Category Archives: Hooliganism

“Hurricane Fighting”: the Hooligans of London, Circa 1900

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 9th January 2013 An excerpt from The hooligan nights : being the life and opinions of a young and unrepentant criminal by Clarence Rook (1901): The average Hooligan is not an ignorant, hulking ruffian, … Continue reading

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M. Vigny’s School of Self Defence (1904)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 11th January 2013 From the Daily News, May 27, 1904: All good citizens will rejoice to learn that a new and efficacious method of abolishing those pests of the streets known as Hooligans … Continue reading

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“Footpads of Paris: How French Thugs Ply Their Thieving Trade” (1894)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 8th February 2016 The following catalogue of ingeniously non-lethal “mugging tricks” perfected by the Parisian “Apache” street gangsters is excerpted and translated from Le Bas du Pavé Parisien by Guy Tomel (1894). At the … Continue reading

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A Detailed Report on Dr. Emelyne Godfrey’s Lecture for the Bagri Foundation

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 25th May 2016 The Bagri Foundation in London hosted this recent lecture by Dr. Emelyne Godfrey, author of Masculinity, Crime and Self Defence in Victorian Literature and its companion volume Femininity, Crime and Self Defence in Victorian Literature … Continue reading

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Staging the Streets: The Theatricality of Science in Fin-de-Siecle Martial Arts

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 27th May 2016 By Peter Katz, Pacific Union College “A Fight Which Was None of Your Own Making”: Martial Arts and the Theater of ScienceAs they near the conclusion of their 1890 … Continue reading

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“’Engagement’” Rings: Knuckle-Duster Jewellery” (1911)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 18th January 2017 Subtitled “Ingenious Weapons Favoured by Apaches – for ‘Engagements’ with Law-Abiding Citizens”, these pictures were originally published as a photo-feature in The Sketch of Wednesday, 1st March 1911. Nick-named in honour … Continue reading

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The Belt as a Weapon (1890)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 17th February 2017 Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright frequently referred to the utility of Pierre Vigny’s stick fighting art against common street weapons, including the fearsome, heavy-buckled belt favoured by gangsters in large … Continue reading

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“Fearsome Armour of the ‘Human Porcupine’” (1910)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 20th February 2017 From the Dundee Evening Telegraph of 10 January, 1910: ARMOURED RUFFIAN HAS DESPERATE STRUGGLE WITH POLICE. One Killed and Three Wounded. Paris is no stranger scenes of violence in the streets, … Continue reading

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The Apache’s Foe (The Bystander, 12 September 1906)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 10th May 2017 Burglaries in Paris and the provinces, wherein the revolver and the knife, as a rule, play an important role, are becoming more and more frequent. The police seem powerless, … Continue reading

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“How Sir Hiram Maxim Met the Hooligan” (St James’s Gazette, 24 June 1902)

Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 8th September 2017 In which the estimable inventor Hiram Maxim, best-remembered today for devising the world’s first portable machine gun, tells of how he fended off a London hooligan with his fists and … Continue reading

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