THE KO QUEEN

Pioneering female boxer Annie Newton is one of the many colourful characters featured in Alex Daley’s new book

TODAY women’s boxing is thriving. There’s never been a better time for females to take up the noble art. But what if the likes of Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor had been around in the 1920s?

Back then their hardest fight would have been outside the ring, contending with a largely hostile society. Not only was the idea of women boxing frowned on then, it was deemed an abomination. Even leading boxing figures like the great Jimmy Wilde felt it was freakish and unseemly.

For one female boxer trying to make it in the Roaring Twenties, this ideology proved an unbeatable foe. Her name was Annie Newton and she’d been steeped in boxing from an early age. Born in Highgate, North London, in 1893, she was mostly raised by her uncle, “Professor” Andrew Newton, one of Britain’s top boxing trainers of the time.

Before the Great War, Annie was part of the Newton Midgets, a troupe comprising herself, her brother David, the Professor’s son Andy and the Prof himself. They toured some of London’s best-known music halls and performed a boxing act choreographed by the Professor.

As a novelty act on professional bills, Annie sometimes boxed three-round exhibitions with male opponents. As a schoolboy pro boxer, my grandfather, Nipper Pat Daly (managed by Professor Newton), appeared in several exhibitions with Annie, sparring, hitting punchballs and demonstrating the Professor’s training methods to paying crowds. There was no public outcry when Annie sparred with men or, in my grandfather’s case, a child. But a match between two women proved a step too far for ’20s sensibilities.

In 1926, Annie was scheduled to fight Madge Baker, a pupil of the late world bantamweight champion Digger Stanley. Immediately, the press jumped on the story, which made headlines worldwide.

“Women’s participation in all masculine sports should be banned by law,” actor Robert Hale thundered in the Daily Express. Even former world flyweight champion Jimmy Wilde weighed in on the topic, saying: “The idea of women in the boxing ring is repulsive, and will receive no support from real lovers of the art.”

Newton and Baker were due to box six rounds at Hoxton Baths on February 1, for a £25 side-stake, but Shoreditch Borough Council vetoed the match. So promoter Harry Abrahams rescheduled it for February 14, at Hackney’s Manor Hall. The fight there may well have taken place were it not for the efforts of a 78-yearold pastor and moral crusader called Rev. Frederick Brotherton Meyer.

Meyer, who’d played a key part in the abandonment of the Bombardier Billy Wells-jack Johnson fight in 1911 (claiming a Johnson victory would spark dissent in Britain’s colonies), secured the support of Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-hicks, in his bid to derail the proposed women’s match.

In a letter printed in the national press, Hicks said there was no law he could rely on to intervene, but added: “I hope and trust that the influence of decent public opinion will prevent such an outrage taking place.”

Although the match wasn’t banned, Hicks’ comments had the desired effect; Abrahams called the fight off. He didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, he told the press, but he did not want to go against public opinion or defy the Home Office.

“I’m terribly upset about it,” Annie said. “I have been looking forward to the match for a long time and got myself in first-rate condition. I know that every woman is not fit enough to go in for boxing, but neither are some men.”

You can read more about Annie Newton, including Nipper Pat Daly’s recollections of her, in Alex Daley’s new biography of his grandfather, Born to Box: The Extraordinary Story of Nipper Pat Daly (Pitch Publishing).