A Thousand Blows: the real history behind the Victorian boxing drama
From bruisers and cunning thieves to bare-knuckle brawls, the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows offers viewers a ringside seat for the world of Victorian boxing. Ellie Cawthorne speaks to two historical consultants on the show, Hallie Rubenhold and Sarah Elizabeth Cox, to find out more…
A Thousand Blows, the latest historical drama from the mind of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, takes place in 1880s London and follows a cast of characters seeking to carve out a name for themselves in the capital – both through boxing and more nefarious means.
But how much of what we see on screen is based on real history? How accurate are the boxing scenes? And was there really a gang of female thieves called the Forty Elephants?
**Warning, you may find some spoilers ahead**
Are the characters in A Thousand Blows based on real people?
From Sugar Goodson and Mary Carr to Hezekiah Moscow, several of the central characters are inspired and named after real people – although, in most cases, the resemblance is pretty loose and the character arcs are largely fictional.
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Was Hezekiah Moscow a real boxer?
In A Thousand Blows, Hezekiah Moscow (played by Malachi Kirby) is fresh off the boat from Jamaica with his friend Alec Monroe (Francis Lovehall). And according to the show’s historical consultant on Victorian boxing, Sarah Elizabeth Cox, both Moscow and Monroe were real boxers in this period.
The real Hezekiah Moscow arrived in London in the early 1880s, and the 1891 census reveals he was from the Caribbean. However, since his country of origin was simply listed as ‘West Indies’, we don't know if he was definitely Jamaican, as portrayed in the show.
In the opening episode, a promise of work as a lion tamer doesn’t turn out as Moscow imagined, and he is forced to turn to boxing to make money. However, the real Hezekiah did in fact have a career as a bear tamer and a lion tamer at the East London Aquarium, while also boxing at night.
Kirby’s Moscow speaks Chinese and is described as having a Chinese grandmother. Again, the show’s creators are drawing on aspects of the real Moscow here, who boxed under the name ‘Ching Hook’.
The real Hezekiah had a decade-long career as a well-respected lightweight and boxing trainer, but in 1892 his story took a strange turn
“It’s unclear where he got that name, but in the early days of his boxing career, newspapers described him as a ‘black Chinaman’,” says Cox. “We do know that there were Chinese people in the Caribbean when Moscow was born there in the early 1860s, so there's a good chance that he may have been of mixed heritage, but we don’t know for certain.”
The real Hezekiah had a decade-long career as a well-respected lightweight and boxing trainer, but in 1892 his story took a strange turn. After walking out on his wife and daughter, Moscow disappeared, never to be seen again. Years later, a fellow boxer told his wife that he had spotted ‘Ching Hook’ working on the docks in New York, penniless and alone. However, the story was never verified.
“I’ve never found him on the Ellis Island records, but he could have been using an alias,” says Cox. “So in terms of his life story, the character in A Thousand Blows is loosely based on Moscow and shares his name, but that’s where the similarities end.”
Were Sugar Goodson and Treacle Goodson real people?
Known as ‘Sugar’ and ‘Treacle’, Henry and Tom Goodson were real people, sons of a haulage man. One theory is that their nicknames may have come from the products they were hauling. Both brothers were boxers, but neither were major champions, says Cox.
The family’s real success in the world would come later. “Sugar and Treacle’s sons actually became more popular boxers than the brothers themselves.”
Born in the mid-1850s, the real Sugar Goodson would have been around 25 years younger than the grizzled veteran boxer played by Stephen Graham in A Thousand Blows – and had only one working eye.
He was best known at the time for an infamous illegal prize fight that took place in a London chapel in 1882.
“It’s unclear whether this was a bare-knuckle fight, but it was prosecuted as such,” says Cox. The blasphemous bout was busted by undercover police, and became a massive press scandal. “The idea of fighting in a church, and betting on the communion table was absolutely shocking!” explains Cox.
Although Sugar Goodson later became a publican, his trouble-making reputation followed him. He was arrested for another prize fight in a barn in 1884, and had run-ins with the law for assaulting his brother and drunkenly shouting in the street.
“I'm not quite sure why Sugar Goodson specifically was chosen for A Thousand Blows (beyond the fact that he's got a really cool name), but there are certainly elements of truth behind Stephen Graham's interpretation of him,” says Cox. “Those aspects of his bad-boy character definitely come out in Stephen's performance.”
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Was there a real female gang called the Forty Elephants?
Outside of the boxing ring, A Thousand Blows takes us back to the murky underworld of Victorian crime, arm-in-arm with a gang of female thieves called the Forty Elephants. But in this era of tight corsets and stifling gender expectations, was there really an all-female criminal gang?
Well yes, the Forty Elephants were a real gang, in existence from at least the 1870s, but possibly as early as the 18th century.
They were known for perpetrating what they called ‘hoists’ in which they would rob department stores wearing a variety of disguises, even using fake pockets and false arms. Sometimes the Elephants would avert suspicion by pretending to be upper-class women, and at other times, they acted as housemaids, using false references to infiltrate and burgle households.
- Read more about the real Forty Elephants
In the first episode, we see Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) pretending to give birth on the street, while the other gang members pickpocket the watching crowd. And according to Hallie Rubenhold, a historical consultant on the show, this is exactly the kind of stunt the Forty Elephants were known for.
“A gang member might follow a well-to-do man down an alley and suddenly start screaming he had tried to rape her. Other Elephants who were waiting in the wings would back her up and threaten to call a constable. Mary Carr would turn to the horrified man and say ‘this will all go away if you give me £50’. If he refused, she would just grab his watch and run.”
Was Mary Carr a real person?
Yes, the “queen” of the Forty Elephants gang was indeed a woman named Mary Carr. She used several different aliases, including Mary Crane, and had a long and largely profitable criminal career, despite various spells in prison. “Her family lived in Lambeth quite comfortably – which goes to show that for some people at the time, crime really did pay,” says Hallie Rubenhold.
Unexpectedly for a gang boss, Carr was also a life model for the esteemed painter, Frederic, Lord Leighton. It’s even speculated that she may have been the model for his 1895 painting Flaming June. However, “there’s no evidence that she knew Hezekiah Moscow, so there’s a bit of historical imagination at play there,” explains Rubenhold.
Was Victorian London really racially diverse?
From Jamaican boxers Hezekiah and Alec to the Chinese landlord Mr Lao, the show presents us with a diverse vision of Victorian London. And according to Hallie Rubenhold, this isn’t just a 21st-century reimagination, but a reflection of Britain’s global empire at the time.
“The idea that everybody was white in London at the time is just ridiculous,” she says. “It just simply wasn't the case. The East End was in fact quite diverse. Limehouse, for example, had a significant Chinese population.”
As Sarah Elizabeth Cox explains, boxing was not segregated in Britain at this time, and there were several black boxers on the circuit alongside Moscow and Munroe in the 1880s, including the American Jack Davenport and Australian Peter Jackson.
Are the boxing scenes in A Thousand Blows realistic?
A Thousand Blows is set in the 1880s, and according to Sarah Elizabeth Cox, this was a fascinating era for British boxing. As seen in the show, two worlds co-existed uneasily within the sport at the time. One was respectable regulated boxing, which involved wearing gloves and following the ‘Queensberry Rules’. The other was illegal prize-fighting, fought with bare fists and decried by the press for its brutality. These matches could last for hours and were regularly busted by the police.
The character of Sugar Goodson encapsulates this divide between illegal prize-fighting and respectable boxing. He refuses to wear gloves, and we see him duking it out with anyone who thinks they’re hard enough at a pub called the Blue Coat Boy. So, could you really head down to your local boozer to enjoy a few rounds of boxing along with your round of drinks?
According to Sarah Elizabeth Cox, prize-fighting was happening on the sly “absolutely everywhere” in Victorian London, and “pretty much every pub in East London had a back room boxing saloon”.
The Blue Coat Boy was a real pub in Spitalfields, home to a boxing saloon run by Punch Lewis (played by Daniel Mays), and boxing nights there were indeed run by the Goodson brothers. This ‘taking on all-comers’ type of tournament was more associated with wrestling than boxing at the time, explains Cox, “but I do think that the way the Blue Coat Boy has been designed is brilliant, and the atmosphere that’s created is fantastic”.
Cox’s work also helped inform the costume choices. As she explains: “A lot of photos from this period show boxers posing in studios, bare-chested and wearing white tights.
“But in the ring, they were in fact often flashy dressers, wearing purple knickerbockers or black tights, with colourful scarves around their waists. It was a lot more colourful than you might assume, and I think A Thousand Blows has done a fantastic job of showing that.”
Is A Thousand Blows historically accurate?
When you're watching A Thousand Blows, it’s worth bearing in mind that although the details may have been switched around a bit, the real history is just as interesting.
As Hallie Rubenhold puts it: “It's always important to remember this is television, so inevitably, it’s not necessarily an accurate representation of what happened.
“But the wonderful thing about period dramas like this is that they can be a gateway drug to hardcore history. A lot of the characters are based on fascinating real people and I think there is a lot to be learned from the show about the experiences of women, and black and Chinese people in Victorian London.”
Sarah Elizabeth Cox and Hallie Rubenhold were speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full episode ad-free at HistoryExtra.com/podcast
A Thousand Blows is available to stream on Disney+. You can sign up to Disney+ for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year now.
Authors
Ellie Cawthorne is HistoryExtra’s podcast editor. She also contributes to BBC History Magazine, runs the podcast newsletter and hosts several live and virtual BBC History Magazine events.