'The weapon is a good stout ash-stick with a large basket-handle ... The players are called "old gamesters," -why, I can't tell you,- and their object is simply to break one another's heads: for the moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten, and has to stop. A very slight blow with the sticks will fetch blood, so that it is by no means a punishing pastime, if the men don't play on purpose, and savagely, at the body and arms of their adversaries.'

Thomas Hughes