Judge — August 12, 1882 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical cartoon depicts fashionable society attending what appears to be an indoor boxing match or exhibition. The title "Boxing Mania" suggests the satire targets the upper-class obsession with prizefighting as entertainment. The scene shows well-dressed men and women gathered around a shirtless boxer, with additional boxing illustrations displayed on the walls above. The exaggerated facial expressions and caricatured features emphasize how ridiculous the artist finds this trend among the wealthy elite. The subtitle indicates this was "paper for parlor entertainments"—suggesting Judge magazine itself provided satirical content for drawing-room discussion. The cartoon mocks the fashionable classes' adoption of boxing as parlor amusement, treating a working-class sport as genteel entertainment, likely reflecting early 20th-century debates about boxing's respectability.