Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 22nd June 2012
The world premiere of this new play by Chicago playwright Reina Hardy will be produced by the Babes With Blades theatre company in August 2012.
It’s 1888 in London, and the Society of Lady Detectives meets discreetly to indulge its members’ tastes for swordplay and sleuthing. As the genteel club considers a disturbing series of murders in the Whitechapel district, a frantic heiress turns up with a startling accusation towards one of their own. Society member Susan Swayne takes the case, defying societal norms and pursuing the truth through the Victorian streets. Combat sequences from violence designer/BWBTC ensemble member Libby Beyreis will feature smallsword and bartitsu (a Victorian mixed martial art influenced by jujitsu and savate).
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 11th July 2012
Edith Garrud’s great-great-great-grandniece and namesake poses with a replica of the plaque commemorating her ancestor, and with her toy octopus friend.
On a sunny Saturday in June 2012, around 70 people congregated around the steps of a house in a smart square in London to celebrate the life of a brave woman who had once lived there; Edith Margaret Garrud, the jujitsu trainer of the Bodyguard corps of the British Suffragette movement circa 1910-1913. Two of the people present had known Edith Garrud; her grand daughters Jenny Cooper and Sybil Evans. To them, she was just Nana.
There was a group of about fifteen members of the Garrud family, many of them from Sheffield in the North of England who had travelled 200 miles to be present at the unveiling of the relative none of them had met. They said they were inspired by her courage and wanted to be part of the ceremony. I met people from one of the London Judo societies and several women proud of their Suffragette predecessors who had helped women to take their place in today’s society. A young boxing enthusiast was clear that Edith and her companions had made it possible for her to be accepted as a boxer today.
As the appointed time for the unveiling approached, the photographer marshalled groups of family supporters, decedents and others into groups to record the event for the local newspaper and to make pictures for a permanent display of the achievements of Islington people. Although too little to understand much of what was happening today, young Edie will surely grow up to be proud of the ancestor whose name she carries.
At last the photographs were over and the crowd gathered round under the green veil which covered the plaque to listen to a short speech from the Leader of Islington Council. She spoke a little about the Suffragette movement and the equality they sought. She reminded us that the council is trying to promote encourage equality today, between the residents on the west side of Caledonian Road who live on £10,000 a year and those so near on the east side such as the area of Thornhill Square where houses may sell for £2 million. She thanked local Councillors for attending this celebration, and then asked one of the relatives to say a few words. As this was unexpected, I managed only to thank Tony Wolf who started all of this and Islington Council for all of their efforts with the Plaque, and then turned back to the Leader to unveil the Plaque.
There were more photographs, the green baize curtains revealed the Plaque, and after a round of applause most people moved across the road to St Andrews church to enjoy cups of tea and cakes and a good opportunity to find out who else had come to the celebration. Around the walls of the church room there were panels prepared by Islington illustrating the Suffragette movement, there was also a large copy of the Punch cartoon and a family tree showing where Edith fitted into the Williams/Garrud/Jones/Deamer families. After an hour or so of meeting new friends and distant relatives people began to drift away for some long journeys home. I walked with two members of the Jones family whom I had met first 25 years ago and not seen since, and with a few more fond farewells the party was over.
We went home remembering something of Edith’s life and proud of her achievements and our association with her.
Thanks to Martin Williams, a descendent of Edith Garrud’s, for both organising the commemorative plaque project and for writing this guest post.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 13th July 2012
The CombatCon Western martial arts/fight choreography/pop-culture conference ran in Las Vegas from July 7-9.
On Friday night Tony Wolf hosted a public screening of the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes documentary, followed by a Q&A session that ranged from production challenges to in-depth questions about Bartitsu history.
On Saturday morning Tony taught a very successful 2-hour Bartitsu intro seminar that attracted about 45 participants. The seminar covered Bartitsu history in a ten-minute precis and based much of the rest of the training on the synergy exercises being developed at the Bartitsu Club of Chicago, very gradually incorporating boxing, kicking, canonical stick and jujitsu techniques/kata/set-plays, then developed that into segue drills, stressing the idea of “combat improvisation” in the face of the unexpected.
The seminar finished with a short description of the modern revival and the explanation of the non-hierarchical, open-source approach aroused spontaneous applause.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 16th July 2012
The Bartitsu Club of Chicago held its second Antagonisticathlon event on the morning of Sunday, July 15th 2012.
The Antagonisticathlon is a fun, challenging martial arts obstacle course in which participants represent Victorian era adventurers running a gauntlet of ruffians and assassins. The course is not timed but “style points” may be awarded at the audience’s discretion.
The obstacles (not all shown in the video clip) included:
* Shoulder barge to heavy punching bag (“knocking a ruffian out the window and into the Thames”) * Use of overcoat to entangle and throw dagger-wielding hooligan * Ten reps using antique wall-mounted weightlifting machine * “Into the Alley of Death”: the adventurer is required to fend off strikes from three ruffians entering at different points of the “alley” and counter each one with a strike to the mask * “Belabour as you see fit”: freestyle striking with cane against Steampunk standing bag * Moving a heavy bag over a crash pad and then carrying it across a balance beam (“Rescuing Dr. Watson”) * Cane fencing, with the object being to throw and belabour the enemy assassin * Shoulder roll, use cane to knock off the final hooligan’s hat and then knock him unconscious
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 21st July 2012
The original “world’s greatest detective” employs “a touch of baritsu” to down a fleeing felon by way of introduction to the Dark Knight himself; from Detective Comics #572 (1987).
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 25th July 2012
About the author: Tony Wolf is the author of the book Edith Garrud: the Suffragette who knew jujutsu. He is currently developing a work of multimedia fiction inspired by the Suffragette Bodyguard stories.
A familiar street scene in early 20th century London; police constables arrest a Suffragette protester.
We have not yet made ourselves a match for the police, and we have got to do it. The police know jiu-jitsu. I advise you to learn jiu-jitsu. Women should practice it as well as men.
Don’t come to meetings without sticks in future, men and women alike. It is worth while really striking. It is no use pretending. We have got to fight.
– Suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst, quoted in the New York Times on August 12th, 1913.
By 1913, the sociopolitical battle that was the British women’s suffrage movement had reached a boiling point. Faced with the practice of hunger striking by jailed Suffragette leaders, the government responded with the so-called “Cat and Mouse Act”; an unprecedented amendment to the law that allowed prisons to deal with starving prisoners without resorting to the highly controversial methods of forced feeding. Under the new Act, a starving suffragette could be released from jail, allowed time on the outside to recover her health, and then be re-arrested on the original charge.
To keep their leaders free as long as possible, as well as to protect them against run of the mill assaults by irate defenders of the status quo, the Women’s Social and Political Union created a secret society known as The Bodyguard. Numbering 25 or 30 athletic and dedicated women, the Bodyguard was charged with providing security at Suffragette rallies throughout the UK.
A satirical cartoon from Punch Magazine.
The Bodyguard took their duties seriously and, following Sylvia Pankhurst’s advice, started training in the Japanese martial art of jujitsu, which had been introduced to London some 15 years previously by Edward William Barton-Wright, the founder of the eccentric and eclectic self defence art of Bartitsu. They were trained in a succession of secret locations by Edith Garrud, who was among the very first professional jujitsu instructors in the Western world. Journalists, delighted by this colourful wrinkle in an already juicy story, quickly dubbed the Bodyguard the “jujitsuffragettes”.
Along with their practical duties, the Bodyguard also became something of a symbolic rallying point as the Suffrage movement became ever more radical. They served an important role as agents of propaganda, ensuring that women’s suffrage stories stayed in the newspaper headlines; a necessary and valuable tactic towards winning over hearts and minds.
Edith Garrud demonstrates a jujitsu armlock.
Many colourful stories are told of the adventures of the Bodyguard. After one window-smashing protest, Edith Garrud reminisced, she led a group of suffragettes fleeing the police through the back-alleys of London to her dojo (martial arts school), where the fugitives hid their weapons in trapdoors hidden under the mats. By the time the “bobbies” came knocking at the door, they found only a group of young women innocently practicing jujitsu.
Although vastly outnumbered by the police, the Bodyguard accomplished several truly impressive victories. On the night of February 10th, 1914, Suffragette leader Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst (Sylvia’s mother and a fugitive under the Cat and Mouse Act) was scheduled to give a speech to the public in Camden Square. By 8.00 that evening, the Square was filled with both pro- and anti-suffrage citizens and with a large contingent of police constables. Mrs. Pankhurst appeared on a balcony high above the Square and, pulling up the veil of her hat, delivered a rousing address, finishing by taunting the police and the government:
I have reached London tonight in spite of armies of police. I am here tonight, and not a man is going to protect me, because this is a woman’s fight, and we are going to protect ourselves! I am coming out amongst you in a few minutes and I challenge the government to re-arrest me!
When the tiny, veiled woman did emerge at street level, escorted by members of the Bodyguard, the police quickly swept in. Bodyguard Katharine Willoughby Marshall rallied the crowd: “It’s Mrs. Pankhurst, friends! Don’t let her be arrested!” The crowd surged forward but the police pounced first. When the constables pulled out their truncheons, the Bodyguard responded in kind, drawing hardwood Indian clubs (bowling-pin shaped clubs intended for exercise classes) from the bustles of their long dresses. There was a short, bloody fight, but the police managed to seize their target. She was struck on the head and thrown to the ground, where several men held her down with their full body weight, causing her to pass out due to asphyxiation. Six policemen then lifted her unconscious body to shoulder height and began to push their way through the roiling crowd, as Katherine Marshall called out again, “Help Mrs. Pankhurst!”
The Bodyguard continued to batter the police as they made their way towards the nearby Ladbroke Grove station, at which point, bruised and exhausted, they discovered that the veiled women they had captured was a decoy; the real Mrs. Pankhurst was long gone, having simply waited out the excitement in the balconied house at Camden Square before being spirited away by the Bodyguard and a “smart woman driver”.
By far the most dramatic event in the history of the Bodyguard, though, took place about a month later. The “Battle of Glasgow” occurred at a Suffragette meeting at St. Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow, Scotland. As Mrs. Pankhurst had written in a letter to her friend Ethel Smyth:
Whatever happens will hit the Government. If I get away they will again be laughed at, and if I am taken the people will be roused. The fools hurt themselves every time.
The Bodyguard had travelled up from London by train, spending an uncomfortable night in a third-class carriage before booking into a local hotel under the guise of a theatrical troupe.
On the evening of March 9th, St Andrew’s Hall was packed to capacity with a crowd largely sympathetic to the Suffragettes’ cause. The Bodyguard carefully surveyed the crowd from their vantage point, a semi-circle of chairs set up on the stage directly behind the speaker’s podium. Garlands of white and purple flowers decorated the edge of the stage and banners bearing the Suffragette mottoes, “Deeds Not Words” and “Votes for Women” were strung high above them.
The Glasgow police had taken no chances, surrounding the entire hall with a cordon and also stationing 50 constables in the basement. The atmosphere was tense, even more so when the appointed hour of 8.00 came and went with no sign of Mrs. Pankhurst. Many members of the audience doubted that she could possibly break through the cordon, no matter how many Bodyguards she might have to help her. Thus, when she suddenly appeared on the stage, the effect was like magic; though, as with the most apparently sophisticated illusions, the principle was simple misdirection. After spreading a rumour that she would attempt to breach the cordon, she had in fact arrived at the hall early and in disguise, paid for her ticket like any other member of the public, and taken a seat close to the platform.
I have kept my promise and in spite of his Majesty’s Government I am here tonight.
Very few people in this audience, very few people in this country, know how much of the nation’s money is being spent to silence women. But the wit and ingenuity of women is overcoming the power and money of the Government!
My text is – equal justice for men and women, equal political justice, equal legal justice, equal industrial justice and equal social justice!
That was as far as she got before being interrupted by the heavy tread of police boots, as the squadron in the basement made their way upstairs to the hall. Just as the helmeted head of the lead constable, a giant of a man, appeared in the doorway, Janie Allen, a Scottish Bodyguard who was wearing an elegant black evening gown, stood up from her seat, drew a pistol and fired it straight at his chest. There was a deafening blast and the constable fell back into his colleagues, believing that he had been shot – but in fact, the pistol was loaded with blanks.
As the startled and angry police struggled to climb past the panicked giant in the doorway, the Bodyguard pulled out their Indian clubs and took up a defensive formation around Mrs. Pankhurst, who continued to speak over the commotion. The police finally broke through onto the stage and a fearsome fight took place; 25 women armed with Indian clubs and jujitsu vs. 50 truncheon-wielding police constables. The audience began to jeer and boo at the police, drowning out the speech they had come to hear.
Pandemonium now reigned in the hall. Several plain-clothes detectives, who had been hiding in the crowd, attempted to blindside the Bodyguard by climbing onto the platform, but were repelled by a barrier of barbed wire that had been hidden in the floral garlands decorating the edge of the stage. Old ladies then stood up and belaboured the detectives with their umbrellas. Chairs and tables were overturned as the combatants on the stage swung and jabbed, grappled and fell. Gert Harding, the Canadian woman who was the tactical leader of the Bodyguard, was not allowed to risk arrest by being caught with a weapon and was therefore unarmed when a constable raised his truncheon at her. She later recalled being surprised when he seemed to change his mind at the last instant and, instead, threw her into a pile of toppled chairs.
Eventually, the constables overwhelmed the Bodyguard resistance and hauled Mrs. Pankhurst off to a waiting police cab, her clothes torn to shreds during the struggle. The audience was outraged, particularly when the detectives attempted to break up the meeting, and angrily shouted them down; the meeting was, in fact, legal and they carried on with it, hearing speeches by other Suffragette leaders. Afterwards the crowd marched to the Central Police Station in St. Andrew’s Square, forming a mob of protestors that was estimated to include some 4,000 people, chanting their support for Mrs. Pankhurst until they were dispersed by police on foot and horseback.
The “Battle of Glasgow” changed the course of the Suffrage movement. As Mrs. Pankhurst had predicted, her arrest at St. Andrew’s Hall roused her supporters to a new pitch. The next day, a Suffragette named Mary Richardson protested the arrest by taking a meat cleaver to the Rokeby Venus, a famous and very valuable painting hanging in London’s National Art Gallery, later saying:
I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.
Thereafter, the Suffragettes’ protests by arson and vandalism became more frequent and much more destructive, provoking a backlash both from within the WSPU and from the general public as well. The Bodyguard continued their duties, however, including an infamous street fight with the police outside Buckingham Palace on May 21 that left one constable knocked unconscious and many people injured.
The outbreak of the First World War, though, put an end to the Bodyguard and to most radical Suffragette activity, as Mrs. Pankhurst decided that “votes for women” would be meaningless if England was conquered by Germany. Instead, she urged her supporters to throw their strengths and skills into supporting the government for the duration of the crisis, including many activities that were formerly considered to be strictly “men’s work”.
In March of 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed, granting voting rights to some eight million English women.
Edith Garrud (aged 94, in the year 1966) demonstrates a jujitsu wrist lock on reporter Godfrey Winn.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 3rd August 2012
A photomontage from Mark Donnelly’s recent Bartitsu seminar for the Bartitsu Club of New York City. The successful weekend event attracted 34 participants across both days.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 4th August 2012
A Q&A session with Tony Wolf regarding the upcoming second annual Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture event, to be hosted by the Bartitsu Club of Chicago at the Forteza Fitness and Martial Arts studio between September 8-9.
Q – First things first; what is Bartitsu?
A – Bartitsu is a 100+ year old method of cross-training between several martial arts and combat sports including fisticuffs (old-school boxing), jujitsu, wrestling and the Vigny method of self defense with a walking stick. The founder, E.W. Barton-Wright, had traveled the world as a young man and had sampled a wide range of “antagonistics”, as martial athletics were known in his day. In 1899 he set up the original Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue.
Q – And what happened then?
A – The School was successful for a few years, attracting quite a colorful group of athletes, actors and actresses, politicians and soldiers as students. Barton-Wright was a bit of a social climber and he needed the Bartitsu Club to appeal to a relatively wealthy clientele. Then, in early 1902, for reasons that are still a historical mystery, it closed down and the instructors dispersed. Barton-Wright spent the rest of his career working as a physical therapist and Bartitsu itself was almost completely forgotten.
Q – Apart from the Sherlock Holmes connection …
A – Yes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave Bartitsu a sort of cryptic shout-out in “The Adventure of the Empty House”, when it was revealed as the means by which Holmes had defeated Professor Moriarty in their fight at the Reichenbach Falls. That one obscure reference was the clue that eventually led to the modern revival of Bartitsu, which began almost exactly 100 years after the original Bartitsu School closed down.
Q – How is the Bartitsu School of Arms event tied in with that revival?
A- The Bartitsu Society has been operating as an informal collective of enthusiasts since 2002, and last year (2011) we held our first School of Arms in London. We wanted to model the event as closely as was practical on the way Bartitsu was originally taught, even down to things like renting a genuine Victorian-era warehouse as a venue. We also developed a somewhat radical team-teaching system based on circuit training, which appears to be how classes were run at the original Club. The overall goal was both to boost participants’ skills and also to boost the revival of Bartitsu itself by encouraging networking and skill-sharing between practitioners.
Q – So what about the 2012 event?
A – The plan is to alternate between North America and Europe annually, so this year we’re based at the Forteza Fitness and Martial Arts studio in Chicago. Forteza was actually directly inspired by Barton-Wright’s club; it’s a 100 year old building that’s been outfitted to resemble a c1900 gymnasium, including a “gymuseum” collection of functional antique exercise equipment. It’s also the base of the Bartitsu Club of Chicago, which will be hosting the 2012 School of Arms.
Q – What’s on the agenda?
A – We’re starting on Friday the 7th with an optional tour of the Hegeler Carus mansion in LaSalle, which is about a two-hour journey from Chicago. The mansion has a fascinating history of its own – among other things, it was the place where Zen Buddhism was introduced to the Western world – but the highlight for Bartitsu enthusiasts will be the turnhall (gym), which is believed to be the oldest still-extant private gymnasium in the US. It’s still equipped with its original apparatus, including wooden Indian clubs, climbing ladders, etc.
We’ll be running cross-training and circuit training sessions all day on Saturday and Sunday, featuring instruction from myself and my colleagues James Marwood, Allen Reed and Mark Donnelly. The object is to both preserve what is known of Barton-Wright’s original style and to continue his experiments, which were basically left as an work in progress when the original Club closed down in 1902. Every instructor has their own “take” on the material, so participants will enjoy a wide range of drills, exercises and perspectives. On Saturday night we’ll all go out for dinner at O’Shaughnessy’s, which has a great Victorian-style side-room – really ideal for this type of event.
Q – What about the “Antagonisticathlon”?
A – That’s happening on Sunday afternoon. It’s basically a fun way to test your Bartitsu skills via “martial arts obstacle course”. Participants represent Victorian-era adventurers fending off assassins and street hooligans while moving through a series of obstacles and challenges set up around the gym. We’re planning some surprises for the next course, including some booby traps …
Q – Sounds like fun. Can people just come along to watch the Antagonisticathlon?
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 10th August 2012
From The Medical Record: Volume 94, Issues 1-12, Page 31.
When Lieutenant Desouches of the French Mission attached to the American Army, was in Paris last, he expressed surprise that Dr. McCurdy, head physical instructor of the Y. M. C. A. for the American Army, was not aware that jiu-jitsu was taught in both the French and British Armies. He said: “Go to the Ministére de la Guerre and see Commandant, or, as you say, ‘Major,’ Royet, directeur de l’infanterie. He is at the head of the physical instruction.”
Commandant Royet received me courteously and at once spoke of jiu-jitsu in the French Army. “Why, we have had this going on for more than half a year, and all the men in the French Army have to learn jiu-jitsu, adapted to our requirements, and the feature is an enormous success. We encourage the men in every way to perfect themselves in what we call “corps-a-corps fighting,” and this feature is of immense use. Before the war the method of combat was with the bayonet and was simply a system reduced to movements, manual exercises, and fencing. But since the war we have gone into the thing with entirely new motives. We have adopted real hand-to-hand fighting, such as is imposed by the circumstances of this war. We require our men to kill their adversaries in this new corps-a-corps work. The bayonet is all right, but suppose you have no bayonet – which sometimes happens – well, a man can clutch his knife and attack his adversary. But suppose he has no knife, or, for some reason, cannot make use of it, at the psychological moment? What then? Why, he simply relies on his knowledge of jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is an art which takes time to learn thoroughly, but a soldier can learn enough in a month to give him complete confidence in himself when he has nothing but his hands, head, and feet to help him out, minus his gun, bayonet, grenade, or sword, as the case may be. What we teach enables our men to master their adversaries in almost all circumstances – even when the adversary is armed. He can disarm his adversary. You can see this in our schools. You simply kill a man with this jiu-jitsu properly applied.
“The one thing above all, in this jiu-jitsu work is that a soldier has complete confidence in himself. We have found it a splendid thing for the morale. When they advance at the front they are sure they can grapple with their adversary. Is not this a good thing to learn? The English Army has taken this up and it has found its value, and I can heartily recommend it to all the Allied Armies. The Minister of War is getting out a brochure containing this system of instruction and it will soon appear with illustrations and at the same time our Ministry will issue an English translation.
“Boxing is all right, so is the savate, or French substitute for boxing, so is wrestling, and so is also, of course, the Japanese jiu-jitsu. All come into our system of instruction. Let us take an example: suppose a man boxes his adversary, knocks off his helmet. There is a fraction of a second of surprise. Then is the time to disarm him and finish him off with jiu-jitsu. Our system does not give jiu-jitsu the monopoly to the exclusion of all other means of getting rid of one’s enemy, but it is an adaptation to our requirements. We use bayonet, knife, savate, boxing, and jiu-jitsu, all combined for practical purposes. When I say one month is sufficient for a man to learn our army physical development exercises, I do not mean any one at random; I mean a man who has had some physical development to start with. A man who never had physical development exercises cannot be expected to pick up jiujitsu in a short time. He takes longer to get the required skill. But he gets it. Believe me, our men are delivering the goods all right.”
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 20th August 2012
Comrades-at-arms at the recent Antagonisticathlon event held by the Bartitsu Club of Chicago; from left, Brendan Hutt, Josh Woolf (visiting from New Zealand), instructor Tony Wolf and Michael Mauch (in costume as a c1900 newsie).
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