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Sarah Elizabeth Cox

@oispooky.bsky.social

5.4K followers 660 following 3.2K 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 · 6d

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 · 27m

Ah thanks so much. Still writing it and it'll be on shelves either November 2026 or the following Spring - details to come! Hez, Alec & Sugar's real stories all feature heavily! I've got about six years and 150k words of blogs to delve into on my website if you fancy it though 😂

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

So glad you liked it! Technically THREE of the actors! Ashley Walters has a few snippets of screen time in ATB in flashbacks as Hezekiah's father in Jamaica during the rebellion. He also directed several episodes 😊

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Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · 18h

I feel like this show flew under the radar a bit with two of the actors also in “Adolescence” and that getting so much more attention. It is damn good. Only six episodes but a season 2 is on the way. Highly recommend if you like “Peaky Blinders” and similar shows.

A promo image of the Hulu series “A Thousand Blows” with actors Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Malachi Kirby.

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

Hah I quote that line in my book. Love the whole thing about not wanting to get rid of prize fighting but to 'improve it out of existence' too.

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Stephen Graham @stephengraham.bsky.social · 5h

Should be Bluesky's tagline.

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 7h

it's the americans who are most exhausting

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

Not sure whether it says more about me or Jaywick that when I first saw a crowd gathered I assumed a body had washed up.

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

Dozens of people in Jaywick have just been battling to save a horse trapped by mud from the tide being out. Up to its belly. Very dramatic scenes. Everyone has applauded! He is free! (I am the Clacton Gazette).

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

The first British Professional Boxing Association was formed in London in 1885 at the Blue Anchor, Shoreditch. Its founding members numbered around 60. I believe Hezekiah Moscow to be the first Black man to be elected, but the digitised Sporting Life in which they're all named is too faded to read!

Two photos of a nine and a half stone Black or Black mixed heritage Chinese man in his late 20s. On the left he is posing shirtless in white tights, fists raised against a painted backdrop of tropical plants in a studio portrait. On the right in the same studio he is wearing a typical late-Victorian working man's outfit, a dark velvet looking jacket, waistcoat, shirt, trousers.

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 11h

As an aside, I would wear every one of these outfits today as a 38yr old woman 😍

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 13h

The boxing one was much bigger - had a large room for boxing downstairs and a smaller one upstairs. I know the upstairs one seated 300 with a ring set up!

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 13h

Ah, no that's not the one - there's always confusion. Different pub. The Blue Anchor was on Church Street just off Bethnal Green Road and the street layout and buildings were changed long ago. It was on the other side of the road to Boxpark Shoreditch, slightly further along Bethnal Green Road.

Boothe Map showing end of bethnal green road and location of blue anchor

Demolished buildings off Bethnal green road

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

Haha, I literally did once, on a catwalk, plus a cape made of smaller plastic bags and a cereal box crown which I made, I think as some sort of comment on recycling 🤷🏻‍♀️ Also, inexplicably, lots of blue eyeshadow and a bindi. I was about 14. There's photos. No they will never be public.

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

I've got an outfit planned for the 25th and it's like... brown? I'll get some lipstick on or something 😂😅

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

Sorry, bear emoji explainer:

Hezekiah Moscow was also a bear tamer 👍🏻

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

@drlindseyfitz.bsky.social Omg I can't believe you were like oh the purple sequins were a bit much and there's Kate literally at the Met Gala 😍

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

Buy my book and you'll meet lads called William Ethelbert 'The Old War Horse' Cheese and Sugar Goodson too 😆

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

These were taken by a photog called Harry Carpenter in 1888 which would put Hezekiah at only 26 - he arrived here around 19. There's not many records which confirm his past! Only really the 1891 census, which gives a birth year of 1862 and origin as a vague 'West Indies' - no specific country :)

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

I've been liaising with people at the National Archives and the British Library to gain access to original newspapers from the time period. So many are so damaged or frail they can't be seen or travel. I actually haven't made enquiries about this particular 1885 'Life though, hoping to do so soon!

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

And of course, as well as a boxer with a great name, he was also a wolf, bear and lion tamer...

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

Thank you so much! It is part inspired by my research and I'm the boxing consultant on it (but a no-name nobody so did very little media or got much credit, etc, haha). Glad you enjoyed it. Can't wait for everyone to see season two in January! And hopefully many more to come...

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

Still not convinced it's his real one, it's a long story! He boxed as Ching Hook or Ghook. Also a long story. Another researcher has traced a family in Jamaica which had a couple of men in the Victorian era called Ezekiah, surname Mascoe. Very feasible! Or it may have been a 'fake' name entirely.

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

I'm not sure it was clear in this post - Hezekiah (under his ring name of Ching Hook, that surname spelled a variety of ways) was a FOUNDING member, elected at the first meeting to confirm members. Alec might have been. Cool, huh? He'd been boxing in London for four years at that time 🐻🥊

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

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

Alexander Hayes Munroe and Hezekiah's story will be told in my book next year, alongside the stories of seven other boxers and all their associated families, weird tangents, and wild animals. I've worked on this for seven years.

Please watch A Thousand Blows too. It's great. But it IS a fiction!

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

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago ^^ His name is almost gone, the earth is collapsed around him, and you have to crawl under a tree to say hello. But I just think it's remarkable you still can. It says a LOT about the pugilistic fraternity and the East End community in the mid 1880s.

Clip from 1885 Sporting Life newspaper titled DEATH OF ALEC MUNROE. It reads:

Boxers will be sorry to learn that Alec Munroe (one of the most inoffensive men of his class) was stabbed in the locality of Great Pearl Street, Spitalfields, on Friday night last, and expired at the London Hospital half-past three a.m. yesterday (Monday). John Knifton and his old friend Goode to soon as they heard of the occurrence once repaired to the hospital, but Munroe expired a few minutes prior to their arrival. They are anxious see the remains of poor Munroe interred in a respectable manner by the Professional Boxing Association, and due notice will given of the arrangements for the funeral through the Sporting Life.

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

If there's any other men of colour named in the faded part of the article, they would likely be Alec Munroe. Alec was stabbed and died seven months after the Association was founded. Its chair and vice chair were among the first to rush to the hospital, and the organisation paid for his gravestone.

Close up of a half-buried-in-the-earth gravestone at Manor Park Cemetery, under a tree, alongside the rail tracks. The words Alexander Ha-- are just about visible, the rest has worn away.

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