19th century pugilism, fencing and other “manly arts of self defence” will be on display at the upcoming Port Townsend Victorian Heritage Festival (Washington, March 23-25).
A short video impression of the recent Open House held at Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture and Martial Arts, featuring demonstrations by the Chicago Swordplay Guild, the Bartitsu Club of Chicago and the Asylum Stunt Team.
Click on the highlighted text to read the article Martial Arts, Victorian Style: Bartitsu at Forteza Fitness Brings Back the Lost Fighting Art of Sherlock Holmes, by New City journalist Kristen Micek.
Another new article on the Bartitsu Club at Forteza Fitness is available here: Blast into the Past.
On Sunday, March 11th of 2012, members of the Bartitsu Club of Chicago took part in the first ever “antagonisticathlon” event hosted by the Forteza Fitness and Martial Arts studio in Ravenswood, Chicago. This was their graduation from the recent six-week introductory Bartitsu training course.
During the late 19th century, the word “antagonistics” meant all manner of combat sports and self defence skills. Antagonisticathlon participants represent Victorian-era adventurers fighting their way through a gauntlet of obstacles and ne’er-do-wells, inspired by Sherlock Holmes’ escape from Professor Moriarty’s assassins in The Final Problem:
My dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about mid-day to transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself by the fraction of a second. The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant.
I kept to the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet. I called the police and had the place examined. There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing.
I took a cab after that and reached my brother’s rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away. You will not wonder, Watson, that my first act on entering your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some less conspicuous exit than the front door.
The “stations” of the antagonisticathlon (not all shown in the video compilation) included:
Charging shoulder tackle to punching bag (“knocking an assassin out the window and into the Thames”)
Precision cane thrusts through suspended rings
Overcoat and cane vs. dagger-wielding assassin
Weight-lifting on antique pulley-weight apparatus
“Death Alley”; cane vs. three stick-wielding assassins
“Rowing across the Thames” on antique rowing machine
“Rescuing Dr. Watson”
Cane vs. stick combat
Shoulder roll and hat toss to finish
Thanks to the Victorian Productions website for this shot of a Bartitsu demonstration by Terry Kroenung and the Victorian Antagonistics League at the recent AnomalyCon steampunk gathering in Colorado.
Follow this link to read an Islington Tribune article about Edith Garrud (pictured left, above), who was the jujitsu and self defence trainer of the Suffragette Bodyguard society. We eagerly await the unveiling of her commemorative plaque.
Visit this link to hear WFUV radio journalist George Bodarky’s interview with Bartitsu Club of New York City founder Rachel Klingberg, shown above modelling her 19th century-style physical culture outfit. The item also includes interviews with Sarah Lohman, a revivalist of 19th century gastronomy; Zoh Rothberg, a co-founder of the New York City Victorian Parlor Craft Circle; and Mike Zohn and Evan Michaelson, co-owners of Obscura Antiques and Oddities.
Captain Alfred Hutton was among the instructors who taught various branches of “antagonistics” at E.W. Barton-Wright’s School of Arms in London circa 1900. One of England’s most prominent and respected swordsmen, Hutton was also the president of the Amateur Fencing Association and a pioneering practitioner of revived Elizabethan era fencing with weapons such as the rapier and dagger.
Although Hutton’s specialties do not appear to have been formally included as aspects of Bartitsu, it’s evident that there a good deal of cross-training took place at the Bartitsu Club; for a complete account, see Ancient Swordplay: the Revival of Elizabethan Fencing in Victorian London.
In an article for The Press newspaper (8 February 1904, Page 10), Captain Hutton reminisced about some colourful characters and incidents from his long experience of fencing. He also offered the following remarks upon his Bartitsu Club colleagues and their methods of antagonistics:
Before bringing my passing recollections to a close as regards people I have met, and as having been more especially connected with the use of defensive and offensive weapons, I should like to refer to my friend Monsieur Pierre Vigny, a Swiss gentleman, devoted to all athletic exercises, and certainly master of the art of self defence by means of an ordinary walking-stick, a Malacca cane being preferred. The exercise is most useful in case of attack by footpads, most interesting as a sport, and most exhilarating in a game. It beats single-stick. However, it would take far too long for me to give further explanations.
There is another new development of athleticism which I strongly advocate, viz., Ju-jitsu, or Japanese wrestling. I am too old to go in for regular wrestling as it obtains in Japan, easy as it may look, but my good friends Uyenishi and Tani put me up to about eighty kata, or tricks, which even at my age may one day or another come in useful. In modified form the art might be advantageously practised by a small boy when meeting a great hulking bully; indeed, the successful way in which a twelve-year-old friend of mine who knew some tricks of Japanese wrestling floored his parent in my presence was most instructive in spite of its apparent disrespect.
My Japanese friends tell me it is one of the most amusing sights to watch the little native policemen in Japan throwing and capturing huge, stalwart, European sailors who have supped not wisely but too well.
These anecdotes clearly demonstrate that Hutton took a keen practical interest in the classes offered by his fellow Bartitsu Club “professors”. He occasionally demonstrated the Vigny method of self defence with a walking stick during interviews, and he offered a somewhat more detailed account of the Vigny system in his book The Sword and the Centuries. It was also in that book that he described the Bartitsu Club as being “the headquarters of ancient swordplay in England”.
As it turned out, Hutton did find use for some of the 80 “kata” he learned from Tani and Uyenishi, beginning when he penned a short monograph on Ju Jitsu, or Japanese Wrestling, for Schoolboys. A few years later, Hutton demonstrated a number of jujitsu “tricks” for a panel of doctors working in one of London’s psychiatric hospitals. This was almost certainly the first time Asian martial arts had been applied towards the problem of humane self defence and restraint in a therapeutic environment.
Despite E. W. Barton-Wright’s advocacy of a rational melding of various “antagonistics” for purposes of self defence (a theme that was later championed by others including his former collaborator Pierre Vigny, wrestler/author Percy Longhurst and French antagonathletes Georges Dubois and Jean Joseph Renaud), the years 1906/7 saw a “boxing vs. jujitsu” controversy play out in the pages of British sporting magazines. The controversy is detailed in the second volume of the Bartitsu Compendium.
The substance of that debate included both the questions of “who would win” in a contest between a boxer and a jujitsuka, and also which of the two styles was a better method of self defence training. Barton-Wright might have replied that it did not have to be a question of either/or.
The following short article attributed to the famous strongman and entrepreneur Eugen Sandow is a typical contribution to the debate, mingling nationalistic sentiment with fighting savvy. As did several other contributors, Sandow hints at having knowledge of “trials” pitting the two styles against each other, which evidently took place in private; a true “jujitsu vs. boxing” match would have been considered “brawling in a public place” under Edwardian English law.
With the remarks of Sir Ralph Littler at the Middlesex Sessions this week on the lapse in public favor of the “noble art” I am in cordial sympathy. The art of boxing as an accomplishment amongst the men of this country is undoubtedly upon the wane. I am very sorry to see this, for the resort to fisticuffs as a method of self-defence or offence when circumstances call for such measures is a sound, healthy, and, all things considered, most satisfactory one. I ascribe this decline in popular favor to the growing habit of “looking on” is preference to “taking part,” which nowadays seems to pervade all branches of athletics. Attendances at boxing events were never larger than to-day, but I suppose also there never was a time when, proportionately, fewer men were able to use the “mittens.”
Perhaps the worst phase of the subject is that the average Briton has during the last two or three years been losing his respect for the national pastime owing to the popularity of the Japanese ju-jitsu, which receives a veneration that it certainly does not merit when compared with boxing. A good knowledge of boxing is a more practical attainment than the admittedly clever Japanese method. Because small exponents of ju-jitsu have overcome great exponents of wrestling, it has assumed a distorted magnitude in the eyes of the man in the street. In such trials as I have knowledge of between ju-jitsu and boxing the latter has had a distinct ad vantage. The more this is known the setter.
I think it is very important that the British form of self-defence should be encouraged for many reasons. Boxing is good for men because it teaches the lesson of giving and taking minor hurts generously. Experience in the sport gives a man a feeling of self-reliance and power amongst his fellows that leads to a magnanimous self-restraint in attacking a weaker opponent. Even amongst the worst class of men, a set-to with the fists must surely be preferable to the stealthy stab with a knife or blow from the back with a loaded belt or sandbag.
