Cockfighting in Georgian Bath

Official city cockfights, as opposed to the many casual contests between individual owners, ran over 3 or 4 days and started with everybody showing the cocks they intended to use in the cockpit. Each cock would be carefully assessed to ensure that its owner was not cheating in the way he had prepared his bird. Fines for cocks judged to be fraudulent were levied at around 3 shillings and 4 pence a bird, and birds were banned from fighting for the rest of the year.

Cocks would then have their feathers trimmed in accordance with the rules agreed with other owners. A fine of around 10 shillings would be levied on anyone breaching the terms of this agreement. Birds were matched by weight and wore metal spurs which inflicted terrible injuries.

Cockfights were controlled by an official known as the “Master of the Match” whose decisions were final.

Sometimes, matched cocks refused to fight and had to be withdrawn after 10 attempts to get them to do so.

The official matches received national publicity by being recorded in the annual racing calendars and in the London press.

Cockfighting prior to the eighteenth century had taken place in a purpose-built building in Timber Green on the edge of what is now Saw Close. By 1725 however, when Gloucester met Somerset, the cockpit had fallen out of use, and the match took place at the White Lion inn. The next county clash, this time between Gloucester and Dorset in 1729, took place at the Lamb, which seems to have provided the venue for most major meetings.

Also, in 1729 at the beginning of March Mr Cains and Mr Figg fought a match, 31 cocks a side for 2 Guineas for each match and 20 for the overall result known as the “main”. The match was won by 2 battles, with birds weighing between 3lb  8 oz and 4lb 8oz. The winner would, therefore, have received 24 guineas, but this would have been a trivial amount in comparison to the side bets made around the pit.

The next year April 1730, saw a match between Mr Cain, who showed 31 Cocks, against Mr Johnson at 4 Guineas and 40. In the end, after the birds were inspected and some were rejected, the match comprised 22 Battles, 12 of which were won by Mr Cain and 10 by Mr Johnson. This was a return match for one that had been fought in Oxford the previous year.

The following year in March, a team of bird owners from the  City of Bath fought a team from the  City of Bristol, showing 41 cocks a side for 6 Guineas and 100 for the main, the match was won by Bath by 6 or 7 Battles.

In 1735 In the “City of Bath, on the first Tuesday in May Mr Segar fought Mr Ball showing as they had at a previous match at Meere in March, 41 cocks a side for 6 guineas and 100, in this match, there were 24 battles 16 of which were won by Mr Segar and 8 by Mr Ball”

In May 1744, Champney Esq. fought the gentlemen of Bristol and Wells, showing forty-one cocks on each side, for ten Guineas a battle and a hundred the main. The main consisted of twenty-eight battles, each side winning fourteen, which rendered it a draw.

In August 1761, an advert appeared in the chronicle “A COCK-MATCH TO be Fought at Mr Charles Smith's, at the Sign of the Coach, in the Parish of Twerton, in the County of Somerset, (one Mile from Bath) between the Gentlemen of Somerset-shire and the Gentlemen of Gloucestershire flew and weigh 31 Cocks each side in the Main, for Four Guineas a Battle, and Twenty Guineas the odd Battle; and 15 Cocks for Bye-Battles.— To weigh the 10th Day of August, and fight the three following Days.”

In 1771 the Bath Chronicle, after decrying petty horse races and boxing matches, observed that “Petty cock-matches are no less than the others the source of vice, profaneness, and immorality” 

1772 The Rev. James Woodforde recorded that his “Brother John set forth this morning for 

Bath to a Cock Match.” And later, “Brother John returned this evening and supped etc. at Parsonage; he says that he has won fifty Pounds at Bath.”

As the century progressed, cockfighting fell out of fashion, and major matches in the city became less frequent. However, as late as 1798, Somerset and Wiltshire breeders fought a two-day match near Grosvenor Gardens.

Prizefighters and prizefighting in Georgian Bath

This is an article about professional prizefighters and prizefighting. All through this period, men and women were fighting with and without weapons in the streets and taverns of Bath to provide entertainment and gambling opportunities for their neighbours and visitors to the City, but theirs’ is a story for another time.

Prizefighting was still admissible, even condoned, at Bath during the Coronation festivities of 1728 but was banned from the strict confines of the City sometime around 1755. However, it continued to flourish in the countryside around Bath. [1}Reporting on a backsword tournament in 1760, the Bath Journal tells us that the “Heroes of the Fist likewise made no small part of each Day’s Diversion”.

In 1762, George Meggs, the Bristol-born champion of England, fought “a pitched battle for a considerable sum” with one Millsom, a baker of Bath at Calne in Wiltshire, when after a fierce battle lasting 40 minutes, the Bath boxer was declared the winner. Meggs later challenged Millsom to a rematch, which he also lost.

By 1765, Millsom was reported as fighting and beating another noted west country boxer named Parfitt Meggs on Lansdown. The Bath Chronicle of 1771 reported with approval the action taken by courts in Northumberland to control petty horse race meetings places of “drunkenness, gambling, profane turfing and swearing, quarrelling and fighting, and other breaches of the peace and good behaviour” and which brought “together the greatest number cf the lower classes of the people, and robbing the public of their labour.” It noted that “Similar evils arise to the community from the brutal practice of boxing matches, between a banditti of human monsters. Not withstanding these abominable exercises are a disgrace to a civilised nation, and even to humanity, yet, in several parts, and not far from the most polite city of Bath, they are frequently exhibited, not to say authorised.— ls not the suppression of these infamous premeditated bruiting matches as necessary and political as those of the gladiators.” From approximately 1780 to 1820, boxing was arguably the most popular spectator sport in England. For major matches, it was not unusual for crowds to gather, numbering tens of thousands. This was despite the fact that for much of this period, the sport was illegal.

Martin the Bath butcher who had a considerable provincial reputation came to London in 1786 to fight the boxer Richard Humphrey’s “the Gentleman” who took an astonishing 105 minutes to beat him.

In the next year, Daniel Mendoza, who was destined to become one of the leading figures of Georgian boxing, fought Martin the Bath Butcher at Barnet, which he won in 20 minutes, gaining a purse of 25 guineas and effectively ending Martin’s London career. The Bath baker George Ring was defeated in a 37-minute fight at the Hay Field, Bloomsbury, in 1788, which seems to have ended what, up to that point, had been a promising entry into the London boxing scene.

In 1789, the newspapers reported a complaint about riotous boxing contests regularly distracting the working people of Bath from attending to their employment on Mondays.

Martin the Bath Butcher, who had for some time been a resident of Oxford, was reported by the Bath papers in 1791 to have signed a contract to fight John Blythe the Coventry Weaver on a stage of 20 feet in diameter for a purse of 20 guineas a side and two-thirds of the gate. The result was to be determined by a boxer falling from exhaustion. 

In October, an advert appeared in the 1793 Bath Chronicle saying that “several gentlemen of this city” had raised a subscription to bring professional boxers to the Tennis Court to put on a display of sparing. This event featured the leading boxers Johnson, Mendoza and Lee. This reflected a Regency fashion for gentlemen training in pugilistic skills with leading exponents of the sport. The most famous adopter being Lord Byron.

The newspapers of 1797 carried complaints that one Sunday bare-knuckled local bruisers, stripped to the waist, had slugged it out on Lansdown urged on by “horrid imprecations” from the assembled crowd.

In Bath in 1797, London boxing promoters decided to hold a match they had arranged between Tom Jones and the Bristol boxer George Nicholls on Lansdown. The two fighters stripped for the contest when Nicholls, noticing that Jones was considerably taller, refused to fight.

George Nicholls had earlier been matched against the Bath Champion boxer Leonard for 5 guineas a side on Lansdown in a programme that also included a match between two well-known men, Spaniard Harris and Bob Cox. The Bath Champion was badly beaten, and his eyes were so swollen he could not see to go on.

Charles Williams, a Bath locksmith, pummelled his Bristolian opponent to a standstill in an unremitting two-hour “milling” at Newton St Loe in October 1793.

In 1819 the great chroniclers of sports and Regency society, Pierce Egan, wrote:“At no great distance from the Race-Ground stands the Blathwayte Arms, close to which the Fair at Lansdown is held annually on the 10th of August. It is a very large fair, and distinguished for the sale of horses, and large quantities of cheese: great numbers of cattle and pigs are also brought here. It is a most convenient spot for the numerous assemblage of persons that arrive from Bristol, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, &c. and it proves quite a jubilee-day for the country people to enjoy the fun with which it abounds. The gingerbread - stalls form a long street; and numerous shows from different parts of England, of every description, to obtain the money from the pockets of the lads and lasses, are not wanting. Lansdown Fair is also notorious for a number of pitched battles which are fought by the pugilistic heroes of Bristol.”

There was a match made between Bickens, a Bath man, and Jem Ward part of a London stable of fighters, for £20 a-side, and a subscription purse. The battle took place on the racecourse at Lansdown, on Friday, July 2, 1823, Ward winning it without a scratch on his face or body.

Horse-racing and boxing often shared locations and the “Fancy” who financed and bet huge sums on boxing were mostly the same rich punters and aristocrats who owned and bred thoroughbred racehorses. These links are particularly manifest in the extraordinary life of John Gully the most famous boxer connected with the City of Bath.

John Gully was born on 21 August 1783 at The Crown Inn , Wick where his father was the landlord. During Gully's boyhood, the family moved to Bath, where his father became a butcher, and he was brought up to his father's trade. After his father's death, the business gradually declined. An inability to pursue his trade or pay his debts meant Gully at the age of twenty-one became an inmate of the Kings' Bench prison. He had for some time taken an interest in prize-fighting matches, and this led in 1805 to his receiving a visit from an acquaintance, Henry Pearce, the ‘Bristol Game-Chicken’, the champion of England. The two men had a ‘set-to’ which so impressed the onlookers that a number of prize-fight promoters paid Gully's debts, and took him to Virginia Water, where he was trained for a more serious fight with Pearce. The contest took place at Hailsham in Sussex on 8 October 1805, before a huge crowd, among whom was the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV). After fighting fifty-nine rounds, which occupied an hour and ten minutes, he was beaten. However, his performance in this contest greatly enhanced his reputation.The reason for this can be seen in Pierce Egan’s description of the last few rounds:“Thirty-seventh to forty-third.—In the last six rounds the Chicken displayed a manifest superiority: their figures were bloody in the extreme; but Gulley was literally covered from the torrents which flowed down from his ear, and who now began to appear somewhat shy—his head was truly terrific, and had a giant-like appearance, from being so terribly swelled, and the effect was most singular, for scarcely could his eyes be seen.Forty-fourth.—The Chicken, with considerable science and force, planted his favourite hit in Gulley's throat, when he fell like a log of wood. The fortitude that Gulley had displayed in this most trying conflict had raised him considerably, not only in the estimation of his friends but the sporting men in general. He had been so severely punished that he was not able to face his man with his former resolution and propriety— his brave heart was reluctant to acknowledge superiority, and he endeavoured now and then to put in a hit, and falling until the fifty-ninth.—When his friends interfered and positively insisted that he should fight no longer, as the chance was against him ; and, at length, he complied ….”

Ill health forced the ‘Bristol Game-Chicken’ to retire in December 1805 and Gully was regarded as his legitimate successor, although he was never formally nominated champion. 

No challenger for his title came forward for two years. He was then matched against Bob Gregson, the Lancashire Giant, for 200 guineas a side. His opponent measured 6 feet 2 inches in height, and was famously strong, while Gully himself was 6 feet tall. The fight took place on 14 October 1807, at Six Mile Bottom, on the Newmarket racecourse. This encounter was remarkable for its brutality. Both men fought to near exhaustion, but in the thirty-sixth round Gully landed a blow with such force to Gregson’s face which ended the fight. Captain Barclay, a prominent member of the fancy, took the winner off the ground in his carriage, and the next day drove him in triumph onto the Newmarket racecourse. 

Gregson, not being satisfied, again challenged his opponent. This match, which was for £250 a side, took place in Sir John Sebright's Park in Hertfordshire, on 10 May 1808. This contest was watched by nearly a hundred noblemen and gentlemen on horseback and in carriages and a crowd of more modest people that was so great that it caused a rumour that the French army had landed. The two men fought in white breeches and silk stockings, without shoes. After the twenty-seventh rounds of a match which lasted an hour and a quarter Gregson was too exhausted to continue.Pierce Egan, summarised the contest as follows.‘Gregson’s strength was manifest to his opponent, who endeavoured to ward off its potent effects by his thorough knowledge of the science, and Gulley put in another dreadful facer, which made the claret fly in all directions, when Gregson fell’.
Gully earned large sums of money from boxing, through prizes, purses given by grateful punters and side bets, and now began to think of investing in a different future.

In June 1808, with follow boxing champion Tom Cribb, Gully took a lease on a Tennis Court in London, and formally retired from the ring. At this time he also became proprietor of The Plough inn, 23 Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. 

He also to decided take his interest in gambling into the world of horse-racing.

In 1812 he bought his first horse, Cardenio and around this time moved his residence to Newmarket the centre of racing and home of the all powerful Jockey Club.

In 1827, gave Lord Jersey 4000 guineas for his Epsom Derby winner Mameluke. He backed his purchase for the St Leger that year, but James Robinson on Matilda took the race, and Gully lost £40,000. 

In 1830 he formed a racing partnership with Robert Ridsale, another wealthy race horse breeder and gambler. The partnership prospered and 1832, they won the Derby with St Giles, and Gully took the St Leger with Margrave, making £50,000 on the former and £35,000 on the latter race. However, having fallen out with Ridsale in the hunting-field, he horsewhipped him, which led to his having to pay £500 damages for assault. In partnership with John Day a racehorse trainer, Gully won the Two Thousand Guineas in 1844 with Ugly Buck, and in 1846 he took both the Derby and the Oaks (with Pyrrhus the First and Mendicant), an event previously accomplished only once, when Sir Charles Bunbury's Eleanor carried off both prizes in 1801. 

Gully was again the winner of the Two Thousand Guineas with Hermit in 1854, and in the same year he won the Derby with Andover, having the bookmaker Henry Padwick for his partner in the latter horse. 

During this period as a racehorse owner and gambler Gully purchased Upper Hare Park, near Newmarket, from Lord Rivers, but he subsequently sold it to Sir Mark Wood. He then bought Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, Yorkshire, becoming MP for that pocket borough from 10 December 1832 to 17 July 1837. Politically, he described himself as a reformer, supporting the ballot and shorter parliaments. 

As an MP and having amassed a considerable fortune from his racing interests, he acquired a degree of respectability and in 1836 was presented at court. He married twice and had twelve children with each wife.Having sold Ackworth Park Gully took up residence at Marwell Hall, near Winchester. He next began to invest in coal extraction purchasing shares in the new Hetton colliery. He was also involved in setting up the Thornley collieries and took a share in the Trindon collieries. In 1862 he became the sole proprietor of the Wingate Grange estate and collieries. By this time he had moved to Cocken Hall, near Durham. 

Gully died at Durham on 9 March 1863 aged 79. His body was returned to Ackworth where he was interred with his daughter.Lord Lennox summed up Gully’s character as follows:
‘His unpromising deportment, his great common sense, and his absence of false shame when it came to his career, fairly earned him that respect which I, and I believe many others retained for him. The memory of John Gully will be cherished by all Englishmen who can appreciate manly courage.’ 

1. Fawcett - Bath Entertained