ENGLAND: THE OTHER WITHIN

19th Century Fighting Rings

Karen Mak,
St Cross College

Knuckledusters, or brass knuckles, are found both within and outside of Europe, and their typological multiplicity is in part represented in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. Displayed alongside several spiked and other similarly fortified specimens from various regions of the world is a comparatively innocuous-looking knuckleduster, described in the accession book entry as “fighting rings made from four George III half pennies (1807) riveted together at one point”.[1] This particular knuckleduster was collected from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, by Henry Balfour in 1890,[2] the very same year that he was appointed as the first curator of the museum.[3] Easily accessible from Oxford, the town of Abingdon became an important link between Bristol, London and Birmingham after the Wiltshire and Berkshire canal was built in 1810.[4] Therefore, it served as a convenient site for Balfour to source out English varieties of knuckledusters, which contributed to the construction of an evolutionary sequence of form for this type of weapon.

From King George III to Queen Victoria

Whilst the long reign of King George III (1760-1820) was plagued by repeated wars with France and the American colonies, domestically the nation had experienced both an increase in population and an economic growth encouraged by various agricultural and technological improvements that had resulted from the Industrial Revolution.[5] With the intensified urbanization occurring concurrently with developments in production, existing social frictions heightened and episodes of street violence came to the attention of the print media.[6] This situation only escalated further in the Victorian era. In the 1898 edition of Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, knuckledusters were defined as:

a metal instrument which is fitted to a man’s fist, and may be readily used in self-defence by striking a blow. Sometimes these instruments are armed with spikes. It was an American invention, and was used in England in defence against the infamous attacks of Spring-heel Jack. We have the phrase “To dust your jacket for you,” meaning to “beat you,” as men dust carpets by beating them.[7]

Sightings of Spring-heeled Jack were first documented in 1837,[8] and his supposed exploits were enthusiastically reported by the press. Unsurprisingly, the interest of the public was stimulated by this media frenzy, and he became one of the most notorious figures in British urban legends, featuring in numerous plays, serials, and other publications.[9] However, while such colourful dissemination instilled a recurring sense of paranoia in the public, [10] fiends like Spring-heeled Jack or Jack the Ripper did not accurately represent street violence. While the press disproportionately emphasized the dangers of attacks, violence on the street was a phenomenon that was intimately tied to the tensions of class, gender, and race. Furthermore, it was a typical social mechanism for the negotiation and renegotiation of identity in 19th century Britain.

Cultivated Violence, “Englishness”, and Performed Masculinity

There seemed to be a consensus among 19th century Englishmen that their instinctual aggressiveness was a defining part of the English national character. As Thomas Hughes wrote frankly in his Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), “fighting with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their quarrels”. [11] More importantly, it was the principled and civilised use of that potential aggression which constituted a distinct “Englishness”:

Part of the ideal process of maturation into a manly ‘Briton’, of whatever social class, was the development of appropriate ‘right’ feeling that would ensure any expression of physical force was not misdirected.[12]

Aside from sports, one suitable display of aggression was a ‘fair fight’, an example of which would be the duel, a tradition commonly bounded up with notions of honour, chivalry, manhood, and justice. Like most social norms, however, what constituted a ‘fair fight’ changed in response to shifting contexts. In England, therefore, the duel was by and large replaced by the fist-fight, in which men fought with their bare fist often in front of a large audience. [13] Though neither the practice itself nor its associated concepts were particular to the English, [14] such romantic conceptualisations served as effective cultural markers of “Englishness” at a time when increased industrialisation and expansion of commerce led to an influx of foreigners in cities such as Liverpool and London. The foreigners, whilst equally capable of aggression, were characterised by their natural inclination to fight dishonestly, often with knives and other lethal weapons.[15]

All this, of course, applied to English men only. Thus, in addition to “Englishness”, the ideal of fair fights also contributed to the construction of manhood. Fighting and defeating other men fair and square became one of the ways by which a man can (re-)establishes his masculinity publically. But in contrast to duelling, fist-fighting was regarded as a strategy employed only by men of the lower classes [16] because they had only limited ways to build up their status and reputation. [17] Furthermore, different conceptions of masculinity coexisted, and the working class had its own idea about what makes a man more masculine, or ‘harder’,[19] than his peers. As the continual performance of masculinity formed a part of the working class culture , fist-fighting on streets, became an element of everyday life. Nonetheless, fist-fighting with bare hands generally remained an unrealised ideal. Given that legal restrictions on weapons were not fully codified and enforced until the 20th century, most men on the streets during the 19th century were armed in some way or other.[20] A knuckleduster, or a heavy belt buckle,[21] could be used as either an offensive or a defensive weapon depending on the situation. The prevalent presence of knuckledusters had likely inspired the coining of the London slang ‘a fourpenny one’ in the early 20th century; to give somebody a fourpenny one is to deliver a hard punch, usually to the head.[22]

Notes

[1] Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Book Entry 1912.11.1
[2] Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Book Entry 1912.11.1
[3] “Henry Balfour”. http://history.prm.ox.ac.uk/collector_balfour.html
[4] “Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A4298862
[5] “George III”. http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon55.html
[6] Sindall, Rob. Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990. p. 163
[7] Brewer, E. Cobham. “Knuckle-duster.” Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1898; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/81/
[8] Dash, Mike. ‘Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost’ in Fortean Studies. Vol. 3, 1996, pp. 7–125.
[9] “Spring-Heeled Jack”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Heeled_Jack
[10] Sindall, Rob. Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990. pp. 164-165
[11] Wiener, Martin J. Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 51.
[12] Rowbotham, Judith. “‘Only when drunk’: the stereotyping of violence in England, c. 1850-1900”. In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 159.
[13] Rowbotham, Judith. “‘Only when drunk’: the stereotyping of violence in England, c. 1850-1900”. In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 75.
[14] “Duel”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel
[15] Wiener, Martin J. Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
[16] Rowbotham, Judith. “‘Only when drunk’: the stereotyping of violence in England, c. 1850-1900”. In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 161.
[17] Archer, John E. “‘Men behaving badly’?: masculinity and the uses of violence, 1850-1900.” In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 47.
[18] Rowbotham, Judith. “‘Only when drunk’: the stereotyping of violence in England, c. 1850-1900”. In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 74.
[19] Wiener, Martin J. Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. pp. 50-51.
[20] Archer, John E. “‘Men behaving badly’?: masculinity and the uses of violence, 1850-1900.” In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 46.
[21] Archer, John E. “‘Men behaving badly’?: masculinity and the uses of violence, 1850-1900.” In Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class (ed. Shani D’Cruze) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. p. 46.
[22] Partridge, Eric and Paul Beale. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 8th ed. London: Routledge, 2002. P423.

Further Reading

D’Cruze, Shani (ed.). Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, Gender and Class. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. 2000.
“Henry Balfour”. http://history.prm.ox.ac.uk/collector_balfour.html
Sindall, Rob. Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press. 1990.
Watson, J. Steven. The Reign of George III: 1760-1815 (Oxford History of England). OUP: Oxford. 1963
Wiener, Martin J. Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004.