Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

676 Women in the Martial Arts
named Lascarina Bouboulina, who commands ships in battle against the
Turks and Egyptians, and takes pride in taking and discarding lovers like
a man.
1822 In London, Martha Flaherty fights Peg Carey for a prize of £18;
the fight, which starts at 5:30 A.M., is won by Flaherty, whose training has
included drinking most of a pint of gin before the match. Female prizefighting
was a function of the low prevailing wage rate for unskilled female
labor. (Assuming she worked as a fur sewer or seamstress, Flaherty’s prize
exceeded a year’s wages.) Attire included tight-fitting jackets, short petticoats,
and Holland drawers. Wrestling, kicking, punching, and kneeing
were allowed. Women with greater economic freedom usually preferred
playing gentler games. For instance, although Eton did not play Harrow in
cricket until 1805—Lord Byron was on the losing Harrovian side—Miss S.
Norcross of Surrey batted a century in 1788.
1829 The Swiss educator Phokian Clias publishes a popular physical
education textbook called Kalisthenie (the title comes from the Greek
words meaning “beauty” and “strength”). Clias favored light to moderate
exercise, and rejected ball games for women because he thought they required
too much use of the shoulder and pectoral muscles.
About 1830 An Italian woman named Rosa Baglioni is described as
perhaps the finest stage fencer in Germany.
1832 Warning that lack of exercise produces softness, debility, and unfitness,
American educator Catherine Beecher publishes A Course of Calisthenics
for Young Ladies; the best exercise for a woman, according to Mrs.
Beecher, is vigorous work with mop and washtub. No liberation there.
Then, in 1847, Lydia Mary Child, author of The Little Girl’s Own Book,
became slightly more adventurous, saying that “skating, driving hoop, and
other boyish sports may be practiced to great advantage by little girls provided
they can be pursued within the enclosure of a garden or court; in the
street, of course, they would be highly improper” (Guttman 1991, 91).
1847 Queen Victoria decides that women who served aboard British
warships during the Napoleonic Wars will not receive the General Service
Medal. At least three women applied, and many more were technically eligible.
But they were all denied. Explained Admiral Thomas Byam Martin,
“There were many women in the fleet equally useful, and [issuing awards
to women] will leave the Army exposed to innumerable applications of the
same nature” (Stark 1996, 80–81; fn. 66, 184).
About 1850 After catching her trying to steal their horses, Flathead
Indians club to death a Blackfeet war chief called Running Eagle. As Blackfeet
men frequently rode naked into battle as a way of showing that they
had nothing to lose by fighting, it cannot be argued that Running Eagle
masqueraded as a man. Instead, it seems to have been fairly common for