The re-imagined story …
Of course, you are too young to remember Blackford’s the butchers. They used to have a shop on the corner of Wood Street and Cricklade Street, but that’s long gone. I can recall going to the shop in Bridge Street with my mother, although it could be quite a scary experience as old man Blackford was a bit erratic. He’d been a famous backsword player in his day and they said he’d been seriously injured several times during his fighting career.
I don’t suppose you know what backswording is either; no one plays it anymore. It was a brutal sport. Players had one arm restrained and with the other they beat their opponent about the head with a wooden stick, the aim to land a blow causing the blood to run for one inch.
There was some decent prize money to be won mind and more if you liked to gamble. Those old gamesters were made of stern stuff but they paid a high price. Joseph’s father Robert suffered from the frequent blows to his head and died from an accidental drug overdose of the laudanum he used to manage the pain.
Joseph concentrated on the butchery business, though and by the time he was raising his family backswording was a thing of the past. Joseph named one of his sons Brave – perhaps he thought he had the makings of a gamester.
The facts …
Joseph Blackford was baptised at Christ Church, Swindon on March 24, 1830 the younger son of Robert Blackford and his wife Anne. Robert came from a long line of butchers and at the time of the 1841 census the family were living in a property on the corner of Wood Street and Cricklade Street. In 1851 Joseph was running the butcher’s shop on Bridge Street with his sister Mary. He married Mary Ann Holdway and by the time of the 1861 census they were living in the railway village at 10 High Street [later named Emlyn Square] with their two children William and Mary Ann. A third child, Elizabeth, was born in 1864. Mary Ann died in August 1865 and was buried in the churchyard at St. Mark’s.
Robert died in 1867 probably as the result of injuries sustained during his backswording career. The verdict of the coroner’s court was that he had “died from taking an overdose of laudanum, whilst labouring under a fit of temporary insanity.”
On February 27, 1867 Joseph married Rosanna [Rosina] Woolls, a widow who describes herself as a butcher. The couple set up home in Purton where they raised their family.
Joseph died in September 1906 aged 76 and was buried in plot D1447 with his son Harry Bath Blackford who had died just weeks before him. Rosina died in 1923 and their daughter Alda Priscilla Bamford died in 1932 joining her parents and brother Harry in plot D1447.
Newspaper proprietor William Morris was particularly opposed to the sport of backswording, writing in his newspaper The Swindon Advertiser:-
And I recollect that this was particularly the case at the New Swindon sports. The left arm and side and thigh of one of the players was so cut and bruised that it had the appearance of raw meat, and although the man himself kept on, and always came up to time, the spectators became so alarmed at his terrible condition and lacerated appearance that some attempt was made to get him to leave the stage and insisted that a medical man should be requested to attend him …
Shrivenham was one of the places noted for its backsword players, and I have been told that on one occasion a player in that village continued to play after one of his eyes had been cut out and lay on his cheek, and slices of flesh had been cut off his arms. Of course, such a one would receive much encouragement from the spectators as being a “good plucky fellow,” and the flow of pence into his basket at the close of each bout would be most liberal…
The Popular Amusements of our Grandfathers -The Swindon Advertiser, Saturday December 6, 1884.
Radnor Street Cemetery 