'The Noble Art'

New Zealand Tablet, 13 August 1908, Page 10

'The Noble Art'

Father Bernard Vaughan stoutly maintained on a -recent. .occasion that ' boxing and fencing .should form].an essential part of the curriculum of every boy's education: ".Boxing,' added he, lis not brutalising, no matter what people may say. We know that to be a success the professional-boxer of to-day ha's to live a simple," strenuous life.' As to the statement that boxing is not brutalising, one must make a distinction between the clean manly exhibitions of skill and self-discipline given by men who ' don the mittens ' for amusement, exercise, or a harmless and good-tempered athletic display (such as Father Vaughan contemplates), and, on the other hand, the things that are witnessed in the. prize-ring—especially in.' glove-fights to a finish.' Ths»e latter may be made more cruel and even more .dangerous than the old-fashioned ' mill ' with bare knuckles', such, as that of ' Donnelly and Cooper, who fought all on Kildare.' The -'.glovefights to a finish' that were popular in England .for some.years up 10 1899 .were a libel on sport, and were,jnpre degrading, than the .Spanish cotrida de toros, or bull-fiht, , . '" . In England, the prize-ring of the. nineteenth century was. a revival; nota survival. ' -We first hear of it about the year .1740, in the days when religious'feeling had, perhaps, .touched bottom among the people. Hitherto Hodge had been content to settle His differences'at" Smithfield and the other markets'.by brute force •and endurance, rather than by skill" at fisticuffs. One Broughton introduced the prize-ring, boxing-gloves, aftd- fights to a finish. A-"" hard-hitting slogger named Jackson followed him in 1795, and established what'are, substantially, the present rules of ' the noble art of self-defence.' '- The craze tookaviolenLgrip of the, pujblic ' fancy, and Jackson became almost as great a hero as a Spanish '.Matador, or as Wellington after Waterloo. ,The high nobility became his pupils—George IV., the Dukes of York and Clarence, Lord"Byron7 and the rest; and for half a .century 'the fancy' 'sparred and countered and" drew blood from 'claret-jugs,' bunged up and knocked teeth out of, ' potato-traps,'-\ till -life-game became too 'crooked? except Jpr roughs and. pickp'dekets and such-like lewd fellows of the baser sort.. It died- at "last of-gangrene (as one might say)--pf its "own rottenness . The last forty-years 'witnessed a fresh revival. . .And-as'before.* tin ■nobility—even royalty—took the ' prize-ring under . their high patronage. brutal exhibition in .which'the hireling Crook met his death afc^rfe cl6se of ,897 was, in fact, a ' select-affair/ which was witnessed by numbers of titled Englishmen and^y - a-.large-body of the-wealthy patrons of this revival of one of \ISSqI? g I\S.P°J,tS^ f theC°^unv The Burns-Roche mill of -Jast St.-Patrick s Day was no more elevating, if less fatal. Bo*. dilrf !h r?'M an r Wholes6me <*ercise-b Ut not under the con. ditions.that still cling to the prize-ring.