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Sarah Elizabeth Cox

@oispooky.bsky.social

5.4K followers 670 following 3.3K posts

👩🏻‍💻 PR @britsciassoc.bsky.social 🥊 1880s boxing + wrestling historian 📕 THE DEVIL'S DANCE FLOOR (Duckworth, 2026/27) ✍🏻 Moscow, Munroe, Goodson, Wannop, Smith, Ball &c. 🤜🏻 Advisor #AThousandBlows 🏖️ Clacton-on-Sea 🖤 www.grapplingwithhistory.com

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 8d

Seconds out! Round one!

THE DEVIL'S DANCE FLOOR

This isn't an official announcement from Duckworth. It's a page from my agent's newsletter and book fair rights catalogue, which is public. So, a tiny-text soft launch? Details subject to change.

A lot of thank yous and less Disney, to come.

🐻🥊👊🏾👊🏻🦁🍺

Page from literary agency Curious Minds rights guide for Frankfurt Book Fair etc. Alongside a photo of me looking slightly drunk and a lot hostile, it says, in tiny font:

NEW DEALS
AGENT - Eli Keren
PUBLISHER - Duckworth
PUBLICATION - Spring 2027
STATUS - Manuscript due April 2026
LENGTH - 80,000 words
RIGHTS SOLD
World English (Duckworth)
The Devil’s Dance Floor
Late-Victorian London and the Last Bareknuckle Boys
SARAH ELIZABETH COX
An 1880s’ group biography of the last of Britain’s
bareknuckle boxers from the historical consultant behind
A Thousand Blows (Disney+/Hulu)
THE DEVIL’S DANCE FLOOR is the first popular book from Sarah Elizabeth Cox,
the historical consultant behind Steven Knight’s television series A Thousand Blows
and author of the historical blog ‘Grappling with History’.
A group biography of Victorian boxers, THE DEVIL’S DANCE FLOOR is a cultural
history that does far more than recount the true story behind the fictionalized
version now streaming. Taking a narrative approach, Cox charts the decline of
bareknuckle boxing over the 1880s, and, in doing so, explores subjects ranging
from policing and healthcare to the press and entertainment – all while offering a
personal-scale view of the melting point of Victorian London (think Hallie
Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper but
with a lot more getting punched in the face).
The subjects themselves hail from as far afield as London’s East End and the North
to the United States and the Caribbean. Each has a unique story to tell and reveals
something not only about our shared history but also about the world we live in
today.
Sarah Elizabeth Cox was a historical consultant on season one and two of Steven Knight's
1880s’ boxing and crime TV drama A Thousand Blows. She researches biographies of
Victorian and Edwardian boxers and wrestlers for her website ‘Grappling with History’ and
works as the British Science Association’…

1888 portrait of boxer Hezekiah Moscow, a slim Black or Black/East Asian mixed heritage man, taken by Harry Carpenter. He is shirtless, fists raised, wearing white tights and a chequered sash at the waist. There are painted palms on the studio backdrop.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 2h

A year ago they told us they had small animals coming in. A little petting zoo. I assumed rabbit, hamster? Then forgot all about it.

Get an app notification, click...

My 11 month old is sat on a woman's lap, milk bottle hanging out his mouth, doing Reiki hands over a massive snake.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 2h

Son's nursery has just messaged to let us know that the babies will be having a photo taken with an owl next week. No particular reason.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 3h

I also genuinely like it! Double Espresso AND a Flat White in one cup for £1.81 in central London??? Yep.

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 3h

Woke: Being an independent woman chilling in a pub alone

Broke: Making it a 'spoons

Bespoke: Wetherspoons with your laptop AND BNA UNLIMITED FREE ACCESS to 19TH CENTURY FIGHTS AND MURDERS 💪🏻

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 4h

Libraries too and - I don't know WHY - but Wetherspoons!? I am almost certainly the only one sat in there with my 1885 Sporting Lifes and a cheap but just about drinkable wine, but perhaps they should advertise it! 😆

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Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox

N16Breda Corish @n16breda.bsky.social · 3h

Something I only discovered a few years ago - free membership of the City of London's Barbican Library (you only need a UK address) gives you *remote* access to a great range of online resources - inc BNA (altho offline today) & other newspaper databases 😃
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/lib...

Screenshot of some of the online databases listed on the Barbican Library website here
https://col.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/client/en_GB/default/?rm=LENDING+LIBRAR0%7C%7C%7C1%7C%7C%7C1%7C%7C%7Ctrue

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 3h

😯😯😯😯😯

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 3h

I have never replied 'leather trousers required' to a lady on the internet before, I swear, but: leather trousers required 🥹

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 3h

Ooh yes that makes sense!

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 4h

Hah, you're welcome 😂 I've got a subscription at the moment so haven't checked if it still works since last year, but it had done for years, and in every branch I tried to use it in!

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 4h

Iris Miyako, also reported as Miyake, 18, was originally reported as Japanese, then English with Japanese parents. Can't find any sign of her on a census etc under this name. Taro Miyake was a very well known male Japanese jiu-jitsu wrestler in the UK at the time, whose name she may have adopted? 🤔

Black and white photo of badass looking Japanese jujitsu fighter Taro Miyake in white robe and poloneck type jumper, arms crossed, looking like he'd beat the shit out of you in 5 seconds flat.

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 4h

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 5h

What, the metal girders, boards, and everything? 18ft or 24?

SORRY 😜

It was actually a Lady Comedian friend's 'half-hoop diamond bauble' valued at £30, stolen from the dressing room at Walthamstow Palace in 1908...

Headline from 1908 newspaper. It reads MUSIC HALL THEFT. Japanese Lady Wrestler Faces Charge of Ring Stealing

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 5h

"He was convicted and imprisoned for ATTACKING HIS SECOND WIFE WITH A MALLET and has publicly admitted, in a letter to The Times, to administering lethal drugs to his first wife, who was terminally ill with cancer."

Reform Party UK Exposed @reformexposed.bsky.social · 6h

Reform Devon | clarity sought for role of convicted wife attacker in party activities

www.theprsd.co.uk/2025/10/13/r...

Reform Devon | clarity sought for role of convicted wife attacker in party activities - the PRSD

Exeter Labour Women’s branch chair calls on Reform Devon to explain role of convicted wife attacker in Party activities

www.theprsd.co.uk

Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox

Richy Craven @richycraven.bsky.social · 1d

I'm not getting the level of sympathy I think I deserve as someone who has to write a book just because I desperately begged and campaigned to be able to write it for over a year.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 17h

He talks non-stop in a nonsense we refer to as Jackanese, but this was first sentence - sort of - in English. And it's about how much he enjoys terrible fast food. Great.

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 17h

I missed my baby's first rolling because I was at the gym, and his first walk because I had to work. Now I've missed his first sentence (well, sort of) because... I was doing laundry while the lads got a KFC 🤦🏻‍♀️

"Jack, are you finished?"

"No dada. Me, chicken, mmm."

😂🍗

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 18h

I do have to question who brands think they're making trousers for, when I'm 5ft 11 and hems are trailing on the ground. Giants in platform shoes only! 😂

Ps. Love YOUR jacket in profile pic!

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 22h

Immediately DMd you x

Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox

Scarred For Life @scarredforlife.bsky.social · 23h

Final Destination had nothing on British public information films.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 22h

NEED

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 22h

Not read EVERYTHING but I bet you get sidetracked less by donkeys 😄

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 23h

A much better boxing writer than me! 🥊

Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 1d

After years of delay, I’ve finally put together a website for myself and my writing.

It’s still raw, a work in progress. I’ll post the 🔗 below

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 1d

There's a bit where he shaves his head and I muttered to my boyfriend omg he looks like The Rock now and he literally didn't even acknowledge me 😔

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 1d

The Smashing Machine is really good!!! Go for Dwayne, stay for Emily Blunt's outfits. I'm a bit distressed that it has made me want to watch MMA (have never previously engaged) instead of the opposite, though.

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Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox

Dr Fabiola Creed @fabiolacreed.bsky.social · 7d

📙 Bluesky is the only platform where I haven’t circulated my book, as I’d recently joined and was waiting for the physical copy. So here it is (last book post, I promise) 📙

☀️ Sunbed in Britain: Tanning Culture from Fad to Fear is free to download via: dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781...

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