I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought in this way since I fought the famous boxing woman of Billingsgate 29 minutes and gained a complete victory (which is six years ago); but as the famous Stoke Newington ass-woman dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I do assure her I will not fail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with will be more difficult for her to digest, than any she ever gave her asses. _Note._--A man known by the name of Rugged and Tuff, challenges the best man of Stoke Newington to fight him for one guinea to what sum they please to venture. _N.B._--Attendance will be given at one, and the encounter to begin at four precisely. There will be the diversion of cudgel-playing as usual. Pugilism was evidently a much valued accomplishment among the lower-class ladies in 1728, and there is no doubt that Mrs Stokes and Mrs Field were considered very estimable persons as well as great athletes in their respective circles. There is, moreover, a suspicion of humour about the reference to the asses in the reply of Mrs Stokes. In the happily-named Rugged and Tuff we see the forerunner of that line of champions of the ring which, commencing with Figg and Broughton, ran unbroken up to comparatively modern days. Other advertisements about this period relate to cock-matches and mains, sometimes specified to “last the week,” to bull-baiting in its ordinary and sometimes in its more cruel form of dressing up the beasts with fireworks, so as to excite both them and the savage dogs to their utmost. Perhaps brutality was never so rampant, or affected so many phases of society as it did in the first half of the eighteenth century. Slavery was considered a heaven-born institution, not alone as regards coloured races, for expeditions to the Plantations went on merrily and afforded excellent opportunities for the disposal of any one who happened to make himself objectionable by word or deed, or even by his very existence. The wicked uncle with an eye on the family property had a very good time then, and the rightful heir was often doomed to a slavery almost worse than death. Apropos of slavery, we may as well quote a very short advertisement which shows how the home trade flourished in 1728. It is from the _Daily Journal_ of September 28:-- TO be sold, a Negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire of the Virginia Coffee-house in Threadneedle street, behind the Royal Exchange. Negroes had in 1728 become quite common here, and had pushed out their predecessors, the Moors and Asiatics, who formerly held submissive servitude. This was probably owing to the nefarious traffic commenced in 1680 by Hawkins, which in little more than a hundred years caused the departure from their African homes and the transplanting in Jamaica alone of 910,000 negroes, to say nothing of those who died on the voyage, or who found their way to England and other countries.