Captain Sydney Temple Leopold McLaglen (1884-1951) was one of the most colourful “characters” of the early 20th century jiujitsu scene. Charismatic, moustachioed, broad-shouldered and towering at 6’7″ in height, McLaglen looked every inch the dashing British soldier, and had, in fact, been photographed with his brothers for an army recruitment campaign poster, billed as “the Fighting Macks”.
Reminiscent, however, of Sir Harry Flashman – the fictional protagonist of George Macdonald Fraser’s popular historical novel series, The Flashman Papers – Leopold McLaglen’s stalwart stature concealed the heart and mind of an adventurous con-artist.
McLaglen claimed to have studied Japanese unarmed combat from boyhood with a family servant who was proficient in the art, rapidly advancing to the point where he was able to defeat his instructor. He also claimed to be the Jiujitsu Champion of the World, based on his highly dubious defeat of a Japanese fighter named Kanada in British Columbia during 1907, here summarised by a local reporter:
For two hours the spectators saw nothing but Kanada crouching on the mat with McLaglen on top of him and there was little, if any, jiu-jitsu to the performance. It was apparent to everyone that McLaglen’s knowledge of the game could be covered with a pinhead.
McLaglen’s enthusiastic self-promotion was, thus, inspired by an essentially meaningless title, as – even if he had won a clear victory over Kanada – there was neither a governing body nor a recognised format of international jiujitsu competition during this period.
During late 1911 and early 1912 Leo McLaglen was again in the newspapers, this time for having been caught impersonating his own younger brother, Victor, who was by then making a name for himself as a boxer and as an actor. While working as a doorman at a Milwaukee movie theatre, Leo began calling himself “Victor Fred McLaglen” and publicly claimed a storied past as a decorated hero of the Boer War, a former British intelligence agent and member of King Edward’s bodyguard corps, and a soldier of fortune who’d chased down criminals in Canada. He also said that he had fought heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson in Vancouver during 1909.
Riding on local media notoriety, McLaglen then challenged a fencing instructor to a broadsword match with what appear to have been live blades – the resulting contest was an appalling bloodbath – and shortly thereafter challenged the boxer “Fireman” Jim Flynn, only to be knocked down several times within three rounds. At that point his brother Victor caught wind of Leopold’s shenanigans and sent a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Free Press, denouncing Leo as an impostor but pointedly not mentioning that the two of them were, in fact, related.
Leopold left Milwaukee in disgrace and turned up about a year later in South Africa, where he teamed with strongman Tromp van Diggelen in a touring jiujitsu act. Van Diggelen later wrote that he was surprised to discover that McLaglen’s “paralysing” nerve grips did not actually work, but he was happy to feign being immobilised for the sake of showbiz.
During one performance, however, McLaglen was challenged by a member of the audience who turned out to be a well-known local boxer. As the boxer climbed onto the stage and began removing his jacket, McLaglen unaccountably punched him in the face, causing the pugilist to go berzerk. Van Diggelen then watched bemusedly as his partner was pummeled off the stage and up a flight of stairs leading to their dressing room.
Nevertheless, Leopold McLaglen successfully parlayed his “Jiujitsu Champion” claim into a reputation as a military close-combat expert. By 1913 he was touring India, China, the Philippine Islands, Australia and New Zealand, teaching and demonstrating his version of jiujitsu and also an unusual system of bayonet fighting, which he also claimed to have invented. The McLaglen Bayonet System was notable for its incorporation of extreme close-quarters techniques such as trips, disarms and throws.
Most of McLaglen’s trainees were soldiers and police officers, many of whom were recruited as performers in large public Assault-at-Arms exhibitions starring McLaglen himself, supplementing his jiujitsu and bayonet displays with feats of strength, horsemanship and swordsmanship.
By this time, Leo McLaglen’s jiujitsu claims included purported defeats of a veritable who’s who of (notably obscure) opponents, including:
(…) T. E. Hiria, M. Tani and Prof. Yamagata, one of the best men in Japan, who was engaged by President Roosevelt to teach the American police jiujitsu. Captain McLaglen broke the professor’s arm. Prof. Fukamuchi (Los Angeles), Watanalu, Rondo, Saku, Prof. Shimura and [Henry] De Raymond all sustained defeat, the last named, a man of 350 lbs., retiring with a broken shoulder blade. In Calcutta, January 1913, Capt. McLaglen defeated Prof. Yamasaki and Prof. Toda (…)
Even allowing for the vagaries of transliterating Japanese names into English during the early 20th century, this is a highly dubious list. “Professor Yamagata” is clearly a garbled reference to Yoshiaki Yamashita, who actually was President Theodore Roosevelt’s personal judo instructor, but there appear to be no records of McLaglen and Yamashita ever having met, let alone to the former breaking the latter’s arm.
In the years during and following the First World War, Leo McLaglen produced a series of jiujitsu and self-defence training manuals, including books on his bayonet system and on self-protection for women. His greatest notoriety, however, was to come during the 1930s, when he arrived in Hollywood.
Attempting to break into show business as an actor and director – though his only previous experience seems to have been a supporting role in the British drama Bars of Iron (1920) – Leopold quickly again ran afoul of his brother Victor, who was, by this time, a successful member of the Hollywood establishment. Their feud led to Leopold suing Victor for $90,000, charging slander and defamation of character. The trial judge rejected the lawsuit, and it was reported that Leopold refused Victor’s offer to shake his hand afterwards.
The years 1937 and 1938 proved to be Leopold McLaglen’s nadir. Still based in Los Angeles, he became involved with the American Nazi underground and apparently masterminded a plot to assassinate twenty-four prominent “Hollywood Jews”, including Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddy Cantor and Samuel Goldwyn. This scheme, which involved planned assassinations by machine gun and explosives, was to have been funded by millionaire sportsman Philip Chancellor, who had originally hired McLaglen as a jiujitsu instructor.
When the assassination plot was uncovered and defused by a network of private investigators hired by Hollywood studio heads, Leo McLaglen attempted to extort $20,000 from Chancellor, which led to his arrest. In his own defence, McLaglen claimed that he had, in fact, been working as a secret agent attempting to expose Chancellor as a Nazi spy, but his evidence did not convince the jury and he was offered the choice of either leaving the United States for five years, or spending that time in prison. Victor McLaglen, by this time an Academy Award-winning actor, paid for Leopold’s boat fare back to England.
Leopold McLaglen died on January 4th, 1951, leaving an intriguing but very deeply tarnished legacy.
Under “Bar-titsu ” I comprise boxing, or the use of the fist as a hitting medium, the use of the feet both in an offensive and defensive sense, the use of the walking-stick as a means of self-defence in such a way as to make it practically impossible to be hit upon the fingers.
– E.W. Barton-Wright, “Ju-Jitsu and Ju-Do”; Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London (1901)
Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright’s articles and presentations repeatedly highlighted the Vigny system’s innovative guard structure, which was geared around protecting the defender’s weapon-wielding hand.
The basic combative logic of this style of guarding was clearly explained by Barton-Wright in 1901:
It must be understood that the new art of self-defence with a walking-stick, herewith introduced for the first time, differs essentially from single-stick or sword-play; for a man may be a champion in the use of sword or single-stick and yet be quite unable to put a walking-stick to any effective use as a weapon of defence.
The simple and sufficient reason to account for this is that both in single-stick and sword-play a cut is always taken up by the hilt of the weapon, whereas if you attempted to guard a blow with a walking-stick — which has no hilt — in the same way as you would with a sword, the blow would slide down your stick onto your hand and disable you.
Therefore, in order to make a stick a real means of self-defence, it has been necessary to devise a system by which one can guard a blow in such a way as to cause it to slide away from the hand instead of toward it, and thus obviate the risk of being disarmed by being hit upon the fingers.
After some fifteen years of hard work, such a system has been devised by a Swiss professor of arms, M. Vigny. It has recently been assimilated by me into my system of self-defence called “Bartitsu.”
– Barton-Wright, “Self-defence with a Walking-stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions (Part I)”, Pearson’s Magazine, 11 (January 1901)
Within the scheme of Vigny’s style, protecting the weapon-wielding hand was accomplished by:
Like many martial arts and fencing instructors, Vigny favoured “guards by distance”, i.e. avoiding an opponent’s attack while simultaneously counter-attacking:
Vigny’s implicit critique of more traditional stick fighting systems was that these styles essentially treated the cane as if it were a substitute sabre. Crucially, that meant that they included the standard sabre-style parries of tierce and quarte, in which the weapon-wielding hand is held lower than the point of impact, leading to the risks referred to above by Barton-Wright:
Students in more traditional cane defence classes wore heavily padded gloves to mitigate the chance of injuries to their hands and fingers in training, but of course these items, like hilts, are not present in spontaneous street altercations. Therefore, Vigny eliminated tierce- and quarte-style parries from his own system, which was specifically designed for self-defence rather than academic fencing.
Similarly, being further spatially removed from the opposing weapon, the characteristic high guard positions of the Vigny style – particularly the Rear Guard, shown in the centre above – reduce the chances of the weapon-wielding hand being targetted and “sniped” by an alert opponent.
Casual perusers of Barton-Wright’s articles on stick fighting are sometimes confused by the incidence of fighting stances in which the defender’s cane appears to be held in tierce/quarte. Those stances, however, fall into two specific categories:
The defences that emerge out of those positions include hanging guard parries, pre-emptive strikes and closing in to grapple with the opponent at close quarters. They never include actual parries in the tierce or quarte positions, which contradict the basic strategy of the Vigny style.
“Hanging” guards are those in which the defender’s weapon-wielding hand is positioned higher than the point of impact between the two weapons at the moment the attack is parried. This position has the effect of deflecting or “shedding” an attack downward along the shaft of the cane:
The combination of the “guard by distance” tactic, the default to high guard positions and the options of hanging guards as backup defences represents the combative ideal of “striking without being struck” and offers the optimal chance of avoiding disarms and hand injuries in a stick fight.
Written, co-directed and co-produced by Bartitsu instructor Tony Wolf, the 50-minute documentary No Man Shall Protect Us: The Hidden History of the Suffragette Bodyguards explores the origins and exploits of “The Bodyguard” – a secret society of women who trained in jiujitsu and defended the leaders of the radical suffragette movement in England.
Bartitsu demonstrations will be part of the festivities at the second Sherlockon Poland convention, taking place between June 30-July 1 2018 at the Ursynów Culture Center in Warsaw, Poland.
This article from The Globe newspaper of February 3rd, 1910 reveals some more mugging tricks developed by the so-called Apache street gangsters of Paris.
Most of these marauders were professional thieves and burglars, who are divided, in their own slang, into “ceux qu montent” the burglars; “ceux qui marchent”, or thieves of various classes; and “ceux qui butent”, those who make a speciality of nocturnal aggression. It is the third category which is most dreaded by Parisians, for the desperate criminals who make a speciality of night attacks are a bloodthirsty, cowardly set of ruffians, and they are always armed to the teeth and hold human life—the lives of others, bien entendu — very cheap. A solitary citizen going home late, or a policeman on a lonely beat, has very little chance against them.
M. Henri Christian lately made the acquaintance of three hooligans whose speciality is “night work,” and they gave him some details of the manner in which they operate. One the three was named Baigueur, the second answered to the nickname of the Costeau de Grenelle, and the third, because the extraordinary size of his nose, was known to his companions Cyrano.
When they have once made up their minds rob a passer-by— which one does not matter much — it is more than likely they will decide to begin operations by the “coup de la discussion.” That means that the three “apaches” will take up position the pavement, and pretend to be engaged in innocent gossip. The street or the boulevard is deserted; a solitary pedestrian comes into sight. In a moment he is weighed up the three scoundrels the look-out for their prey. There is not a policeman sight. The moment is favourable.
“He has a gold chain,” says one. . .
“He’ll do,” says the chief the criminal trio. “Get ready.”
They continue to converse until the Stranger reaches them. Involuntarily he glances at them he passes. That is sufficient.
“What do you mean by looking at like that?” asks the chief in an insolent tone. Then turning his companions, he remarks: “Hasn’t he got an ugly mug?” The pedestrian, however little he may be inclined quarrel with the evil-looking ruffians who have accosted him, will unlikely take their insults in silence. But his first word of protest one of the group advances him with a menacing “What! I’ll show you who you’ve got to deal with.”
The stranger stands upon his guard, but immediately another member the trio bounds upon him from behind, seizes him round the neck with his arm, and lifts him off the ground. His cries for help are stifled in his throat, and if he succeeds making himself heard the arm which presses against his throat is tightened and he loses consciousness.
While this is going on another of the accomplices goes through the victim’s pockets, while the third keeps watch for the police. Then, when everything worth taking has been appropriated, the wretch who has almost strangled the “pante” (victim) releases his arm, gives the victim a violent push, and sends him headlong into the pavement, where he will lie senseless for half an hour at least.
Sometimes things do not always pass so easily. Sometimes the victim shows more resistance than was expected, and then the apaches have to modify their plans. He must either be stunned with blow from a mutton-bone or given a stab with knife or dagger. The mutton-bone used by the Paris apache is a terrible weapon. In appearance it resembles a small hatchet, minus the handle, is about six inches long, and comes from the shoulder of the sheep. This and the knife and the knuckle-duster are the favourite weapons of the Paris hooligan. They are both effective and noiseless, whereas the use the revolver is likely to attract the attention of the police.
The one thing the nocturnal marauder cannot forgive is being the victim of a mistake as to the value of the pedestrian he has singled out for attack. If he has a watchchain and no watch, and if his pockets be empty, then woe to the unfortunate “pante”. To punish him for having misled “Messieurs les Rodeurs,” he is treated with the utmost savagery, thrown brutally the ground, and stamped on. Another terrible punishment inflicted on the pedestrian who does not answer to the expectations of the cowardly ruffians who waylay him at night is the sonnage, which consists in taking the victim’s head by the ears and bumping it into the edge of the pavement.
Among the more recent methods developed by the Apaches of Paris for rendering the passing citizen- incapable of resistance is the lasso. At the favourable moment a cord, from 15ft. to 20ft. length and ending in a running knot, is thrown by an expert hand. As it falls over the victim’s head, the cord is jerked tight, and, half-strangled, he is thrown the ground. The rest is easy.
Participants in one of instructor Alex Kiermayer’s recent Unarmed Bartitsu seminars practice the chasse median (mid-level side kick).
The chasse median is also one of the few kicks represented in the Bartitsu canon, albeit in the context of demonstrating how the Bartitsu-trained defender could counter this type of attack, which was picturesquely described by E.W. Barton-Wright as the “Most Dangerous Kick of an Expert Kicker”:
It’s likely that Barton-Wright had in mind the use of kicking attacks by Parisian street gangsters, who had then recently been dubbed “Apaches” – though it would take a few more years before that nickname gained real pop-culture currency. Barton-Wright’s presentation of kicking in Bartitsu was, of course, also coloured by the prevailing English sentiment towards French athletics (and particularly French kickers) at the turn of the 20th century …
Alexander Kiermayer is probably one of the most prominent instructors of the historical fencing scene. He has a broad background in various martial arts and is training counselor of the group ‘Ochs – historical martial arts ‘. His great knowledge combined with his practical skills make him a sought-after speaker at home and abroad.
Bartitsu is a martial art and self-defence system that existed between 1898 and 1902 in England. A special feature of the system – and seminar focus – is the use of walking sticks as weapons. Bartitsu became known, among others, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, in which the protagonist also practices “Baritsu”. The art is a combination of Jiu Jitsu, Swiss svingen wrestling, elements of boxing, Savate (French boxing) and stick fencing.
Place: Gymnasium of elementary school – St.-Georg-Str. 20, 91338 Igensdorf close to the main road 2, approx. 18 km from the BAB 3 (Exit Nürnberg-Nord, then towards Bayreuth)
Time: Saturday, October 27, 2018, 10:00 – 16:30
Cost: 30.- € (cash payment on the spot)
Participation: No requirements, open to all associations, styles and grades
Other:
Equipment: Sportswear (also contemporary), gym-suitable shoes, sticks made of rattan, ash or polyethylene; rattan sticks can also be purchased cheaply on site.
Free night in the practice room in Pettensiedel on request!
For registrations please contact:
Matthias Dülp via etlaswind@aol.com
Tel: 09126 2893002 or 0171/706 37 16
There’s a good deal to unpack in this advertisement for an assault-at-arms display organised by former Bartitsu Club instructor Pierre Vigny, including one particularly intriguing item:
ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 at 8 p-m. Under Distinguished Patronage.
GREAT TOURNAMENT OF FENCING AND ALL- ROUND SELF-DEFENCE, given by
Prof. PIERRE VIGNY.
With the participation of the societies The Tierce and Quarte Club, the Self-Defence Club, Le Centre de Quarte of London, the Japanese School of Jujitsu.
Fencing Foils, Duelling Swords, Sabres; English Boxing; French Boxing (La Savate); a Secret Style of Boxing, with numerous tricks and counters; Japanese Wrestling; Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling; Walking Stick, how anyone can defend himself in a crowd.
Foils: Mrs Roger Watts, of Fred MacPherson’s Academy, v. Madame Pierre Vigny (Miss Sanderson); Demonstration of Japanese self-defence Mr S. K. Eida and Mrs Roger Watts (first English Lady to demonstrate this wonderful system).
Reserved Seats, 16s. 6d.; Unreserved, 5s.
Tickets can obtained from Prof. Pierre Vigny, 2. Hinde-street, Manchester-square; Cafe Royale, Regent-street; and St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly.
The “Self Defence Club” was Vigny’s own school, which promoted a “combined” approach to self-defence training very much in the fashion of the Bartitsu Club, albeit with a greater emphasis on fencing than on jujutsu. Unfortunately, comparatively little is known about Vigny’s system in its own right.
Of the demonstrators listed, it’s notable that we can now identify Madame Vigny/Miss Sanderson as Marguerite Vigny, Pierre’s wife and a frequent competitive foil fencer as well as the founder of her own system of women’s self-defence employing umbrellas and parasols. S.K. (Surakichi) Eida was an instructor at the Japanese School of Jujitsu and went on to achieve some fame as a “jujitsu waltz” performer on the music hall stage. Likewise, Mrs. Watts would eventually move from Japanese unarmed combat to devise her own, intricate system of physical culture inspired by ancient Greek athletics.
The reference to a “secret style of boxing, with numerous tricks and counters” is a bit of a puzzle, especially in that it seems to be contextually distinct from both English boxing and French savate. The actual phraseology is very close to, and may well have been directly inspired by a line from a 1902 St. James’s Gazette article reviewing a Bartitsu display at the famous Bath Club, which included “(…) a secret style of wrestling, with innumerable tricks and counters.”
Perhaps the likeliest explanation is that the “secret style” was a development of the method referred to by E.W. Barton-Wright in an article from the Black and White Budget magazine, several years earlier:
Another branch of Bartitsu is that in which the feet and hands are both employed, which is an adaptation of boxing and Savate. The guards are done in a slightly different style from boxing, being much more numerous as well.
Vigny and Barton-Wright had been working together since June of 1899 and it’s clear that one of the fruits of their collaboration was a distinct modification of (kick)boxing. This “secret style” was never explicitly detailed by either man, but Barton-Wright’s comments suggest that it involved an aggressive, street-oriented variation of “standard” boxing defences, in which the defender aimed to damage the attacker’s striking limbs:
As to boxing, we have guards which are not at all like the guards taught in (orthodox boxing) schools, and which will make the assailant hurt his own hand and arm very seriously.
The other likely point of distinction was that Vigny and Barton-Wright both advocated for a more realistic, hard-hitting ethos that was then the accepted norm in French savate circles. At this time, the majority of professional instructors in France were promoting a rather academic and courteous, light-contact version of savate, which was practiced at least as much as a form of “combat calisthenics” as a serious self-defence method.
In the context of Bartitsu per se, the innovation of aggressive and damaging guard techniques was a prelude to finishing the fight as may be necessary at close quarters, via jujutsu. Although the Japanese art was de-emphasised in Vigny’s school, some elements definitely were present, as described by journalist J. St. A Jewell in his 1904 article on Vigny’s school for Health and Strength Magazine:
Part was boxing, part wrestling, part Jujitsu, and part La Savate; but each move blended into the next like a piece of joiner’s dovetailing. One led and landed short, and that proved his undoing, for the next instant he was bent double, rendered helpless, and his arm was by way of being twisted out of socket. That was boxing and Jujitsu. Then the pupil rushed, driving hard with his left, but Vigny ducked aside, pivoted on his left leg and kicked on the mark with his right, in a full body swing, following up the move with back-heeling his man. That was La Savate and wrestling.
By Tony Wolf
I’m sad to report the passing of William Hobbs, who was among the most influential and respected fight directors of the 20th century. He died on July 10th, at the age of 79 years.
Bill Hobbs was a true pioneer of the “modern style” of performance combat. While many of his predecessors in film, TV and stage combat had also been expert fencers, Hobbs broke the mold in crafting fights that were at least as integral to character and story as any other aspect of production design.
It’s about thinking through the character, not through spectacle. A fight has got to grow out of the situation of the play. Perhaps my advantage is that having been an actor, I’m trying only to do the move I feel is right for the character. You are not doing pyrotechnics for the sake of being pyrotechnic.
His fighters were, for the most part, portrayed as fallible human beings. They frequently found themselves scrambling to recover from mistakes, became exhausted or enraged, slipped in the mud, sometimes succeeding (or just surviving) almost in spite of themselves.
All of this was in profound and refreshing contrast to the more purely heroic action scenes of Hobbs’ predecessors in the field, which too often eschewed messy realism and psychological substance for the swashbuckling cliches of textbook “movie fencing”. Bill Hobbs’ fight choreography always sought to surprise his audience, and took the less-obvious path.
As a co-founder of the Society of British Fight Directors, Hobbs was also a pioneer in the practical research of historical martial arts. In this, along with his fellow founders Arthur Wise and John Waller, he anticipated the modern HEMA revival movement by several decades.
From the mid-1960s through to the mid-2000s, Bill Hobbs’ acclaimed fight choreography was featured in dozens of major theatrical, film and television productions. Germane to Bartitsu.org, he staged the dapper John Steed’s umbrella combat scenes for The Avengers (1998):
Career highlights, in terms of acclaim among his peers, include his work on Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (1977), Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990) and John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Perhaps his most famous fight, however, was the honour duel between Rob Roy and Archie Cunningham in Michael Caton-Jones’ Rob Roy (1995).
Younger audiences will recognise Bill Hobbs’ signature creativity and commitment to detail in the “water dance” fighting style of Syrio Forel, as featured in season one of the fantasy TV series Game of Thrones. Actor Miltos Yerolemou worked extensively with Hobbs to develop his character’s unique method of swordplay.
On a more personal note, I believe that it was a 1980s TV news item about William Hobbs’ work that first inspired me to take up fight direction as a career. In fact, his 1967 book Stage Combat: The Action to the Word (with a foreword by Sir Laurence Olivier!) was among the very few resources available to me when I set out on that path. Because there was literally no-one in my home country of New Zealand who could teach me how to become a fight director/stage combat instructor, Bill Hobbs effectively became my mentor via the written word.
When I travelled to London to attend the first ever international stage combat workshops in 1995, I carried my copy of Hobbs’ book with me. A customs agent asked what I’d be doing in England, and I explained a bit about the conference, at which he smiled broadly and asked “Will you be working with Bill Hobbs? I used to flat with him in the ’60s! Welcome to England, sir!”
The conference itself took place at London’s Roehampton Institute. It was an amazing workshop of creative combat, with a colourful, eclectic roster of instructors and participants. I remember that Bill seemed quite nervous as he spoke to us, and I only afterwards learned that he’d been worried that his audience of mostly young, up-and-coming fight directors would think him “old hat”. Far from it; and I think he was a little overwhelmed by the adulation that he did, in fact, inspire in us.
After his lecture, Bill was gracious enough to sign my dog-eared copy of his book. Many years later, I was honoured when he agreed to review and write a foreword for my own anthology of historical stage combat essays and anecdotes, A Terrific Combat!!! Theatrical Duels, Brawls and Battles: 1800-1920 (2009).
Bravo, Maestro, and thank you; now rest in peace.
