All-in Wrestling in Inter-War Britain: Science and Spectacle in Mass Observation's ‘Worktown’

Abstract

All-in wrestling was established as a spectator sport in the 1930s and appealed primarily to a working-class audience. All-in was controversial because of its excessive violence and its blend of the spectacular and dramatic with sport, which led to accusations that it was not really a sport. Nevertheless, it retained many characteristics of sport, and audiences consumed it as such. All-in wrestling was an outcome of the evolution of a traditional ancient sport into a commercial entertainment and represented an extreme conflation of sport and drama. Using records of All-in wrestling in the Mass Observation Archive, this paper explores the ways in which audiences negotiated the tensions between sport and spectacle.

Keywords::

• spectacle
• spectators
• commercialism
• consumption
• Americanisation

Notes

^1.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 28–30; Tamborini et al., “The Raw Nature,” 202; Hunt, “Hell in a Cell”; Lachlan et al., “The Spiral of Violence,” 56; Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 31–40.

^2.Kent, A Pictorial History of Wrestling, 193; Oberholzer, Recreative Wrestling, 11.

^3.McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 362.

^4.Kent, A Pictorial History of Wrestling, 173; Stone, “Wrestling,” 308–9. Harrisson, in Mass Observation's investigation of All-in in Bolton (Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation, 128–38), noted that All-in had become a popular sport throughout Britain with ‘no press help’ and that in Bolton it was not reported in local newspapers.

^5.Times, October 23, 1931. The Times reported sporadically on All-in throughout the 1930s, usually as a social phenomenon rather than a sport, giving insight to mainstream opinion.

^6.Huggins, “The Regular Re-Invention,” 41.

^7.Arlott, The Oxford Companion, 1116.

^8.Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes, xxxv; Wigglesworth, The Evolution of English Sport, 13.

^9.Kent, A Pictorial History of Wrestling, 107; Sim, Pleasures and Pastimes, 161.

^10.Cannon, A Dictionary of British History.

^11. Bachelors of Windsor Handbill, “Revels of Windsor,” August 22, 1831.

^12.Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes, 80–2; Stone, “Wrestling,” 302.

^13.Arlott, TheOxford Companion, 1113–6; Golby and Purdue, TheCivilization of the Crowd, 64; Judd “The Oddest Combination”; Malcolmson, Popular Recreations, 21. Malcolmson also records wrestling to have been popular in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Norfolk in both formal and informal contexts.

^14.Arlott, TheOxford Companion, 1113.

^15.Leonard, A Handbook of Wrestling, maintained that Catch-as-Catch-Can was another name for ‘loose’ wrestling which was little practised outside the County of Lancashire and thus commonly known as Lancashire wrestling; Holt, Sport and the British, 60.

^16.Armstrong, Wrestling, xi.

^17.Arlott, TheOxford Companion, 1113.

^18.Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, 27; Malcolmson, Popular Recreations, 73.

^19.Morning Chronicle, August 29, 1826; May 20, 1828.

^20.Chaudhuri, “In the Ring,” 1762. This occurred, for example, at the bare-knuckle fight between John Heenan and Tom Sayers in Hampshire in 1860.

^21.Anderson, “Pugilistic Prosecutions”; Malcolmson, Popular Recreations, 57.

^22.Huggins, “The Regular Re-Invention,” 42.

^23.Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, March 31, 1850.

^24.Lancaster Gazette, June 15, 1867.

^25.Bailey, Leisure and Class, 155–9.

^26.Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, 35.

^27.Poole, Popular Leisure, 51–73. Poole's account of audience behaviour in Bolton's nineteenth-century music halls bears notable similarities to that displayed by All-in wrestling audiences of the 1930s.

^28.Royal Strand Theatre, “Playbill”; Norwood, “Pugilists and Greasepaint,” provides a detailed account of the incorporation of boxing in nineteenth-century dramatic entertainment which helps contextualise that of wrestling.

^29.Hall, “Classical Mythology.”

^30.Era, January 30, 1870.

^31.Bailey, “Holland, William (1837–1895).”

^32.Bradford Observer, January 28, 1870.

^33.Era, February 13, 1870.

^34.Derby Mercury, February 2, 1870.

^35.Era, February 13, 1870.

^36.Morning Post, December 2, 1887; Liverpool Mercury, January 24, 1893; Dundee Courier, July 7, 1894.

^37.Dundee Courier, July 7, 1894.

^38.Morning Post, December 1, 1900.

^39.Lloyds Weekly, April 17, 1870.

^40.Glasgow Herald, July 15, 1891.

^41.North Eastern Daily Gazette, February 15, 1897.

^42.Lancaster Gazette, October 14, 1893, reported of the court case of a fight at Failsworth near Oldham between local men J. Burns and T. Jones; the former was bribed to lose.

^43.Liverpool Mercury, February 23, 1870, reported that the Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling Society was seeking to rescue the old ‘north countrie’ pastime from its disreputable position.

^44.Murfin, Popular Leisure, 107–8.

^45.Harrison, Wrestling, 16; Oakeley, Blue Blood, 23.

^46.Hackenschmidt, The Way to Live.

^47.Lindaman, “Wrestling's Hold”; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 37–42. See also Gardiner, The Thirties, 514–24, for further details of the physical culture movement in inter-war Britain.

^48.Bailey, “Holland, William (1837–1895)”; Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 147–8. Cochran's other enterprises included the management of Houdini, the escapologist, and the presentation of freak shows, roller-skating and performing fleas.

^49.Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 35.

^50.Lindaman, “Wrestling's Hold.”

^51.Willoughby, “Wrestling.”

^52.Beekman, Ringside, 7–71.

^53.Leonard, A Handbook of Wrestling, 22; Shannon, Say Uncle! 7, argues that the Catch-as Catch-Can style was taken to the USA by European migrants.

^54.Beekman, Ringside, 5–7.

^55.Beekman, Ringside, 42; Beckwith and Todd, “George Hackenschmidt.”

^56.Lindaman, “Wrestling's Hold.”

^57.Chapman, AHistory of Wrestling in Iowa, 10; Lindaman, however, states that Gotch's professional career commenced in 1902–1903.

^58.Lindaman, “Wrestling's Hold.”

^59.Beckwith and Todd, “George Hackenschmidt”; see also Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 38–9.

^60.Chapman, A History of Wrestling in Iowa, 11.

^61.Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 31–4; Beekman, Ringside, 40.

^62.Smith, Professional Wrestling, 28

^63.Kent, A Pictorial History of Wrestling, 185.

^64.Beekman, Ringside, 50–71; Chapman, AHistory of Wrestling in Iowa, 4; Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 2; Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement.

^65.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 28. Sir Atholl Oakeley was a European Heavyweight World Champion wrestler in 1932. Huggins and Williams, Sport and the English, 34–5, suggest that newsreels tended to present the US wrestling as an entertainment; the inclusion of women wrestlers would substantiate this.

^66.Morton and O'Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin', 36.

^67.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 32. Oakeley, Irslinger and Garnon were all professional wrestlers and familiar with the commercial presentation of professional wrestling in the USA.

^68.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 28, 163.

^69. Ibid., 36, 163.

^70. Ibid., 37.

^71.Times, October 23, 1931.

^72. Ibid., November 20, 1931.

^73. Ibid., November 6, 1931.

^74.Harrison, Wrestling, 67.

^75.Times, March 8, 1932.

^76.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 104.

^77.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 104; also from Mike Hallinan's website http://www.allinwrestling.co.uk/index.html

^78.Marquette, Two Falls, 19.

^79.Oakeley, Blue Blood, 37–8.

^80. Ibid., 95.

^81.Times, April 29, 1932.

^82. Ibid., September 30, 1932.

^83. Ibid., September 2, 1932.

^84. Ibid., March 16, 1933.

^85. Ibid., February 14, 1936.

^86. Ibid., January 30, 1937. Wrestling venues gained a reputation for non-compliance with the law; for a detailed discussion of boxing and wrestling venues in inter-war London, see Taylor, “Round the London Ring.”

^87.Harrison, Wrestling, 67.

^88.Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation.

^89.Madge and Harrisson, First Year's Work, 7.

^90. Mass Observation's documentation of All-in wrestling in Bolton/Worktown is found in the Worktown Papers in the Mass Observation Archive held by the University of Sussex and now available online through Adam Matthew Digital. Humphrey Spender's photographs of All-in wrestling in Bolton (and other sports including football, rounders and bowling) are held in Bolton Museum's Humphrey Spender ‘Worktown’ Collection.

^91. For further discussion of micro-history and the everyday, see Haberlen, “Reflections”; Brewer, “Microhistory”; Burkitt, “The Time and Space.”

^92. A detailed discussion of working-class sport culture in south-east Lancashire is provided in Swain and Harvey, “On Bosworth Field,” 1434–6; Swain, “Pedestrianism.” It is of note that Mass Observation was informed by the proprietor of the Bolton Stadium that All-in was a failure in Wigan because the miners were so rough that they could not be impressed by an All-in contest.

^93.Rigby, “The Beginnings of Wrestling.”

^94.Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation, 123.

^95. Ibid., 121–2.

^96. Bill Naughton was at the time resident in Bolton, working as a coal wagon driver and a regular spectator at the Stadium. He was a part-time member of the Mass Observation Worktown Team and, after the Second World War, became a noted playwright. Harrisson recorded that the Stadium was full to its capacity of 2000 spectators on the evening of his visit (Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation, 130).

^97. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^98.Barthes, “World of Wrestling,” 15–25.

^99.Madge and Harrisson, Britainby Mass Observation, 128. Mass Observation estimated the average number of women watching All-in to be between 50 and 80.

^100.Bailey, Leisure and Class, 161–74.

^101.Greenwood, Love on the Dole.

^102.Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation, 123–4.

^103. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^104.Madge and Harrisson, Britainby Mass Observation, 117.

^105. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling. For a more detailed discussion of female spectators of wrestling, see Salmon and Clerk, “Ladies Love Wrestling Too.”

^106. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^107.Barthes, “World of Wrestling,” 16–7.

^108. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^109.Barthes, “World of Wrestling,” 25.

^110. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^111.Madge and Harrisson, Britainby Mass Observation, 123–4.

^112. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^113. Ibid.

^114. Ibid.

^115.Madge and Harrisson, Britainby Mass Observation, 138.

^116. For a detailed discussion of the cultural and philosophical aspects of the impacts of commercialisation on sport, see Lasch, “The Degradation of Sport”; Loland, “Normative Theories of Sport”; Stone, “Wrestling”; Buckley, “Aristotle and Cricket.”

^117.Lindaman, “Wrestling's Hold”; De Garis, “The ‘Logic’ of Professional Wrestling”; Buckley, “Aristotle and Cricket.”

^118. See Caillois, “The Classification of Games”; Atkinson, “Fifty Million Viewers.”

^119.Mazer, “Real Wrestling”; Stone, “Wrestling”; Le Bon, The Crowd, 68.

^120. Mazer, “Real Wrestling”; Atkinson, “Fifty Million Viewers,” 62.

^121.Barthes, “World of Wrestling,” 15.

^122. Mass Observation Worktown Papers File 4-E, All-in Wrestling.

^123. For discussion of the carnivalesque and leisure, see Ravenscroft and Gilchrist, “Spaces of Transgression”; Hoy, “Joyful Mayhem”; Langman, “Carnivals of Consumer Capitalism.”

^124.Bailey, Leisure and Class, 182; Tomlinson, “Good Times, Bad Times,” distinguishes similarly between differing categories of inter-war working-class culture based on the study of Colne, a Lancashire cotton town.

^125.Kuisel, “Americanization for Historians”; Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass Observation, 122–3; Bailey, “Fats Waller Meets Harry Champion.”

^126.Hunt, “Hell in a Cell,” 121.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Snape

Robert Snape is Head of the Centre for Worktown Studies at the University of Bolton. He has published books and articles on leisure and sport in Britain between 1850 and 1939.