Cock fighting

Using google to look for the cockpit in the English market town yesterday (see reference 2), the best I could do was a cockpit in Wales, relocated in the 1960's to a museum. So clearly an opportunity to take another look at the Digital Public Library of America (see reference 1), not looked at for a little while now.

Without fuss, it turns up 47 images, 10 texts and 1 film. I include one of the images left. I have no idea why this particular chair is called a cock fighting chair, although it does come from a time before cock fighting had been made illegal here. It is however a fairly grand chair, so if it did come from a cockpit, clearly the sport of gentry, if not of kings.

Next up is 'Courage, the story of modern cock-fighting' by Tim Pridgen, published by Little Brown in Boston in 1938. Running to 250 or so pages and 25 or so illustrations. The property of Cornell University Library and scanned by Google. Available to read but not to download (at least not in entirety) online. A book which appears to have been written at a time when cock fighting was flourishing in the US and when it was OK to call a fighting cock 'Nigger Blue' - as in: 'the Nigger Blue's hackles went up, a great fluffy collar around his neck. And the Mug's. Their necks went out like snakes striking, bills open, eyes gleaming. There was a click when their bills met. Then the pitters swung back to their lines, searching their cocks' dubbed combs and eyes...'.

There is also talk which reminds me of the stuff that lovers of bull fights put out, about how it is not really a cruel or vicious sport, more an art form. An art form for which cocks were designed and intended. It is their destiny. The author goes so far as to include a picture with the title 'a cock asks for no better death than with his steels on ...'. A steel being, I think, a sort of spur extension, intended to give greater reach and penetration.

I do not find it particularly easy to read online, although the search feature is helpful, but if I had been a member of a participating organisation, maybe the download pdf button would have been enabled.

Then we have a picture of a cockpit in England, sadly not the one I am looking for, rather the Royal Cockpit, once to be found in Birdcage Walk, alongside St James's Park in London.

And while I think cock fighting has been illegal in the US for years, we have a picture from the late lamented Los Angeles Herald-Examiner from 1980, with title: 'Deputies display one of the more than 70 fighting cocks seized yesterday'.

I read about the Bellyse family of Cheshire, a family which has included several famous cockers (as followers of the sport were then known). But nothing about any cockpit which I might have come across.

All in all an entertaining excursion into the world of cockers. A splendid resource for all kinds of people, not least for school teachers trying to stir up a bit of interest in the world outside of Grand Theft Auto.

Reference 1: http://dp.la/. They must have pull to wangle an address as short as that!

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/road-notes.html.