… The popularity of boxing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is attested by the great number of publications and debates about the sport. Pugilism, in spite of its violence, was progressively presented as a sociable … Sports The popularity of boxing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is attested by the great number of publications and debates about the sport. Pugilism, in spite of its violence, was progressively presented as a sociable … Daniel Mendoza, also called the ‘Jew’, to Richard Humphreys, the ‘Christian’ from Clapham from 1788 to 1790, gained public notoriety because they were recounted as performances, the accounts detailing the blows given and received but …