Cockfighting in Cumbria since 1850 contested popular culture
Cock-fighting in Cumbria since 1850: contested popular culture. Dr Guy Woolnough Criminology School of Social Sciences and Public Policy Keele University g. woolnough@keele. ac. uk @Guy. Woolnough
Cock fighting today: 2001: 14 arrested at a cockfight, Lancaster October 2012. Two arrested in Sussex January 2014. Four arrested at a cockfight in Kent Deviant culture Atavistic Outsiders
6 & 5 ( , 5 3 8 1 , t c A s al m i n A o t y t l e Cru ; ) 9 5. c , V I m W l a u t c e f f e e , r s l o a m m i e n h t A r o o t f y t l Act e u r C f o n o i t ) n 2 e 9 v. e c , Pr t c i V 3 1 & 2 1 ( 9 4 8 1 Peachey, B. F. , The Cockfighters: A Survey and Analysis of the Sport of Cockfighting in Britain, 1991 -1992 (1993) The Cock Fight, English (anon) c. 1850 Compton Verney
1849 Cruelty to animals prevention. An act for the more effectual prevention of cruelty to animals. http: //gateway. proquest. com/openurl ? url_ver=Z 39. 882004&res_dat=xri: hcpp&rft_dat=xri: hc pp: fulltext: 1849 -025592: 4
The Westmorland Gazette, 5 Jul 2012 Sarah Calderbank, Cumbria Wildlife Trust: “The RSPCA …. . only aware of about 12 prosecutions …. since 1835. …. it was hard to break into the secretive world of the cruel sport. ” Jennie Massie, b 1944, lived in Loweswater. Cock fighting in the 1960 s, “I know there was still cock fighting and a lot of the farms still had game birds. If it was a rough farm and they had game birds you knew pretty well that there was going to be cock fighting. ”
Many respectable citizens, including magistrates, support and attend cock fights. Humber, R. D. , Game Cock & Countryman, 1966 1937: a question in the House. Do Cumbria police collude with cockfighters? Mr Messer to the Home Secretary, 18 Feb 1937. House of Commons Debates, 320 (cc 1346), 13461347
Barrow in Furness archives The collections of Harper Gaythorp, and other local historians who were interested in cock-fighting. Extracts from the Ulverston News, no date. “…on the lawn of a city magnate’s summer residence. There were quite a lot of ladies present, and again only three magistrates …. we had about 80 miles to motor to the rendezvous…. a collier called out: ‘Hey! There’s a mon here takkin fotygrafs. Does everybody know everybody? ’ This was greeted with a roar of laughter. Then a magistrate stood up and ‘You know quite well what our friend means. Can you guarantee the bone fides of everyone you have brought with you? ’…”
George Patrickson, Scales, Aldingham, Furness. Died 1915, leaving £ 165, 000 Left over £ 100, 000 to charity. Worked in the USA on the railways. In the Midlands as a Land Agent Retired to Cumbria and bought a farm estate. Elected to County Council 1887. Leading Conservative.
Agreement for a meeting between two parties, to be held at Scales, refereed by Patrickson The results of a ‘main’, written onto a typed and copied programme.
South Cumberland Furness Cock-fighting Club, had a successful main on Saturday last, in the neighbourhood of Whitbeck. It is to be regretted that your contemporary was not in a position to publish the names of the hardened law breakers, who took part in this disgraceful affair. Westmorland Gazette, 10 May 1890 p 8 Favourable to cock-fighting: Hostile to cock-fighting: Westmorland Gazette Carlisle Journal Barrow News Kendal Mercury Whitehaven News Barrow Herald
The Carlisle Journal, 1863 • Deplored ‘over-legislation’ • Criticised the SPCA for ‘sneaking’ and getting information from servants to catch cock-fighters. • Asserted ‘cock fighting should be allowed to make itself respectable or die out under the pressure of growing public opinion’. Carlisle Journal, 18 Sept 1863
Who spoke out against cock-fighting? Nothing from John Ruskin and Canon Rawnsley Nothing from the Chief Constable of the Cumberland Westmorland Constabulary. From the Kendal Mercury: 1851, a factory fete praised because the drunken cock-fight had been replaced with a public examination of the Sunday school scholars. 1867, Mr Balmer, factory foreman. Fellside had been transformed since his childhood 40 years ago. The Chapel had supplanted cockfighting and drunkenness.
Respectable, manly. Disreputable, blackguards and blockheads Wrestling Foot-racing Prize-fighting Dog fighting Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown speaking to young working men, Carlisle 1858, reported in Carlisle Journal
The Difficulties of Policing Cock-fights. Petty Sessions, Kendal 1864: One defendant said to “PC Currie ‘If they [those at the main] were all of my mind you (the police) should not go home with whole bones (Laughter)’” Defendants admitted owning the cocks , fitting them with spurs, fighting them. “the bench ‘did not consider the case sufficiently strong against the defendants to convict them upon the evidence. They were sorry they could do no more. ’”
Kendal, 1864: the defence. A cock is not an animal The defendants did not do anything cruel to the birds. (it was the birds that chose to fight) The event at Cunswick took place in the open, not in a managed place. There was no evidence that anyone had managed the event.
Cock-fighting was supported in every class. Some magistrates were sympathetic, some gentlemen attended cock-fights. Opposition was limited. ‘cock fight in local culture. Cock-fighting was entrenched i a n l g l o s But there was some opposition from the ‘respectable’ w h o e u d r l e d be t s o pecta working class. m a ke its b l e or di the p e l f e ressu depended Successful prosecution on the determination, o u t u r e n d o initiative and action of ordinary policemen, e pudiscretionary f r g r b owin l i c and the commitment o ofpthe magistrates. g inion ’. th By the end of the 19 century, the police were prosecuting fewer cases, but the sport had a loyal following in Cumbria well into the 20 th century.
Norbert Elias, Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell, The Civilizing Process; Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); N. Elias, E. Dunning, Quest for Excitement. Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) Rosalind Crone, Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century London, (MUP: 2012); Mike Huggins and J. A. Mangan, Disreputable Pleasures: Less Virtuous Victorians at Play, (London: Cass, 2004). Norbert Elias, ‘The Genesis of Sport as a Sociological Problem’, in Eric Dunning, The Sociology of Sport: a Selection of Readings, (London: Cass, 1971) 108 -9. Robert Storch, ‘The Policeman as Domestic Missionary: Urban Discipline and Popular Culture in Northern England, 1850 -1880. ’ Journal of Social History, 9. 4 (1976), 481. John K. Walton and John Walvin, eds, Leisure in Britain, 1780 -1939. (MUP 1983), 12 -28. Peter Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian city (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England the Question of Class, 1848 -1914 (CUP, 1994), 1 -16. Martin J. Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830 -1914, (CUP, 1990) F. M. L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: a Social History of Victorian Britain (London: Fontana 1988).
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