Although jiujitsu had been introduced to England circa 1900 via the efforts of E.W. Barton-Wright, Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi, the Japan-British Exhibition was the first opportunity for many British citizens to witness other forms of Japanese antagonistics. Sumo, kendo and naginata-jutsu were all on display at this event, which ran from May to October of 1910.
The Exhibition was staged at the famous White City, a fantastically elaborate complex that had been constructed to host the Franco-British Exhibition and the London Olympic Games in 1908. The latter event, incidentally, had been presided over by William Grenfell, the 1st Baron Desborough, who had also served as the president of the Bartitsu Club.
The organisers had spared no expense in creating a simulacrum of a Japanese town and formal gardens, and also a facsimile of an Ainu village. In addition, the Exhibition featured several Japanese-themed funfair attractions, such as a “scenic railway” that trundled through a landscape of miniature mountains and the “Wiggle-Woggle”, which sent riders caroming down a zig-zag track. All the construction work was carried out co-operatively by British and Japanese architects and artisans.
Many of the martial arts displays took place in the Jiujitsu Hall; the Japanese Town area also included a full sumo wrestling arena.
Moments from the Bartitsu seminar at the recent Sherlocon 2017 Sherlock Holmes fandom event, which took place at the Nuovo Teatro Orione in Rome, Italy. Aimed at interested novices, the workshop included examples of Vigny walking stick fighting, self-defence with an overcoat and several canonical jiujitsu set-plays.
Here follow two further reviews of the series of self-defence exhibitions organised by Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright during mid-1899, to benefit Pierre Vigny, who had then recently arrived in London.
Vigny was noted in related reports to have started his study of English boxing at the age of fifteen and had begun to work as a master-at-arms from the age of twenty-three. He had initially travelled to London, at least in part, to gain further experience in the English style of fisticuffs, and indeed had competed in several bouts with English boxers shortly after arriving in the city during late March of 1899.
Vigny, of course, went on to collaborate with Barton-Wright in the practical development of Bartitsu as a “mixed martial art” and assumed the role of Chief Instructor at the Bartitsu School of Arms between 1900-1902. He later set up his own London school before returning to Switzerland and continuing his work as a self-defence and physical culture instructor.
From the Sporting Life: Tuesday, 27 June, 1899:
“WALKING STICK PLAY: BARTITSU LADIES’ NIGHT”
For the purpose of introducing to the English public Professor Pierre Vigny, the celebrated French swordsman and world champion of walking stick play and la savate, and also as a benefit to that gentleman, Mr. Barton-Wright organized a grand display of various forms of self-defence, which took place on Thursday evening in the Banqueting Hall, St. James’s Restaurant, Regent Street . W., which was well attended by a fashionable and appreciative company, including many of the fair sex, in full evening dress.
Mr. Barton-Wright, the initiator of “Bartitsu”, gave a descriptive lecture and demonstration of walking stick play and la savate with Professor Pierre Vigny, who will instruct in these two subjects at the Bartitsu School of Arms, which will shortly be opened in a central position in the West End.
Without question, Professor Vigny is an undoubted master of these two forms of self-defence, and to which he will devote special attention at the Bartitsu School of Arms, but whether these two forms of self-defense will readily be taken up by Englishmen remains to be seen. Anyhow, to become proficient in these, it will require a vast amount of practice, and in gaining this plenty of beneficial exercise will be necessary, and this alone will commend itself to be rising and present generation of athletes.
The entertainment throughout was of a highly interesting character, and as all concerned in it were adepts in their several styles, everything passed off satisfactorily and in the most efficient manner. The chief events comprising the program were –
Fencing foils
Mr. W. H. Staveley (London Fencing Club) v. Mr. W. P. Gate (London Rifle Brigade) – these able exponents had a grand bout, Mr. Gate gaining last hit.
Walking stick play
After an explanation of the procedure and demonstration with Mr. Barton-Wright, Professor Vigny engaged in a most spirited bout with Professor Anastasie, of Paris, both displaying great aptitude with the walking sticks.
Boxing
Lieutenant Ronald Miers (middleweight amateur champion of the Army) v. Tom Burrows (champion club swinger) – a splendid three rounds in which both showed fine science, which was much appreciated, especially by the ladies.
La Savate
Professor Vigny (champion of the world) v. Professor Anastasie (of Paris) – an interesting bout in which both concerned showed great agility in their feet work, especially Vigny, who gained the last point.
Mr. Barton-Wright, who claims to have put forward a new style of defence, especially in dealing with heavyweights at wrestling and otherwise, gave an exhibition of his system with one of the audience, and fully demonstrated his power, but in actual contest he would have to wait his chance of getting on all his holds against a proficient opponent.
Professor Vigny also engaged in a bout with walking sticks against two professors, and gave a clever exhibition of his undoubted superiority with these weapons. Professor Vigny is also a proficient with the gloves under the Queensberry rules.
From the Sporting Life – Saturday, 22 July, 1899:
“WALKING STICK PLAY and LA SAVATE”
Mr. Pierre Vigny, universally acknowledged as the best exponent of walking stick play, gave a most interesting and novel demonstration of this art of self-defence a few nights ago before a very distinguished and select audience at one of the most fashionable London clubs.
He first proceeded to demonstrate the use of the stick by showing the different attacks and guards, displaying wonderful wrist work, in which great strengths and suppleness were combined. He grasps a stout Malacca cane about six inches from the end, and does all the movements with the wrist only, and not with the fingers. He passes his stick from right hand to left and vice versa without the slightest trouble, using right-hand and left-hand alternately with equal dexterity. He then took a stick in each hand and gave a wonderful display of combined right and left-hand work, showing great activity and science.
After this he engaged in a bout with Mr. Anastasie of Paris, a well-known professional exponent of walking stick play and la savate. The weapons used were thick Malacca canes and it must here be observed that no masks, gloves, nor padded jackets were worn. Both exponents appeared in tights only, and wore no protection of any sort. The stage was small and did not admit of the exponents getting away to avoid punishment, and therefore they had to face the music, which was very lively and real. But, in spite of the pace and the formidable weapons used, it was effectively proved that an able exponent of walking stick play never gets hit upon the fingers and so disabled and disarmed.
Mr. Anastasie, a small, agile man, faced his redoubtable opponent with great courage, and displayed considerable skill, but was outclassed by his bigger and more scientific opponent, and Mr. Vigny conclusively proved that, even at close quarters, it is practically impossible to hit him with a stick.
After a short rest Mr. Vigny and Mr. Anastasie gave a display of la savate, and as they are both especially good exponents the demonstration was exceedingly interesting. Mr. Vigny will give a public demonstration of walking stick play, la savate, boxing, swordplay, fencing, and Indian clubs at an early date at the St. James’s Music Hall and we can confidently recommend our readers to go and see him.
Both walking stick play and la savate are included in Mr. Barton-Wright’s system of self-defense, which he calls Bartitsu, and will be taught at the Bartitsu Club which will shortly be started in some central position in the West End. The following gentlemen will be the first directors of the club – W. H. Grenfell, President; Lord Alwyne Compton, M. P., Chairman; Lord Arthur Cecil, Bertram Astley, W. Moresly Chinnery, Captain Alfred Hutton, St. Clair Stobbart, W. Montague Sweet, and Mr. E. W. Barton-Wright, managing director.
Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright frequently referred to the utility of Pierre Vigny’s stick fighting art against common street weapons, including the fearsome, heavy-buckled belt favoured by gangsters in large English cities. Here follows an excerpt from the Warminster & Westbury Journal and Wilts County Advertiser of Saturday, 13 September 1890, detailing how members of the Manchester scuttler gangs would use their belts in combat:
(…) the favourite weapons are stones and belts, and these latter form the almost indispensable outfit of “scuttler.” Many of these belts are very curious, bearing remarkable designs upon them. These are made the insertion of large number of pins, which are used to form a design along the whole length of the belt. The pins are inserted into the leather, then broken off, and filed down to a level with the leather.
The most dangerous part of the belt is the buckle, and this is made of brass, and usually measures about three inches in diameter. These are used by the “scuttler” fastening one end of the strap into the buckle end, and then, winding his hand round the strap from his wrist, he grasps the leather, leaving about eight or 10 inches the belt use a weapon, the winding of it round his arm preventing it from being readily dragged from him in a fight.
There is no chivalry among footpads. It not infrequently happens that a woman finds herself suddenly in a position where she must fight or surrender. The woman who knows how to use the weapons that fashion has supplied her with need fear no “hold-up” — the umbrella is a match for any weapon the tramp can bring into play.
The physical culturists are now teaching women this simple art of self-defence. It is easily learned, is no tax on the strength, and though a girl may never need it, if ever she should, she will need it very badly and very suddenly. A girl should, in short, learn to brandish an umbrella and fence with it as if it were a foil. She should also be instructed in the fine art of stunning a pickpocket with a swift and well-aimed blow with a hand-bag.
A lady, who has acquired this art of self-defence, tells us she handles her umbrella exactly as if it were a weapon, sometimes as a gun and bayonet and then again as a sword. She took a short course of training more for the exercise and the amusement of the thing than because she expected to have to use her umbrella in self-defence. But since she has learned its uses, the umbrella gives her such a feeling of security that she is never without one, and she has completely lost her fear of pickpockets and thieves.
She was first taught to deceive her adversary by a feint, just as a fencer would, except that with the umbrella she knocks the man’s hat down over his face as far as possible. This is sure to surprise the thug, and always disconcerts him, for he is, for the moment, blinded by the hat coming suddenly over his eyes. He loses his presence of mind and gives the woman time to swing the umbrella back again and to inflict upon him a punishment which he will long remember. While he is recovering from the first blow the young woman can choose between several different thrusts, each one effective in its way.
There are two knockout blows, each of which is effective. One is delivered in the solar plexus (just over the abdomen), the other in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple. It requires a little dexterity and practice to deliver the second blow with the accuracy that is necessary.
A dig in the throat when sharply given with the ferrule of an umbrella will make the strongest thug unconscious for a while at least, and allow the girl to escape. To get plenty of strength into the thrust, the umbrella must be taken in both hands and literally rammed at the neck or right at the pit of the stomach. The former blow paralyses the nerves of a man’s head; the latter makes him double up like a jack-knife, and gasp for breath, and if delivered with sufficient force will knock him unconscious.
Fashion has also given to woman two or more weapons from which even the strongest man will flinch. We allude to her hatpin. It is a useful means of self-protection. Many women use hatpins as children use pins, with the head and long end slipped up their sleeve, and just the point in their fingers. When they carry much money and have to go through crowd they hold a hatpin this way in their hands, ready to give a quick jab to any hand that may reach to snatch their treasure.
When the craze for jiu-jitsu first began, men and women believed that they could learn the magic art of self-defence, as taught by the Japanese, in a couple of lessons. Hundreds of women went in for it, but found after a time that the study of attack and defence, as understood by the Japanese, is a very long one, and has to be gone into systematically, carefully, and with circumspection. Few are willing to put in two or three years training merely in order to get in physical condition to be able to throw a footpad easily and gracefully. And though jiu-jitsu is one of the finest means of developing the physique, it has few women devotees.
The Japanese woman, when she is instructed in the art of self-defence, gives up a couple of years to the study, but for the women who do not care to spend time learning jiu-jitsu really the most scientific method of self-defenee is the use of the umbrella.
Unfortunately, however, in conquering footpads it is not so necessary to know the rules of umbrella fencing as to keep your nerves calm, your eye steady, and your head cool, for without these essentials the very finest theories will be found wanting.
A humourous and enlightening demonstration of Self-Defence with a Bicycle, animating the lessons of Marcus Tindal’s eccentric 1901 Pearson’s Magazine article. The demo took place at the recent Dreynevent historical European martial arts workshops in Vienna.
From the Dundee Evening Telegraph of 10 January, 1910:
Paris is no stranger scenes of violence in the streets, but the struggle which took place on Saturday night with Apaches surpasses in ferocity anything which has happened for a long time. The bill for the adventure was one policeman killed and three wounded.
Shortly after seven a sinister individual, of the true Apache type, sitting in a small wine shop the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, boasted aloud that he was going to kill a policeman as soon as possible. Warned of this, two plain-clothes policemen came up and found the Apache, whose name was Liabeuf, just leaving the wineshop.
They immediately clapped hands on him, but at once jumped back with shrieks of pain. Under his sleeves Liabeuf, it seems, was armed with bands of leather studded with long needle-pointed nails, and these had penetrated deeply into the hands of the policemen.
Profiting from their pain and astonishment, Liabeuf then whipped out a long, sharp shoemaker’s knife, and as quick as lightning stabbed one policeman, named Deray, eight times in the chest, then immediately turned to the other policeman and stabbed him twice in the neck.
Half a dozen other policemen came running up and a terrible struggle followed, but owing to the studded bands round Liabeuf’s arms it was impossible to hold him, and he continually stabbed at random.
Liabeuf then took refuge in the entrance of small hotel, and, abandoning the knife, drew a revolver. At the first shots, Deray, who was first stabbed, and in spite of great loss of blood, had gallantly joined again in the struggle, fell with two bullets in the stomach.
Another policeman’s life was saved by his belt buckle, which stopped the third revolver ball.
A bloodthirsty struggle in the narrow, ill-lighted passage was only ended by six or eight policemen, all of whom showed the greatest gallantry, hurling themselves in a heap on Liabeuf. One policeman, then, drawing his sabre, transfixed him through the ribs, but without killing him.
It was with the greatest difficulty that reinforcements of police afterwards kept the enraged crowd of inhabitants from trampling on the inanimate body of Liabeuf.
Policeman Deray died in hospital from his ten wounds after the gold police medal had been pinned on his breast by Monsieur Lepine, just before the final operation. The other wounded are going on well.
Liabeuf turns out to be a vagabond shoemaker, who was recently sentenced three months for exploiting women in Paris. For this he had sworn to be revenged on the police as soon possible. The leather nail-studded bands were made with all the shoemaker’s skill, and had only just been finished.
Postscript: during his trial, Jean Liabeuf claimed that he had not intended to kill Deray, but was rather seeking revenge against the gendarmes Maugras and Vors, who had falsely arrested him for procuring. He said that he had conceived of his unique “porcupine quill” armour during his three months of imprisonment on that charge.
Despite the support of two socialist newspapers – La Guerre Sociale and The Radical – Liabeuf was executed by guillotine on the morning of Friday, July 1, 1910. A large and hostile crowd of spectators had gathered to protest the execution; the police were hissed at and three shots rang out, one wounding a police inspector in the throat. The police then charged the crowd with drawn sabres, and they were dispersed.
From The Sporting Life – 29 October, 1898
Anything absolutely new with regard what no one will deny is an ancient and honourable pastime (we refer to the noble art) must of necessity be received with curiosity, and, to say the least of it, pleasure.
The noble art of self-defence stands where it did in the long ago, and beyond superiority and inferiority on the part of its professors, remains exactly the same, no better, no worse- as illustrated by Jackson, Figg, Broughton, and Cribb down to Mace, Sayers, Heenan, Travers, Wormald, and the rest of England’s greatest pugilists. It has been left to Mr. Barton-Wright to demonstrate some original ideas, which he illustrated on Wednesday evening St. James’s Hall.
Mr Barton-Wright describes his new art of self-defence as founded upon the principle of throwing unnatural strain upon any one of the joints of the body, arms, legs etc., which anatomically and mechanically it is absolutely impossible to resist. It matters not how strong your opponent may be considered, viz., disturbing his equilibrium, at the time completely overpowering and paralysing his efforts.
In addition. Mr. Barton-Wright’s programme embraced an easy method of extricating oneself from the clutches of an adversary when attacked from behind suddenly and unawares, and in a most dangerous position, in any and every case the claimant to this new art of self defence contends that, notwithstanding the most formidable disadvantages, any and every opponent can be easily and effectually overcome.
On Wednesday evening the demonstrator illustrated all these methods, and showed their salutary effects to an attendance, if not numerous, then decidedly select, many ladies being present.
We may mention that Mr. Barton-Wright argues that boxing only a part of self defence, and that defence implies any means whereby a man is able successfully to meet an opponent. It was essentially a fashionable drawing room entertainment, and received unanimous approval.
At the outset (nine o’clock) Mr. Barton-Wright announced that, owing to disappointment, several of his artists had failed to put in an appearance. W. Clarke and Izar wrestled a five minutes’ bout in the Graeco-Roman style as the commencement to the proceedings. Tom Burrow, the famous club swinger, officiated as referee.
Catch-as-catch-can style came next, between A. Muller and E. P. Gruhn. The latter gained first and second falls and Muller the third. Donald Dinnie, the far-famed Scotch athlete, was here introduced.
Swiss trousers wrestling by F. Scherzdegger and Jean Schwickley. This provoked roars of laughter. Schwickley (anglicised) won the first fall, Scherzdegger the second. A “dog fall”; one of the men, shaking his head, described it as a “notting,” and they rested. Finally Scherzdegger won.
Mr. E. W. Barton-Wright now made a welcome appearance, attired in University costume, with Mr. Chipchase (middle-weight Cumberland and Westmoreland amateur champion). Mr. Heffmann introduced Mr. Barton Wright.
Japanese Wrestling. —The illustrator divested himself of boots and socks. His illustrations were:
Tests of the art of falling, fall on back without shock, stomach throw on Mr. Chipchase.
Neck hold with throttle, throwing a man sideways, receiving an attack in Cumberland and Westmoreland style, holds when resisting a throw, demonstrating a lever weight, different ways of tripping, falls in marvellously intricate positions, cross-buttocks lowering the centre of gravity, different ways of throwing man and holding him down, and a thief’s throw.
There was then a bout with Mr. Chipchase – and finally Mr. Barton-Wright concluded amidst a hearty and well-deserved round of cheers.
Announcing the Ken Pfrenger Memorial Pugilism Symposium, a historical pugilism workshop to be held on Saturday June 17 and Sunday June 18, 2017 in Arlington Heights, IL., USA.
Ken Pfrenger was a well known researcher, interpreter and instructor in historical pugilism, amongst other martial arts. He taught at ISMAC, CombatCon, Gallowglass Academy, the Recreational Violence Weekend(s) and at his own school in north-eastern Ohio.
Ken passed away unexpectedly last year, leaving his wife to raise his young son. A portion of each registration from this event will go to help out his wife. A silent auction is also planned that will include a gift certificate for a full scholarship to the 2018 Pugilism Symposium and numerous other items. All proceeds from the auction will go to Ken’s wife.
Instructors for the symposium include Martin “Oz” Austwick (UK), Kirk Lawson (USA), Allen Reed (USA) and Tim Ruzicki (USA).
Classes currently scheduled include:
Col. Monstery’s Boxing for Self Defense
Principles of Power Generation
Frowned Upon – Perfectly Legal Dirty Tricks
Counter Attacking in Single Time
Using your Elbows in Pugilism
For all classes CLOSED face martial arts head gear, MMA gloves and mouth guard are required. Men should also wear groin protection.
Participants must be 18 years of age or older to take part in the Symposium.
Registration until May 1, 2017 is $200 for both Saturday and Sunday or $125 for either Saturday OR Sunday. After May 1st, registration goes to $300 for both days or $175 for either Saturday OR Sunday.
A block of rooms at the Double Tree Hotel is being held until May 17, 2017.
A shuttle can be arrranged from O’Hare Airport by calling the hotel once you are at the airport.
To make reservations for the symposium and/or to reserve a room at the hotel, please go to the Gallowglass Academy Ken Pfrenger Memorial Pugilism Symposium site.
