ABSTRACT
Foreign visitors had long noted that Englishmen were exceptionally willing to fight one another, and, by the middle of the eighteenth century, boxing had even become associated with English national identity. Sport fighting came under increased scrutiny and condemnation due to the increasing social and cultural distance between the classes. This chapter presents cases that refer to incidents in which one of the combatants died during a fight or soon after participating in one. The surviving fighter was then usually brought before the court on a homicide charge. The vast majority of fights did not end in a fatality and are likely never to have come to the attention of the police or the courts. Participants were overwhelmingly working class and male. This is not to say that women did not use violence: working-class women were generally willing and able to use violent means to settle differences or grievances.
