Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 12th March 2013
Detective Inspector Archibald “Archie” LeBrock (left), the protagonist of the Grandville graphic novel series, assumes the Bartitsu “rear guard” position.
Posted inFiction, Pop-culture|Comments Off on Inspector LeBrock (Anthropomorphic Badger and Bartitsu Enthusiast)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 21st March 2013
This 1912 vintage newsreel footage is among the earliest film recordings of Japanese martial arts techniques.
The film, which was probably shot in Paris, begins with a demonstration of formal jiujitsu waza (techniques) performed by Takisaburo Tobari, who had apparently travelled quite widely in Europe, visiting Germany and Austria between 1907-10. His partner in the demonstration is Taro Miyake, who had famously defeated former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani in 1905. Thereafter, Miyake and Tani continued to work as music hall challenge wrestlers, established the Japanese School of Jujitsu in London’s Oxford Street, and participated in the creation of the book The Game of Jujitsu. Both men also worked as challenge wrestlers and jiujitsu instructors in Paris, Miyake in particular being associated with Ernest Regnier’s dojo at 55 Rue de Ponthieu.
The second part of the newsreel features a spectacular and highly polished display of jiujitsu as gentlemanly self-defence against villainous “apaches” (French street gangsters). It is very probable that the participants in this display are S.K. Eida, Shozo Kanaya and Yuzo Hirano, all of whom also taught at the Oxford Street school. Possibly uniquely, it includes a demonstration of a jiujitsu defence against the infamous coup du père François strangulation trick.
The “apaches” evidently had a terrific time performing for the camera …
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 21st March 2013
For a number of years, the 1982 docudrama The Year of the Bodyguard, directed by Noel Burch, was one of the sasquatches of Bartitsu/Edwardian antagonistics research. There was tantalising evidence that it existed somewhere, but it proved frustratingly difficult to track down.
We recently (finally!) had the opportunity to watch the telefilm, which was originally broadcast as part of a British Channel 4 documentary series called The 11th Hour. What follows is not a review, but a comprehensive summary of the film, highlighting those aspects most likely to be of interest to readers of this website.
The film opens with a shot of a chair, upon which rest a red Edwardian-style jujutsu gi (training uniform), an Indian club and a short whip – weapons associated with the militant Suffragettes. In voiceover, an actress representing Edith Garrud briefly quotes the advice given to her by Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankurst – “Speak, and I think that we shall understand”.
Cut to the narration of an eyewitness to police brutality against a Suffragette protestor during the infamous “Black Friday” riots of 18 November, 1910, as the camera very slowly pans in on the face of a woman who has fallen to the pavement:
There follows some early newsreel footage of the riot itself; lines of police, a vast, milling crowd of behatted Londoners pressing around a small collection of suffrage banners off in the distance.
Next, there is a re-enactment of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s “Votes for Women” exhibition at Prince’s Skating Rink in Knightsbridge, in which a mock-up of the relatively opulent, large cell afforded to recognised political prisoners is contrasted with the cramped, miserable cell of an imprisoned Suffragette. We then watch a re-enactment of the forced feeding of a Suffragette on hunger strike.
A fashionable shop window is smashed by an unseen militant Suffragette protestor crying “Votes for women!”, and next we see the protestors, having barely out-run the police, escaping into Edith Garrud’s jiujitsu studio. They quickly hide their weapons of vandalism – hammers and stones – and street clothes in a trap-door hidden under the tatami mats, and by the time the police arrive, they appear to be a group of young women innocently practicing jiujitsu.
Next, an actor portraying G.K. Chesterton delivers a monologue to the camera, making the point that a woman’s deltoid muscles are the least thing a man has to fear from her. This is followed by a startling scene of modern (1980s) domestic violence.
Returning to the Edwardian era, we witness another common form of Suffragette protest by vandalism, as a woman pours a liquid accelerant into an iron post-box and incinerates the mail within. A female narrator quotes Christabel Pankhurst on the relative moralities of different types of violent action.
This is followed by a documentary photo-montage of militants being arrested and disorder in the streets of London, while a male narrator explains the doctrine of state-sanctioned physical force behind the rule of law, also suggesting that while physical force is a male domain, the law drew equally from moral force, which is associated with women; “let the men make the laws, and we (women) will make the men.”
An actress portraying a working-class suffragist from Lancashire delivers a speech to the camera in the style of a 1980s television interview, arguing that the undignified protests of middle- and upper-class women who “kick, shriek, bite and spit” were driving her peers away from public political action.
There follows a long, static shot, rather in the manner of early silent film, showing a performance of the George Bernard Shaw play, Androcles and the Lion, which is disrupted by a loud argument on the suffrage question between members of the audience. Three of the actors on stage eventually break the fourth wall and applaud the pro-suffrage position.
The next shot is of a black and white television set which is showing an actress playing the elderly Edith Garrud circa 1967. She describes her first meeting with Emmeline Pankhurst, which took place at a jiujitsu display she was giving in the early 1900s.
We then segue to another actress playing Edith at the time of that display, lecturing on jiujitsu and demonstrating several holds and throws on a man wearing a police uniform.
We shift to September of 1913, as two plain-clothes police officers climb a ladder outside a building to secretly observe a Bodyguard jujitsu training session through a skylight.
One of the women spots them and, after some confusion, organiser Gertrude Harding orders the trainees to leave one at a time and not to allow themselves to be followed home. The camera follows one of the women as she confronts a detective in the street and proposes a game of wits; if she is able to lose him, she will win. They walk off into the darkness.
A narrator quoting Christabel Pankhurst describes the formation of the Bodyguard and the power of women to terrorise men, over a montage of photographs and early film footage showing Suffragettes in prison, practicing jiujitsu and protesting, “divinely discontented, divinely impatient and divinely brave”.
Next there is a re-enactment of three militant Suffragettes harassing Prime Minister Asquith during a motoring trip through a Scottish forest. The women rush out from hiding and stop his car, then attack Asquith and his companions with flour-bombs and horse-whips, crying “votes for women!” and “Asquith out!”
The next sequence quotes a speech by Sylvia Pankhurst, who was concerned with organising political protest among the working classes of London’s East End, urging her followers to learn jiujitsu and to bring sticks to their protests. “There is no use talking. We have got to really fight.” This is followed by a stylised, slow motion scene in which the young Edith Garrud, wielding an Indian club as a weapon, defeats two male attackers in front of a flickering projection of a suffrage rally.
This scene is interrupted by the Year of the Bodyguard director, Noel Burch, who asks the actress playing Edith to demonstrate one of her jujitsu locks for him. She asks why and the scene freezes momentarily.
There follows a humourous scene in which a large, but bruised and dishevelled c1913 police constable is interviewed by a female reporter, ostensibly in the aftermath of an encounter with the Bodyguard. He abashedly admits that he was hit by a woman, claims that he doesn’t know whether he supports the right of women to vote in elections, and ends up distractedly trying to re-attach his right sleeve, which has been partially torn off during the affray.
The film then takes a much more serious turn, with slow-motion archival footage of the Suffragette protestor Emily Wilding Davison running into the midst of the Derby Day horse race of 1913 and being trampled by the King’s horse, Anmer. Both woman and horse somersault through the air after the impact, and then the crowd surges on to the racetrack to help; the horse survived and Emily Davison became the first Suffragette martyr.
In a satirical scene, an actor in modern dress playing a psychiatrist offers the opinion that Wilding was a masochist and a “hysteric”.
The final scenes show a group of women training in a contemporary (early 1980s) self defence class, followed by a series of interviews with the trainees about the value of learning self defence and the politics of inter-gender violence. Following a short scene in which a woman is shown defending herself against an attacker in a busy London street, a title card describes the impact of the First World War on the suffrage movement, as Mrs. Pankhurst suspended the “Votes for Women” campaign and organised many of her followers to support the government during the war effort, which prompted the granting of the vote to women over the age of 30 on 11 January, 1918.
Many of the items on permanent display are functional and can be used in exercise classes, while some others are for viewing only.
The collection includes:
* an 1880s vintage cast-iron and oak rowing machine * an assortment of classic cast-iron dumbbells and hardwood Indian clubs * “Sandow” brand spring-loaded dumbbells in their original packing * an “Italian pattern” broadsword fencing mask * a wall-mounted pulley weightlifting machine * a 1911 women’s gym suit * a leather medicine ball * a wooden exercise wand and rings * an early boxing speed bag.
Also on display is a gallery of antique prints showing combat athletes in training, as well as several large, photo-realistic reproduction posters featuring Bartitsu, boxing and the late-Victorian revival of historical fencing.
Although it is unfortunately impossible to pinpoint their origin, these pictures were almost certainly published in a London magazine circa 1909-1913. Between those dates, and given the presence of tatami mats on the floor, it is highly likely that they were shot in one of three locations. The first candidate would be jujitsu instructor Edith Garrud‘s own dojo (training hall) at #8 Argyll Place, Regent Street, which advertised classes for women and children; the second would be the Golden Square dojo that Edith and her husband William had taken over from former Bartitsu Club instructor Sadakazu Uyenishi when the latter returned to Japan circa 1908.
However, given that one of the women in the second photograph is wearing what is apparently a Suffragette sash, reading “Women’s (indecipherable) Week”, perhaps the most likely location would be the “Suffragettes Self Defence Club”, which Edith had advertised in the Votes for Women newspaper in December of 1909. The club was based at Leighton Lodge in Edwardes Square, Kensington, which included a number of studios for classes in sculpture, painting and voice. The Suffragette self defence classes started at 7.00 p.m. each Tuesday and Thursday evening and cost 5s, 6d per month.
Posted inJiujitsu, Suffrajitsu|Comments Off on Jujitsuffragette Photographs?
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 12th April 2013
Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright once expressed the wish to export his “New Art of Self Defence” to the United States, and several of his articles for London magazines were subsequently re-published in American newspapers. While Bartitsu itself was not, as it happened, exported to the USA, a small number of somewhat similar self defence systems did arise in North America during the early years of the 20th century. This article deals with evidence for one of those methods, and more particularly with the mystery and extraordinary scandal that enveloped the proponents of that method in the year 1911.
In 1906, the famed New York City photographer Percy C. Byron was commissioned to take a series of studio photographs depicting “Dr. Latson’s Method of Self Defense”. The pictures show an athletic young woman demonstrating an unarmed combat stance, several techniques of self defence with an umbrella and a stamping side kick to the attacker’s knee. There is also one picture that appears to show a dance or calisthenic posture.
Dr. W.R.C. Latson
New Yorker William Richard Cunningham Latson had graduated from the Eclectic Medical College of New York City in 1904 and quickly became something of a self-help celebrity. The editor of Health-Culture, an influential magazine, he was also a prolific author of health and fitness books and his articles appeared in newspapers all across America. As a keen physical culturist with a particular passion for boxing, Latson’s subjects ranged from correct posture to natural diet and from the moral benefits of athletic training to the physiology of knock-out punches.
The 1906 self defence pictures may have been intended to illustrate one of Latson’s planned books or articles, but they appear to have remained unpublished until they were featured as historical curiosities in the book Once Upon a City: New York 1890 to 1910 (1958) and then in the June, 1972 issue of American Heritage magazine. The apparent absence of any references to “Latson self defense method” classes, demonstrations, etc. during the early 1900s may suggest either that the method remained undeveloped, or simply that it was not taught publicly.
During the first decade of the 20th century, Latson’s writing increasingly tended towards self-improvement in the psychological and even spiritual senses.
Scandal and mystery
On May 11, 1911 Dr. Latson’s body was discovered in the library of his well-appointed apartment at 660 Riverside Drive. He had been killed by a single shot from a revolver, which was found underneath his body; also nearby was a note reading “Gertie and Mother, I have done my best – death.”
The subsequent investigation by coroners and police aroused a storm of media controversy that included allegations of “sex cult” activity, murder, hypnotism, a suicide pact gone awry and “mystical psychology”. The controversy focused on the relationship between the late Dr. Latson and his 21 year old secretary, protégée and lover Ida Rosenthal, who used the name “Alta Marhevka” (also rendered by journalists as “Marhezka”, “Marhelka” and numerous other spellings). She was seen climbing out of the window of Dr. Latson’s apartment several hours before his body was discovered and, incidentally, is also believed to have been the woman who posed for the Latson self defence method photographs in 1906.
Several days after the shooting Miss Rosenthal, who had been named as a co-respondent in Dr. Latson’s divorce several years earlier, attempted suicide by gas poisoning in her bathroom. The room strewn with note papers bearing scraps of poetry and philosophical musings. Rescued by her landlady, Rosenthal spent the next several days in hospital. She made a number of statements to reporters, describing Dr. Latson as “a theosophist and Buddhist, learned in the occult”, expressing the belief that Latson’s spirit had risen to a higher plane of existence and referring to him as her “gourah” (guru). The latter word was typically translated by reporters as “god-man”, leading the scandal to be referred to in newspaper headlines as “the God-Man Mystery”.
On June 29, despite a stark disagreement between the coroner in charge of the investigation and his associate – one was convinced that the gunshot that killed Latson was self-inflicted, the other insisted that it could not have been because of the lack of powder burns around the fatal wound – a coroner’s court jury quickly found that Dr. Latson had committed suicide and no charges in connection to his death were ever laid against Ida Rosenthal.
Posted inAntagonistics, Biography, Mysteries|Comments Off on “Dr. Latson’s Method of Self Defense” (New York City, 1906) and the “God-Man” scandal of 1911
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 15th April 2013
Comparatively little is known about the period that Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright spent living in Kobe, Japan. Arriving during mid-1895, he spent the next several years supervising an antimony smelting operation for E.H. Hunter and Company, a large manufacturing business. Most of his free time was apparently spent training at the Shinden Fudo Ryu jiujitsu dojo of his sensei, Terajima Kuniichiro.
However, we do have a curious detail of Barton-Wright’s activities in Kobe one evening during November of 1895, when he was part of a committee invited to test the purportedly supernatural powers of a young French-American woman known as “Annie May Abbott, the Georgia Magnet”.
Who was the Georgia Magnet?
“Annie May Abbott”, whose real name was Matilda Tatro, was actually one of the most successful of several “Georgia Magnet” performers. This “Magnet act” had been touring music hall and vaudeville stages since 1883, when Lulu Hurst, the original Magnet, first rose to prominence in the USA. “Magnets” were typically slender young women who claimed to be able to manipulate a hitherto-unknown power, said to be akin to electricity or magnetism, that allowed them to perform superhuman feats of strength, under certain conditions. This description of a Magnet’s performance from a Minnesota newspaper dated October 15, 1890 is typical:
It was the most wonderful and utterly inexplicable exhibition – a genuine phenomenon – ever witnessed in this country. People may scoff and turn up their nose at the supernatural or, unnatural forces, if you please. Hypnotism until recently had but few believers. Mesmerism and kindred phenomena were thought to be high-flown titles for “fraud” and “fake,” but science has taken a hand and dispelled such ideas. It sounds a little “fishy” to state that she lifted two feet clear from the floor nine heavy men at one time, piled upon two heavy chairs, and as easily as the reader would this paper; in fact two gentlemen had their hands interposed between her hands and the chair, with no other contact when the entire mass came up, and those gentlemen assert that there was no more perceptible pressure against their hands than the weight of the hand.
Her muscles were examined during the tests and no sort of muscular action was found. What does it? The committee all tried singly to lift her, which the smallest man could do (she weighs not over 95) when she willed it, but when she preferred not, it remained not. Men tugged till their eyes bulged and they were red and blue in the face, but she remained smiling and as immovable as a block of buildings. Two, three four, six and eight men together expended all their strength in vain to hoist her a particle. She picked men up by the ears, by the head, hoisted them on poles, by her fingers tumbled them around like paper balls.
Many believers in the Magnet’s powers attributed them to a mysterious energy known as the odic force, which was held to be similar to the energies employed in spiritualist seances.
Barton-Wright meets the Magnet
By November of 1895, “Annie May Abbott’s” world tour had brought her to Japan. She and her manager, Richard N. Abbey – who had previously managed another Magnet, whose real name was Dixie Haygood – joined forces with a Professor Frank E. Wood, who served as their translator. They performed a series of shows, or “demonstrations”, at theatres throughout Japan, eventually arriving in Kobe.
The Magnet’s act consisted of two main parts. First, manager Abbey would deliver a short lecture on the mysterious forces that were Miss Abbott’s to command, his speech translated for their largely Japanese audiences by Professor Wood. Then, a committee would be invited onto the stage in order to test these feats as the Magnet herself performed them. The committee was typically made up of volunteers from the audience, ideally large, strong men. The athletic E.W. Barton-Wright would have made a fine candidate, also possessing the distinct advantage of speaking English, so that he would have no difficulty in following Mr. Abbey’s instructions during the “experiments” on stage.
After the show, the committee was required to sign a testimonial as to the Magnet’s success in the various feats performed on stage.
How to Pose as a Strong Man
E.W. Barton-Wright’s true impressions of the Magnet’s performance became clear several years later, when he authored a detailed expose of “Georgia Magnet”-type stunts. The illustrated essay How to Pose as a Strong Man (PDF available here) was published in Pearson’s Magazine in January of 1899, and included the statements:
It must not be supposed that it is necessary to possess any unusual strength to pose as a strong man; indeed, in many strong men’s feats, strength plays a less important part than knack and trickery.
… (The Georgia Magnet) declared that it was solely owing to the fact that she possessed remarkable magnetic and electric powers that she was able to perform these feats. This, of course, was not the case, for anyone of average strength, who follows these instructions, will be able to perform them.
Armed with his intimate technical knowledge of “balance and leverage as applied to human anatomy”, which was to become a cornerstone of his Bartitsu martial art, Barton-Wright proceeded to explain how to perform numerous illusions of superhuman strength. He also addressed the psychological aspect of the Magnet’s act, referring to techniques of distracting the audience’s attention from the actual methods employed through “patter” and misdirection.
In fact, aspects of the Magnet act had been repeatedly exposed by academic skeptics in various newspaper and magazine articles dating back to the 1880s, but Barton-Wright’s concise essay, well-illustrated with step-by-step photographs, was unusually accessible to the lay-reader. Therefore, it was with some evident delight that the editor of the New Zealand Graphic newspaper decided to re-print How to Pose as a Strong Man during Annie May Abbott’s extended tour of New Zealand in 1899. In the same issue, the editor printed a satirical cartoon suggesting that the Magnet might use her powers to “lift” certain recalcitrant City Council members out of their seats.
Response from the Magnet’s representatives was swift and came in the form of a politely blistering letter to the editor of the Auckland Star, which was published on September 11th:
I shall be glad if you will allow me space to point out the essential differences between the feats set out in the article and the tests accomplished by Miss Abbott. As a preliminary, I may state that the article in “Pearson’s Magazine” was written by a Mr E. W. Barton-Wright, and was published as a sort of counterblast to a complimentary testimony to the “Georgia Magnet’s” ability, which appeared in the “Strand Magazine.” It must also be remembered that at this time the rival firms of Newnes and Pearson were sparing no effort to go one better than the other.
The above facts are well known, and only require being brought to mind, but it is not generally known that Mr. Barton-Wright attended one of Miss Abbott’s performances in Kobe, Japan, in November, 1895, and as a member of her committee signed his name to a testimonial almost similar to the one signed by the Auckland committee on Tuesday week. Perhaps he was “led by the nose” in the manner so elegantly suggested by Mr. Kent in a recent letter; but probably he signed the document of his own free will. In any case, the publication of his article in the “Graphic” Is calculated to throw discredit upon Miss Abbott, for it attempts to explain her feats as purely mechanical operations.
The Magnet’s defender in this instance was a man named Danvers Hamber, who was at that time the assistant editor of the New Zealand Sporting and Dramatic Review. In a high dudgeon, he proceeded to point out the various ways in which Miss Abbott’s performance differed from Barton-Wright’s descriptions, before finishing:
Mr. Barton-Wright undoubtedly used Miss Abbott’s performance as the foundation of his article. He forgot much in the three years which elapsed between witnessing Miss Abbott’s tests at Kobe and writing the paper. He probably forgot all about signing the testimonial to the lady’s ability, and he certainly let the truth slide in concocting many of the above little stories. His article may probably harm Miss Abbott’s tour through New Zealand. Here in Auckland we have already seen the effect it has upon the medical profession. If it can so disturb members of what is considered a calm and judicious calling, what may it not do with persons who have less control over their judgment?
There may well have been divergences between Barton-Wright’s descriptions and Miss Abbott’s demonstrations. Barton-Wright had addressed the fakery of “Georgia Magnet”-style feats in broad terms, and his article also included several feats that were not part of the Georgia Magnet repertoire. It would be interesting to read the exact wording of the testimonials signed by the various committees, there being a significant difference, for example, between the statements “I saw Miss Abbott resist the strength of several men” and “I saw Miss Abbott use odic force to resist the strength of several men.”
Moreover, as Barton-Wright had explained, there are several ways to perform the various Georgia Magnet “experiments” without resorting to odic force, all of them requiring the practiced application of leverage and balance combined with the ideomotor effect – the influence of suggestion or expectation on unconscious bodily movement. Less spectacularly, the same phenomenon can explain the apparently mysterious workings of spiritualistic phenomena including ouija boards, table turning and dowsing at the psychophysiological level. Some twenty years later, magician, escapologist and arch-skeptic Harry Houdini would also pick up on the relationship between martial arts techniques and those of the music hall charlatans …
… who gave the world of science a decided start about a generation ago.
The jiu jitsu of the Japanese is, in part, a development of the same principles, but here again much new material has been added, so that it deserves to be considered a new art.
– Harry Houdini, Miracle Mongers and their Methods, 1920
Mr. Hamber’s fears were somewhat justified, as several other New Zealand newspapers followed the Auckland Star’s lead and printed skeptical editorials as the Magnet’s tour continued through the provinces. The consensus was that, while the show was very entertaining, the “odic force” patter was past its prime. The editor of the Timaru Post asserted that:
.. the “Georgia Magnet” possesses no power, psychic or otherwise, that is not possessed by every member of her sex. As an example. The “Georgia Magnet” holds the downward end of a stick in her clenched right hand, and one or two men are expected to force it through. Why, almost a child could resist their efforts. We know it is claimed that she does not grasp the stick, but we have seen her do it. Every one of her tricks is explainable in as simple a manner, even to the rising of her temperature and simultaneous lowering of her pulse, which seems to have puzzled the doctors so much. Of course, the temperature is raised by her exertions and the surrounding atmosphere, while a couple of minims of tincture of aconite does the rest, as far as the pulse is concerned.
Twice has the “Magnet” been lifted from the local platform, despite her exertions and anatomical distortions, and twice has it been clearly demonstrated that there has been no magnetism or “new force” holding her down, and the nonsense talked about “flesh contact” is as meaningless as it is void of truth.
As previously stated, we have no objection to such exhibitions as shows, merely; but we are bound to protect truth and science from incursions of that description. It is unlikely the Magnet will attract much more in New Zealand, as all the papers are busy exposing her tricks. We have had one “feat” explained to us, and see the impossibility of standing still while clasping a chair in both arms, even though the contrary force is exerted only by some one’s little finger.
It’s unlikely that E.W. Barton-Wright was even aware of the part played by his article in this controversy, but there’s no reason to doubt that it would have pleased him.
