There’s a proliferation of short “What was Bartitsu?” YouTube videos, including many AI-generated offerings, but this piece from the Informed Martial Artist channel is unusually accurate and effective (despite some questionable AI-rendered “photos” of Barton-Wright and the other principal figures).
The conclusion that Bartitsu didn’t have time to be properly developed has been reached before, notably by martial arts historian Graham Noble as featured in the 2011 documentary Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes. Arguably, as Noble pointed out, only Barton-Wright himself, possibly Pierre Vigny and most likely their first generation of students were in a position to prove the art on its own terms, but there was no venue other than academic demonstrations for a martial art combining savate, boxing, jujutsu and stick fighting in Edwardian London. Hence – as the Informed Martial Artist recognises – the motivation of the modern Bartitsu revival movement.