of Legion XXX” (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> At the VI legion’s fortress and military colony at York a man called Victor was buried with a small bone label laid on his chest. It said: “Lord Victor, may you have a lucky win!”, an exhortation normally applied either to gladiators or charioteers. The glory of the remains of the II legion Augusta’s base at Caerleon in south Wales is its amphitheatre. Today visitors can wander around the arena where gladiators fought and among the stone-revetted earthen embankments for the wooden seats that have long since rotted away. It had seats for around 5,000 or 6,000 spectators – enough for the legion – and probably doubled up as a venue for speeches to the troops and formal military displays. A doctor embarks on an eye-catching change of career Gladiators needed some looking after, despite the fact that they might end their lives mutilated and bloody on the arena floor. One man employed to offer medical care to fighters was Gaius Futius Philargyrus, a freedman doctor of Rome’s gladiators in the first century AD. (His name was appropriately descriptive. It means ‘lover of the horse-training circuit’, but was probably used here in a more general sense to refer to a training arena.) We also know that the Greek doctor Claudius Galen’s first professional appointment was as a surgeon to gladiators. Read more | Roman medicine: 6 ways people stayed healthy in ancient Rome Of course, often there was nothing a doctor could do to save gladiators from the injuries they sustained in the arena – a fact that is made grimly apparent by the contents of a cemetery at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Here, the graves were accompanied by inscriptions and tombstones that name and depict the dead as gladiators. The skeletons featured major bone injuries, some even demonstrably from blows made by a trident. Another Roman-period cemetery – this time in Driffield Terrace in York – contains 80 or so skeletons, many of which may have been gladiators. Crucially, about 75 were adult men, which of course couldn’t possibly be representative of the population. A little taller than average and well-built, many of them bore the signs of injuries, some healed and some unhealed. It’s possible that before they were buried, some of the corpses were studied by doctors in post-mortems that could also be used for anatomical lessons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-935427404-14c91db-e1731581036984.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Galen treats a stricken gladiator in the city of Pergamon, as depicted in an illustration from the 19th century (Photo by DEA / BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA /Getty Images)" title="Galen treats a stricken gladiator in the city of Pergamon, as depicted in an illustration from the 19th century (Photo by DEA / BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA /Getty Images)" /> The scientific writer Celsus thought gladiators provided useful evidence for anatomists. “Occasionally,” he wrote, “a gladiator in the arena, a soldier in battle, or a traveller attacked by highwaymen, is wounded so that some part of his insides is exposed.” Interestingly, we know of at least one man whose life straddled the worlds of both medicine and fighting, earning a living as an eye doctor before, following a dramatic change of career, entering the arena as a gladiator. Unfortunately, it seems that this anonymous individual wasn’t a very good doctor – and that made him the target of one of the Roman poet Martial’s jokes. “You are now a hoplomachus [a type of gladiator],” quipped Martial. “Before you were an opthalmicus [an eye doctor]. You did as a doctor what you now do as a gladiator.” In other words, the offending individual’s career had consisted of poking out people’s eyes. Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian, broadcaster and author of Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: 5 ways Victorians spent their free time
The Victorian working day was, in general, extraordinarily long, but people valued their leisure activities just as much as we do today. Here are five Victorian pastimes worth knowing about…
Gardening: a new pastime thanks to the railway boom The expansion of railways in Victorian Britain transformed coal and iron production – but they also had an unintended knock-on effect on how people lived. This mode of travel revolutionised how far the average person could travel, and how frequently. As a consequence, more rural locations were suddenly within commuting distance of workplaces and factories, leading to a rise in suburban living. In these more open areas, houses were more spaced out, and often included patches of land that could be cultivated into gardens and vegetable patches. While gardening was previously a pastime of the elite, these suburban spaces made the hobby more accessible to working-class Victorians. Read more | History explorer: Victorian gardens In wealthier households, a notable trend in private gardening during the Victorian period was carpet bedding (arranging low growing plants into brightly coloured patterns). Patterns were available for households to copy, and there was a preference for using hardy plants with a one-year life cycle. “In urban areas, by the mid-19th century, trying to grow perennial plants (those that should last several years) meant you were on a hiding to nothing,” explains garden historian Twigs Way. As pollution increased, only the hardiest plants could survive. “Better to plant annuals and then just re-plant.” Cricket: a favourite sport among Victorian men Working conditions in Victorian Britain were notoriously long and gruelling, but there were several significant developments in worker’s rights from the middle of the 19th century onwards. Through acts such as the Factory Act of 1847, the Master and Servant Act of 1867 and the 1875 Employers and Workmen Act, it was increasingly recognised that greater protection was needed to promote wellbeing and more manageable working conditions. One of the first groups of people to benefit from improved working hours in the Victorian people were male white-collar workers in the middle class. With more spare time on their hands, many turned to a growing sport: cricket. Initially, many people just played the game, but over time it increasingly became a sport that people wanted to watch too. The rise of the railways helped transform cricket into a spectator sport, allowing fans to travel to popular matches. Big-name players like WG Grace could attract thousands of eager spectators. “The 1860s was the heyday of cricket,” explains historian Ruth Goodman. “There were hundreds of clubs formed up and down the country, all jostling for a space to play”. Read more | Batting for the British Empire: how Victorian cricket was more than just a game The sport quickly became a part of British identity (and soon spread through the British empire as a form of soft power). As Souvik Naha wrote in the July 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine: “The timeless, leisurely nature of cricket in the mid-19th century was imbued with the wistful imagery of a bucolic past set in contrast with the industrial present, rooting the sport strongly within English history and culture." “And this was an ideal to which Victorians were introduced at the youngest of ages. The public school system mythologised the sport as the ultimate lesson in morals, justice, religion and life itself. By playing cricket, boys – and later girls, non-Christians, and colonial people – would become exemplary citizens of the British empire.” Football: a Saturday afternoon spectacle By the 1880s, football was gaining traction as a hobby among working-class men. Changes brought about by the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878 meant that work on Sundays for for children, young people, and women had been banned – and working hours on Saturdays in particular were now shorter. With more free hours on their hands, many workers turned to football as an alternative to cricket, which was generally seen as a middle-class sport. Read more | 5 facts about the history of football In the early days, elements like team sizes and pitch dimensions varied from place to place, with different clubs adopting their own practices. Football clubs sometimes even shared grounds with cricket clubs, as both sports vied for space to accommodate their growing followings. Much like cricket, football gradually transformed from a participatory sport to a spectator event, with people traveling by train to watch games in neighbouring towns. A key moment in the development of the game came in October 1863, when representatives from a dozen schools and clubs met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London to form the Football Association (FA) and agree a set of official rules under which they could all play. “The game had come a long way from the ‘mob football’ of the Middle Ages when, typically, large groups of men would battle to move a ball from one end of a village to the other,” explains Julian Humphrys in a July 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine. “By the early 19th century, organised matches with clearly defined rules were being played at public schools. However each school had its own particular code, which made the organisation of competitive matches problematical.” Later in the century, the game’s rules were further codified, and 1872 marked another milestone: the first ever international football match, played between Scotland and England. Cocoa houses: the temperance movement’s answer to the pub While pubs gained popularity among working-class men in the 19th century, a growing temperance movement sought to provide a different type of social space. As an alternative, temperance advocates introduced cocoa houses, which offered a non-alcoholic, family-friendly social spaces. Read more | A brief history of the temperance movement in Britain and Ireland “The cocoa house was an inviting space where people could enjoy a hot drink and engage in conversation without the pressure to consume alcohol,” explains historian Ruth Goodman. While most of these venues have disappeared, their legacy endures, with faded signs and traces of their influence still visible in some British towns. While cocoa houses were free from alcohol, they weren’t always teetotal spaces (at least by modern standards!). If you opted for a chocolate-based drink in the 1860s and '70s, it may well have contained an unexpected ingredient: coca leaves, the raw ingredient essential to the modern drug known as cocaine. "Strange as it seems to us now, cocaine [was] very much the paracetamol of Victorian Britain," Dr Douglas Small said on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. "It [was] in almost everything. Cold and flu remedies, seasickness lozenges." Bizarrely, it was even recommended, explained Small, to alleviate morning sickness. Listen on the podcast | Cocaine: a Victorian sensation Reading: a solitary escape Thanks to a rise in literacy levels and the expansion of libraries and affordable printing, reading became a popular pastime across Victorian Britain. From novels and newspapers to instructional guides and serialised short stories, Victorians enjoyed a wide variety of reading materials. Particularly popular were penny dreadfuls, a name given to the cheap and sensational serials typically printed on flimsy paper and costing one penny each. Listen on the podcast | Life writing: how to create a Victorian bestseller Charles Dickens is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, enjoying a popularity that far exceeded previous authors. His stories were serialised in newspapers of the day, which helped build their popular appeal among a wide range of audiences – from the poor to Queen Victoria – before being published as full novels. Explore more learning from our course on Victorian Britain HistoryExtra Academy video lecture with Ruth Goodman | Victorian life 5 things you should know about life in Victorian Britain Was Victorian life really so grim? What was life like for ordinary Victorians? How Victorian women cast of deadly fashion trends Discover the whole course here