Rough-and-Tumble Fighting
A rule-free fight of the lower classes in the American South and the frontier, documented from the mid-eighteenth century. Sources most often mention gouging out eyes.
Quick Facts
United StatesCharacter & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Rough-and-Tumble Fighting
Rough-and-tumble was a fight without rules that period travel accounts link with the lower classes of the American South and the frontier, and in which eyes were commonly gouged out, known in English as gouging. We have not been able to verify a founder or a year of origin, and the oldest evidence we have checked is a Virginia law of 1752. According to Wikipedia, the custom faded in the eighteen-forties. Isaac Weld recorded that brawls involved biting, kicking and gouging out eyes, and described gouging as the attacker hooking his forefingers into the opponent's hair and pressing his thumbs against the lower part of the eye. Thomas Anburey saw a man who kept the nails of his thumbs and middle fingers long and pointed and hardened them over a candle every evening. According to Thomas Ashe, the crowd asked before a fight whether it would be fought fair in the English way or rough-and-tumble. In 1752 the Virginia assembly declared the deliberate gouging out of an eye and the slitting or biting off of a nose or lip a felony. A law of 1772 named gouging explicitly and introduced an action for damages, and whoever did not pay received up to 39 lashes of the whip. According to Britannica, the champion of rough-and-tumble was Mike Fink, who became a hero of American tall tales.
History
The oldest verified evidence is a Virginia act from February 1752 against malicious maiming and wounding. According to its preamble, many malicious persons had recently maimed and disfigured subjects, and from 1 June 1753 deliberately gouging out an eye became a felony. An act of 1772 added cases that the earlier provision did not cover, and its preamble states that the offenders concealed property to avoid paying damages. Tutor Philip Vickers Fithian recorded on 6 February 1774 at the Nomini Hall plantation in Virginia that a gardener and a cooper had fought and that the cooper would probably lose an eye because of the custom of gouging out eyes, common among local brawlers. The British officer Thomas Anburey described in a letter from Richmond in 1779 the surgeon Fauchee, whose eye an opponent had gouged out in a billiard room. According to Anburey, the custom had once been so widespread that a law was passed against it, but it persisted in remote settlements. Isaac Weld heard that in the Carolinas and Georgia, in places, every third or fourth man has only one eye, which he himself reports as hearsay.
Technique
In May 1796 in Richmond, Isaac Weld described gouging as an attacker hooking his index fingers into the hair at the opponent's temples and pressing his thumbs against the lower part of the eye. According to Weld, fighters also bit and kicked, and opponents tried to tear out each other's testicles. According to him, faces were often cut up by fingernails even when nobody lost an eye. Thomas Anburey described a man he called a great master of gouging. He kept the nails of both thumbs and middle fingers long and pointed and hardened them over a candle every evening. According to Wikipedia, which cites Gorn, some fighters allegedly filed their teeth to bite off body parts more easily. Thomas Ashe recorded that in rough-and-tumble no spectator was allowed to intervene or stop the fighters from tearing each other apart on the ground. He also described a fight between a Virginian and a Kentuckian, in which bets were placed and the loser gave up only after losing an eye, a nose and a lip. Ashe is regarded as an unreliable travel writer.
Did you know
According to Britannica, Mike Fink, born around 1770 or 1780 at Fort Pitt, was called the king of the keelboatmen and champion of rough-and-tumble and became a hero of American tall tales. In 1822 he joined Ashley's fur-trapping expedition, and a year later he was killed in a quarrel. Stories about him circulated, according to Britannica, from about 1829 until the Civil War. According to L. A. Jennings, Davy Crockett compared his own experience of gouging to taking out a gooseberry with a spoon. Isaac Weld wrote that there were men who were proud of the skill with which they could gouge out an eye.
Frequently asked questions
What does gouging mean in rough-and-tumble?
Gouging meant gouging out eyes. In 1796 Isaac Weld described how the attacker hooked his forefingers into the opponent's hair and pressed his thumbs against the lower part of the eye.
Was rough-and-tumble banned?
A Virginia law of 1752 made the deliberate gouging out of an eye a felony. A law of 1772 named gouging explicitly, and whoever did not pay damages received up to 39 lashes of the whip.
What choice did the fighters have before a fight?
According to Thomas Ashe, the crowd at Wheeling asked whether the fight would be fair in the English way or rough-and-tumble. Thomas Anburey recorded that the lower classes knew various ways of fighting.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.