“I Like to Fight”: Boxer Hattie Stewart, Early Sports Celebrity

“Hattie Stewart, Champion Female Boxer of the World, from the Champions of Games and Sport series issued by W.S. Kimball &Co.” (1887) The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick. The Met.

Hattie Stewart sat down with a reporter in 1887 to recount her victories both in the ring and outside of it. She knocked out Annie Lewis, who had been calling herself world champion, in less than two minutes and beat a man named Jones in Missouri. With these feats and others, she earned a place as one of the fifty sports stars featured on Kimball advertising cards. Stewart grew up fighting boys in her Philadelphia neighborhood and continued her combative ways as a woman in her twenties. She explained how she had slugged a baggage porter who would not give her back her dog and also a man who insulted her at a theater in Kansas City. When told that a woman who had challenged her to a fight claimed to have $10,000 worth of property, Stewart commented that if she owned that much she would “quit the business—as a profession.” Just the “profession” part so clearly she felt she would continue to fight on the side!

Stewart had earned fame for her boxing skills only a couple of years earlier. She began fighting at Harry Hill’s infamous saloon and other venues in New York City in 1884 and quickly caught the eye of sports enthusiasts. Stewart joined the athletic company of Richard K. Fox and was featured in his magazine The National Police Gazette. She sparred with John L. Sullivan and began calling herself his female counterpart—and it stuck. She challenged anyone, man or woman, to meet her in the ring.

The National Police Gazette (May 17, 1884)

The end of the nineteenth century was both a good and bad time to pursue a career as a female boxer. Stewart enjoyed access to venues such as Hill’s because boxing women were novel and they did not yet attract heavy censure for their unladylike ways. Stewart was arrested for her altercation with the porter and had her fights occasionally stopped by the police since boxing was illegal in many places. Generally, however, society was accepting of street violence. Also, bouts could be arranged without promoters so the athletes received all the money pledged for the fight. Stewart used the media to entice opponents and respond to challengers.

Stewart soon, however, found herself without competitive partners since the pool of boxers was so small. Men did not want to fight her and women too were intimidated by her size and skill. Middle-weight Minnie Rosenblatt Blesser told a reporter in 1893 that Stewart was 

“quick as a flash with both hands, and very spry on her legs. She is in fact the very best lady boxer I ever saw. Indeed, I think she could make almost any man I know of save a few of the tip toppers hustle for a victory.”

So Stewart went on the road for about twenty years, boxing when she could but also performing on vaudeville stages. She faced Leslie Remington in St. Paul and Libbie Ross in Salt Lake City. She teamed up with her husband Dick and when he died, her new partner Tom Gillen became her second husband and biggest fan. Stewart and Gillen, a singer and comedian, created a very popular show “Wanted, a Professor” that apparently combined boxing, dancing, and comedy. How I wish there was a recording or at least a description of it!

 

The New York Clipper Annual (1896)

 

Stewart performed in most of the major cities in the US including Chicago, Denver, and Seattle until possibly her health kept her at home starting in about 1905. Gillen continued to tour while Stewart stayed in their house on Lenox Avenue in upper Manhattan. She survived a surgery to remove a tumor in 1909. Obviously she was still a fighter but we have no additional stories of her facing anyone either in or out of the ring. Seems that she mellowed with age.

Hornell (NY) Evening Tribune, Jan. 17, 1925 (https://fultonhistory.com)

Stewart was not, however, content to be forgotten, or maybe it was Gillen who would not let it happen. She reemerged in the celebrity culture world of the 1920s, spotted in the audience at the theater and being remembered with mentions in newspapers and magazines such as Billboard. Gillen frequently featured her in his reminiscence pieces in the New York Morning Telegram and probably reissued one of her old photographs as a collectible card in 1925 with her nickname: the female John L. Sullivan. All fights, however, come to an end. Stewart passed away in 1936 one year after her husband died.

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Sources and Further Reading

Benedict, Chris. “Pugilists in Petticoats.” The Grueling Truth. (Sept. 30, 2021). https://thegruelingtruth.com/boxing/pugilists-in-petticoats-hattie-stewart-challenges-hattie-leslie-for-recognition-as-the-true-female-john-l-sullivan/

McKee, Sam. “News and Gossip of Vaudeville.” New York Morning Telegraph. October 15, 1922, p. 2.

Pfister, Gertrud and Gerald Gems. “The Shady Past of Female Boxers—What Case Studies in the USA Reveal.” Sport in Society 20 (August 2017): 998-1012.

“She Loves to Fight: A Chat with Mrs. Hattie Stewart, ‘The Female John L. Sullivan.” Omaha Daily Bee. Dec. 28, 1887. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1887-12-28/ed-1/seq-2/

Smith, Malissa. A History of Women’s Boxing. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.

“When a Woman Dons the Gloves.” The Wichita Daily Eagle. August 17, 1893. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014635/1893-08-17/ed-1/seq-2/