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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
Douglas Small reveals how cocaine was widely used in all manner of 19th-century products, and explores why it became a fixture of society, sport, culture and literature
In a much-publicised race in the 1870s, the most celebrated athlete of his day, the long-distance pedestrian Edward P Weston, admitted that he had chewed coca leaves, sparking a frenzy of interest in the substance and its derivative, cocaine. For the next few decades, cocaine became a household ingredient in many products, and was perfectly legal. It wasn't until the early years of the 20th century that concerns began to be voiced about its dangerous addictiveness. Dr Douglas Small explains how cocaine won over the Victorians in this conversation with David Musgrove. View Green Video on the source website
War and pieces: 5 games from history that were about much more than fun
Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
Games are among our most enduring cultural technologies. They persist, in part, because they’re a way for our brains to serve themselves pleasure for free. The Greek historian Herodotus, for instance, wrote about the Lydian people, who reportedly suffered an 18-year famine. He claimed they alternated between eating food one day and playing games the next – play, in other words, lessened the sting of hunger. But games aren’t just fun: they are also essential education. Animals play to practise for the serious demands of adulthood: kittens chase yarn to drill hunting skills, and young kangaroos rough-house to prepare to box their way up the social hierarchy as adults. Read more | Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past? With the invention of games, humans brought play into the realm of thought, because games exercise various mental functions. Games are especially crucial for developing social skills. Plato believed they were the foundation of civic education, arguing that children who learned to follow game rules would grow up to be law-abiding citizens. And Plato wasn’t alone: scholars across history have lauded games for a range of educational virtues. As a result, people often endowed games with cultural principles they hoped to transmit to future generations. Games are messages from the past, and can reveal the values and beliefs of the people who play them. Senet, ancient Egypt The ancient board game that served as a map for players to pass to the afterlife Senet – likely the ancestor of backgammon – is one of the world’s oldest known board games. It originated in ancient Egypt in around 3100 BC as mammoths still roamed Siberia’s Wrangel Island, hieroglyphic writing was just emerging, and camels were first being domesticated. Senet means ‘passing’, possibly referring to the game’s race-like mechanic: players vied to be the first to move all their pieces across the board by casting sticks or knuckle bones. In the earliest known record of trash talk, a senet player depicted in the tomb of Pepyankh in Egypt brags: “You speak as one weak of tongue, for passing is mine.” Though its origins were secular, senet came, over time, to serve as a map for the soul’s journey after death. It makes several appearances in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of magic spells inscribed inside coffins to help souls successfully navigate the netherworld. Read more | Guidebook to the Ancient Egyptian afterlife Certain squares on the board became associated with landmarks and obstacles in the afterlife. Landing on square 27, denoted with the hieroglyphic for the ‘waters of chaos’, sent players back to 15, ‘the house of rebirth’. Before exiting the board, pieces had to land on 26, ‘the house of happiness’ – the mummification chamber. Mummification was thought to help souls recognise their corpses, the doorway to the afterlife. Although it was prohibitively expensive for many Egyptians, personal senet boards, found buried in many graves, were another way a soul might recognise its former body. As such, senet democratised access to the immortal realm, serving as an accessible map of life after death. The Mesoamerican ballgame, the Americas A dangerous, sometimes fatal, ball game that may have helped rulers avoid conflict More of a family of games than an individual sport, the Mesoamerican ballgame – as it’s widely known – likely arose around 3,700 years ago in what’s now Mexico. It remained vital for millennia among the Olmec, Maya and Aztec people. Some experts suggest it helped maintain and cohere those cultures because they used it as a proxy for war. Players from opposing teams worked to keep a heavy rubber ball in the air, sometimes using sticks but most often using their hips. Points were scored by bringing the ball to the opposite end of the court, and lost if it hit the ground twice before it could be returned to the other team. A player automatically won the game for their team if they put the ball through one of the prohibitively tall hoops that lined the court. The ball weighed up to four kilograms, so players were frequently bruised and bloodied despite wearing heavy padding. Spanish accounts note players dying after the ball hit them in the head or stomach. Injuries weren’t the only danger: in some cases, play involved ritual sacrifice, and losing teams were decapitated. Read more | Q&A: Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice? In the Mayan creation myth Popul Vuh, human heroes play against the gods of the underworld, signifying the battle between life and death. However, the game had more than symbolic significance. Players were often important political figures, and their gaming victories may have legitimised their rise to power. Ancient Olmec art is best known for its colossal basalt heads, which are thought to be portraits of kings equipped in the regalia of ball players. Remarkably, the game may have been partly responsible for the rise and maintenance of these complex societies because it offered leaders a more peaceful way to settle disputes than costly and destructive wars. Ball courts were particularly prevalent in hotly contested areas with many border disputes. Other pre-Columbian American games, like chunkey and lacrosse, are also thought to have been peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. Indeed, some scholars argue that lacrosse was vital for maintaining peace among the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Chess, India An Indian stroke of genius honed the minds of medieval princes and early computers alike Chess is the most popular board game in history, originating in sixth-century India as a battle simulation game. In its earliest incarnation, it was known as chaturanga, or ‘four-limbed’, referring to four ancient divisions of the Indian army: infantry, cavalry, elephantry and chariotry. As the game percolated west, these pieces became the pawns, knights, bishops, and rooks familiar to European players. What was once a vizier piece came to be replaced by a more dynamic queen, influenced by the rise of powerful queens in Europe. Persian players would exclaim Shāh Māt (‘the king is helpless’), which, adopted into English, became ‘checkmate’. Chess is the first known game in which different pieces possess different powers, like the military regiments on which they were modelled. Writers have long celebrated chess for honing its players’ strategic skills and clarifying their thinking. Read more | From chess to hula hoops: the top 10 toys from history The game featured heavily in ‘mirrors for princes’, a genre of books on manners popular in India, Persia and Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Playing chess was like looking into a mirror, revealing players’ strengths and weaknesses to themselves. The 10th-century Abbasid scholar al-Masudi detailed how chess was used to train military strategy and mathematics. In fact, chess is so heavily associated with intellect that early computer pioneers took it up as a training ground for developing artificial intelligence. In 1950, Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, claimed that chess was an ideal problem for computers because it was discrete, and “generally considered to require ‘thinking’ for skilful play”. In their quest to teach machines to play chess and other games, researchers pioneered countless computing innovations and laid the groundwork for the striking capabilities of today’s machine learning systems. The philosopher’s game, Europe The medieval mathematical board game that reflected shifting views of the universe Beginning around the 11th century, rithmomachia, or ‘the philosopher’s game’, became central to higher education in Europe. The game was thought to represent, in aesthetic form, the formal number theory of Greek polymath Pythagoras. It was a favourite pastime of monks, because church leaders believed it had an enlightening quality. Ovid hailed it as “the leaf, flower and fruit of Arithmetic, and its glory, laud and honour”. Thomas More had the virtuous citizens of his 16th-century book Utopia play the edifying game of rithmomachia instead of morally corrosive games such as dice. Rithmomachia is similar to chess, and its different pieces move according to distinct rules. Like chess, players vie to capture opponent’s pieces. Unlike chess, each rithmomachia piece is inscribed with a number that dictates where and how pieces must be positioned to capture other pieces. For a ‘proper’ victory, the winner must arrange several of their pieces on their opponent’s side of the board in a mathematical progression – 2-4-8, for example. Pythagoras, who founded a mathematics cult that held a grip on European scholarship for more than a thousand years, proclaimed that “all is number”. Unfortunately, Pythagoras did not believe in all numbers: he instead held that rational numbers – whole numbers such as 1, 2, 3, and simple fractions such as 1/2 – were the foundation of the universe. Read more | Digital revolution: the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals His cult so esteemed rational numbers that they tried to cover up the existence of irrational numbers (non-repeating decimals, including pi) – reportedly assassinating the Greek philosopher Hippasus, who had stumbled on their existence. This myopic focus on rational numbers set back European scholarship by hundreds of years. Yet by the 17th century, new techniques borrowed from India and Persia had reinvigorated European mathematics, and rithmomachia’s popularity waned as Pythagoras’s ideas fell out of favour. Kriegsspiel, Europe The war games that allowed strategists to devise miniature melees to plot a conflict’s outcome Kriegsspiel, or ‘war game’, changed the face of modern Europe. Starting in the 18th century, German military strategists tinkered with chess – which was itself an abstraction of war – to create a more realistic military planning tool. Inspired by the success of the scientific method in so many other fields at the time, they hoped to recast war as a science. Using the game they devised, Kriegsspiel, new strategies could be tested and workshopped. Designers first expanded the chess board to thousands of squares, colour-coded to represent different terrains. Eventually, as map-making technology improved, the game was played on scaled maps of actual battlefields, which allowed officers to plan their real campaigns in minute detail. Each turn represented two minutes of warfare, and wooden block troops were constrained to move a realistic distance in that time. Umpires consulted casualty tables based on actual battle data to predict each simulated action’s effects. Dice throws randomised the damage from each ersatz attack. The result was a remarkably accurate prediction engine, which German officers used to cohere the first German empire in the late 19th century. General Karl Kraft, one of the most eminent strategists of that era, wrote: “The ability to quickly arrive at decisions and the cheerful assumption of responsibility which characterised our officers in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 was in no small measure due to the war games.” Read more | La débâcle! The aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War General Helmuth von Moltke, meanwhile, used Kriegsspiel to rethink traditional wisdom, too: its bird’s-eye view, for instance, inspired him to abandon column-and-line troop formations, which made soldiers easy targets, in favour of unstructured formations. Today, most major militaries still use some form of game simulation in their training and planning. The pacifist writer HG Wells published a simple tabletop war game, called Little Wars, in 1913 in the hope that playing at war and witnessing its horrors in miniature would inoculate people against it. Little Wars gave rise to a new family of tabletop war games, eventually evolving into Dungeons and Dragons and countless popular role-playing video games. War games have also informed modern policy. Every outcome of Proud Prophet, a nuclear war simulation game played by top US officials in 1983, was so harrowing that the exercise convinced the Ronald Reagan administration to open arms control negotiations with the Soviets. Read more | 8 of the best historical board games for history lovers Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist, physicist and author of Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World (Allen Lane, 2024) This article was first published in the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Fast, dangerous and bloody: inside the Circus Maximus, the home of Roman chariot racing
High speeds, violent crashes and a good chance of blood and gore: that sounds like Roman entertainment. Jonny Wilkes explores the largest chariot racing venue in the Roman world and why people were so eager to spend a day at the races
From Rome’s earliest days until after the fall of the Roman empire, there was one place that could truly be described as the crucible of chariot racing: the Circo Massimo, or Circus Maximus. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus called it “one of the most beautiful” structures in Rome, but that was not the word for what happened within its horseshoe-shaped walls. Chariot racing was fast, dangerous and bloody. It was exhilarating for the crowds and could make superstars out of racers. Best visualised in the 1959 Hollywood epic Ben Hur, the sport has been given thrilling new life in the Prime Video series Those About to Die, with the Circus Maximus taking centre stage once again. When was the Circus Maximus built? The first iteration of the Circus Maximus appeared before the Roman empire; before the Roman republic even. According to the historian Livy, the inaugural events and wooden seating were instituted by one of the fabled kings, Tarquinius Priscus, in the sixth century BC. Located in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills, the arena had numerous additions over the years as well as major rebuilds. Julius Caesar gave the Circus Maximus its iconic shape in the first century BC by greatly extending the racing track and seating capacity. Arcades of shops emerged beneath the stands, which enjoyed booming trades on race days. But when a fire started in those shops in AD 64, during the reign of Nero, and spread to destroy much of the city – the Great Fire of Rome – the Circus Maximus had to be rebuilt again. This time, in stone. Read more | The worst Roman emperors: 8 of the bloodiest from ancient Rome's history 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 How big was the Circus Maximus? At its largest, the Circus Maximus reached a length of 610 metres and 190 metres in width. It had three tiers of seating, with the lowest, nearest the action, reserved for the elite. It is estimated the Circus Maximus could seat 150,000 spectators, although claims have gone as high as 250,000. If not an exaggeration, this might include those watching from vantage points on the nearby hills. The racetrack had 12 starting gates (carceres) at one end, and a central walled-off barrier (spina) that was filled with water. The spina featured obelisks brought from Egypt and turning posts (metae) at each end comprised of three large gilded bronze cones. What were chariot races at the Circus Maximus like? Chariot races began when their sponsor dropped a white handkerchief. The chariots – pulled, most regularly, by two horses (biga) or four (quadriga) – thundered out of their gates and along the sand track. A race consisted of 13 turns of the spina, totalling seven laps of the Circus Maximus, run counterclockwise. The completion of each lap was signalled by lifting or lowering elaborate marker, which were in the shape of either eggs or dolphins. A single race took around 8-12 minutes, leaving plenty of time for around 24 races a day during the reign of Caligula. Chariot races took place throughout the year as part of public games to celebrate religious festivals. Each one would be sponsored by the state or a powerful individual looking to boost their reputation. Although there were arenas all over the Roman domain, the Circus Maximus was the biggest and most prestigious. Were chariot races at the Circus Maximus dangerous? Races could be extremely hazardous. With up to a dozen chariots dashing at high speeds while their skilled, courageous or foolhardy charioteers scrambled for position and took hairpin turns, accidents were common. Chariots were lightweight, which made them fast but highly vulnerable in collisions. They could overturn and throw the charioteers out, putting them at risk of being run over by a competitor. Crashes could be so bad that they became known as naufragia, or ‘shipwrecks’. Why are chariot racing teams called factions? Charioteers did not race independently, but as part of a faction. Similar to sports teams today, these were organisations, headed by rich and powerful patrons, with their own horses, charioteers, stables, trainers, grooms, smiths, doctors – and colours. There were four main factions: red, white, green and blue. The first century AD emperor Domitian added two more colours – purple and gold – but this was just a short-lived experiment. Each faction entered several chariots in each race, which could be identified by the colour adorning it. Fans in the crowds would often wear their favoured faction’s colour. (They could also bury curse tablets – which wished all kinds of ill things on rival factions – near the track.) As the factions became more powerful and rich, the race results had significant political repercussions. Patrons used the Circus Maximus to gain influence or take on a rival. Or they could make lots of money: betting was a big part of spending a day at the races. Were charioteers as famous as gladiators? The men who actually drove the chariots were mostly slaves or freedmen of low status. Yet if they won enough races, they could become fabulously wealthy (earning more than the top professions in Rome) and buy their freedom. They were also treated as celebrities by fans, showered with gifts and mobbed in the street. Even the horses could be famous. Among the most renowned charioteers of the Circus was Scorpus, a slave from Hispania who, in the late first century AD, won 2,048 races in a brief career. He died in a chariot crash aged 26. Gaius Appuleius Diocles was luckier: he had a 24-year career and retired at 42 having won 1,462 races and earned more than 35 million sesterces. This makes him the wealthiest sportsperson in history. What other events were held at the Circus Maximus? The Circus Maximus became a gathering place in Rome for purposes other than sport. Processions that preceded festivals ended there, as did celebrations of a triumph, and the track hosted events even bloodier than chariot racing, like executions, animal hunts and gladiatorial fights. The Circus Maximus also held an important socio-political role. It was where the emperor could be seen by the people and boost their image by dispensing gifts or food. Many rulers, such as Caligula and Domitian, adored the races. It was also a place for the people to make their demands or petitions known to the emperor, letting him know their feelings through chanting. What happened to the Circus Maximus after the construction of the Colosseum? Rome’s other great arena, the Colosseum, was built during the reigns of Vespasian and his son Titus from AD 70-72. It was smaller than the Circus Maximus – seating 50,000-80,000 people – and primarily used for gladiatorial games, which it was felt needed a more ‘intimate’ setting. Therefore, the Circus Maximus continued to be used well into the sixth century, after the fall of the western empire. Chariot racing was still enjoyed by the Ostrogoth rulers and the Byzantine empire to the east, where crowds filled their version of the Circus, the Hippodrome of Constantinople. This would be the site of the infamous Nika Riots of AD 532, which resulted in 30,000 deaths and the irrevocable decline in chariot racing’s popularity.