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Fight Club, 1880: Boxing, Class, and Literary Culture in John Boyle O'Reilly's Boston
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2019
Abstract
Because late nineteenth-century American sport was connected to both immigrant assimilation and cultural prestige, this essay first describes Boston amateur athletics during the later nineteenth century. Ireland-born poet/lecturer/newspaper editor John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–90) provides an important example of social and intellectual class mobility from the perspective of an immigrant writer. We observe through O'Reilly's sporting experiences and literary career how the development of upper-class amateur athletics in Boston and the popularity of boxing among its Irish working classes gave him exceptional influence among both groups. His history of boxing, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (1888), is examined in detail as a key statement on pugilism, masculinity, and American citizenship fame. This view of Boston's intellectual and physical cultures, observed from the standpoint of O'Reilly, a talented writer and a sort of literary counterpart of famed pugilist John L. Sullivan (his friend, occasional sparring partner, and fellow celebrity among the Irish American community), sheds light on newly available pathways to social mobility made possible by simultaneous engagement with literary and athletic cultures.
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References
1 O'Reilly, John Boyle, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1888), xiGoogle Scholar. Epigraph by Dr. James Muir Howie (1846–88), a Liverpool physician and advocate for the Weir Mitchell rest cure, abstinence from alcohol, and massage therapy (obituary, British Medical Journal, 16 June 1888).
2 Roosevelt, Theodore, “The Value of an Athletic Training,” Harper's Weekly, 37 (1893), 1236Google Scholar.
3 O'Reilly, xi. Epigraph by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–94). Holmes, a health reformer, novelist, and poet, was a prominent member of the Boston medical and literary elite.
4 Ian Kenneally emphasizes the late nineteenth-century Irish involvement in British and American military units: “There were tens of thousands of Irish soldiers in the British army … [In the Civil War] there had been 150,000 Irish-born soldiers in the Union army and 20,000 or more in the Confederate army.” Kenneally, Ian, From the Earth, A Cry: The Story of John Boyle O'Reilly, Kindle digital edn (Cork: Collins Press, location 340)Google Scholar.
5 For discussion of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century athletics as a factor in Irish Catholic immigrant assimilation in the United States see Gems, Gerald R., “Sport and the Assimilation of American Catholics,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 36, 2 (2018), 33–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 American higher-education development accelerated especially after passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts (1862, 1890), which provided for a system of land-grant universities for each state. In the decades following, and especially after 1914, these universities dramatically expanded programs for physical education and intercollegiate athletics. See Sorber, Nathan M., Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: The Origins of the Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 The overview of nineteenth-century American sporting culture presented here is drawn from several key sources: Ashby, Leroy, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1930 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006), 41–72Google Scholar; Gems, Gerald R., “The Politics of Boxing: Resistance, Religion, and Working Class Assimilation,” International Sports Journal, 8, 1 (2004), 89–103Google Scholar; Gems, “Sport and the Assimilation of American Catholics”; Green, Harvey, Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New York: Pantheon, 1986)Google Scholar.
8 This survey of the nineteenth-century athletics scene is drawn from Green, Fit for America. Isenberg contrasts the ebullient sporting mood after the Civil War with the more constricted and serious realm of sporting competition during the Jacksonian period: “To participate in the [Jacksonian] sporting life meant to take risks, to wager in some way on an outcome. Victory – at almost any cost – was vital, offering concrete proof of success and of the risk well-taken.” See Isenberg, Michael T., John L. Sullivan and His America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 45Google Scholar.
9 Roosevelt, “The Value of an Athletic Training,” 1236.
10 Years earlier, when future President Theodore Roosevelt was a Harvard student, it was Dr. Sargent who had pronounced Roosevelt unfit for even moderate exercise, thus prompting Roosevelt's famous embrace of rough sports at Harvard, including boxing. Sargent achieved additional fame by measuring and photographing thousands of Harvard and Radcliffe freshmen during these years in order to research “anthropometric” variability among American elites. See Kasson, John F., Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 5, 41Google Scholar.
11 For extended discussion of boxing in late nineteenth-century Boston see Hardy, Stephen, How Boston Played: Sport, Recreation, and Community, 1865–1915 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 168–75Google Scholar. The fine distinction between bareknuckle fighting (“pugilism”) and gloved boxing (“sparring”) was an important one for the Cribb Club boxing subculture but also for boxing events held for spectators. For example, Hardy (170) points out that in Boston “city alderman granted entertainment licenses for ‘sparring’ with gloves” for the benefit of spectator events.
12 In 1877, O'Reilly declared that “eighty per cent … of our readers are in the truest sense ‘honest, horny-fisted sons of toil’” (see Roche, James Jeffrey, John Boyle O'Reilly: His Life, Poems and Speeches (New York: Cassell, 1891), 185Google Scholar). Founded by the Irish immigrant publisher Patrick Donahoe in 1836, the Boston Pilot was for decades the most influential Catholic newspaper in the United States. A catastrophic 1872 fire destroyed the Pilot headquarters, and in 1876 Donahoe was forced to sell the newspaper, which was purchased jointly for $730,000, payable in ten installments, by the Archdiocese of Boston and John Boyle O'Reilly himself. Roche, 155.
13 Until recently, details of John Boyle O'Reilly's biography were available mostly from the lavish edition of his works published soon after his death by O'Reilly's colleague James Jeffrey Roche (1891). That edition includes his complete poems and speeches, edited by his wife, Mary Agnes Murphy O'Reilly; a lengthy biography by James Jeffrey Roche; and an introduction by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore. Kenneally provides additional details and documentation. O'Reilly's immigrant background and American career highlights are drawn primarily from these two biographies, supplemented by Wendy Birman, “John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–1890)” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume V (1974), at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oreilly-john-boyle-4338; and George Noble Plunkett, “Recollections of John Boyle O'Reilly,” Irish Monthly, 19 (1 Jan. 1891), 19–26.
14 Keneally, Thomas, The Great Shame and the Triumph of the Irish in the English Speaking World (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1999), 422–23Google Scholar, sketches out the particulars of O'Reilly's brief military career before his court martial.
15 For detailed discussion of the circumstances leading to O'Reilly's court-martial see Birman.
16 O'Reilly hitched transport aboard a series of ships in a complex process as he made his escape westward across the Indian Ocean from Western Australia, narrowly avoiding capture at Rodriquez Island, sailing around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, changing ships at St. Helena, and finally joining the Bombay in Liverpool as crew member before making the final leg of his migration to Philadelphia. The police records of Western Australia posted a fugitive-wanted notice after O'Reilly's escape: “imperial convict; arrived in the colony per convict ship Hougoumont in 1868; sentenced to twenty years, 9th July 1866. Description – Healthy appearance; present age 25 years; 5 feet 7½ inches high, black hair, brown eyes, oval visage, dark complexion: an Irishman. Absconded … on the 18th of February, 1869.” Online at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oreilly-john-boyle-4338, accessed 24 May 2018; Roche, 83. For additional details of O'Reilly's passage to Australia see also S. Ashton, “John Boyle O'Reilly,” in James P. Byrne, Philip Coleman, and Jason King, eds., Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO), available at http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abciramrle/o_reilly_john_boyle_1844_1890/0, accessed 19 Nov. 2015. Ashton also describes O'Reilly's escape as assisted by an Australian priest and Fenian supporters abroad.
17 Roche, 126.
18 Oscar Wilde met O'Reilly in Boston in 1882, during Wilde's famous American tour, after which they corresponded occasionally. O'Reilly also introduced Wilde to Walt Whitman, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Wendell Phillips. See Ian Kenneally, From the Earth, location 4289. On O'Reilly’ acquaintance with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joaquin Miller, and Whitman see Plunkett, “Recollections of John Boyle O'Reilly,”
19 Roche, vii.
20 Between 1873 and 1886, O'Reilly published four books of poetry: Songs from the Southern Seas, and Other Poems (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873); Songs, Legends, and Ballads (Boston: Pilot Publishing,1878); The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881); and In Bohemia (Boston: Pilot Publishing, 1886). O'Reilly's novel Moondyne: A Story from the Underworld (Boston: Pilot Publishing, 1879) was serialized in the Boston Pilot (1878–79) before appearing as a book.
21 During the Irish famine of 1845–52, Boston had become a key port of entry for Irish immigrants, most of whom were unskilled laborers from rural areas of Ireland. A large proportion of these Irish immigrants took low-paid positions in the local economy, with Irish men tending to work as manual laborers. Domestic service was frequently performed by Irish immigrant women. By 1860, about two-thirds of Boston servants were Irish. James Patrick Byrne, Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, Volume II (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO), 552.
22 Thoreau, Henry David, Walden and Other Writings, ed. Atkinson, Brooks (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 33Google Scholar.
23 Morgan, James, The Life and Work of Edwards A. Moseley in the Service of Humanity (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 95Google Scholar. Morgan notes as well that O'Reilly's engagement with Yankee Boston was marked by tactical sensitivity toward the complexities of Puritan history in New England. For example, O'Reilly's Plymouth monument dedication poem “celebrated Puritan virtues enthusiastically and touched rather gently on their vices”:
They feared too much some sins men ought to fear:
The lordly arrogance and avarice,
And vain frivolity's besotting vice;
Impelled too far, they weighed poor nature down;
They missed God's smile perhaps, to watch his frown.
24 Plunkett, 20.
25 According to its 1880 charter, the St. Botolph Club was established for the “promotion of social intercourse among authors, artists, and other gentlemen associated with or interested in literature and art.” Joining O'Reilly among its founding members were notable Boston writers such as Henry Cabot Lodge, William Dean Howells, and Francis Parkman. See St. Botolph Club Records, Massachusetts Historical Society, at www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0077, accessed 12 Feb. 2019.
26 Lane, Roger, “James Jeffrey Roche and the Boston Pilot,” New England Quarterly, 33, 3 (1960), 341–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 343.
27 After O'Reilly's untimely death in 1890, Roche – an Irish-born Canadian immigrant to America who had served on the Pilot staff for seven years – assumed editorship of the Boston Pilot. Roche and Theodore Roosevelt were close friends, which led to Roche's appointment as consul to Italy and later to Switzerland between 1905 and 1908. See Roche, John Boyle O'Reilly.
28 Roche, 200.
29 Ibid., 200.
30 Bacon, Edwin Monroe, Bacon's Dictionary of Boston, ed. Ellis, George Edward (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1886), 66Google Scholar.
31 Willis, who had attended Yale too early to benefit from the new boxing curriculum in physical education, was assaulted by Forrest in 1852. Forrest, noted for his strenuous physical training in gymnastics and boxing, had received rumors of Willis's having an affair with his wife. See Baker, Thomas N., Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 128–30Google Scholar.
32 Roche, 205.
33 For a description of O'Reilly's participation in Cribb Club-sponsored prizefighting in Boston see Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America, 127.
34 Roche, 202.
35 Ibid. 200.
36 Morgan, The Life Work of Edward A. Moseley, quoted in Kenneally, From the Earth, chapter 14 n. 11.
37 Moseley quoted in Kenneally, location 5474.
38 Ibid., location 5480.
39 Kenneally, From the Earth, provides a capsule history of the Pilot, which throughout its history had served a Catholic readership in Boston. When O'Reilly joined the Pilot in 1870, the paper had been published more or less continuously for 40 years under various names: The Jesuit (1829), the United States Catholic Intelligencer (1831), the Jesuit again (1833), the Literary and Catholic Sentinel (1835), and The Pilot (1836).
40 In his study of boxing and working-class assimilation, Gerald R. Gems observes that involvement in amateur boxing followed United States immigrant patterns. Irish immigrants emerged as notable boxers later in the nineteenth century, and Italian immigrant boxers followed. “By 1928 there were more Jews in the ranks of [American] boxing than any other ethnic group.” See Gems, “The Politics of Boxing,” 90.
41 Masculine segregation among Boston men was notably strong during the era of John L. Sullivan and John O'Reilly Boyle, according to Isenberg: “In these ‘privileged enclaves’, such as clubs, colleges, and professional or service-oriented brotherhoods, men could glory in their superiority and continue boyish behavior patterns well into middle age.” Isenberg, 48.
42 Cited in “The Boxing World,” Encyclopedia Britannica, at www.britannica.com/sports/boxing/Boxings-legal-status, accessed 24 June 2018. Commonwealth v. Colberg (1876), a Massachusetts case outlawing boxing, including amateur matches, was in force at the time John Boyle O'Reilly and his companions began their club boxing matches.
43 “The Boxing World.” Gems, “The Politics of Boxing,” notes that the 1897 Oxford–Cambridge boxing match, which had been preceded by a certain amount of intramural collegiate boxing in the United States since the 1880s, launched a half-century of increasing popularity of college boxing in England and America. Boxing was added to the modern Olympic Games in 1904. By the 1930s, boxing was second only to American football among spectators of collegiate athletics in the United States.
44 According to sports historian Leroy Ashby, by 1850 professional boxing was the most popular spectator sport in the nation, even though – due to fatalities and serious injuries – it had been made illegal in numerous parts of the country. See Ashby, With Amusement for All, 65.
45 Quoted in ibid., 94. See also Isenberg, 113.
46 George S. Hage, Games People Played: Sports in Minnesota Newspapers, 1860–1890, at http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/47/v47i08p321-328.pdf, accessed 24 June 2018.
47 Sullivan, John L., Life and Reminiscences of a 19th Century Gladiator; by John L. Sullivan, Champion of the World. With Reports of Physical Examinations and Measurements. Illustrated by Full-Page Half-Tone Plates, and by Anthropometrical Chart, by Dr. Dudley A. Sargent (Boston: Jas. A. Hearn, 1892), 281Google Scholar.
48 O'Reilly, John Boyle, Watchwords, ed. Conway, Katherine E. (Boston: Thomas A. Flynn, 1907), 26Google Scholar. Ashton provides this summary of O'Reilly's work as a poet: “His specialty was ballad stanza political couplets that would call out for freedom and against tyranny. These immensely popular poems, written in a romantic and sentimental tradition, promoted a genteel bourgeois sensibility … these poems appealed to the Irish immigrants who sought assimilation and to well-established Bostonians alike.”
49 O'Reilly, Watchwords, 26.
50 Historian John F. Kasson connects the rise in athletics culture during the postbellum decades with the burgeoning industrial economy of the United States, which in turn was fueled by large-scale immigration: “The nation's population continued to be the fastest growing in the world, leaping from fewer than forty million in 1870 to roughly sixty-three million in 1890 and nearly 92 million in 1910.” Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man, 12.
51 O'Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 151; also reprinted in O'Reilly, Watchwords, 28.
52 Kasson, 12. On the development of gay subculture in New York City during this period see Chauncy, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1995)Google Scholar.
53 Green, Fit for America, 182.
54 Quoted in Roche, John Boyle O'Reilly, 311.
55 O'Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 3, 4.
56 Osborne, Duffield, “A Defense of Pugilism,” North American Review, 146 (April 1888), 434–5Google Scholar.
57 O'Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 38–39.
58 Ibid., 84.
59 Quoted in Roche, 226.
60 O'Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 85.
61 For a detailed discussion of Hewlett's boxing career and his pathway to the Harvard physical education faculty see Smith, Kevin, Black Genesis: The History of the Black Prizefighter, 1760–1870 (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2003), 132–38Google Scholar. Leonard, Fred Eugene, A Guide to the History of Physical Education (Philadelphia: Lee and Febiger, 1923), 269–70Google Scholar, has more details on Hewlett's activities in the larger context of Harvard physical education. Hewlett's importance has been underappreciated by historians. Frederick Douglass's son, Frederick Douglass Jr., married Aaron Molineaux Hewlett's daughter, Virginia Hewlett. See Fount, Leigh, Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 268Google Scholar.
62 O'Reilly, Ethics of Manly Sport, 87.
63 Ibid., 148–50.
64 Ibid., 58.
65 Ibid., 62.
66 Ibid., 77.
67 Ibid., 74, 69.
68 Ibid., 173.
69 Ibid., 174. O'Reilly's amateur research on the historic development of Irish bronze weaponry cites the “year of the world” (year of Christ's birth) dating of 4655, which is adjusted here as an approximation.
70 Ibid., 185, 188. O'Reilly stipulates that early Irish military competitions were essentially sporting events and not simply training activities, noting in passing, “Many, if not all, of these feats, were not regarded as feats of arms intended for actual use in combat, but were merely ornamental accomplishments and proofs of skill.” Ibid., 188.
71 Quoted in Roche, John Boyle O'Reilly, 352.
72 In 1794 the English writers Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had discussed establishing an egalitarian utopian community, what they described as a Pantisocracy, in the Susquehanna river valley in Pennsylvania; their plans were abandoned in 1796.
73 William Cullen Bryant, “The Night Journey of a River,” in The Complete Poems of William Cullen Bryant (New York: Frederick Stokes and Company), 237, quoted in O’Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 319.
74 O'Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, 335.