The 19th Century diarist whose writings I had discovered in Dublin, the woman named Shannon who had been sent to, and somehow survived, the First Carlist War, had risen from her 1820s Dublin anonymity for the same reasons tonight's Dublin streetwalker had put on such a good showing in fighting me.
The primary one being the ability to not flinch at a punch in the face.
I remember growing up in Buffalo, a small group of girls gathered around in a circle at a girlfight that semi-miraculously had fulfilled its life-cycle from rumor to hype to actual fight. Both girls had made it to the same place at the same time. There were no "peacekeepers" (another parallel, by the way, with the Carlist Wars) to break them up--no school counsellors or meddling friends. The two girls were here to fight, and they were actually going to fight. The electricity was palpable.
And then, the first punch happens, and .....
Nothing. Worse than nothing, actually, for the crowd who had finally allowed themselves to get their hopes up that they were finally going to witness something exciting; something to offset the long, cold, dark Buffalo winters.
The girl who had gotten hit first just .... turns away. She doesn't hit back. She doesn't quite cry. She just .... quits, really. Without saying she quits. Her body just ... quits on her, mid-fight.
Because she can't take a punch.
That makes it pretty hard to fight. When you can't take s punch. Duh.
Obviously.
Earlier in the week, when modern-day Shannon and I had arranged to have what, for each of us, was our first real fistfight against each other, the elephant in the room for each of us was that question--could we take a punch? Or would we turn and crumble the first time a girl punchdd us in the face.
We had both passed the test. Even though I won the fight, Shannon had done nothing to disgrace herself in that category. The small group of women who circled and watched us had gotfen a good show. They had seen a complete girlfight.
Is that part of what held Dawn and I back from fighting in Buffalo before it was too late (and she moved)? Neither of us knowing for sure if we could take a punch in the face?
In 1820s Ireland (then England, then Spain), there weren't many socially-accepted opportunities for a young woman to find out if she could take a punch to the face. When I watch "Bridgerton" here in 2022, which takes place in 1813, I have to just roll my eyes at ease the characters have at finding times and places to hook up ('sometimes, they even use beds', is the funny line I remember reading about it). Because it just wasn't like that. Setting aside the crushingly repressive social norms (from, in Dublin, not one but two churches--the Established Church of Ireland--for the Protestant Ascendency, and the still-medieval Inquisitorial Roman Catholic Church in 26 bishoprics spread thru the counties), there was the public health dystopia to navigate (everyone knows about the 1846 Famine--but that had been preceded by cholera in 1832-37 and typhus in 1818).
How Shannon had rise above these to learn to fight was .... miraculous.
She figured out she could fight. And latched onto a band of mercenary Iridh-British soldiers who had helped Spain fight of Napoleon in the Peninsular Wars.
And whose familiarity with the Iberian port cities of the north (Bilbao, Santander) became useful again in 1820-23, when the Spanish liberals temporarily gained the upper hand over the traditional element of Ferdinand VII's Spain.
Shannon was shuttle back and forth from the Dublin to Bilbao, whose banking center was distributing cash to the recovering port city. The Bilbao nightlife was showing signs of life, and its taverns would host topless (what they titillatingly called "bare-bosomed" women's fist fights).
And Shannon wad a popular draw at those.
Women would face each other in a ring and swing, bare-knuckled, at each other until there was a victor. Or until mutual exhaustion.
Which would sometimes take hours.
It was a lucrative life if uou were good at it. And Shannon was.
She was a Bilbao celebrity.
She was good at fighting. And she liked it.
No wonder I was drawn to her story.
1820-23 were good years for her.
Too good to last.
To be continued.....