What is "bearbaiting"

Usage examples of "bearbaiting".

Mack had been here before, and he knew that bearbaiting, dogfights, sword fights between women gladiators and all kinds of amusements were held in the backyard.

He sees how the Londoners like violent sports like bearbaiting and beheadings at Tyburn, so he writes the most violent play ever written.

Yelling obscenities, as at a bearbaiting or cockfight, the men spurred on the clandestine activity taking place.

American savages, they might as well bring back some decent English sports like bearbaiting and cockfights.

Some cities prefer the traditional cruelties of bearbaiting or cockfights, while others indulge their baser appetites with gladiators and arenas.

While bearbaiting was an amusing and lucrative entertainment, everyone knew it should take place in a bear pit and not by the side of the road with a nonpaying audience.

Admission was a mere twenty-five cents, and the man next to him explained that it had cost more before the opposition to bearbaiting had ended that practice in many places.

This is a reflection of the fact that the Puritans, to their great credit, strove to have bearbaiting made illegal.

Puritans, but not of the sort Macaulay recently described who hated bearbaiting because it gave pleasure to the spectators, not because it gave pain to the bear.

England had outlawed bearbaiting and the last captive bear had been ransomed.

There were bearbaitings, then, and wild beast fights with boars, dogs, and bulls.

Cliff, this means attendance at mills, bearbaitings, cockfights, and visits to any gaming hell where green-as-grass country bumpkins can be assured mat they will leave the establishment with empty pockets.

What more appropriate than a bear, or several bears, in some way specially, outstandingly, qualified for bearbaiting?