In this short scene from the 2015 movie Suffragette, newly militant Maude Watts (Carey Mulligan) receives her first lesson in jiujitsu from Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter).
In real history, Edith Garrud served as the self-defence trainer for the secret Bodyguard Society of the Women’s Social and Political Union, whose duties included physically protecting suffragette leaders from arrest and assault.
The anonymous author of this article from the Pall Mall Gazette of 27 August, 1901 turns a sharply critical eye to E.W. Barton-Wright’s promotion of Bartitsu.
Noting for the sake of context that the term “Jap” carried no pejorative meaning in Edwardian English, being more in the nature of a simple abbreviation like “Brit” for British or “Aussie” for Australian.
If Mr. Barton-Wright, when he set out to introduce the Japanese style of self-defence into England, had confined himself within ordinary limits, it highly probable that athletic young Britain might have taken to the pastime —and to Mr. Barton-Wright. But the latter makes the great mistake of not knowing when he has got a good thing.
During the past three or so years he has had a capital run for his money. The Bath Club took him up and tried to make the business fashionable; but, alas Mr. Barton-Wright was too much of a showman for the game to catch on as an ordinary athletic sport. His claims were tremendous and amusing – no man, even Sandow, could stand against his system; but somehow or other Mr. Barton-Wright never seemed in condition to take on people who came forward in reply to his challenges. Probably he was right in so doing.
Now, at all events, he seems have realized that the business makes a very good music-hall turn, which, as some one prophesied many months ago was what it was best suited for. Certainly it is a pretty game on the stage, and might be useful if one was attacked by a very guileless rough of the Hooligan type. These gentlemen do not come up the in the simple way that some eminently scientific gentlemen seem think, when on plunder bent; very often one s first knowledge of them comes in the shape of a “cosh” on the head with a stick or a punch behind the ear with a fist which naturally puts one at a disadvantage from the start.
Still, provided the rough or thief does get hold of you, you may possibly throw him, especially if he keeps to sporting rules and you get off a foul on him! Indeed, this style wrestling seems to us to be made up of “fouls” – “everything in,” in fact, that precludes anyone being allowed to take Mr. Barton-Wright or his two clever men from Japan at their own game—at all events, in public. Fights to a finish, “nothing barred,” are not permitted in this country.
However, as a music-hall turn the thing is fairly attractive; but let us have no more silly talk about “no one, not even the strongest man in the world”, being able stand up to the Japs. We have had quite enough of that during the couple of years and, to use “Tommy Atkins’s” expressive phrase, we are “fed up” with it.
With the advantage of hindsight, some of the writer’s points are valid; it is, for example, likely that Barton-Wright’s efforts would have been more successful if he had sustained his relationship with the prestigious Bath Club. The detail of why that didn’t happen has, unfortunately, been lost to history.
Writing shortly before the commencement of Barton-Wright’s public challenge campaign, at a time when most previous displays had been more-or-less academic in nature, the author’s skepticism is understandable. That said, he clearly underestimated the practical efficacy of jiujitsu, even against very strong men. Although Eugen Sandow was later, in fact, challenged by Yukio Tani, the strongman refused to take on any jiujitsu wrestlers, probably because he had only a modest wrestling background and would very likely have lost the match.
Congratulations to high school senior Erin Lowe, whose dramatic presentation Suffrajitsu: The Women Who Fought Back won the first prize in the Senior Individual Performance category during a recent National History Day competition held at the University of Maryland.
A KCUR radio interview with Ms. Lowe is available here.
In this short fight scene from the movie Swing Kids, Peter Müller (Christian Bale) takes on a knife-wielding member of the Hitlerjugend, applying some deft umbrella techniques that will be recognisable to Bartitsu aficionados.
In real history, the laissez-faire Swingjugend – who much preferred American jazz and English fashions to the crushing conformity of Nazism – frequently did engage in street fights with the Hitler Youth.
Instructor Chris Dyer will be teaching a Bartitsu seminar at the Autumnfecht HEMA event in Columbia, Maryland on November 4, 2017.
Class description:
Explore the gentleman’s art of self-defense! Bartitsu is a practical style of self-defense with an emphasis on scientific principles to overcome an attacker. The growing threat of street gangs in Victorian and Edwardian London was the catalyst behind the creation of Bartitsu. Named after its creator, Edward William Barton-Wright, Bartitsu incorporates bare-knuckled boxing, French kicking, Japanese jujitsu, and stick fighting to suppress attacks from single ruffians and gangs alike. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle named Bartitsu as Sherlock Holmes’ means of defeating his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Students will learn a number of choreographed techniques showcasing a variety of Bartitsu methods.
No experience or equipment required. Period dress is not required, but encouraged.
The 1990 Russian sociopolitical satire Bakenbardy (“Side-whiskers”) is distinguished as the only feature film in which walking stick fighting serves as a crucial plot device. It’s also a pertinent warning as to how youthful enthusiasm can be perverted by authoritarian impulses into something dark and ugly.
The story revolves around two fire-eyed young men who are seeking to save their country’s soul by returning it to the mores of the early 19th century. Inspired by the figure of Russian intellectual and duellist Alexander Pushkin, they affect sideburns, wide-brimmed felt hats and capes and habitually carry ball-handled canes, with which both are expert combatants. Pushkin, incidentally, was known to carry an iron walking cane to strengthen his right arm.
Trying to help the citizens of a town beset by a decadent cult of bohemian artists, one of the neo-Pushkinites gets into an alley-fight with members of the rough-house “Tusks” gang:
Realising that the Tusks’ youth and aggression might be harnessed to their own ends, the neo-Pushkinites then further impress the gang with their panache and fighting prowess. Staging a takeover, they gradually transform the Tusks into a disciplined “Pushkin Club”, well-trained in Russian Romantic poetry and in the art of walking-cane combat:
… with which they violently rout the bohemians in a disturbing “Night of the Long Canes”:
Power corrupts and, now viewing anyone who does not love Pushkin as a depraved enemy of their New Order, the fanatical Pushkin Gang turns against the citizens of the town their founders were originally trying to save:
The resulting riot leads to their own downfall and humiliation at the hands of the state, after which, inevitably, a new stickfighting gang rises to take their place.
Produced at a time when many Russians were concerned about the rise of militantly ideological youth groups, the darkly satiric morality play of Bakenbardy is painfully relevant today.
In which the estimable inventor Hiram Maxim, best-remembered today for devising the world’s first portable machine gun, tells of how he fended off a London hooligan with his fists and trusty umbrella.
Sir Hiram S. Maxim, who says he has had three encounters with hooligans, writes to say that when walking from Southfields Station to attend a garden party at Wimbledon on Saturday afternoon last, he was struck several times with a ball flung by boys. Lady Maxim took the ball, and Sir Hiram later returned it to the boys.
“I thought no more of the matter” (says Sir Hiram) “until I saw a large and powerful man come running after us. He approached me, exclaiming something about “boys and cad,” which I didn’t exactly understand, and at once made a rush at me, aiming a very heavy blow at my face.
Fortunately I had, in my younger days, been a good boxer, and I warded off his blow, at the same time giving him a sharp blow across the face with a strong and closely-folded umbrella that I happened to have in my right hand.
He made several more rushes, each time only to receive a stinging blow in the face. Although I had successfully warded off all his mad rushes, and he had not succeeded in touching me, still I was soon very short of breath, and thought of what the doctor had said.
At this time he was standing some 12 feet away, and then gathering himself together, he made one more desperate lunge. This time I brought my umbrella to the charge as soldier does his gun, and summoning all my remaining strength I gave him a powerful thrust in the pit of his stomach. The umbrella, which had stood the racket up to this point, collapsed, the staff being broken in three pieces and the frame smashed, but it knocked the wind out of the ruffian, and I left him doubled and trying to get his breath.
In looking over the wreck of the umbrella I find that the tip of it is gone, and Lady Maxim suggests that the man may have carried it off, and that there is still a possibility of my being arrested for manslaughter!”
Sir Hiram says he has been told that, as a good citizen, he ought to report to the police, but Lady Maxim says the man has received quite punishment enough.
“What ought I to do?”
The following two accounts offer a fairly complete record of the controversial 29 November, 1905 jiujitsu match between former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani and Tsutsumi Hōzan-ryū stylist Katsukuma Higashi. Taking place in Paris shortly after the famous jiujitsu vs. savate contest between “Re-Nie” (Ernest Regnier) and Georges Dubois, the Tani/Higashi match ended in a near-riot, leading to talk of French authorities banning similar contests in the future.
Daily Telegraph & Courier (London) – 2nd December 1905
Sporting Life – 6th December 1905
In honour of (and to help promote) the upcoming release of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Hacksmith YouTube channel has been challenged to create a Kingsman-style weaponised umbrella:
In the pedantic interests of accuracy, the “good quality umbrella” that serves as a zipline grapple and destructive melee weapon early in the video is clearly an Unbreakable Umbrella, featuring a solid, high-strength shaft and reinforced fittings. Unbreakable Umbrellas are specifically designed for self-defence. The brolly that is then shown being modified into a gunbrella, on the other hand, is of the standard, hollow-shafted variety.
The results are undeniably impressive, but the world still awaits a combat umbrella that can both shoot metal slugs and smash through a microwave oven.
