“The future George IV loved such social occasions, and in the Battle Royal (1788)…he is to be seen watching the match he has arranged between a working woman, ‘Big Bess,’ and his hanger-on Major William Hanger. The match fought at Plymouth lasted only five minutes, concluding with a knock-out blow and Big Bess being carried in triumph through the town exclaiming, ‘I have done the Major!'”
This is from, I believe, the essay “Equivocations of Gender and Rank,” Eighteenth-Century Life 16:1 (Winter 2002), 70-93. It was posted to the 18th-century email list by the author, Betty Rizzo.
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