London Prize Ring Rules
The 1838 rules of the bare-knuckle prize ring. A round ended with a knockdown, rounds were unlimited, and a bout ran until a man failed to toe the line.
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About London Prize Ring Rules
The London Prize Ring Rules are the code under which bare-knuckle fights for a money prize were contested in nineteenth-century England. They were published in 1838 and revised in 1853; they have no founder in the personal sense, because they were drawn up by an association of pugilists rather than by one man. A distinction is needed here, because two different codes are routinely confused. Broughton's Rules of 1743, written by Jack Broughton, are the older set, and the London Prize Ring Rules build on them, but they are not the same thing. This entry belongs to 1838; Broughton's Rules are a separate landmark almost a century earlier. The shape of a fight was unlike anything today. Men fought in a square ring twenty-four feet on a side, with ropes at four and two feet. A round ended the moment one of them went down — not when time expired. He then had thirty seconds to recover and a further eight seconds to come up to the scratch line in the middle of the ring. There was no limit on the number of rounds, so a bout lasted until one man could no longer continue. The rules barred butting, gouging, scratching, kicking, hitting a man while down, holding the ropes, biting, and the use of resin, stones or other hard objects in the hand. The 1853 revision added, among other things, exact dimensions for the spikes on the boots, fines for seconds who broke the rules, and a procedure for fights interrupted by the authorities or by darkness. In 1867 they were superseded by the Queensberry rules, out of which modern boxing grew.
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