It occurred to me as I was tagging some of the older posts that it might help the mental geography to have a little map with indications of where London's main foreign populations were.  There was a small Arabic population in the City, and a Russian one, but I haven't pinned them down yet, and will add them when I do.

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  At Mr. STOKES’s Amphitheatre,

in Islington Road, near Sadler’s Wells, on Monday next, being the 3d of October, will be perform’d a trial of skill by the following Championesses. Whereas I Mary Welch, from the Kingdom of Ireland, being taught, and knowing the noble science of defence, and thought to be the only female of this kind in Europe, understanding there is one in this Kingdom, who has exercised on the publick stage several times, which is Mrs. Stokes, who is stiled the famous Championess of England; I do hereby invite her to meet me, and exercise the usual weapons practis’d on the stage, at her own amphitheatre, doubting not, but to let her and the worthy spectators see, that my judgment and courage is beyond hers. I Elizabeth Stokes, of the famous City of London, being well known by the name of the Invincible City Championess for my abilities and judgment in the abovesaid science; having never engaged with any of my own sex but I always came off with victory and applause, shall make no apology for accepting the challenge of this Irish Heroine, not doubting but to maintain the reputation I have hitherto establish’d, and shew my country, that the contest of it’s honour, is not ill entrusted in the present battle with their Championess, Elizabeth Stokes.
     Note, The doors will be open’d at two, and the Championesses mount at four.
     N.B. They fight in close jackets, short petticoats, coming just below the knee, Holland drawers, white stockings, and pumps.
 
It is interesting and significant that the clothing of the combatants is described (nobody cares what the men wore), and sounds very practical and modest.  Low and extremely rough prize fights were fought for gin, new clothes, men and such all over the City.  The women 'tied up their hair and stripped to the waist'.  Many of these fights were between street prostitutes and added a little to their income, or perhaps a lot, depending on how many spectators and how successful they were.  Elizabeth Stokes maintained the 'half-crown rule' in her fights, which is quite clever, as it stops scratching and gouging, and puts a time limit on the fight.  The rougher matches were without rules and it was thought particularly effective to punch and scratch an opponent on the face and breasts.  Once again, this rough boxing was popular with the Irish, both as fighters and as spectators and as it was fought on such a low level, few records remain.
 
In contrast, Elizabeth Stokes's career was well-publicized.  In 1728, the Daily Post carried the following:

At Mr Stokes's Amphitheatre in Islington Road, this present Monday, being the 7th of October, will be a complete Boxing Match, by the two following Championesses: Whereas I, Ann Field, of Stoke Newington, ass driver, well-known for my abilities in my own defence, whenever it happened in my way, having been affronted by Mrs Stokes, styled the European Championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of her best skill in Boxing, for 10 pounds; fair rise and fall...I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought this way since I fought the famous Boxing Woman of Billingsgate 29 minutes and gained a complete victory....but as the famous ass-woman of Stowe Newington dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I do assure her I shall not tail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows I shall present her with will be more difficult to digest than any she ever gave her asses. 

           N.B Attendance will be given at one, and the encounter is to begin at four precisely.  There will be the diversion of cudgel playing as usual. 

 
The cudgel display was not only a diversion: Elizabeth Stokes was also known to fight with weapons, including the short sword and the cudgel, and apparently she was very skilled.  It should be noted that although Stokes and her husband took on other couples in mixed fights, men and woman never fought each other.  Stokes is perhaps the most famous female fighter of the Georgian period, but there were others, including the famous 'Bruising Peg' who was of Amazonian proportions and quite terrifying (also very rough), and in 1795 two famous male boxers Mendoza and 'Gentleman Jackson' acted as seconds in a fight between Mrs Mary Ann Fielding and a 'Jewess of Wentworth Street'.  The fight lasted 80 minutes and there were over 70 knockdowns between them for a prize of 11 guineas. 
 
Bare-knuckle fighting for women continued into the 19thC, drawing an ever-rougher crowd.  Fights were often staged at dawn before everyone went to work, or as they were coming home.  An exception was 'The Boxing Baroness' Lady Barrymore, who used boxing to keep fit and amuse her sport-mad husband in the early 1820s. The Victorian period drove bare-knuckle fighting underground, and in 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry made boxing a sport for gentlemen. 
 
(The illustration used here is a bit of fun. It's completely spurious.)

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James Figg was born to a poor farming family in Thame, Oxfordshire in 1684 (or 1695, depending on which source you read).  He was the youngest of seven children and grew up a tough little nut, going to local fairs and challenging the prize fighters in the booths there.  He based himself at the Greyhound Inn in Cornmarket in Thame, where he could be challenged, and gave self-defence lessons.  By the time he was a grown man he was 6 feet tall and around 185lbs, fit and fast, and travelled to fairs throughout the Midlands where he challenged all-comers from noon until sundown.  He taught himself to fight with a short-sword, a staff and a club, and staged exhibitions of his skill at the fairs (very clever, as it avoided taking on an opponent for at least part of his day).  

     

Click here to download:

James_Figg_Father_of_British_B.zip (425 KB)

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The very first sedan chairs belonged to grand individuals in the late Elizabethan period, who employed fit young men to carry them through the streets as part of their household retinue.  Then, from 1634 Sir Saunders Duncombe took a fourteen year licence in Westminster to provide sedan chairs to the public.  They had two great advantages: you could get inside the chair in your own home, and get to your destination without being seen or recognized, and they were legal on both the pavement and the roads, so avoided the traffic wherever it was necessary.  They were also very good for invalids, although many complaints were made about the public sedan chair rank at St James' Park as it was open air and the leather chairs got soaked through in bad weather, making them smelly and unpleasant to travel in.

  The chair itself is a strong wooden frame with metal fitting through which two stout poles fit.  As long as the frame, floor and seat of the chair were strong, the idea was to make the rest of the chair as light as possible.  Very grand chairs were carried by four men, but almost all street chairs were carried by two, who were fitted with a leather harness to distribute the weight across the shoulders and prevent them from dropping the handles of the chair.  At night, they were helped on their way by one of London's link-boys, who made a few pence by carrying lighted torches through the streets and escorting the 'chairmen' to their destination.  The link-boys were indispensible, as they knew the warrens of London streets, and most chairmen were Irish.  They worked in teams of at least two, and were licenced by the authorities, having to wear badges on their sleeves with numbers.  Public sedan chairs were like large boxes, clad only in stiffened leather stained black with a bench seat inside.  They were the property of carriage companies or teams of chairmen.  Most smart pubs, inns, hostelries, and clubs would have had at least one chair for the use of patrons, but they didn't want to keep (or feed) a staff of brawny chairmen on hand, so the teams of Irish chairmen grew up on the streets.  After all, as a poor but strong immigrant, being a chairman was ideal: it paid well (about a shilling for a cross London-trip), you didn't need any more than basic local knowledge because the link-boys worked days as well as nights, and your working apparatus was a wooden pole and harness.  (This is also why hardly any sedan chairs apart from the very grandest have their original poles; the two rarely belonged to the same person.)  

  Being a chairman, provided you were strong to begin with, and had the appropriate and well-designed harness was extremely physically demanding but would have made a man enormously powerful.  Last year I came across the sedan chair (pictured in the gallery) in an auction.  This is the chair of a reasonably wealthy private individual.  I pushed it about a little to see how much it really weighed, and it wasn't light, probably weighing in excess of 60 pounds.  If we say the average person in Georgian London weighed 140 pounds (some would weigh much more, or less, but I would imagine particularly heavy or even corpulent people would have known better than to attempt to get a sedan chair through London's busy streets and taken a more comfortable carriage instead).  Still, we are talking about a constant load of around 100 pounds for each chairman, not including his poles and harness.  It was rewarding work, but even if it was for seven hours a day, it was hard graft (a phrase for which we most likely have to thank the Irish, but not until the 1790s).  Still, the chairmen of London were generally regarded to be the best by Continental visitors, being strong and agile enough to overcome most obstacles, as well as remarkably rapid.  A young Frenchman records being knocked over four times by sedan chairs during his visit to the capital. 

  During the Georgian period, there was a large increase in the Irish presence in London.  Hardship at home, plus the opportunity to labour in a city expanding as fast as London was, drew them to the English capital.  They began known for their brawn and willingness to work at any hard task.  They also became known for making trouble, and their love of fist-fights.  Boxing has long been a popular English sport, but as chairmen men got fitter and stronger, it was common for the English boxing promoters of the day to advertise fights between 'the Irish chairmen', as they could sustain many 'knockdowns' and provided excellent entertainment.  The newspapers of the time contain frequent occasions when riots had to be broken up because in excess of 500 people had come to watch and bet on the chairmen.  

     

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A_kind_of_portable_coach_Sedan.zip (2358 KB)

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