With group classes off the table until further notice, martial arts practitioners are switching en masse to home- and self-training. A handy tip for Bartitsu practitioners is to use an Indian clubs as a substitute for the Vigny cane, whose 3.5 foot length poses a risk to indoor furnishings and ceilings. A relatively light (1.5 – 2 lb) Indian club suitably mimics the balance and handling of the asymmetrically-weighted Vigny walking stick for drilling purposes.
While we’re at it, here’s a good basic Indian club warm-up routine from The Art of Manliness:
As a side-note, there’s also a Bartitsu connection between Indian clubs and the radical suffragette movement. Edith Garrud, who became the jujitsu instructress for the secret Bodyguard Society of the Women’s Social and Political Union, had trained with former Bartitsu Club instructors Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi. As well as unarmed self-defence, Garrud also taught the members of the Bodyguard how to use Indian clubs as concealed weapons against the truncheons of the London police:
Indian-club wielding Bodyguards burst forth in this panel from the 2015 graphic novel Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons.
During the late 19th century, newspaper and magazine articles tended to skirt the subject of practical self-defence. The popularity of feature articles on that subject was spurred by Edward Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu series for Pearson’s Magazine in 1898-99 and continued through to the outbreak of the First World War. By the late 1920s, they had almost become passé.
This Popular Mechanics feature on the subject of self-protection against “rogues and stick-up men” offers a compilation of street-fighting tricks ranging from the common-sense to the somewhat fanciful, though the author’s emphasis on quick thinking and improvisation under pressure is as valid now as it was during the roaring ’20s.
Strategy is more effective than strength if one only knows how to use it in a dealing with bullies, ruffians or holdup men. A frail five-foot man can, figuratively, make a whipped dog out of a seven-foot rogue if he knows how to use his brain to make up for his inferiority in physical power.
There is even a way to prevent being held up at the point of a gun which is about 90% effective, if one only knows the trick. That is the simple expedient of keeping one or both hands in one’s pocket while passing through locations where a hold-up might be attempted.
No bandit, except one bereft of his senses, or with a reckless disregard for retaining a whole hide, would ever try to hold up a man who’s right hand reposes languidly in his coat pocket. The bandit has no knowledge that the hand in the pocket may not repose upon the butt of a pistol. The wise stickup-man therefore chooses for his victim one who can be told to “reach for the sky” without the possibility of bringing a trigger-finger unexpectedly into action.
No blanket rules can be set down to offer complete defense against the attacks of strong-arm bandits and bullies, but a generalization of methods of defense can be made which will serve almost every purpose. First of all, it should be remembered that all rules of fair play have no part in dealing with an adversary who is obviously outside the pale of law and order and public decency.
The problem of the person on the defensive is that of getting the best of the attacker by brain work and doing it in the quickest and most effective way.
The element of surprise movement is just as important to an individual seeking to defend himself as it has always been with armies. Catching the enemy unawares, and upon a quarter where he never anticipated and attack, is always one of the surest ways of getting the best of him. Thus, the big bully who launches an assault upon a person of lesser physique is usually taken completely off his guard when the little fellow hauls off with a quick fist and plants a blow squarely in the pit of his opponent’s abdomen. When this happens, the fellow who received the blow usually fold up like a jackknife, and spends the next 2 or 3 minutes gasping for breath, or howling with pain. We say that such a blow “knocks the wind out of one.” It does that figuratively but not literally. The jolt from even a fairly weak abdominal punch is absorbed by the intestines, the spleen and the lower part of the stomach. There are no bones to protect these vital organs from serious, or even fatal, injury. A blow of equal force could be landed upon the chest without the slightest injury to the recipient.
Next among body blows for putting an attacker out of combat, the groin is about the most vulnerable part of the body. Moreover, a bully or rogue seldom expects his harmless-looking victim to make use of his feet in defending himself. He is therefore taken completely off his guard, and is knocked out cold when the intended victim lets fly with the point of a shoe which catches him in the groin. If the person on the defensive has heavy shoes, the kick is all the more effective.
Umbrellas, canes, walking sticks, hat pins and many other articles which people commonly carry may be used as thoroughly efficient weapons for repelling the most vicious attack, if one knows just how to wield them. A person who is attacked while carrying an umbrella usually makes the mistake of attempting to use it as a club. A clubbed umbrella is scarcely more dangerous than a big feather, but the same umbrella, if thrust into an attacker’s face, automatically becomes a dangerous javelin that will gouge out an eye, rip the nose, or tear into the mouth or cheeks like a sword. An umbrella with the point dressed down by a few strokes of a file is also a terrible weapon when used javelin-fashion.
The intended victim of an attacker, who carries a cane or walking stick, usually clubs down upon his opponent in an effort to defend himself. It would require a very heavy cane to inflict in a serious injury by a downward swing of that instrument. An arm suddenly raised will ward off the blow completely. But, let the walking stick welder swing his improvised weapon horizontally, like a Chinaman will let drive with a broadsword, and even a light walking stick becomes a dangerous, or even deadly, weapon. With a cane swung horizontally, the man defending himself is more apt to catch his assailant unexpectedly. The blow is aimed upon the side of the head, and a good stiff jolt there will make a huge bullies see stars. It may break an eardrum, or cave in the side of the skull at a point where it is very thin. If the blow can be landed slightly below and a little behind the ear, even a light walking stick will crush the skull.
Fist blows aimed at the face are effective, but as a means of self-defense are not so good, especially since the average ruffian is usually something of a pugilist, and probably of a physique superior to his intended victim. The little fellow, therefore, should endeavor to defend himself, bearing in mind that fingernails gouging at his enemy’s eyes are more apt to inflict serious injury than a small weak fist bringing up against a hard lantern jaw. Hat pins, for women who wear them in these days of a small hats and bobbed hair, are, and always have been, potential weapons of self defense. They are to the owner, when wielded in the direction of an opponent’s eyes, precisely what the cat’s claws are in turning an angry dog. Women and girls who are annoyed by “mashers” have the most effective means of curtailing such an annoyance by cool-headed wit. Instead of displaying antagonism, they have but to feign approval – and then pass the annoyer over to the nearest police department.
In cases of personal combat, when the person on the defensive has been seized, or has clinched with the antagonist, the most effective defense available is to make quick and decisive use of one’s teeth. A study of police records of hundreds of attack cases reveals the fact that only one person in 50 ever seems to remember to bite the assailant when there is no other available method of besting him. Yet many instances also are recorded of persons who have completely defended themselves from attacks by making use of the teeth. A physically weak person can easily trim a finger off the hand of a husky rogue, or will make such a dent in his hand or arm that he’ll think of nothing but the pain.
Among classes of persons who frequently have occasion to act in self-defense, newspaper reporters and photographers probably top the list. They are constantly called upon to interview or photograph persons who don’t desire to be interviewed or photographed. Arguments and attacks are the logical outcome. There are innumerable opportunities for such squabbles, but they are always avoided by using a few of the repelling methods known to every newspaper man. Some of these methods are worth reciting here because they can be adopted or modified to meet the requirements of most persons in moments of urgent self-defense.
The newspaper photographer’s ever handy weapon of defense is the very camera that so often gets him into trouble. Few would expect a press photographer to use his camera either as a shield or as a weapon, but such use of it has the tremendous advantage of surprise. A 15 pound camera when suddenly lifted to shield one’s face from a fist blow offers splendid protection, as well as shock-absorbing qualities that will probably cause more damage to the fist than to the camera itself. Likewise, the same camera, when swung by the handle, becomes a weapon that will crack a head – or, better still, send that the opposing party scurrying beyond harm’s Way. The reporter’s favorite weapon is a lead pencil held like a dagger against the ball of the thumb and thrust in the direction of the antagonist’s face. No sane person will risk an eye against such an implement. Hence the threat in most cases ends the encounter before active warfare begins.
In the development of improvised weapons of self defense there are absolutely endless possibilities, depending, of course, largely upon the resourcefulness and initiative of the individual. Pins, belts with metal buckles, a shoe jerked off the foot and clubbed by the toe end, sticks, stones, tin cans, glass tableware and crockery that can be conveniently broken to make a jagged edge, and many other things, are recorded among articles that have been pressed into service by persons desperately in needs of defense. Wit and self-reliance are, indeed, the most powerful mediums for self-protection when it must be individually furnished.
Many suggestions are contained in police records of persons who have avoided indignities by means of quick wit. A few of these are listed for the valuable knowledge they may offer to others. A physician, who makes numerous calls at all hours of day and night, carries an ounce of red pepper done up in oiled paper, sewed into cheesecloth, and tide on the end of a buckskin thong.
Another, almost humorous incident of self-defense was that of a little fellow who was being set upon by a big bully as the result of their respective automobiles having locked fenders. The bully attempted to administer a chastisement upon the driver of the other car, but got a reception entirely unexpected. The little fellow grabbed a small hand fire extinguisher off the dash of his machine, then squirted his attacker in the face with the highly volatile fluid. A policeman who arrived on the scene to investigate the traffic jam found the bullying motorist rubbing his eyes, gasping for breath, and rid of all thought of personal combat.
We would hardly think of a strand of wire as an instrument for overpowering a bandit and delivering him into the hands of the police, but at least one incident of that sort has been recorded. A man was coming home one night when he was attacked by a footpad. A sharp scuffle followed during which the intended victim of the attack became entangled with a wire. Quick to think and act, he got the wire off his own feet and succeeded in taking a turn around the bandit’s neck with the thin strand of metal. After that, strangling the attacker into submission and leading him to the nearest police call box was the work of a few minutes.
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The once-celebrated and now little-known “manly art” of rough-and-tumble fighting, a.k.a. “gouge fighting”, is explained in this video by pulp fiction scholar Jeffrey Shanks.
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English actress and self-defence advocate Honor Blackman has died at the age of 94 years.
After studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Blackman landed small feature film and television parts until her 1962 breakout role as Cathy Gale in the popular Avengers action/mystery series. Playing opposite Patrick Macnee as the dapper, umbrella-wielding spy John Steed, Blackman took up judo for her role and so pioneered the model of the martial arts-trained television action heroine.
She left The Avengers to play glamorous villain Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in the 1964 feature film Goldfinger, also earning the distinction of being the first female character to (briefly) gain the upper hand in a physical encounter with James Bond:
In 1966 Blackman again drew upon her martial arts experience to author Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence, a handy compendium of fighting tips and tricks for swinging chicks.
Her post-Avengers and Bond film roles included parts in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Shalako (1968) and The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), and she made guest appearances in Columbo, Minder and Doctor Who. In 1990, she was cast in a regular role in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand, playing the glamorous mother of the lead female character, and in 2014 she was the inspired choice to host a short suffrajitsu documentary for the BBC’s One Show:
Honor Blackman was a committed political activist on behalf of the Liberal Democrats and was staunchly opposed to the institution of the monarchy, having turned down a CBE in 2002. She is fondly remembered by her family, friends and many fans.
May she rest in peace.
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During early-mid 1902 the Bartitsu Club instructors embarked on a largely successful exhibition tour that was to prove to be their “last hurrah” as a collective unit. Their venues included the Oxford Town Hall, Cambridge University, the Shoreditch Army Camp, the Adelphi Theatre in Liverpool and the Mechanic’s Institute Hall in Nottingham.
Australian-born writer/composer Kenneth Duffield was, at that time, a student at Cambridge. According to his memoir Savages and Kings (1946), Duffield was among the volunteers who braved a close encounter with Bartitsu Club jiujitsu expert Yukio Tani when the “Anglo-Japanese Tournament” exhibition visited his alma mater:
____________
“I’m Twenty-One Today”
Yukio Tani, the famous Japanese Jiu-Jitsu champion, gave an historic – as far as I was concerned – exhibition of his strange (but mostly non-utilitarian) prowess during my fourth year at Cambridge. I shall never forget the occasion, because it happened on my 21st birthday, 31st May, which date more or less coincides with the end of the term and the final exams.
The Corn Exchange was packed, mostly with noisy undergraduates, and I must admit that our twelve-fold front-row contribution to the din could not be denied. After a long day of gaiety and only one lecture, we had dined most sumptuously-well off a dish or two of those notoriously good Trinity College kitchen products, to say nothing (at the moment) of a flagon or so of the famous “Audit Ale” from out those labyrinthine King Henry VIII cellars.
Towards the end of the remarkable Jiu-Jitsu performance – which consisted of chiefly of “11th Hour” escapes from murdererous Japanese clutches, grips and strangulations – Representative members of the audience were invited to go on the stage to prove for themselves how very innocuous were the demonstrations.
Of course there was no difficulty in persuading a young man who had just celebrated his majority to volunteer, and I clambered onto the platform to the accompaniment of cheers and hoots from my friends. I was given a heavy canvas jacket and a pair of shorts in place of my evening dress, and when I had donned these the “fun” began.
I was shot into the air – “with the greatest of ease” – ricocheted back into Yukio Tani’s massive arms, hurled sideways between and assistant’s open legs, and, by the infamous “scissors movement”, thrown violently to the floor upon my right ear. I should have been quite dead by this time had the stage not been well padded, and I began to take a dislike of the entire procedure, and by no means a very good view of the audience, who were by now convulsed with laughter.
So I determined on revenge – a worthy but forlorn resolution. Again I found myself flying up into the “flies”, kicked in the stomach by Yukio, who, gripping my arms, hurled me over his head and so to the stage, flat on my back …
I think the Audit Ale, which, like rum, gives one extra courage, then began to take effect, for I got on my feet, charged Yukio like a bull, straddled his body between my legs, and seized him tightly by the ears with my strong, wiry fingers.
If you have ever seen a rodeo bronco-busting show, you can visualize the buck-jumping performance that I gave as I clung like grim death to his massive body and rode him by the ears. He shook me, bounced me, rolled me on the floor (which hurt me considerably), nosedived me but failed to dislodge this Australian-born bushman.
Finally, having drawn blood – and a good deal of it, too – from his ears, I forced him to his knees and made him tap twice on the floor (the signal for surrender), to the discomfort of his attendance satellites but to the vociferous approval of my friends in the front row.
____________
In writing nearly five decades after the fact, Mr. Duffield clearly allowed himself some artistic licence, such as his repeated descriptions of the diminutive Yukio Tani as “massive”, let alone the above illustration portraying Tani as if he was built like a sumo wrestler.
Still, there’s enough detail here to strongly suggest that Duffield actually did grapple with Tani during the Cambridge exhibition. Did he win as described in this anecdote? Alas, that vital point has been lost to history …
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 5th January 2019
Here follows a review of the new English-language edition of the instructional DVD Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny, which was originally released with German-language captions and narration. The DVD features instructor Alex Kiermayer assisted by Christoph Reinberger and was produced by Agilitas.tv, a company that has previously produced a number of instructional HEMA DVDs.
Mr. Kiermayer and Mr. Reinberger are dressed in the simple white shirt, suspenders and dark pants ensembles that frequently stand in for Victorian/Edwardian attire in Bartitsu exhibitions. Their demonstrations take place in a large, distraction-free studio space and are well-covered with a truly impressive range of camera angles, including some high overhead shots as well as well-placed closeups. The technical presentations are methodical and crystal clear and the DVD itself is well-produced, including the new English narration. Some of the translated phrasing is a little awkward, but this is no way detracts from the value of the DVD as a training resource.
Also, the chapter select feature very efficiently allows the viewer to refer not only to particular chapters but also to technical sub-sections within those chapters.
Chapter 1: Theory first covers the general history of Bartitsu’s rise and fall at the turn of the 20th century and then offers a special focus on Pierre Vigny and his stick fighting method. These sections are well-illustrated and very highly accurate. It’s worth noting that recent (largely subsequent to the video’s original production) discoveries about the so-called “secret style of boxing”, a.k.a. “Bartitsu boxing”, have enabled us to make educated deductions about exactly how it differed from the orthodox boxing/savate practiced circa 1900.
The next section presents a variety of knob-handled and crook-handled sticks, noting their relative pros and cons for both self-defence and training purposes.
In Chapter 2: Basics, the various guard positions are clearly described and demonstrated, including the orthodox front (“right”) and rear (“left”) guards and double-handed guard variants. Gripping the stick is addressed, including the important but seldom-addressed matter of shifting into a fighting stance from the ordinary walking-stick grip position. The fundamentals of body mechanics via stance and footwork are also methodically detailed in this section.
Mr. Kiermayer also includes several lowered guards, which are shown as positions of invitation (but not defined as guards per se) in the canonical material. This section then develops into a series of exercises which serve triple duty as as warm-ups, conditioning training and dexterity drills. These include moulinets and many techniques of passing the cane from one grip to the other, emphasising the crucial ambidexterity of Vigny stick fighting.
Chapter 3: Attacks begins with a simple demonstration of preferred targets including the face and head, solar plexus, elbow, hand, knee/shin, etc. Effective use is made of graphics, as red circles are superimposed over the key areas of Mr. Reinberger’s anatomy.
The next section deals with striking mechanics, beginning with “snapping” strikes from the sabre grip (i.e., strikes made primarily from the wrist with the thumb extended along the shaft for extra support and precision, although the point is correctly made that this type of grip is not actually advocated by the Vigny style, which defers to the “hammer” grip instead). “Sweeping” strikes are described as the “bread and butter of la canne Vigny”, requiring a larger preparation but offering much greater power; these are further developed into the characteristic “fanning” strikes of the Vigny system.
Mr. Kiermayer also introduces a simple numbering system for the sake of convenience in training, comparable with the traditions of numbered positions in fencing (“cut to tierce”, etc.) and numbered angles of attack in the Filipino martial arts. This was alluded to in E.W. Barton-Wright’s Self Defence with a Walking Stick articles, which included a few references to fencing numbers. Although there is no evidence of a consistent number system being emphasised within the canonical style, it’s a useful tool for training purposes.
A range of striking exercises includes simple standing and lunging attacks employing various dynamics and drills in which the training partner spontaneously presents a striking target at various angles and positions. This section also includes logical extrapolations from the canonical material, such as strikes in which the sections of the cane held between (or extending beyond) the hands in the double-handed grip are used as striking weapons at close quarters.
In addition, it showcases the use of the “short end” of the cane as a dagger-type thrusting weapon at close quarters, which was referred to by numerous observers of Vigny’s Bartitsu demonstrations and also by Captain Laing in his 1902 article. Curiously, however, this section does not include examples of attacks in which the stick is held with both hands at one end.
The Attacks chapter closes with a series of sample combination exercises – each one finishing with the characteristic “attack while moving back into guard” tactic – and a demonstration of freestyle striking against a hanging car tire target.
Chapter 4: Defences opens with the basic parries of classical canne fencing, named after the fencing convention of numbered hand positions. Although there is some commonality with the Vigny style, classical canne also includes types of defences that are categorically not part of Vigny’s method, including parries in the tierce and quarte guards (in which the point of impact between the sticks is above the defender’s stick-wielding hand) and low parries against leg attacks.
The classical canne parries are also demonstrated via three-count parry/riposte drills and then via a more elaborate drill adapted from one of Henry Angelo’s early 19th century cutlass exercises. Again, the latter includes defences which are not part of Vigny’s system, and so while these techniques and drills are of academic interest for the sake of comparison between historical styles, they run the risk of confusing beginners who may be following the exercises step by step, because they will then have to be “forgotten” when the focus shifts back to the Vigny style.
The classical canne section is followed by an examination of Vigny’s single-handed hanging guards, which are directly relevant to the practice of Bartitsu stick fighting. Again, the progression from isolated technique into defence/riposte drills is shown effectively, and there’s a useful graphic that superimposes “after-images” of the defence positions as Mr. Kiermayer runs through the sequence of five basic parries.
The “stick up” variants that follow, however, again contradict the basic defensive premise of the Vigny style, and the inclusion of these parries in the context of a Vigny-style instructional DVD is regrettable. These techniques were not featured in any of the historical Vigny sources, and in fact were actively argued against – the logic being that hanging guards better protect the weapon-wielding hand, resulting in the range of high guard positions that fundamentally characterise the style.
Although lowered guard stances are featured in the Bartitsu canon, they are exclusively used as positions of invitation (to bait the opponent into attacking an apparently exposed target), with any subsequent parry action being executed from a high or hanging guard. That said, if – in the heat of a sparring match, for example – a fighter is caught momentarily unawares while in a low guard, he or she may be forced to perform a parry in 3 or 4 out of expedience.
We then move through several variations of the canonical “guard by distance”, in which the defender invites an attack to a deliberately exposed target in order to slip the attack and riposte. The first variant is curious in that the defender invites a mid-level attack to his elbow and then counters to the attacker’s weapon-wielding hand, which requires a rather awkward, slightly upward-angled strike leaving little room for error. The equivalent canonical technique involves a low/mid-level invitation to attack the defender’s hand and the counter is performed to the attacker’s head, allowing for a more powerful and unobstructed riposte.
The Defences chapter continues with a progression of partnered attack/riposte drills, many of which are strongly reminiscent of the drills described in Captain F.C. Laing’s 1902 article The Bartitsu Method of Self Defence. These exercises gradually introduce greater complexity and degrees of “aliveness” by requiring one or both partners to react to spontaneous, rather than pre-arranged attacks.
There follows a section on using the double-handed cane grip to ward off unarmed attacks, including straight right and left punches and both front and roundhouse kicks, and then a useful study of release techniques against seizure to the cane-wielding defender’s weapon or clothing. This latter classification is notably lacking in the canonical material and the release defences presented here are martially plausible.
Chapter 5: Additional Techniques and Tactics introduces a number of the canonical sequences originally presented in Barton-Wright’s articles and in Lang’s 1923 book, especially those representing the fusion of Vigny’s cane style with Barton-Wright’s jiujitsu. It’s pointed out that Barton-Wright particularly recommended this type of technique when faced by an opponent armed with a heavier and stronger weapon.
Many of these techniques are presented with slight “neo-Bartitsu” variations, which are then extrapolated into a series of purely neo-Bartitsu close-combat cane takedowns. Some discussion or demonstration of how to best train these techniques, particularly against a non-cooperative opponent, would have been useful. In combination, however, this section illustrates the important point that the Vigny style includes a range of close-combat locking and takedown options.
The final section in Chapter 5 usefully introduces a series of basic unarmed combat techniques, with particular attention to using straight punches and low kicks in combination with the leverage-based releases covered in Chapter 4 to assist in releasing your cane if it’s seized by the opponent. It’s mentioned that a planned future DVD will focus on unarmed Bartitsu.
Chapter 6: Applications offers a series of self-defence scenarios as examples of how the previously-learned material might be applied in practice. These include the common-or-garden double-handed lapel grab, a single-handed lapel grip and punch with the free hand, a double-handed shove that pushes the defender to the floor, knife attacks, etc. As the “attacker”, Mr. Reinberger wears body protection for a number of these sequences, allowing Mr. Kiermayer to demonstrate some of the impact force that would be applied in a real attack situation.
Most of the example defences are logical and realistic extrapolations of the Vigny system as it was practiced at the Bartitsu Club circa 1901, combining basic savate and jiujitsu with the use of the cane; though again, some more discussion of training practices allowing for spontaneity and active resistance would have been helpful.
Finally, Chapter 7: Free Fencing offers a demonstration of several bouts of light freestyle sparring in the Vigny style. Gratifyingly, both Mr. Kiermayer and Mr. Reinberger demonstrate fluid shifting between a wide variety of guard positions and active ambidexterity in their attack and defence techniques, and there are several points where the fights continue at close quarters (although no actual locks nor takedowns are shown in this section).
In conclusion, Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny is an excellent new training resource for Bartitsu revivalists. In the sense that each rendition of the style has added novel elements – from the blending of stickfighting and jiujitsu at the original Bartitsu Club, to the incorporation of Afro-Caribbean techniques by H.G. Lang in the 1920s – most of the innovations introduced here are both stylistically logical and martially plausible. The only serious criticism is, again, that the inclusion of certain classical canne parries will serve to confuse beginners and to dilute the canonical style.
The expanded range of double-handed cane techniques and the inclusion of release techniques are particularly valuable, serving to “fill in the gaps” left by the scenario-based canonical sequences from Barton-Wright’s articles. In many ways, Mr. Kiermayer’s DVD is in the spirit of Captain Laing’s 1902 essay on Bartitsu self-defence, which likewise offered a systematic progression of technical drills.
The English-language edition of Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny is currently available from this website. It will soon also be available on DVD from the Freelance Academy Press and then as a series of streaming downloads via Vimeo.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 17th June 2017
Members of the Amazon Defence Corps train in unarmed combat (July, 1940).
During the fraught summer of 1940, the people of England were bracing themselves for a seemingly inevitable invasion by the German army. While politicians dithered over whether women should be allowed to serve as “Home Defenders” – and some women planned suicides – others began training themselves to repel the Nazis by force.
Venetia Foster’s London-based Amazon Defence Corps was among the first of these organizations. Legally prevented from carrying firearms, they neverthless practiced with rifles in shooting galleries set up in public amusement arcades and members’ homes. Weighted beanbags served as facsimile hand-grenades and molotov cocktails. The Amazons also studied unarmed combat, rehearsing jujitsu throws on their lawns, and scanned the skies for German parachutists with their opera glasses.
As branches of the Amazons Defence Corps got underway in areas outside London, Percy Longhurst (whose self-defence expertise dated back to the glory days of the Bartitsu Club circa 1900) contributed a series of five illustrated photo-features to the Daily Mail. Titled “At Him, Girls!”, the articles instructed readers in some basic jiujitsu techniques and also included advice on how to wield an umbrella, walking stick or fireplace poker if attacked by an invading enemy soldier.
In August of 1940 the ADC joined forces with Dr. Edith Summerskill’s new Women’s Home Defence organization and thereafter continued their training throughout wartime, as shown in this newsreel footage:
Although women were never formally admitted into England’s Home Guard as potential combatants, the former members of the Amazon Defence Corps showed true initiative and determination in preparing to resist Nazi invaders.
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In this video, instructor Argent Bracci demonstrates some examples of destructive elbow guards applied to the noble art of fisticuffs:
As Edward Barton-Wright noted in the 1901 article Bartitsu: Its Exponent Interviewed, orthodox boxing/savate defences – as typically taught to middle-class students in commercial schools, geared entirely towards relatively safe competition – could be modified and improved towards the goal of winning a street fight:
Another branch of Bartitsu is that in which the feet and hands are both employed, and 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. The use of the feet is also done quite differently from the French Savate.
As to boxing, we have guards which are not at all like the guards taught in schools, and which will make the assailant hurt his own hand and arm very seriously.
Pierre Vigny demonstrates a destructive guard against the opponent’s left lead punch to the body.
Thus, Bartitsu boxing guards represented an aggressive, damaging modification to the standard blocks of boxing and savate. The opponent’s strikes would be met percussively, the defender chopping into punches with elbow/forearm strikes or offering the sharp wedge of an elbow-forward shield, as well as counter-kicking into attacking shins and ankles, as a precursor to finishing the fight at closer quarters.
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Despite considerable popular interest in the jiujitsu exhibitions of Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi during 1901, many critics declared that they would withhold their judgement until they’d seen the Japanese style in earnest action against a European champion or two. Promoter Edward Barton-Wright, however, had his work cut out for him in persuading European wrestlers to test the novel system in the public arena.
Among the first grapplers to take up Barton-Wright’s challenge was Percy Longhurst. Tough, well-respected and experienced in a diverse range of traditional English styles, Longhurst was the type of plausible contender the sceptics had been looking for. His bouts with Tani, described here in the Music Hall and Theatre Review, helped to kick-start the Bartitsu Club’s brief but historically significant “golden era” of music hall challenge contests.
Noting as usual that the term “Jap” was not used pejoratively in Edwardian English, being instead a simple abbreviation in the way “Aussie” stands in for “Australian”.
ON Wednesday night Mr. Percy Longhurst, a member of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Amateur Wrestling Society, was, by permission of Mr. Barton-Wright, allowed to have a bout with one of the two Japs now giving illustrations of Japanese wrestling and the art of self-defence at the Tivoli.
A week ago Mr. Longhurst tried his skill on the Tivoli stage, and from the insight he then gained into the methods of his opponent he had a notion that a second time he could do better. The opportunity afforded him was fully availed of, and the Cumberland amateur, who struggled hard with his Japanese opponent, the one named Tani — the other, although performing, having injured his hand — found himself defeated at every move.
The contest was maintained with the utmost vigour on both sides, the little Jap, however, having it pretty much his own way, although in one or two of the bouts the North countryman gave him a good deal of trouble.
Mr. Barton-Wright informed the audience that Mr. Longhurst had expressed a desire to try his skill and strength in holding his antagonist down. Accordingly Tani lay flat on his hack on the stage, and the Cumberland wrestler did all he could think of to prevent him from rising, but all his exertions were unavailing, the Jap wriggling away from him after a very short contest, amid the loud applause of a crowded house.
The style of Eastern wrestling, some 3,000 years old, has scarcely anything in common with European methods. The Japs are eel-like in their movements, wriggling and slipping away from any grip, and doing it with the utmost celerity and without apparent effort. An expert Russian wrestler has challenged them for one night next week, and it will be interesting to see how he fares with such redoubtable champions.
Unfortunately, the “expert Russian wrestler” was to back out of his challenge at the last possible moment – while he was literally waiting in the wings of the Tivoli stage!
Percy Longhurst, however, was impressed enough with jiujitsu to learn the Japanese art himself – almost certainly at the Bartitsu Club, as he wrote of training with Barton-Wright – and seems to have maintained cordial relationships with many of the Bartitsu Club principals for some years thereafter. He went on to write numerous articles and several books on the subjects or wrestling, self defence and physical culture. Aside from Barton-Wright’s Pearson Magazine article series, Longhurst’s 1906 book Jiu-Jitsu and Other Methods of Self Defence is about the closest thing to a “Bartitsu manual” to have been published in England during the early 20th century.
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