Fair sex

From April-September 1795 Sporting Magazine:

June 5. A most severe pugilistic conflict ensued between two heroic females, Mary Ann Fielding, of Whitechapel, and a noted Jewess of Wentworth-street, in a large field near the New Road, for two guineas a-side. The battle began soon after the necessary arrangements, and was continued for some time with great intrepidity, each exhibiting many manoeuvres relative to the art of boxing. After much alternate dexterity, the scene changed in favour of Fielding, who fought with great coolness, and knocked down her adversary not less than seventy times. This battle lasted an hour and twenty minutes, when victory was declared in favour of Fielding.

Mendoza was second to the Jewess, and Jackson to Fielding, and they had two of their own sex as bottle-holders. A vast concourse of people assembled to see this rare and unrivalled circumstance.


Now can you imagine any of today's fighters getting up from 70 knockdowns, in a bare-knuckle fight, lasting 1 hour 20 minutes, winner getting several hundred dollars, loser getting nothing?

 

Going down without a punch landing was usually considered a foul in that time, resulting in an immediate loss. If the umpires agreed that is, that it was a fall without a punch.

 

I believe one other issue even had an engraving of one female fight, but I don't remember which volume it was. There were a few female vs male fight reports too.

 

Found it. Volume XIX of Sporting Magazine, October 1801 - March 1802.

image

Occurence in Duke's Place.
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[An Etching.]
======
To the Editors of the Sporting Magazine.
gentlemen,
Lately passing, in the neighbourhood of Duke's Place, I was witness to the last scene of a kind of tragi-comical farce, performed al frisco, which, in the hands of one of your ingenious designers, I think would furnish a good subject for the decorative department of the Sporting Magazine.
It seems, two near neighbours of the parish of ---- ; the one of a Knight of the Shears, and the other of the Cleaver, pot companions, had each entertained a penchant for the wife of his friend.--As the Knights were pressing so were the ladies kind. An appointment was fixed (as the genius of ill-luck would have it) at the same house, and nearly the same point of time. The Paphian temple was situated in an obscure street, not far from the Great Synagogue of the Jews, to which the amorous tailor was the first to repair, followed at some little distance by his beloved spouse, whom, seeing approach, and being apprehensive of having been seen by her, little suspecting her engagement, he prudently gave up his own, pretending not to notice her, and proceeded towards home.--The lady, however, kept her appointment, and arrived at the house of rendezvous nearly at the same moment as her gallant.
The interview of the lovers, I shall not attempt to describe; suffice it to say, it was soon disturbed by the bursting open the door of the apartment in which they met, when in rushed Madam Marrow-bone, whose patience had been nearly exhausted waiting for her fickle paramour, in an adjoining room ; when, hearing the whispering of love through the wainscot, she applied her eye to a crevice, and beheld, of shame and confusion, her next door neighbour and tea-table companion, the bosom wife of her faithless knight, in the arms of her own husband.
Disappointed passions now assumed the air of indignant virtue, and she fell, with tooth and nail, upon her unfortunate friend, who, flying from her immediate fury down stairs, made a stand in the street; where our two amazons, each experiencing support from the surrounding crowd, maintained a doubtful fight for some time ; victory, however, at length, declared in favour of the virtuous lady.


There was another engraving of two females fighting in Folio Society's "Selections from The Fancy", I think, very good one too.