Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 5th September 2017
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.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 6th September 2017
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.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 8th September 2017
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?”
Posted inAntagonistics, Hooliganism|Comments Off on “How Sir Hiram Maxim Met the Hooligan” (St James’s Gazette, 24 June 1902)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 13th September 2017
Above: Katsukuma Higashi (left) and Yukio Tani.
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
Posted inJiujitsu|Comments Off on “A Jiu-Jitsu Battle Royale in Paris”: Tani vs. Higashi (1905)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 13th September 2017
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.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 20th December 2018
In this holiday season marking one century since the end of the First World War, we depart from our usual coverage of Edwardian-era antagonistics to highlight the events of the 1914 Christmas Truce.
Although the Truce has been subject to some mythologising since the 1970s, the facts of the matter are extraordinary in themselves. Defying strict orders against any type of fraternisation with the enemy, spontaneous cease-fires took place up and down the Western Front during late December of 1914. Sections of No Man’s Land were briefly transformed into common ground, as handshakes, seasonal greetings and small gifts were exchanged between English, French and German soldiers. Under mutual respite, carols were sung and the bodies of the fallen were buried. Evidence strongly suggests that at least one 30-a-side football game was played.
May the unique lesson of the Christmas Truce inspire all fighters to recall the values of dignity, charity, respect and fellowship.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Sunday, 29th October 2017
The first generation of Japanese jiujitsuka to arrive in London included Kaneo Tani, Seizo Yamamoto and Yukio Tani, all of whom had been invited to the England by Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright. K. Tani and Yamamoto remained in London for only a few months, but Yukio Tani remained and was then joined by Sadakazu Uyenishi. The two of them taught, demonstrated and competed under the Bartitsu banner until mid-1902.
During the decade or so after the closure of the Bartitsu Club, a second generation of Japanese experts passed through the English capital. Many of them – most notably professional challenge wrestlers like Taro Miyake, Akitaro “Daibutsu” Ono and Mitsuyo Maeda – settled only briefly before moving on to other countries. Others, such as Yukio Tani, Yuzo Hirano and S.K. Eida, made England their home for a period of years, or even settled there permanently.
Except for the fact that he was born in Japan during 1878, little is known about Eida’s life prior to his arrival in London. The earliest record of his presence there is to be found in the 1901 census, which lists him as an assistant gardener, living in Acton, West London. At that time he was staying with his brother, Saburo Eida, who was an importer of art. S.K. – whose given name was rendered by Edwardian English journalists as “Surye Kichi” – also served as a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, advising Londoners on the exotica of Japanese gardening.
Given that the Bartitsu Club was operating between 1899-1902, it’s possible that Eida trained there, though there’s no known record to that effect. Several years later he did, however, join the staff of the Japanese School of Jujutsu, a dojo figureheaded by former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani and his colleague Taro Miyake.
It was common for martial arts experts to supplement their teaching and competing income with “jiujitsu turns” on the music hall circuit, but the notably agile Eida seems to have made a unique specialty of this type of performance. Between September 29, 1906 and April 27, 1907 he teamed with the popular French entertainer, Mademoiselle Gaby Deslys, in performing a “Ju-Jitsu Waltz” as part of a musical extravaganza called The New Aladdin, which ran at London’s Gaiety Theatre.
The Ju-Jitsu Waltz was, essentially, a series of spectacular throws performed by Mademoiselle Deslys, with S.K. Eida serving as her acrobatic uke or “fall guy”. The equivalent term in Mlle. Deslys’ native language was “cascadeur”, likewise implying an acrobat who specialised in tumbling – the term survives in modern French show business to describe stunt performers.
In 1909 Eida married an English woman named Ellen Christina Brown. She took the professional name “Nellie Falco” and, as “Falco and Eida”, the couple revived the Ju-Jitsu Waltz, touring music halls throughout the UK.
S.K. Eida fades from the historical record during the second decade of the 20th century, but it’s not unlikely that he is among the uke/fall guys who appear as “Apache” muggers during this 1912 French Pathe film clip:
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Sunday, 12th November 2017
This newly-discovered image of Marguerite and Pierre Vigny shows the former demonstrating a double-handed thrust to the throat. Note that Pierre Vigny, left, is holding what appears to be a typical Vigny-style self-defence cane of his own design.
The original caption from the Weekly Irish Times of January 18, 1908 reads:
THE CHAMPION LADY FENCER – Miss Saunders*, the champion lady fencer, has issued a challenge to fence with any lady for £200 a side. In our photograph Miss Saunders, assisted by Mons. Vigny, is giving a demonstration of her system of walking-stick fencing, illustrating how people can protect themselves with a stick if they know how to fence.
* Note that Marguerite Vigny went by the professional name “Miss Sanderson”; “Miss Saunders” appears to have been a misspelling.
Referred to as the “bayonet” thrust by Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright, this attack seems to have been a favourite of Marguerite Vigny’s, as shown below:
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Sunday, 19th November 2017
Bartitsu has received an unusual shout-out in the new biography Toupie Lowther: Her Life, by English author Val Brown.
Born to a wealthy, aristocratic family in 1874, May Lowther – known almost universally as “Toupie” – grew into a multi-talented woman of means, adept at opera singing, motoring and (especially) both tennis and fencing. In the latter capacity she once playfully challenged Bartitsu Club fencing instructor Captain Alfred Hutton to a match after Hutton had made a polite but, to her ear, condescending remark about female fencers.
Toupie’s other athletic enthusiasms included weightlifting, jiujitsu and possibly boxing, and Val Brown speculates that she may also have studied Bartitsu, given that the Bartitsu Club admitted female students. Although history isn’t clear on that point, Brown does note Toupie’s portrayal as a Bartitsu practitioner in the Suffrajitsu graphic novel trilogy, in which she serves as Emmeline Pankhurst’s chauffeuse and getaway driver and as the second-in-command of the clandestine “Amazons” bodyguard team. She is also featured as a significant supporting character in the spin-off novella The Isle of Dogs and as the protagonist of the short story The Pale Blue Ribbon.
In real life, Toupie Lowther was decorated for her service in France during the First World War, which included organising and operating an ambulance team under extremely dangerous conditions.
Post-War, Toupie was also a friend of writer Radclyffe Hall and her partner, sculptor Una Troubridge, until after the publication of Hall’s controversial novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928. Toupie believed that the novel’s female protagonist, the cross-dressing former WW1 ambulance driver Stephen Gordon, was based to a large extent on herself, and this seems to have caused a rift in the friendship.
An interesting woman who led a highly unusual life for her time, Toupie Lowther well deserves the wider recognition that this very readable book will undoubtedly bring her.
Toupie Lowther: Her Life is available in paperback from Amazon US and Amazon UK.
