Reporting on the recent stabbing and shooting of Christy Martin by her husband in Florida recently, Sports Illustrated called the 1990s World Boxing Council women's super-welterweight champion "the most celebrated female boxer in history." They mean celebrated by Sports Illustrated, as Martin graced the magazine's cover in 1996.
More than a century ago, when the Police Gazette was the Sports Illustrated of its time, that title belonged to Mrs. Hattie Leslie, the first publicly recognized women's boxing champion, whose reign and life ended at age 23 in a Milwaukee hotel room.
Hattie won her championship in a match against Alice Leary on Sept. 16, 1888. The bout was held covertly in a barn near Buffalo, N.Y., Leslie's hometown, for the American women's title and a purse of $250.
What the New York Times decried as a "disgraceful prize fight" lasted seven rounds, or about one-half hour. The almost 5-foot-8, 175-pound Leslie had 20 pounds on Leary, and battered her until the latter's corner threw in the towel to end it.
Instead of boxing gloves they wore flannel driving gloves, the cords of which had been removed "to avoid cutting the pretty faces of the fighters," according to the Boston Herald. It was a nice try.
"Both women presented a disgusting picture" after the fight, reported the Times.
The new women's champion was arrested a week later for violating the anti-prize fight law, but was released and instead her chief male second, well-known boxer George LaBlanche, served six months in the workhouse for his participation in the fight.
Over the next four years, Mrs. Leslie -- admiringly described in the Gazette as "the "famous Amazon who has made quite a name and gained considerable reputation as a boxer" and "a tall, powerful specimen of humanity" -- had a standing challenge out to defend her title against all comers. But since female boxers were only slightly more plentiful at the time than one-legged clog dancers, Hattie spent most of her time demonstrating her ring skills on the vaudeville circuit instead of in real fights.
On Sept. 18, 1982, she opened what was supposed to be a a weeklong engagement at People's Theater on W. Water St. (now N. Plankinton Ave.). On the bill with her was the Nibble French Burlesque Company, whose bombastic routine of "playing on musical glasses with two fiddle bows" was pretty tame stuff next to Hattie's sparring sessions with her husband, John.
She "kept him spinning around the stage in lively style," reported the Milwaukee Sentinel after their first performance.
But in the middle of the week Leslie, not feeling well, took to her bed in their room at the Exchange Hotel on N. 1st and W. Michigan Sts. Instead of getting a doctor, John Leslie sat up with his wife for two nights before he finally keeled over himself. When he woke up on the morning of Sept. 25, Hattie was dead, put down for the count by typhoid fever.
A whole century would go by before women's boxing got a real foothold. Today some troglodytic boxing fans (including, frankly, me) still cringe watching the girls sling leather. Good thing Hattie Leslie isn't around to put us in our place.
