‘Scotch Training for a Milling Match’, 1811

Description

Mounted hand coloured etching, entitled ‘SCOTCH Training for a Milling Match’, designed by anon, etched by William Elmes, and published by Thomas Tegg around 1811.

A young boxer in training, squats over a bucket with his breeches down; on the wall behind him hang a huge pair of boxing gloves. His trainer, a Scotsman wearing a bonnet with a large thistle, kneels by an open fireplace applying bellows to a fire under a steaming cauldron marked ‘Crowdy’.

Among the objects on the mantlepiece are box of ‘Scotch Pills’. The trainer is trying to reduce the boxer’s weight in time for a match. The boxer says “Oh” _my Guts_ Captn. dont you think I am reduced enough”. His trainer replies “Hoot awa’ man, another muckle mess of Crowdy and a fiew doses of Scotch Pills will do your business”.

The ‘Scotch Pills’ are probably the well-known Anderson’s Scots Pills, a cathartic, produced from c.1635 until the early 1900s, containing aloes, anise, jalap, myrrh and gamboge.