Part 19: Shin Kicking in America

Rather than Australia, he might have been more at home in America.

The most gruesome account of shin kicking comes from the US, where Welsh coalminers introduced "purring" to Pennsylvania.

The New York Sunday Mercury described a "purr" outside Philadelphia between two fighters known as Grabby and McTevish in 1883.

(And if you're at all squeamish, I suggest you look away now…):

"At two o'clock the men appeared, wearing Lancashire shoes toed with copper, having submitted their feet for inspection to show that there were no protruding nails. Grabby advanced cautiously and…took hold with apparent unwillingness, and then began the most brutal and savage contest that two men could engage in.

For fully five minutes they sparred with their feet in a manner that was simply wonderful. Blows were countered and returned with the same skill and rapidity as shown by men fighting with their fists. Not once in that time did either man more than touch his opponent's skin.

Then McTevish, taking a firmer hold on his opponent's collar, lifted his left foot and, after keeping it poised for a moment, made a straight toe kick for his opponent's right knee.

Grabby deftly avoided the blow by spraddling his legs far apart, and with almost inconceivable quickness brought his left foot around and caught McTevish on the outside of the right calf.

The flesh was laid open almost to the bone, and the blood spurted out in streams.

McTevish never uttered a word. At the same instant that his own leg was cut he gave Grabby what is known as the sole scrape. Beginning at the instep and ending just below the knee pan, Grabby's left shin was scraped almost clear of skin.

Both men were evidently in pain, and angry. They kicked and countered a dozen times again without doing any damage. Then Grabby, by some mishap, lost his hold… In attempting to grasp it again he lifted his eyes for a moment, and before he could recover himself the calves of both of his legs were laid open by a double-foot kick.

In return for this he succeeded in delivering a terrific kick on McTevish's knee, causing him to drop to the ground like a log, pulling the other kicker on top of him.

The seconds rushed forward and separated the men and took them to their corners to bind up their wounds. The first go or round occupied sixteen minutes.

When the call of purr came again the purrers hobbled to the centre and took another hold. They were, indeed, a pitiable looking affair. McTevish's legs, although bound up in plaster, were bleeding freely, and the exposed places looked like beefsteak.

His opponent's shins had both been scraped clean of the flesh, and the blood was oozing out from between the strips of plaster…"

©J.R. Daeschner

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Part 18: Naked Shin Kicking and Drunken Orgies

Even so, shin kicking lived on in gory incarnations throughout the West Country and the rest of the country—as well as America.

Hobnailed boots and metal toecaps weren't enough for some fighting Welshmen; they wore thick shoes with nails sticking out the sides.

Shin kicking was so popular it made it into one of the first Welsh dictionaries in 1793 as 'crimmogiaw' ('crimog' meaning 'shin').

Eventually, though, the Welsh adopted the incongruously gentle term used by their coalmining counterparts in the northwest of England: "purring" (possibly related to "pare" in English or the Scots Gaelic piorr, meaning "to scrape or stab").

In Lancashire, the locals enjoyed clog dancing—a forerunner of American tap-dancing—as well as clog fighting. Only they didn't use the quaint, carved klompen worn by the Dutch; their shoes and boots had horseshoe-like irons hammered to their wooden soles to make them hardwearing.

The leather uppers were fastened with brass nails, and metal toecaps were often added for dancing and fighting.

So "clog toe pie" wasn't a regional delicacy, and "a leather 'n' timber kiss" wasn't a sign of affection; they both meant that you were about to receive a good kicking.

What's more, miners would grapple against each other stark naked, wearing only their clunky, metal-trimmed clogs.

This may have been in imitation of the Greeks, or it simply may have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Whatever the reason, naked shin kicking was common throughout Greater Manchester, when "hot and rebellious liquors were indulged in to excess, and the Sabbath was desecrated and made hideous by drunken orgies".

Miners from Oldham, Bacup and Ashton would pit themselves against quarrymen from Whitworth.

The Oldham "rough heads" were renowned for being as slippery as "snigs," or eels, but their winning streak ended after they were caught cheating by rubbing soap all over their bodies.

Another report tells of a clog fight near Manchester in 1843 between two young men named Ashworth and Clegg—"(both in a state of nudity with the exception of each having on a pair of strong boots)".

They kicked each other for 45 minutes… all for one pound. Both wound up severely injured.

In another fight, Ashworth went on to kill another opponent and emigrate Down Under (aptly enough)—though it's unclear whether this was his choice or Her Majesty's Pleasure.

©J.R. Daeschner

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Part 17: Devious Devonians

What with all the kicking, injuries were inevitable.

"After the wrestling match is over… the wrestlers ought to have room for themselves… to dress one another's legs," he recommended.

But some wounds were beyond doctoring. In an accompanying poem, he recalled seeing a particularly vicious bout as a boy: "One man got kick'd so in four rounds,/That in very few days died of his wounds."

In the West Country, the only place that frowned on shin kicking was Cornwall, home of what may be England's oldest wrestling style.

Originally, Cornish combatants were allowed to use their feet and legs, but only to trip their opponents or hit them with their heels and insteps.

Frontal toe-to-tibia attacks were forbidden, not least because wrestlers usually fought barelegged from the knees down.

Trust their archrivals from the next county over to twist the rules to their advantage.

By the early 1800s, wrestlers in Devon had made two vicious innovations: not only did they trip their opponents, they also whacked them in the shins.

What's more, the devious Devonians took to wearing heavy shoes and hobnail boots—sometimes even baking the soles to make them extra hard.

"By the abuse of this latitude of rules (for it cannot be otherwise regarded than as an abuse) the shoes had been allowed to develop into a hideous weapon armed with a thick sharp-edged sole," a Victorian wrestling expert wrote.

In their defence, Devon's bruisers claimed that kicking had a long pedigree in wrestling: the Greeks had allowed it in their ancient Olympics; unlike Devon's wrestlers, though, the Greeks had fought in the nude.

If Cornish wrestling was brutal, the Devon style could be lethal.

In 1840, a Devon wrestler threw his rival "with so much violence to the ground, that his neck was dislocated and his back dreadfully injured, so that his life for some time despaired of, and he now lies in a precarious state," a newspaper reported.

On another occasion, a 22-year-old died from his wounds.

Not surprisingly, Cornish wrestlers were somewhat… reluctant to fight the Devonians.

But they couldn't walk away from a challenge—especially not from those scoundrels across the River Tamar.

Women wrestling in Devonshire, circa 1898

One of the earliest known showdowns between the two styles took place in 1826 in Devonport, on the county line.

Devon champ Abraham Cann fought Cornwall's James Polkinghorne, a pub landlord.

Whereas the barefoot Cornishman reputedly had a neck like a bull, Cann's boots were soaked in bull's blood.

The match ended in a draw, but Cornwall won out in the long run: although Cornish wrestling has survived to this day, its Devonian pretender eventually died out.

©J.R. Daeschner

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Part 16: America's Founding Shin Kicker

In the interim, though, good old sports like shin kicking and backswording also faced growing opposition.

A small print tucked away in Campden's town hall commemorates a famous backsword match held at Dover's Games, possibly the same year they were shut down.

The local champion, Ebenezer "Nezzy" Plested, and a man called Spiers are locked in combat, wearing breeches and blousy shirts, with one hand bound to their thighs.

The bout lasted a long time—maybe up to an hour and a half. In the end, Plested won the match but lost an eye, while Spiers was "incapacitated for further work" and died two weeks later.

Fatal encounters like that triggered calls to ban the sports.

Thomas Hughes defended backswording but drew the line at shin kicking: "I suppose there are more unsettled points in wrestling, or it is harder to see whether the men are playing fair," he wrote after watching a bout in his home village in 1857.

"Besides, the kicking, which is allowed at elbow and collar wrestling, makes it look brutal very often."

Nevertheless, shin kicking was a crowd-puller.

In the wrestling style that Hughes refers to, competitors gripped their opponents' jackets by the collar and elbow while kicking and throwing each other. Collar and Elbow wrestling--still the national style in Ireland--was even exported to America.

As a teenager, George Washington had been a champion Collar and Elbow wrestler (and at least two other presidents followed his example).

During the War of Independence, Washington supposedly took time out to wrestle seven of his soldiers, throwing them one after the other; not bad for a man of 47.

It's unclear whether America's Founding Father stooped to shin kicking, but Collar and Elbow wrestling did allow tibial attacks in Britain.



George Washington: Shin Kicker... and Zombie Hunter


While Hughes frowned on kicking in the West Country, on the east coast of England, "Collars and Elbow men" would batter each other in a now-extinct style known as Norfolk wrestling.

(Incidentally, Norfolk was the birthplace of Cotswold Olimpicks founder Robert Dover.)

A veteran gamester wrote a pamphlet on "The Whole Art of Norfolk Wrestling" in the 1830s.

In it, Charles Layton, nicknamed "The Celebrated Game Chicken" (roosters attack with their claws in cockfights), described the wrestlers' footwear as long socks and genie-style shoes with curled-up toes to help them hook each other's ankles.

Officials would check combatants' legs and feet beforehand to prevent cheats from using shin pads or shoes with nails in them.

"It requires a good temper and a great deal of caution" to avoid "getting desperately kicked," Layton wrote. "Kick sharp or faint, kick high, kick low, to kick certain is the main thing."

©J.R. Daeschner

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Part 15: The Inspiration for the Modern Olympics

In fact, just as England's first Olimpicks and other festivals were being shut down, a replacement of sorts was beginning barely 60 miles away, in the Shropshire village of Much Wenlock.

These new games, started in 1850, were similar in spirit to Dover's early competition and went on to inspire the Frenchman who founded the modern Olympics.

The Wenlock Olympian Games included ancient contests like racing and modern events such as football.

Their founder, Dr. William Penny Brookes, had read about Dover's Olimpicks in one of his favourite books, which he gave as a prize at the Wenlock event.


Dr. William Penny Brookes


Just as Dover had defended his "harmelesse honest sports" against the Puritans 200 years earlier, Penny Brookes hailed the "harmless recreation" of "Merrie England" and talked of the need to train "a noble, manly race" to build the Empire and prevent the "physical degeneracy" seen in France and America.

However, Penny Brookes had his own puritanical leanings.

As an archetypal Victorian reformer, he believed in temperance.

What's more, it wasn't enough that the games were fun; they had to serve a Higher Moral Purpose.

"As Christians we should, on moral grounds, endeavour to direct the amusement of the working classes—as patriots we should recognise and promote them."

Despite some powerful opponents, the doctor's crusade quickly grew from its village roots to become the National Olympian Association.

Penny Brookes was working on the most ambitious phase—an international event in Athens—when he came across a young Frenchman who had the same goal, as well as the connections to make it happen.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was that rarest of things: a Frenchman who admired Britain.

The future founder of the Olympics had read Tom Brown's Schooldays and come to believe in its ethos of "muscular Christianity".

"Since ancient Greece has passed away, the Anglo-Saxon race is the only one that fully appreciates the moral influence of physical culture," he wrote.

The 27-year-old made a pilgrimage to Much Wenlock in 1890.

Unfortunately, Penny Brookes died four months before De Coubertin staged the first modern Olympics in 1896.

However, he is still regarded as "the father of the English Olympics", and Wenlock continues to host its games every July.

Meanwhile, Robert Dover's contribution was all but forgotten. Britain's oldest Olimpicks were killed off in 1852 after Rev. Bourne succeeded in enclosing Dover's Hill.

The organisers stayed defiant to the end.

As the vicar won his legal victory in Parliament, they looked to the future: "The celebrated and renowned Olimpic (sic) Games… are esteemed by all brave, true and free-spirited Britons," their posters declared. "The good old times will be revived."

* * *

©J.R. Daeschner

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