A bunch of fives

The phrase appears in print in 1825, in Charles Westmacott’s satirical novel The English Spy:

“…came up to the scratch and floored many a youkel with their bunch of fives.”

It is also reported as appearing, slightly earlier, in Boxiana by Pierce Egan, 1821. Boxiana is a classic work on boxing history and folklore, and just the place to look for such a reference, but it isn’t easy to obtain copies of it these days, and I can’t confirm that attribution.

However, ‘a bunch of fives’ does certainly derive from early boxing terminology. The ‘scratch’ referred to in Westmacott’s story is the line that boxers were brought up to, to face each other at the start of a match. The early 1800s saw the invention of the boxing glove, which later became mandatory under the Queensbury Rules in 1867. In the 1820s bare-knuckle fighting was still commonplace and the ‘fives’ were the weapon of choice.