An illustration from The Wrinkle Book, edited by Archibald Williams and published by Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., London.
These techniques were probably inspired by those described in Percy Longhurst’s Jiu-jitsu and Other Methods of Self Defence, first published in 1906. Longhurst was an associate of most of the principal figures attached to the Bartitsu Club and may well have trained there himself.
The Level 1 and Level 2 incarnations of Flint, the Bartitsuka flamingo
“Flint” is a new character in Urban Rivals, which is a “free multiplayer online trading card game (MMO TCG) with hundreds of characters to discover, collect and level up by fighting live against players from all over the world!”
We here at the Bartitsu Society website are very old and do not quite understand what that means. According to Flint’s official biography:
Maintaining one’s chic and sang froid under any circumstances is no easy task when you’re surrounded by badly brought up country bumpkins who have a nasty habit of getting into fights for no apparent reason. But Sir Flint isn’t just any old poseur. His mastery of Bartitsu has made him an opponent to reckon with, who’ll have you on the floor in less time than it takes to relight his pipe. And just in time for tea, if you please.
So, if you’ve ever wanted to play a free multiplayer online trading card game (MMO TCG) as a Bartitsu-fighting flamingo, here’s your chance.
Founded by Muriel Cossgrove in 1908, the New Zealand Peace Scouts were a precursor to the Girl Guide movement in New Zealand.
Peace Scouts were encouraged to eschew corsets, which were believed to interfere with breathing and natural movement, to eat healthily, to play outdoor sports and to train in self defence techniques, as seen above.
This post includes another example of Peace Scout self defence training.
One of the most famous and colourful “characters” of Chicago during the roaring ’20s was Detective Alice B. Clement, whose sharp wits, snappy dress sense and enthusiastic use of jiujitsu in quelling “mashers”, fraudulent clairvoyants and other ne’er-do-wells made her the darling of the city’s newspaper editors.
Alice Clement, badge # 1708
According to this excellent 2003 article from the Chicago Magazine:
She was the city’s own “feminine Sherlock Holmes,” “the saviour of souls,” “nemesis to many a masher,” “the wonder of the police world,” “terror of the guilty and hope of the friendless.” This was Chicago’s woman of a thousand disguises and a thousand arrests (including at least one lunatic, according to the papers), who could expose phony clairvoyants and fold a man into a jujitsu pretzel; who could pass as a bagwoman one day and seduce an embezzler with a saucy smile the next (“Old dips fall for us,” she was known to say).
When she wasn’t dragging a criminal in by the ear like some exasperated aunt, she was sizing up the latest dances, infiltrating the cabarets and shimmy parlors to see whether new steps like the “moonlight slide” and “angle-worm giggle” squared with the moral code of the day. With the blessing of the police chief and other high-ranking officers, she had even produced—and starred in—her own movie, Dregs of the City, in which she saved a country girl from the “bright lights, the flashy dress and the glib tongue” of the city’s underworld.
Click here for a PDF of Oliver Lang’s 2011 German-language article on Bartitsu for Schwert & Klinge magazine, featuring technical demonstrations by Stefan Dieke.
The new documentary No Bois Man No Fraid explores the stick fighting art of kalinda as a vibrant modern martial art with roots embedded deeply in Trinidadian and African cultures. Kalinda also has an intriguing connection with Herbert Gordon Lang’s Walking Stick Method of Self Defence, as put forth in his book of that title, which was published in 1923.
At that time, Lang was a senior officer in the Indian police force and he hoped to institute his system of stick fighting as a key aspect of police training, while also noting its potential as a method of civilian self defence.
In his Introduction, Lang noted that:
The System has been carefully built up after several years’ thought and demonstration, and combines a method devised by a Frenchman, Vigui (sic), of which, little is now heard, together with the stick play of tribes of negroes on certain of the West India Islands, called “Bois.”
Additions and ameliorations have been made as the result of experience and close practice under varying circumstances.
Although the actual historical connection between H.G. Lang and Pierre Vigny remains frustratingly unclear, Lang’s book represents the most detailed exposition of Vigny’s unusual method of stick fighting, which had earlier been incorporated into the curriculum of Bartitsu.
Lang was born in Grenada, West Indies, on December 3, 1887. It’s possible that he studied bois there as a teenager and later melded that style with what he learned of the Vigny system.
The Creole term “bois” (“wood”, or “stick”, also “bois-bataille”, etc.) was historically applied to stickfighting in both Grenada and Trinidad. While actual stick combat was successfully banned in Grenada, “bois” is still practiced there as a folk dance. However, as shown in No Bois Man No Fraid, the combat system has been perpetuated in Trinidad via the carnival traditions.
Thus, it’s likely that Trinidadian kalinda (a.k.a. bois, kalenda, calinda, etc.) is very close to what Lang might have added to the Vigny method.
Click here to read the new article Reviving Bartitsu: The Way English Gentlemen Fought, featuring the Bartitsu Club of New York City.
Bartitsu: the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes is the first and only feature documentary on Bartitsu, the “gentlemanly art of self defence”.
At the end of the Victorian era, E.W. Barton-Wright founded Bartitsu as a pioneering “mixed martial art” combining jiujitsu, kickboxing and self defence with a walking stick. It was also the means by which Sherlock Holmes was said to have defeated his arch-nemesis, the evil Professor Moriarty, in their famous battle at Reichenbach Waterfall.
This groundbreaking documentary was shot on location in Italy, Switzerland, England and the USA. Through numerous interviews, animations, re-enactment sequences, rare archival film footage and historical images, it explores the history, rediscovery and modern revival of Bartitsu.
Reviews
(…) reveals an exciting world of Victorian ruffians, garroting panics, militant suffragettes, and physical culture, as well as the colorful life of Bartitsu’s founder Edward Barton-Wright … music by the steampunk band Abney Park creates a moody atmosphere of Victorian danger, excitement, and heroics. Through interviews, re-enactment, archival images, and contemporary footage of neo-Bartitsu students, the “lost” martial art is brought to life.
– Rachel Klingberg
Here’s the problem – what to do when you love a good punch up, but public brawling is incompatible with your image as an amenable, if damp-stained, man of letters? The answer is “Bartitsu,” a nineteenth-century martial art developed specifically to transform the upright classes into killing machines, and whose unusual history has been revealed in an excellent new documentary …
– Andrew McConnell Stott
Sleek and engaging … fascinating … a superbly watchable piece of martial arts history …
– Bullshido.net martial arts movie reviews
Further information/how to order
Please visit the Freelance Academy Press website to view a photo gallery, read an article about Bartitsu and the documentary production, and to place your DVD order.
Copies of the DVD may also be ordered from Amazon.com.
Alternating annually between Europe and North America, the Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture is the Bartitsu Society’s international seminar and conference event. The 2013 SoA was held between September 13-15 at Beamish Museum near Newcastle, UK.
Unfortunately, instructor Allen Reed (USA) had to withdraw about one week before the event due to his wife’s sudden illness and instructor/SoA organiser Tony Wolf’s flight from the US to the UK was delayed and then cancelled. Thanks go to instructors James Marwood (UK) and Mark Donnelly (USA), who stepped into the breach and accepted both extra “on the ground” administrative responsibilities and an extra teaching load.
As the Beamish Museum complex includes “Beamish Town” – an entire reconstructed c1900 town street, complete with working tram cars – it was an ideal place to hold a Bartitsu gathering. The School of Arms was established in an upper floor of the Barclay’s Bank Building in Beamish Town, overlooking the main street.
“Beamish kept us immersed in the Edwardian atmosphere even while not training and I think this provided an unquantifiable, but wonderful addition to the proceedings.”
Day 1 began as School of Arms instructors and participants met at the Beamish Museum entrance and then caught a c1900 tram through the countryside to Beamish Town. There they gave a Bartitsu lecture and demonstration for an audience of museum staff and visitors in the Beamish Freemason Hall.
“In the opulent surroundings and with the participants in Victorian costume it was easy to imagine that we were giving a demonstration to the assembled members of the Bath Club!”
“The garotting attack and takedowns onto a hard marble floor provided a compelling spectacle …”
The costumed lecture/demo. was followed by a pleasant casual tour of the museum’s facilities and exhibits.
Day 2 started with a brisk walk to the training hall, followed by a “story warm-up” in which calisthenic exercises were contextualised as part of a Bartitsu-themed narrative.
This was followed by a series of Bartitsu classes progressing from extreme, to long, to punching ranges, with Mark Donnelly leading the stick work and kicking drills while James Marwood taught boxing and jiujitsu atemi-waza.
Participants were encouraged to explore the material, in the spirit of the “combat laboratory” collaboration between practitioners of various different styles at Barton-Wright’s original Bartitsu Club in London circa 1901.
“Professor Donnelly and Mister Marwood lead an excellent course of training. Rather than simply teaching the canonical material they encouraged the participant to take the techniques, some of which they were already familiar with, and experiment with how they slotted into the overall principles and ethos of Bartitsu.”
Later in the day we were honoured by a visit from British martial arts historian Graham Noble, whose collaboration with the late Richard Bowen during the 1990s effectively marked the beginning of modern Bartitsu scholarship. Graham observed the last hour or so of training and then joined the School of Arms staff and participants for a buffet and a social evening at the Sun Inn, an authentic Edwardian era pub and restaurant located just down the street from the School of Arms.
“Over beer and a superb dinner of traditional northern English food, we had some interesting discussions on the nature of the Bartitsu experiment, on what Bartitsu might have become had it continued to scientifically incorporate other martial arts, and on different approaches to studying Bartitsu now by either sticking with the canonical material or continuing to experiment with other contemporary or earlier systems to see where they could be used in gentlemanly self defence.”
Day 3
The third and final day began with a warm-up session led by both instructors and segued into further study of the “building blocks” of Bartitsu. In the morning Mark Donnelly covered stick material, using the stick at closer range, and dealing with an opponent trying to close, drawing from la canne Vigny and from contemporaneous Irish stick fighting material.
In the afternoon James Marwood looked at mixing boxing and atemi strikes before introducing some simple jiujitsu locks and controls. This moved into using these wrist and arm controls to break away from an attacker, finishing with some pressure drills in which a boxer had to try and prevent a grappler from closing.
“In particular I enjoyed looking at the control of distance, and the use of techniques to keep the ruffian at the distance that best suited the defender, for example a defender with a cane using a Savate kick to prevent the assailant closing from an extended measure into punching distance, or using a carefully chosen boxing technique to keep them from closing to grappling range.”
The day and the event ended with a discussion about the open source nature of the Bartitsu revival, an exhortation for people to open their own clubs and encouragement for them to get involved with the Bartitsu Society. The participants departed having built new bridges between clubs and with the sense of camaraderie that is the best feature of gatherings of enthusiasts in any field:
“We covered a tremendous amount of material in two days, sadly more than I’ll be able to retain, but I’m very much looking forward to continuing my own study with a better understanding of the general framework it fits into.”
“It was a really rewarding weekend. Especially good for me, as before this event, the only Bartitsu I’ve been in contact with has been via B-W’s articles and Youtube videos of other study groups. Huge opportunity for me to absorb a very great deal. I was particularly impressed by way that certain movements echoed back and forth between the cane work Mark demonstrated and the strikes James taught.
Really good atmosphere too — no egos, but plenty of opportunity to press ourselves hard if that’s what we wanted to do.”
“As a first look at Bartitsu I enjoyed it enormously and the venue helped bring about a sense of history when taking Bartitsu in its context of when Barton-Wright first started the style. Both instructors were very knowledgeable and skilled and were also very friendly and helpful.”
“All in all a great experience and venue which left plenty of avenues of further exploration for me to look into.”
“It was a fantastic event!”
Special thanks go to instructors James Marwood and Mark Donnelly, Beamish events co-ordinators Stephanie Celino, Lisa Wilkinson and Tanya Wills, as well as to Kathrynne Wolf, Duncan McNulty and SoA organiser Tony Wolf.
The fourth annual Bartitsu School of Arms is scheduled to be held in North America during late August or September of 2014; we hope to see you there!
A short video showing some technical stick sparring from the 2012 Bartitsu School of Arms.
In this type of sparring, the mask, gloves, forearms, thighs and calves are all legal targets. Stick strikes and thrusts as well as unarmed strikes, weapon traps/disarms and standing grappling may all be employed.
Fighters are encouraged to experiment with variations on the standard high guards, for example by lowering the guards as positions of invitation. They may acknowledge hits verbally and/or gesturally, but the emphasis is on continual action.
The weapons are 3/4″ diameter, 36″ rattan sparring canes from Purpleheart Armory, equipped with solid rubber ball handles to simulate the steel ball handles of real Bartitsu canes. The asymmetrical balance of the cane is a key factor in Bartitsu stick fighting.
