The Feb. 4, 1900, Sunday sports section in the Syracuse Sunday Herald had stories from all over the athletic world.
There were stories about boxing, track and field, figure skating, and bowling.
The ice track at Kirk Park in Syracuse was considered now then one of the best in the country for horse racing and the Syracuse Stars had just signed a lease for a new baseball stadium on Marsh Road, soon to be renamed Hiawatha Avenue.
And there was something else.
The only photograph on the page is of “Red Rufus” a champion in what was then the “most popular sport” in all of Seneca Falls -- cockfighting.
Boxing, figure skating, baseball and horse racing on ice at Kirk Park are all mentioned on this Syracuse Sunday Herald clipping from Feb. 4, 1900 but the only photo belongs to Rufus the rooster and his handler. "Chicken scrappers" will prevalent along the Auburn Road around Seneca Falls. Courtesy of World ArchivesCourtesy of World Archives
“For more than 40 years,” the Herald reported, “cock fighting has been the favorite sport of a large number of men of Seneca Falls. More than 200 mains (fighting tournaments) have been held in the vicinity during the last quarter of a century.”
In one such event a few days before the article was published, nine “battles” were fought and about 100 spectators, whom the headline called “chicken scrappers,” watched and betted on the birds, despite the protests from local clergy.
Three-year-old “Red Rufus,” owned by local bartender Edward McConnell, of the Third Ward Cock Fighting Club, had survived 13 of these fights and had won “many hundreds of dollars for his backers.”
It seems fighting chickens had become a favorite pastime in towns up and down the “Auburn road.”
A BRIEF HISTORY
Fighting chickens for entertainment is one of the oldest “sports” in the world, dating back to Biblical times.
It was brought to Greece by the ancient Persians and Greek soldiers used the fights to stimulate themselves before battle.
It spread throughout Europe and was popular in Britain, a favorite pastime for common man and nobleman alike.
Julius Caesar fought chickens against those belonging to Mark Antony and King Henry VIII had a fighting pit at the Palace at Whitehall.
Spanish and English settlers brought it to America where it would spread across what became the United States, Mexico, and Central America.
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, who some historians argue earned his nickname “Honest Abe” for his deft handling of cockfights while serving as a referee, were all fans of the blood sport.
In 1782, the American Bald Eagle became the national bird, just beating the gamecock by a single vote.
Following the Civil War, opposition to cockfighting and other forms of animal abuse increased.
Henry Bergh of New York was the founder of the A.S.P.C.A.
In 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals (A.S.P.C.A.) was founded by New Yorker Henry Bergh.
That same year, the New York State Legislature passed the nation’s first effective anti-cruelty law. For the first time, a state legally recognized the rights of animals from pain and neglect.
One year later, Bergh rallied for an amendment to the original law which banned blood sports in New York and allowed for the prosecution of fight hosts and audience members.
The legislation would become a template for the rest of the United States and by 1900, 40 states had made cockfighting illegal.
“CHICKEN FIGHTERS BRING HOME THE BACON’
As the 20th century begin, cockfighting was illegal in Central New York, but it was hard to tell.
This is from the Jan. 20, 1904 Post-Standard:
“Cock fighting is a favorite winter pastime with a number of Syracuse persons and ‘mains’ are held almost every week in one or another part of the city. Although under the ban, the game chicken fanciers manage generally to guard their movements from the observation of authorities.”
These so-called “fanciers” did little to hide their activities.
This Jan. 20, 1904 headline in the Post-Standard mentions that illegal cockfighting was "popular" with Syracuse-area sport fans. Courtesy of World ArchivesCourtesy of World Archives
“It was stated yesterday that a number of game cock owners of this city are now preparing their birds for a big main with Buffalo birds, to be pulled off near the Bison City for a large side bet, besides wagers on the individual fights.”
The article then proceeded to provide a “rough outline of the rules” for those you were “unfamiliar with the fine points of the game.”
Fights were to the death and rules stated that should both birds “become mortally wounded while fighting the last living bird shall win the battle.”
Prosecutions were difficult.
In 1904, a New York S.P.C.A. officer, G.W. Moshler, complained he had not won a single cockfighting case in Syracuse that year. Witnesses always refused to testify on the grounds of self-incrimination.
What must have been even more frustrating to animal rights crusaders were the way fights were written about in newspapers.
The fights were illegal but articles about them on the sports pages during the first quarter of the 20th century made them almost sound like normal sporting contests.
This report is from the Syracuse Journal on Feb. 12, 1924 about a main between birds from Syracuse versus those from Albany. The writer is almost rooting for the hometown team:
“Syracuse sportsmen who haven’t been able to outgrow their love for the ancient and honorable sport of cock fighting, took their high-spirited birds to Albany Saturday night, where quite the little main was staged and where Syracuse game cocks did nothing to dishonor their city.”
It was reported that the local chicken fighters “returned with the bacon,” bringing back “between $7,000 and $8,000 in Albany money with them.” (That is roughly between $107,000 and $122,000 in today’s money.)
‘NOT PERMITTED IN SYRACUSE’
Perceptions around cockfighting changed in the years following that fight. No longer were the fights written about in such glowing terms.
Police raids were now the order of the day.
On the early morning of May 28, 1932, police made a surprise raid on a chicken fight being held on 117 South McBride Street, arresting 75 men, and seizing 37 birds.
It was the largest raid of its kind in the area in over 20 years and it happened after more than seven months of investigation and surveillance.
This clipping from the May 31, 1932 Herald shows a packed police court room where some of the 60-70 men arrested for participating in a cockfight on South McBride Street in Syracuse Courtesy of World ArchivesCourtesy of World Archives
Incredibly, it all started with the grief over a lost dog.
In the midst of the Great Depression, a desperate mother appeared at the office of the Syracuse S.P.C.A. where her young children’s dog, “the only joy the youngsters had in life,” was being kept.
The dog was unlicensed, and the destitute family had no way to pay for one.
J. Henry Cassidy, the managing director of the S.P.C.A., asked if her husband was out of work.
“No, he works four days a week,” she said, before admitting, “He spends all his money going to boxing matches and cock fights. The children and I are in dire need.”
Cassidy made her an offer. If she let him know the next time her husband went to a fight, the dog could go home.
She kept her word and the big raid on South McBride, just a stone’s throw from the heart of downtown Syracuse, was the result.
Police learned of a secret cockfighting arena in a stable loft, made soundproof so that no one outside knew what was happening inside.
“All plans for the raid were laid in the deepest secrecy,” the Syracuse American reported.
Twenty patrolmen were hand-picked for the assignment.
Two vans brought groups of police at 1 a.m. Officers were stationed at every point of escape.
The Syracuse Herald reported what it was like inside:
“Inside a white-lighted storage loft, set with wooden benches in tiers rigged for spectators. The eight-sided pit, floored with tanbark, was littered with feathers from the first match in which one bird had been killed after 10 minutes of fighting.”
Men, who paid $3 to get in for 10 matches, were crowded around the pit, “money in their hands.”
Chickens were crowing overhead in cages, when Captain Edward Smith announced, “The place is surrounded, men line up over there,” pointing at a wall along one side of the room.
There was a “wild surge” for the $100 sitting on table, money bet on the current fight, and for the windows. But there was no escape.
Within the 15 minutes, the first load of captives was on their way to police headquarters. It would require an hour to clear everyone out.
Police headquarters was a scene of mayhem that night, with dozens of prisoners, bondsmen, and crowing chickens packed into the confused station.
Men from as far away as Rome, Cortland, Marathon, Ithaca, Oswego were among those arrested.
The men were each fined $10 at Police Court, the lowest fine possible for witnessing a cockfight. The money went to the local S.P.C.A.
“There was a buzzing show of interest in the review of the cocking main followers seldom publicly indemnified in the daytime,” the Syracuse Herald noted, “although known to each other in the nocturnal fraternity of the pit-side.
The 37 chickens were brought to an animal shelter.
“Cock fighting will not be permitted in Syracuse,” said Cassidy on May 31, 1932. “It is the cruelest of all so-called sports.”
Sixty people were arrested near Baldwinsville on March 1, 1953 after State Police raided a cockfight. Onondaga County was considered a hub then in the Northeast for the illegal blood sport. Courtesy of World ArchivesCourtesy of World Archives
CENTER OF COCKFIGHTING
Police raids on Central New York cockfights were fairly common during the 1950s and ’60s.
On March 1, 1953, State Police swooped down on a barn at Wright’s Corners in northeastern Onondaga County, just north of Baldwinsville.
They arrested 60 people and destroyed “thousands of dollars’ worth” of cockfighting equipment, including 45 birds.
Police would call the location the “apparent center of cockfighting” in the northeastern United States. The fight was advertised in fighting circles as a derby, with the survivors advancing to a “big-money feature” in Buffalo.
In fact, when Edward Jones, the chief officer of the Onondaga County SPCA, were questioning the spectators, many were impatient to be arraigned so they could leave for Buffalo as soon as possible.
One man lost $700 in less than two hours gambling on the fights.
A raid at a fight in Hamilton on Feb. 28, 1960 saw another 23 arrested. The “arena” at the barn had its own concession stand selling coffee and sandwiches.
A few months later, in July, 69 roosters were seized, and 29 people were arrested at a brazen cockfight occurring in the middle of the afternoon at a “wooded hollow” near Central Square. This fight was one on a “circuit” and had its own homemade bar which served beer and liquor.
The fight against cockfighting continues in New York State.
In 2017, the state’s Attorney General launched “Operation Bloodsport” which culminated in the arrest of 41 people and the seizure of more than 230 roosters in Herkimer County.
Those arrested came from as far away as Queens, the Bronx, Buffalo, Syracuse and even West Virginia to participate in the illegal sport.
Today, cockfighting is illegal in all 50 states, Louisiana being the last to ban the practice in 2007.
In 2019, Congress passed, and President Donald Trump, signed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, which made the cruelty to animals a federal crime.
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This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-427-3958.
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