Victorian on The Gamecock Codex

On the Cockpit's End

Fri, 01 Jan 1886 00:00:00 +0000

date: 1886-01-01

A remark printed in The Field in 1886, the year after the comprehensive failure of cockfighting in England to recover from the 1835 Act. The speaker’s name is not recorded.

On the Modern Game

Thu, 01 Jan 1885 00:00:00 +0000

date: 1885-01-01

Lewis Wright’s Book of Poultry (1885) is the most widely cited Victorian poultry reference, and remains in print in facsimile editions. The description of the Modern Game captures the breed’s appearance — a bird bred, in the half-century since the Crystal Palace, into a creature of almost absurd verticality.

Harrison Weir on the Asil

Sat, 01 Jan 1853 00:00:00 +0000

date: 1853-01-01

Weir’s The Poultry Book — published in two lavish volumes between 1853 and 1854 — is the first major English-language monograph on the domestic fowl, and the source from which most Victorian and Edwardian breed standards ultimately derived. His chapter on the “Aseel” (his transliteration of Asil) is the earliest detailed Western description of the breed.

The Cock of Tomorrow

Tue, 01 Jan 1850 00:00:00 +0000

The first great poultry shows (Birmingham 1847, Crystal Palace 1848) launch the Modern Game — a bird bred for type alone, the first show-bench breed developed purely for the visual eye.

The Cockpit Goes Legitimate

Sat, 01 Aug 1835 00:00:00 +0000

The Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822 is followed by the Humane Act of 1835, which makes cockfighting illegal in England and Wales. The sport persists in Ireland and Scotland until the late nineteenth century.