Cock-throwing, dog-tossing and bare-knuckle boxing: the brutal history of Pancake Day in Bristol
The sport of cock-throwing in Elizabethan England, as imagined by a 19th century illustrator.
Pancake Day isn’t really up there with the big holidays. Some of us might mark it by making pancakes because, well… tradition? Because pancakes are good? Because making them will be fun for the kids?
But many of us won’t crack any eggs or search for the vegan pancake mix at the back of the cupboard. It will be just another Tuesday.
Not like the olden days, when in Bristol Shrove Tuesday was the occasion for plenty of bloodletting, both animal and human.
Here, as in many other places, a time-honoured ‘sport’ on this day was cock-squailing (usually called cock-throwing elsewhere). This involved tethering a cockerel by the leg to a stake in the ground and throwing sticks, sometimes weighted, at it until it was killed.
The hapless bird might already have undergone weeks of ‘training’, with smaller sticks being flung at it to make it more adept at dodging them, so those making side bets on its survival might find it surprisingly agile.
If you’re sickened by the idea of people throwing missiles at a helpless bird, so were some people in the past – and they were labelled killjoys.
Welcome, this Pancake Day, to one of the culture wars of former times.
The last taste of fat for 40 days
Shrove Tuesday (today, 4 March in 2025) used to be an important day in the Christian calendar – the last one before the 40 days of fasting and self-denial of Lent. Households would use up their stores of eggs and fat, often making omelettes and pancakes – hence Pancake Day.
In French-speaking cultures, it was Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras. In others still it was various spellings of ‘carnival’ derived from Latin or Romance language expressions meaning ‘farewell to meat’.
In the 16th century came the Reformation, and Protestantism’s rejection in England and many parts of Europe of the authority of the Catholic Church and the Pope in Rome. Protestantism arrived around the same time as the printing press, growing literacy – people could now read the Bible in English and make their own interpretations.
Aside from dog-tossing and cock-squailing, Shrove Tuesday was also by tradition a time for brawling, which at least usually involved consenting adults hurting each other rather than animals
Christians were prepared to kill one another over religion, but were even more keen on policing each other’s words, beliefs, and actions. None more so than the puritans of the late 1500s/early 1600s and, later, nonconformist groups – more of which further down.
Across Europe, culture wars turned into real wars. The civil wars of the 1600s in Britain are often framed as Crown vs Parliament, but religion was also key. It has long been fashionable to regard many of the numerous sects on the fringes of the Parliamentary side as forerunners of the labour movement. But the passionate sincerity of their religious faith was always upfront.
The Cavaliers lost, the Roundheads won, King Charles I was executed in 1649, and what followed was rule by Parliament, then a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. The winners sought a more godly society, and so literally cancelled Christmas and banned plenty of other things, too, including Shrove Tuesday bloodsports.
In Bristol, this not only meant the end of cock-squailing but also something called ‘dog-tossing’. We don’t know the exact rules of this one, but we can safely assume it was of no benefit to the dog.
In 1660, Bristol’s city fathers, loyal to the Parliamentary regime, issued a now-annual reminder. It was “by the Mayor’s order cryed about the city, that cocks should not be squailed at, nor dogs tossed…”
Even so, “The next day being Shrove-Tuesday, the apprentices willing to obey the Mayor’s orders did not squail at cocks or toss dogs, but they squailed at geese and hens, and tossed bitches and cats; and they squailed a goose before the Mayor’s door in Nicholas-street…”
Shrove Tuesday: brawling among consenting adults
Two months later, Charles Stuart returned from exile as King Charles II and the monarchy was restored. Shrove Tuesday, Christmas, and other festivals were again celebrated in the previous manner.
Aside from dog-tossing and cock-squailing, Shrove Tuesday was also by tradition a time for brawling, which at least involved (usually) consenting adults hurting each other rather than animals.
Often, there were pre-arranged fights between local trades. A Gloucester paper of 1723 said that in Bristol on Shrove Tuesday, “the blacksmiths of the city assembled in St Thomas Street, in order to engage their annual combatants, the coopers [barrel makers], carpenters, and sailors there…”
Things were going badly for the blacksmiths until a gang of weavers came to their rescue and routed the opposition, “sending ’em home in the utmost disorder to show their wives, &c., a parcel of broken loggerheads.”
We know cock-squailing was still going on a century later, but by then the fringe religious beliefs of the early 1600s had produced a number of nonconformist groups – religious organisations that did not adhere to the tenets of the Church of England headed by the monarch. Quakers, Baptists and Methodists and others found Bristol much more fertile ground than many other places.
So cock-squailing was once again banned, and in 1762, we find Bristol’s magistrates ordering the arrest of anyone caught at it. Other blood sports remained popular though, such as dog-fights and cock-fights. The biggest crowds were drawn to bull-baiting – similar to bear-baiting – where a bull was chained to a post and set upon by dogs. It was said the meat tasted better if the bull died this way.
Bull-baiting took place at The Marsh but later moved to Old Market when The March became Queen Square. It also occurred in St Jude’s and on the Downs.
The arguments continued. John Wesley, founder of Methodism (which had strong Bristol roots), noted a letter from a supporter calling for an end to all animal abuse, including even horse-racing.
At the same time, others complained that the wholesome recreations of free-born Englishmen were under threat. Bristol Anglican cleric Rev. Thomas Johnes argued that “the practice of bull-baiting was … exceedingly correct and useful to Society.”
To stop it, he said, would be “injurious to the courage of the common people and an infringement of their rights”.
The death of Shrove Tuesday bloodletting
But by the early 1800s, opposition to cruelty on religious grounds had gone mainstream. An 1826 order from Bath’s mayor and magistrates summarised the attitude of the time:
“As the custom of THROWING at COCKS on SHROVE TUESDAY is evidently barbarous, and therefore doubtless offensive to Almighty God, who has not given us authority or license to exercise any degree of cruelty on even the meanest of his creatures…”
It was also true that the growing middle classes also had a horror of rowdiness among the proletariat. But there was also a widespread belief that cruelty to animals led to criminal behaviour.
By the time Victoria took the throne in 1837, many of the cruel or boisterous activities of old had been banned or had faded away, thanks to two centuries of lobbying which had started on the fringes of Christianity.
Some remnants lingered on, notably fox-hunting, and dog-fighting which continues underground to this day. But for a symbolic moment in the death of Shrove Tuesday bloodletting locally, look to 1867.
‘Prize fighting’ – bare-knuckle boxing – was huge in the late 1700s and early 1800s Britain. Bristol produced several champions in this brutal sport, where two men battered each other until one gave up or was knocked out. Kingswood crowds even saw the occasional female match.
Successful fighters earned good money, and gentlemen wagered immense sums. Matches were held year-round, but Shrove Tuesday of 1867 was set for a bout in Bristol between Joe Goss and Tom Allen, two well-known Midlands pugilists.
Prize-fighting was illegal, and as Bristol’s police watched them, the fighters, their seconds, and a small army of spectators took the train from Temple Meads to South Wales to find a convenient spot. Twice local police there stopped them before they finally fought in a field near Cardiff. The match ended in a draw after nearly two hours.
Both men would later fight one another again – after they had moved to the United States, which had a more permissive attitude towards bare-knuckle fighting. The same year, the Queensberry Rules governing most modern (and gloved) boxing, were published.
Pass the maple syrup, would you?
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