An entertaining and informative intro. to bare-knuckle fisticuffs courtesy of popular martial arts YouTuber Sensei Seth and pugilism expert Tom Billinge.
Thanks to antique dealer Rob Phillips for these photos of an antique Vigny cane; the first such example known to have been located in the history of the modern revival.
The cane is labelled
VIGNY’S “SELF DEFENCE” STICK
18. BERNERS ST. W.
and appears to be stamped “W.S. NOWELL” on top of the handle:
A Walter Salmon Nowell was active in London during this period, working in the field of dental surgery.
The Berner’s St. address dates the cane to post-September of 1902, when Pierre Vigny had set up his own academy of arms and physical culture in London’s West End.
Although Vigny’s system was versatile enough to provide protection with light canes, crook-handled canes and umbrellas, it was optimized for the specific type of cane that Vigny himself developed. In “The Walking Stick as a Means of Self-Defence” (Health and Strength, July 1903), Vigny wrote:
(…) therefore the cane is the most perfect weapon for self-defence; but in order to make it so, it must possess the necessary qualities, which, expressed in one word, is solidity.
It is for this reason that I have had a cane specially made under my directions which embraces all the necessary qualities. It is a medium-sized Malacca cane, mounted with a thick metal ball, and so firmly riveted to the cane that it cannot come off however roughly it may be used. The metal ball handle is of such a thickness that it will not get dented; but in spite of this the cane is a most handsome and elegant one, and has been so much appreciated since it has been brought out that many people may be seen carrying them.
Oliver Janseps presents his interpretation of H.G. Lang’s “flick” and “flip” techniques from “The Walking Stick Method of Self Defence”.
Posted inInstruction, Video, Vigny stick fighting|Comments Off on Advanced Strikes: The Flick and the Flip for Bartitsu from “The Walking Stick Method of Self-Defence”
The AgelessExplorer YouTube channel offers an entertaining angle on cane-fighting and on Charlie Chaplin’s physical comedy genius in this mini-documentary.
Nice to see some of these techniques in action, particularly in that the self defence section of The Wrinkle Book was possibly my first ever exposure to the notion of “early 20th century martial arts/self defence”. My late father had a first edition copy of this book and I came across this section while leafing through it sometime in the late 1970s or early ’80s; note to younger people, this is the sort of thing that sometimes happened long before the Internet.
Much later, the Wrinkle Book‘s page of self-defence illustrations may well have been the very first image I ever scanned for online republication, and in 2006 I used a lightly modified version of the same page as the cover image for my augmented republication of Andrew Chase Cunningham’s book, The Cane as a Weapon.
This episode of the BBC’s Repair Shop series features the painstaking restoration of a 1930s oil portrait of former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani, which had hung for many years on the wall of the venerable London Budokwai martial arts school. Tani had been among the dojo’s original instructors and taught there until his death aged 69 on January 22nd, 1950.
A few seconds of footage of former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani watching a catch-as-catch-can wrestling championship in Finsbury Park, Middlesex. Tani would have been around 49 years old at the time this film was shot; about a decade later he suffered a debilitating stroke that ended his athletic career, though he recovered well enough to be able to coach judoka and jujutsuka from the sidelines of the famous London Budokwai.
A fairly well-researched presentation on Edith Garrud’s role in the jujutsu training of the WSPU Bodyguard unit, contextualised with some background on Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu.
