A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details THE FIELD AND THE STAGE PUGILISM, COMBAT PERFORMANCE AND PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING IN ENGLAND 1700 – 1980 BENJAMIN LITHERLAND SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX FEBRUARY 2014 1 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree. Signature:……………………………………… 2 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX BENJAMIN LITHERLAND SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE FIELD AND THE STAGE: PUGILISM, COMBAT PERFORMANCE AND PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING IN ENGLAND, 1700 – 1980 SUMMARY Speaking to a local radio station in the 1960s, with the glitz, glitter and glamour of televised professional wrestling at its height, one old, retired Cumbrian wrestler declared that ‘wrestling…was a game for the field not the stage’. This statement, condensed and potent as it is, could stand in for the questions this thesis asks and seeks to answer: why did wrestling develop as a professional, performed ‘sporting entertainment’? To answer this question, existing theories of social and sports history are combined with cultural studies methods and applied to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of fields. Chapters one and two surveys the birth of a fielded society and the growth of spectator and professional sport as part of a wider cultural field in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Considering many sports during this time had relationships with the theatre, circus and fairground, the seemingly logical expansion of professional sport was closer to that of professional wrestling. Sport, however, did not develop in this way. Chapter three explore the reasons for this and posits that the genesis of the sporting field, demonstrated by the growth of sporting bodies and the perpetuation of amateur ideal, dominated the field. Control of wrestling, however, for various reasons, was not gained in this manner. Chapter four examines the consequences of this when professional wrestling became a fully performed sport in the interwar years. Finally, chapter five assesses the relationship between the sporting field and television in the late twentieth century. Wrestling as a ‘sporting entertainment’ is of interest precisely because it displays a ‘discarded possible’ of how professional sport may have grown had it not been for the institutions and ideologies active within the field during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. It also demonstrates the often precarious nature of fields and concludes that sport’s meanings, pleasure and values are not as consistent as are first assumed. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Researching and writing is always a form of collaboration. The following work has been discussed and dissected in detail, with family, friends, colleagues, conference delegates, and taxi drivers. I want to thank them all for their interest. I have considered their questions, comments and queries and I hope I have addressed them here. Rachel Wood, my partner with whom I share a flat, has had to endure an intensive and greater burden than most. Her loving support, positivity and pragmatic advice continues to council the little, and sometimes large, emergencies that seem to characterise postgraduate study. The Wrestlemania-weekend friends are dedicated and passionate fans of professional wrestling and I remain in awe of their knowledge and expertise; they remind me, more importantly, that watching wrestling remains something which should be pleasurable. My family, Mum, Dad, Hannah, William, have provided sustained financial and emotional support, even when slightly bemused by the idea of a thesis about wrestling. While the supervisions and proof reading duties are not technically 50/50, both my supervisors, Andy Medhurst and Lucy Robinson, are equally inspiring reminders that academics should be political, challenging and, every so often, troublemaking. I respect and admire their work and feel privileged to have had them involved with this project. In particular, Andy has read multiple drafts and his feedback is always precise and greatly appreciated. Andy and his partner, Phil, have spoiled us to wine we could never afford and food I would never have dared taste: life is all the richer on both counts. More generally, the staff and PhD community in Media, Film and Music is a productive, exciting and genuinely interdisciplinary place to work. Evenings spent debating, gossiping and laughing has meant that the postgraduate experience has been anything but solitary. I am grateful to the staff at the University of Sussex library, Mass Observation Archive, National Fairground Archive, London Metropolitan Archive, ITA/IBA/Cable Authority Archive, and the Carlisle Archive Centre. They have responded to endless enquiries, and occasional absented mindedness (I often forget a pencil), with patience and professionalism. Finally, the Arts and Humanities Research Council have provided funding for the work produced here. Needless to say, this thesis would not exist without them and I hope that they long continue to support scholars who would otherwise not be able to work at this level. 4 CONTENTS Introduction 6 I. A question of sport? 11 II. Discarded possibles 22 Chapter 1 Carnivals, Bear Gardens and Prize Fighting Amphitheatres, 27 C.1700 – 1770 I. Carnival… 29 II. Effusions of blood and bear gardens 38 III. The usual weapons 43 Conclusion 54 Chapter 2 Assault of Arms Entertainment, C.1770 – 1860 55 I. Controlling culture 57 II. Mock encounters and scientifical sparring 66 III. Grecian statues, highland fandangos, and boxing 72 burlesques IV. Pugilistic clubs 82 Conclusion 88 Chapter 3 Mass Entertainment: Sport and the Music Hall, C. 1860 – 1920 89 I. Professionals and amateurs 91 II. The Marquess of Queensberry rules 98 III. ‘Can the ancient sport be revived?’ 100 IV. The wrestling craze 106 Conclusion 123 5 Chapter 4 All-In Wrestling, C. 1920 – 1955 125 I. Slam bang 127 II. All-in 130 III. Wrestling vs. reformers 140 IV. The Mountevans committee 149 Conclusion 154 Chapter 5 Greetings, Grapple Fans: Television, C. 1955 – 1980 156 I. Girls, wrestling, bright musicals, quiz shows, and 159 real life drama II. The music hall tradition 166 III. Have a good week…till next week. 171 IV. Sporting entertainments? 178 Conclusion 186 Conclusion 188 Bibliography 198 Images 216 6 Figure 1: Professional wrestling on the fairground, c.1970 INTRODUCTION Wrestling, in its multitudinous and varied forms, runs throughout English culture. References to wrestling have appeared in the plays of William Shakespeare and the films of George Formby; the sport’s traditions are of central importance to the local identities of Cumbria, Lancashire, Cornwall and Devonshire; and professional wrestling contests have appeared on the stages of the Alhambra Music Hall and on the screens of Independent Television. This thesis is a study of how regional forms of wrestling, pugilism and prize-fighting interacted with the circus, fairground and music hall in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and produced professional wrestling, a ‘sporting entertainment’,1 in the twentieth. Considering the sport’s ubiquity, not to mention the dedication, energy and excitement surrounding studies of leisure, popular culture and British sport in the decades following the emergence of ‘from below’ social history and cultural studies in the 1960s, it seems remarkable that an extensive academic history of professional wrestling in England or the U.K. has never materialised until now. Sports history has 1 Letter from H.W. Abby, Dale Martin Promotions, to Lew Grade and Howard Thomas, 21 Jan. 1966, Sporting Events “Wrestling” vol.1, IBA, Box 01097. 7 seen multiple texts produced on, for example, association football, 2 horse racing, 3 boxing,4 rugby,5 and many other sports. Elsewhere, economic histories6 and historical overviews7 have been produced and well received. In 1989, Richard Holt wrote Sport and the British: A Modern History, a detailed investigation of sport from the eighteenth century onwards, a work which remains the key text in the field. 8 Out of this historiography important themes have been established: rational recreation; 9 the relationship between sport and media (print in the nineteenth century, television in the twentieth); the role of the public schools and muscular Christians;10 commercialism; and the all-important, and in some ways all-encompassing, questions of amateurism and professionalism. 11 Why, then, has a study of English professional wrestling – a fascinating case study which both supports and complicates these themes – not been forthcoming? The answer, as is to be expected, is complex. There are pragmatic reasons and there are the unique and more complicated theoretical difficulties that are specific to the sport and its histories. An immediate problem for professional wrestling in England or the U.K. is that home-produced versions of the sport have not been a regular feature on British screens since the 1980s.12 British professional wrestling’s popularity, moreover, peaked in the mid-1960s. Both in and outside the academy, writers and, more importantly, editors and publishers are attracted to ‘fashionable’ histories and thus fashionable sports. The best, most detailed historical study of (professional) wrestling in England and Europe, by 2 Tony Mason, Association Football and English Society 1863 – 1915, (Brighton, 1980); Matthew Taylor, The Leaguers: The Making of Professional Football in England, 1900 – 1939, (Liverpool, 2005). 3 Mike Huggins, Flat Racing and British Society, 1790-1914, (London, 1999).