Two Girls in the Ring

In September 1886, an unofficial boxing match took place on Staniford Street between two young girls, Lizzie and Mollie. The bout involved a makeshift ring, drawn-up terms, a referee, and two-hundred young people in a crowd. When a police officer arrived, the fight quickly ended, but the event made front-page news, and linked the West End to a century-old tradition of women and girls’ boxing in 1700s Britain.

On September 28, 1886, the front page of the Boston Globe reported on an unusual sporting event on Staniford Street in the historic West End: an informally-organized boxing match between two young girls, Lizzie and Mollie (no last names given). The reporter, who observed that the West End had many successful athletes, suggested that the two girls, younger than 14, may have been some of the first girls to take up boxing in the 19th century. According to the Globe, “the West End has developed many good oarsmen, sprint-runners and boxers, and has contributed many valuable acquisitions to the sporting world.This same section of the city now comes to the front with probably the only girl pugilists on record.” Lizzie and Mollie may have in fact been some of the first “girl pugilists” in the United States, just two years before the first women’s boxing championship match in 1888, in New York. Lizzie and Mollie used gloves in their fight, yet bare-knuckle boxing matches between women and girls had an earlier precedent in 1700s Britain, where fighters like Elizabeth Wilkinson had even boxed against men. The West End, in at least one reported instance, was connected to this boxing tradition decades before notable West Enders, like Arthur “Hy” Diamond, won professional fights at the Boston Garden.

Over multiple days in September 1886, Lizzie, the younger sister of a West End boxer, and Mollie, who had no brothers, fought their own unsanctioned boxing matches, with friends as referees and drawn-up terms for each bout. One Sunday evening, after the fighters agreed upon the location of Staniford Street, a crowd of 200 young people arrived to see Lizzie and Mollie fight in a makeshift ring (with corners and rope) put together on the street. The young girl boxers exchanged words after shaking hands, as “Lizzie glanced fiercely at her rival, and said: ‘you are bigger than me, but I can do you up in two minutes, you mean old thing!’” The Boston Globe described in vivid detail the exchange of blows between Lizzie and Mollie. After thirty seconds of right and left hooks to the ear, the nose, and the chin, the first round was called in Lizzie’s favor. The second round was a stalemate, as “both were much refreshed and each seemed more determined than ever to vanquish her obnoxious rival.”

The bout between Lizzie and Mollie ended abruptly when a young boy yelled out, “cheese it! Der’s [sic] a cop! You’d better skin” (“cheese it” and “you’d better skin” were British slang terms in the 19th century). The children saw an Officer Grey emerge near an adjacent building, and the crowd quickly fled the scene. On September 27, 1886, Lizzie and Mollie agreed again to fight at the same time and place, but neither showed up because the street was being watched. Boxing in the West End, and the city as a whole, continued to grow as residents gained a greater interest in the sport – evidenced in part by this unofficial, youth-organized boxing match. In the early 20th century, boys’ boxing matches at the West End Athletic Club captivated audiences, such as in 1905 when Jimmy Briggs from Chelsea, Massachusetts defeated “Kid” Coffey from New York. Women’s boxing matches took place at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, and more young women in Boston were trained in boxing by the 1920s.

The reporting of Lizzie and Mollie’s fight might seem, for some, to be proof of a slow news day in the 1880s. But the press fairly acknowledged, in this story, that the West End was a hub of promising athletes of many kinds in the 19th century, even girls coming to blows for a crowd on Staniford Street.