Magistrates' records from the English town of Portsmouth show the town's women to have been exceptionally violent. Women accounted, on average, for just over 31% of all assaults on record for the years 1653 to 1781. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to compare the fighting styles of men and women and to examine the extent to which these were gendered. Particular attention was paid to levels of violence between pairs of brawlers. The most common form of violence was male-on-male (2,666 cases), followed by female-on-female (1,690), male-on-female (1,675), and female-on-male (299). Of these pairings, female-on-male assaults were the most violent, as measured by the types of weapons used by the aggressors, and female-on-female pairings were the least violent.KEY WORDS: interpersonal aggression; early modern England; physical dominance; gendered aggression.To form yourself an idea of these tender languishing nymphs-these lovely fighting ornaments of the fair sex, imagine a something of more than Amazonian stature, having a crimson countenance, emblazoned with all the effrontery of Cyprian confidence, and broad Bacchanalian folly: give to her bold countenance the war-like features of two wounded cheeks, 1