Sarah Elizabeth Cox
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oispooky.bsky.social
Sarah Elizabeth Cox
@oispooky.bsky.social
👩🏻‍💻 PR @britsciassoc.bsky.social
🥊 1880s boxing + wrestling historian
📕 THE DEVIL'S DANCEFLOOR (Duckworth, Oct 2026)
✍🏻 Moscow, Munroe, Goodson, Wannop, Smith, Ball &c.
🤜🏻 Advisor #AThousandBlows
🏖️ Clacton-on-Sea 🖤

www.grapplingwithhistory.com
Pinned
Seconds out! Round one!

THE DEVIL'S DANCE FLOOR

This isn't an official announcement from Duckworth. It's a page from my agent's newsletter and book fair rights catalogue, which is public. So, a tiny-text soft launch? Details subject to change.

A lot of thank yous and less Disney, to come.

🐻🥊👊🏾👊🏻🦁🍺
It's exactly 10 years (!) since I press-released what was then a Goldsmiths student project - the BrightSign sign language glove. It went on to be HUGE. Pricey though.

And now this guy. Writing about young, aspirational, inspirational, people doing brilliant things is the best part of my day job:
November 11, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Ava Gardner at 40 when she was incredibly beautiful but also looked like total filth and could drink you under a table was peak Ava Gardner.
November 11, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
I would just live my life so that Joyce Carol Oates does not feel the need to destroy me.
November 11, 2025 at 5:56 AM
My mother has suggested that I'm probably only tired because I need to take iron - she saw it in the Daily Mail health pages last week. Oh okay.
I'm currently working full time 9-5, doing part time/freelance bits, writing an 80k word book in nine months and parenting a toddler. And the ONE thing that has tipped me over the edge is: yesterday my child wiped his snot onto his hand and then smeared it across mine. Too much. Too far.
November 11, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Ok so @zackpolanski.bsky.social are you running in Clacton at the next election. If not, are you starting to find, budget for, and plan for a REALLY good candidate NOW? Tories and Labour rolled over and let him take it in 2024. And he STILL didn't win over 75% of the constituency. Everything to win.
Reform UK is one person.

Without Farage, it all crumbles.
November 10, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Can't thank the Lewisham Ledger enough for this headline. So good 😂. You'll find the latest about Miss Juno May on my website AND there will be more in women's wrestling essay collection Amazons of the Arena next year 🤼‍♀️ Please message me if you're up for a challenge!

www.grapplingwithhistory.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:08 PM
"The Finest Specimen of Womanhood Extant" at the Empire, Dublin, 1907!

Who was Juno May? 💪🏻

'From Brockley' ALLEGEDLY.

Do YOU know? I'm working on it. I've been working on it for six years. We'll get there one day. More to come.

(She apparently did a v. good, very quick, very slick, elbow roll!)
November 10, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
The CURRENT sitting MP for Clacton earns £511,000 as a presenter for GB News and took £281,000 as a brand ambassador for Direct Bullion.

So maybe sit this one out, you rancid herring.
November 10, 2025 at 5:44 PM
10am November 17 deadline!

One week to go! >>
ScienceWrite 2026 is open for applications! 🧪

Our programme for minoritised/marginalised science writers based in the UK is running again!

Have an idea for a book, article or other writing project for a lay audience? This is for you!

Apply & find out more at sciencewrite.co.uk
November 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM
I'm currently working full time 9-5, doing part time/freelance bits, writing an 80k word book in nine months and parenting a toddler. And the ONE thing that has tipped me over the edge is: yesterday my child wiped his snot onto his hand and then smeared it across mine. Too much. Too far.
November 10, 2025 at 12:11 PM
The Goodwin Gymnasium ("three doors down from [the former] Shoreditch station") used to stand at 5 Kingsland Road, London - what is now a very closed milkshake shop, although I believe it was actually in that space to the right, incorporating the arches. Here's Jack Wellend V Alf Ball, 1890:
November 10, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Floella Benjamin for DG.
November 9, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
"Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten."

Gunner Sydney Wannop, Royal Field Artillery. Or Sidney Clarence Wannop, a New Cross, South East London, butcher and son of Jack and Miriam.

1896 - 1918
November 7, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Remembering my grandad, Thomas Walter Cox (1913-1987). He worked at the Packhorse Service Station near Dunstable with his dad, Fred, joined the 2nd Btn. Beds & Herts, got shot through the neck in N. Africa, May 1943, came home, married my nan, and got a job as an electroplater for Vauxhall cars.
November 9, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
You know what we don't talk enough about?

80's homoerotic pro wrestling vignettes.

Designed to introduce new 'heartthrob' wrestlers to an area, and especially to appeal to female fans to attend the live shows, promoters would make these vignettes to sell them and well... Judge for yourself.
November 8, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Chill out
When people jerk me off, I kill them!
November 8, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
🥰 one of my favourite bits of kitty’s diaries are when she gets told off by other women in the halls for wearing her sash, & is seen as scandalous for being a suffragette (tho fair enough giving her proclivity for the arson & bombing campaign) - it was a such a battleground between female performers
November 8, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Played by Gwendoline Christie.
November 8, 2025 at 10:46 AM
At her first interviews in 1906, 6ft 2 Lady Wrestler Miss Juno May huffed that she wished people would "stop asking if she was a woman suffragist" - confirming she wasn't.

V. fun that she may have JUST missed meeting Kitty Marion (see @drfernriddell.bsky.social Death in Ten Minutes) in 1907! 💥
November 8, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Agree. And imo quite a lot of us barely having a pay rise since then has quite a lot to do with it 🥱
I was reflecting earlier - having rewatched the Mr Bean section of the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony (which is perfect in many ways) - how Britain really hasn't experienced much of a sustained, unifying feelgood factor since then.
November 7, 2025 at 11:13 PM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
If you see this image on social media re. the Forty Thieves or Elephants - the London gang that inspired the female characters in #AThousandBlows... yeah, no, these women are not them. They're from North Shields. It says NORTH SHIELDS on the signs. The Sun used it in February and never corrected...
November 4, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Taking a break from The Devil's Dancefloor tonight to work on pinning down Miss Juno May for a forthcoming international essay collection on women's wrestling, past and present-ish. Out 2026 (I don't know how, when, where) edited by @physcstudy.bsky.social & US colleagues!

AMAZONS OF THE ARENA! 🤼‍♀️
November 7, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
First paragraph - Frank Slavin cuts one of the greatest promos of all time 👊🏼 1916, London Evening News.
June 6, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Reposted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Timely to also remember the legend Frank Slavin, an 1880s boxer who enlisted himself in 1916, in his 50s. He initially did recruitment and motivational work but went on to active combat in Europe with the 67th Battalion (Western Scots).

His son, Frank Slavin Jnr, was killed in battle in 1918.
Sergeant-Instructor Billy Wells chatting to Frank 'Paddy' Slavin while he enjoys a cigar in the crowd at a boxing match. Pictured in the Daily Mirror, 1916.

Frank's son, Frank Charles Slavin, also enlisted in 1916. He was killed in action during the final days of the war.
November 7, 2025 at 1:29 PM
"Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten."

Gunner Sydney Wannop, Royal Field Artillery. Or Sidney Clarence Wannop, a New Cross, South East London, butcher and son of Jack and Miriam.

1896 - 1918
November 7, 2025 at 2:38 PM