Knock-out boxing show inspired by History graduate’s research

A Goldsmiths graduate’s research into Victorian boxers helped inspire the hit Disney+ series A Thousand Blows.

Historian Sarah Elizabeth Cox’s expertise saw her working as an advisor alongside Professor David Olusoga and Hallie Rubenhold on the show created by Steven Knight, of Peaky Blinders fame. 

Sarah completed an MA in History in 2020, with a dissertation on New Cross wrestler and boxer Jack Wannop, and it was her research into the broader world of 19^th century London ring-fighters which informed the TV show. 

The programme starring Stephen Graham, Malachi Kirby and Erin Doherty follows the fortunes of Hezekiah and Alec, two best friends recently arrived in the East End from Jamaica. 

Sarah’s blog Grappling With History charts the stories of the real-life Hezekiah Moscow, Alexander Hayes Munroe, and their 1880s pugilistic circle. The historian explains how this research was used to inform the fictional tales which feature on screen. 

Sarah said: “In 2018 I had just started my research on Wannop and was spending hours reading digitised 1880s newspaper reports on him in the British Newspaper Archive. Easily distracted, I began exploring names connected to him, perhaps people on the same bill as him at an event. The name ‘Ching Hook’ jumped out. Google search showed me a striking photograph of a Black or Black mixed heritage boxer but no information about him. It was baffling to me that no one seemed to have looked into this guy before. 

“I started piecing together his story, which became easier after finding out his ‘real’ name - Hezekiah Moscow. I published my work online; shared information about Hezekiah and fellow boxer Alec Munroe on social media; worked with the National Archives on an education project for GCSE students; spoke to young people at a Goldsmiths open day about them. I also wrote an essay for my MA History research skills module about how that one photo was able to kick-start this whole enormous project.

“Soon after, actor Hannah Walters also saw Moscow’s photo online, and with the help of some details drawn from my research, took an idea for a TV show to Steven Knight.”

 

Sarah’s work as “the authority on constructing the real Hezekiah Moscow’s life” was recognised by one of the show’s Executive Producers, David Olusoga, in a recent Guardian interview. 

Sarah says: “As Professor Olusoga explained, Hezekiah and Alec’s story is typical of Black Victorian histories in Britain - we have ‘flashes of detail and then ages of darkness’. My research has been extensive but it has found little of these men’s voices, their personalities. What were they really like? How did they really experience London in the 1880s? How did London experience them? 

“What TV dramas like A Thousand Blows can do is help fill in those gaps. The amazing writing team and the actors are inspired by the facts that researchers like me can find through records and newspapers, but it’s only through the creative licence of historical drama that they’re able to really bring these characters ‘back to life’.

“Black, Asian, multicultural, Victorian histories are so little taught in schools and so little explored. When the A Thousand Blows trailer came out there were some responses from people saying that the Black or Asian characters didn’t exist, they were ‘over representative’, or something like a mixed relationship wouldn’t have been possible, for example. Well, they did, and it was. Hezekiah and Alec were real. Hezekiah married a White woman.

“I loved studying at Goldsmiths in my 30s with a much clearer sense of what I wanted to study and more enthusiasm for it than I had as a student the first time around, at 19, when going to university felt like box ticking. My tutors within the history department and colleagues in the wider university were a real inspiration for me to want to get into ‘public history’. I’ve always wanted my research in popular magazines, newspapers, talks, in accessible books, on podcasts and inspiring TV dramas. Seeing Hezekiah Moscow’s name in the headlines more than 130 years after he was last there has been so exciting. He deserves it, and I’m so proud to have played a part.”

As well as being a graduate of the MA History course Sarah is also a former member of Goldsmiths’ staff where she worked in the press office for more than five years. 

She is currently working with a literary agent on a proposal for her first social history and boxing history book, and in 2026 will be a chapter author in an anthology on women’s wrestling, Amazons of the Arena, edited by researchers at Ulster University and the University of Texas.