Tips on Boxing History Research?

Don't just assume something is correct because you read it somewhere. Been caught out with that one before, lol.

Look at as many sources as you can

 

It is true in any historical events. The best information always is first hand information written by someone who was there. Many newer books use older books and just compile information. Just read it all and if you can old newspaper articles and interviews-and watch the old fights and newer and eventually all the work will pay off, but you have to love it to get into it that much.

 

I'd say there's a bit more to it than that. Often initial reports are questionable, and it can take time for the truth to be figured out. First hand accounts are very often news reports which can contradict each other, and if you've ever read a new story on something you were involved in or well versed in, you know how poor reporting can be. Other first hand accounts can be written years later, and memory can be very unreliable.

If you want to seriously look into something, obviously the primary sources are very important. Basically history is hard, and since there's no serious universities or anything (to my knowledge) studying it, I think you honestly just need to keep the limitations in mind.

 

Not so. Randy Roberts teaches a course on boxing history at Purdue. He is a tenured professor. He has written books on Johnson, Dempsey, Tyson, and Louis.

Kasia Boddy is a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge. She wrote "Boxing: A Cultural History."

Gerald Gems is a professor of health and physical education at North Central College. He wrote "Boxing: A Concise Cultural History of the Sweet Science".

I could name many others: Elliott J. Gorn, Theresa Rustedtler, Louis Moore.

It's a myth that there aren't any proper boxing historians with relevant degrees. There are. But most of them focus on far more important issues than who beat whom, like the way that boxing is deeply implicated in the social construction of privilege and power.

 

Nice post. I see your point although I think if you read everything you can on anything, eventually you get the truth sorted from the not truth. But a person has to read it all and be interested in it, so your mind then sorts it all out. Somehow the truth comes out.

 

You can make your best assesment. Sometimes you can be pretty confident, in some cases atleast I've never been able to be sure what happened. With the research I've done so far into the 1700's stuff (which there's still more to be done), I've not been shy in outright speculating, I see nothing wrong with it, as long as you say that's all you're doing. Maybe that's a limitation of me, I'm sure if it was my job and I could travel to do first hand research I could probably solve some of these. Even then, sometimes something new comes up. In something as important and well researched as WWI, there's still sometimes new stuff found that really changes our understanding.

tl;dr I agree it's reasonable to say what you're best assesment is, as long as you keep your humility and admit an appropriate level of doubt (which could be low, but there's always got to be enough so that you can change your position if warrented).

 

Get to know best sources covering boxing for this or that period of time. They may be not local for this or that bout, but they offered more than just wire reports.

New York Clipper and Spirit of the Times (the "classical" one without a prefix in its name, or the one by Porter, or the one by Wilkes, they were three different newspapers with different authors) are the best for studying American boxing up to 1870s. NY Clipper continued to print boxing news/reports until early 1900s, but it was gradually getting worse.

Then there was the National Police Gazette from 1880 (after Fox hired William Harding as sporting editor, before that time it only had occasional write-ups on boxing bouts).

From around 1882 or 1883 Boston's Illustrated Police News (not to be confused with it's London's namesake) was an excellent weekly source of boxing information (with such authors as Capt. Albert Cooke, Nelse Innes, Charles O'Hara aka Bill Blunt, William Pierce, George Tuohey, Benjamin Benton aka Rob Roy), it continued until early 1900s.

There were other weeklies with good boxing write-ups, but they are hard to find if any library has them at all, examples are American Sporting Chronicle (New York, NY) in the 1840s, New York Illustrated News from the time Arthur T. Lumley joined it in 1888 (after quitting NPG due to disagreement with Richard K. Fox about Kilrain-Smith bout), and others.

 

Local newspapers boxing coverage could vary at different times. For example, New York Evening Post existed for a long time, but only started covering boxing in mid-1920s, I think. New York Times and New York Tribune weren't of much use in 1880s-1900s.

 

Many sporting writers had weekly boxing write-ups, beside covering late gossip or news day by day.

Examples:
Macon McCormick in Cincinnati Enquirer on Sundays (many others newspapers printed his weekly letter, too) from 1880s until 1903, later with Harry Weldon, sporting editor, writing 'All Sorts' column that included boxing (in 1890s-1900), then Joe Nolan continuing Sunday boxing column after their death.

Capt. Cooke's 'Crank on the fighters' in Illustrated Police News from August or September 1884.

Harry McEnerny in New Orleans Daily Picayune, with his Sunday columns "Bantam's Budget" in 1892-1896 and "Mack's Melange" in 1896-1914.

Writer, who's name I don't know, writing "Sportsman's Niche" column on Mondays in San Francisco Chronicle in 1880s-1890s.

Thomas Andrews of Milwaukee, syndicated write-ups in 1910s (probably 1900s and 1920s too, I don't remember).

John Dunbar Pringle in Pittsburg Dispatch in 1890s, on Sundays.

Barratt O'Hara of Chicago Chronicle in mid-late 1900s, on Sundays.

Sandy Griswold in Omaha Daily Bee, then in Omaha World-Herald, on Sundays, in 1890s-1910s.

Uncle Toppy McGuire (I believe, although they were unsigned) in New York Sun in 1880s, on Sundays ("Gossip of boxers" or something like that), continued by somebody else after his death in April 1889.

Unknown author in San Francisco Daily Examiner, on Mondays, in 1880s.

Bill Naughton, of San Francisco Examiner, with his syndicated write-ups on Sundays in 1900s-early 1910s.

 

Google News Archive has a bunch of newspaper boxing articles going back to the early 1900's. You just have to stumble into them somehow. Many times you find out things thought to be true today, may have been slightly different at the time the real event occurred.

https://www.thoughtco.com/search-tips-for-google-news-archive-1422213

 

https://elephind.com/

This is usefull for historic newspapers, though the archives only go back to 1800 AFAIK, and only certain places (not the UK).

There's other places too to search.

 

And that's their shortcoming. In case of general history, most things being described have had thick volumes written on them, before the multi-disciplinary approach was used toward them. Here, there's too much of a mix of different points (sociology, culture, economy, racial relationships, etc, the trend used in general history science for at least a couple of centuries, if I recall correctly), and too little of boxing. The authors have very shallow knowledge of boxing history itself, low level of source study regarding boxing itself (even Gorn, who covered old newspapers that wrote on boxing, is just perusing the manuscript he got from Paul Magriel Sr., for the most part, and therefore is limited to the choice of clippings in that manuscript; and yes, I understand, that was before the Internet epoch and online newspaper archives). Just my humble opinion, of course.

 

Yeah it seems oddly to write lengthy articles exploring the implications of what happened, before seriously researching what happened. It's not a minor point. If you're going to discuss the treatment of Tom Molyneux, it's not exactly good research to just pick one of the several contradictory accounts, and run with it, you have to first figure out what happened, what people at the time thought happened, what they thought of it etc.

What little I've seen of the acedemic stuff didn't seem worthwhile, because they did far too little to establish what happened, and may as well have been looking at some apocryphal folklore.

For the record, I never responded to RRP's post because it came across as pure gotchaism, maybe I'm just soured from our previous interactions. My point was clearly that it's hard to determine what happened, and some of this stuff is beyond a bunch of amateurs, with little in the way of funding, or formal training in historical research. To bring up academics talking social implications etc., not academics actually researching what actually happened, doesn't change the point I was making.