Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 26th November 2016
This gallery of images from an article in the Oregon Daily Journal (April 30, 1911) showcases the combative talents of Miss Blanche Whitney.
Between 1908-11, the Philadelphian Miss Whitney travelled the US carnival and vaudeville circuit, taking on all comers as the “World’s Champion Lady Wrestler”. She challenged any woman in the audience to try their skill against hers, and would also grapple with any male wrestler weighing no more than 145 lbs (she herself weighed in at a muscular 155 lbs). She was also held to be a proficient boxer and foil fencer, and indeed an all-around athlete whose skills included bowling and gymnastics.
During April of 1910 she defied a police ban on “lady wrestling” contests in Chicago and took on Miss Belle Myers in an otherwise all-male wrestling card. She then moved on to performing tent-shows at the lakeside White City amusement park, where she proudly informed an interviewer that she was teaching up to four classes a day for “society ladies” desiring to learn how to apply half-nelsons and hammerlocks.
It may have been at the White City that she assembled her troupe of “Lady Athletes” – wrestlers, boxers, ball-punchers and gymnasts – with whom she later toured to perform at the great Appalachian Exhibition.
Goldie Griffith, one of Miss Whitney’s Lady Athletes, strikes a pugilistic pose.
The “Americanised jiujitsu” featured in these pictures may not be strictly traditional – it may, in fact, represent something more in the nature of catch-as-catch-can wrestling plus a couple of half-learned tricks from a jiujitsu manual. Nevertheless, while Miss Whitney was self-professedly not a suffragette (“I can take care of myself without a vote”), she had no qualms about promoting her contests and classes as exemplars of women’s self-defence.
If a husband is cross and disagreeable, “advises the stalwart Miss Whitney, “just put him on his back as fast as he can get up. It will make a gentle man out of him in no time.
This clinging vine stuff is alright, but, believe me, the woman is a winner who can look her husband in the eye and say, ‘what about the coin for that new dress? Do you come across like a little man, or do I throw you down and sit on you while you make up your mind?’
Think how different the world would be if such scenes were common. The stranglehold might be useful in case hubby came home late at night.
Miss Whitney reported that she herself had applied some of these lessons one night in a Chicago alley:
(…) a tall man halted her in the semi-darkness and said something which, in her surprise, she took to be the words of a “hold up. ” Whether it meant robbery or flirtation, she didn’t waste time inquiring. She merely gripped him by the coat lapel, the simplest trick in Americanized jujitsu, and yanked him forward and downward . At the same instant she swung a clenched fist upward – the simplest blow in sparring – and landed on his jaw. The combination of descending head and ascending fist came within an ace of being a knockout. Her accoster reeled, dazed, for the instant she needed to brush past him and reach the full streetlights.
Posted inAntagonistics, Wrestling|Comments Off on Miss Blanche Whitney, the World’s Champion Lady Wrestler (1911)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 2nd September 2013
“I learned various methods including boxing, wrestling, fencing, savate and the use of the stiletto under recognised masters, and by engaging toughs I trained myself until I was satisfied in practical application.”
– E.W. Barton-Wright, 1950
The Bartitsu revival has gathered real momentum over the past several years, spurred on by the success of the Sherlock Holmes film franchise and by the continuing popularity of steampunk. New clubs and study groups are forming and Bartitsu presentations have become fixtures on the pop-culture convention circuit, especially at steampunk conventions.
The association with Sherlock Holmes and “fantastic Victoriana” means that Bartitsu now holds some appeal for people who might not otherwise take much of an interest in martial arts training, perhaps via taking a “taster” class or just watching a demonstration at a convention. Thus, their first exposure to Bartitsu is often in a basically ironic, playful or academic context that is geared towards people with no, or very little, prior background in martial arts training.
Going through the motions …
Under these circumstances, the overriding requirements are that the experience should be safe and enjoyable for all concerned. Thus, in taster classes, techniques are typically taught and rehearsed slowly and carefully, with some attention to correct form but little emphasis on realistic application against a determined, resistant opponent.
Demonstrations at these events can vary widely, from closely researched presentations of authentic Bartitsu techniques, through to slapstick displays that bear little actual resemblance to the c1900 art.
Engaging toughs …
Participants in an ongoing Bartitsu course, however, can expect to go beyond the rote rehearsal of pre-arranged techniques, and to be progressively introduced to the crucial element of spontaneous, active resistance. In so doing, they may join in the spirit of E.W. Barton-Wright and Pierre Vigny “engaging toughs”, or Bartitsu Club jujitsu instructors Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi, who regularly took on all challengers on the stages of London music halls.
The cliched “sport vs. street” or “sport vs. martial art” argument posits an artificial either/or duality between self-defence/combat training and active competition. Understanding that it’s impossible to safely spar or compete using the totality of techniques from a combat-oriented style, it certainly is possible to spar within a rule-set that draws as much as is safely practical from that style.
It can easily be argued that the benefits of actually being able to test those techniques – as well as, more generally but also importantly, fighting attributes such as endurance, courage and the ability to improvise under pressure – against active resistance out-weigh the objection that one is only using a limited range of techniques.
The case can also be made that it is in the crucible of athletic pressure-testing, via hard sparring or any other form of spontaneous, genuinely resistant training, that the art initiated by Barton-Wright in the late 1890s is really brought back to life.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 3rd January 2017
Along with Percy Longhurst and William and Edith Garrud, W. Bruce Sutherland was one of the most prominent members of the “second generation” of British self-defence experts. A Scotsman, Sutherland ran a physical culture academy in Edinburgh and took up jiujitsu after losing a wrestling challenge match to former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani.
Sutherland’s book Ju-Jitsu Self-Defence went through a number of editions and was notable for its inclusion of a number of “third party” defence and restraint techniques, designed for use by police constables.
By 1915 W. Bruce Sutherland was well-established as a self-defence and close-quarters combat specialist in Scotland, and the ongoing war effort saw him teaching the basics of jiujitsu – according to his own system – for institutions as diverse as the Boy Scouts, the Army and the Special Constabulary.
Sutherland (left) instructs recruits of the “Edinburgh Bantams” in a leg-pickup throw. The “Bantams” were members of a battalion of soldiers who were shorter than 5’3″ tall, and who had initially been ineligible to enlist because of their short statures.
Members of Edinburgh’s “Special Constabulary” receive training in self-defence and come-along holds. The “Specials” were mostly older men who volunteered to serve as constables because many younger, professional policemen had joined the Army.
The “Bantams” – including some very young-looking recruits – learn a jiujitsu throw.
Sutherland (right) observes some of his trainees practicing a defence against a dagger attack.
Sutherland demonstrates a jiujitsu tomoe-nage (“stomach throw”) for an onlooking group of “Bantam Battalion” trainees.
A Special Constable practices an extended armbar restraint hold.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 17th August 2018
Charles Charlemont (left) and Pierre Vigny strike pugilistic poses.
A newly-discovered letter written by Pierre Vigny illuminates both the style of savate he taught at the Bartitsu Club and his feud with Parisian savateur Charles Charlemont. Although Vigny was a prominent professor of antagonistics and was quite widely quoted via articles and interviews, this letter represents one of the very few known instances of his direct commentary.
In early October of 1901, Charlemont wrote a letter objecting to Vigny being promoted as the “champion in French boxing and single-stick” in connection with Bartitsu events. In this letter, which was published in several English newspapers, Charlemont asserted that Vigny had lost to Charlemont himself, M. Mainguet (then an assistant at Charlemont’s school) and “other boxers in Paris.” Charlemont closed by suggesting that Vigny was a “bluffer” who was trying to make a name for himself as a self defence teacher in London.
E.W. Barton-Wright, who was Pierre Vigny’s employer at the time, replied that Vigny saw Charlemont as being a “fantastic dancer only, without the slightest right to the title he has assumed” and noted that Vigny’s championship claim vis-a-vis stick fighting was specific to his own style. Barton-Wright then offered to financially back Vigny in two “World Championship” contests with Charlemont, the first being straight French kickboxing and the second in which Charlemont could kick and punch, but Vigny would restrict himself to boxing.
Barton-Wright further noted that if Charlemont did not accept the challenge, he (B-W) would “allow Vigny to go to Paris and publicly horse-whip him”, before closing with a few choice remarks about the then-recent and infamous Charlemont/Jack Driscoll savate vs. boxing contest (which had ended in a very controversial win to Charlemont).
Despite an exceptionally heated exchange of letters to the editor, the various parties couldn’t agree on terms and so the proposed Vigny/Charlemont challenge fight never happened. Their dispute was, however, illustrative of a wider controversy within the world of French kickboxing.
As we have frequently noted in the past, the academic, touch-contact style promoted by the Charlemonts was coming under increasing criticism at the turn of the 20th century. On October 13th, 1900, Pierre Vigny’s comments in the following letter to Frank Reichel, then Secretary of the French National Sports Committee, were published in the journal La Constitutionelle. They confirm our theory that Vigny was a member of the minority camp, arguing for a radical reform of French kickboxing:
(…) As for the way of organizing this World Championship, why do we not agree upon the rules in force in England, namely: a number of completed rounds, for example six bouts of three minutes each, one of which is a minute of rest, during which the jury, taken naturally from among the most competent, would make notes upon the hits and the work by each opponent in each resumption.
If one of the two opponents is not out of the fight before the end of the sixth resumption, the jury will declare the one who has the most points to his credit to be the winner, or if the two champions are found to be “ex-œquo” (“in an equal state”), they will decide a new meeting.
A good reform would be to remove, in this championship, the announcement of touches; if it is necessary to announce that one has been touched on the shin (which is one of the most frequent strikes), we lose, by the slight pauses resulting from those announcements, whole combinations; it prevents those interesting and scientific passes that may follow.
These rules are those of my boxing and savate school which I introduced in London and which is a branch of what Mr. Barton-Wright, the well-known initiator of the new method of personal defense , calls ‘Bartitsu’.
The editor of La Constitutionelle agreed with Vigny, adding that:
We never say anything else: French boxing is full of inertia and nonsense. It is worthy of derision for one to stop on receiving a light stroke, crying “touché!”, when, in reality, one would “reply” thoroughly. By not going beyond these conventions, we have made French boxing a superb exercise in flexibility, but that is all. From the truly combative point of view, it is especially practical on an ignorant opponent, or perhaps a passing drunkard.
A fighter who “replies” bravely removes the effect of the cross-over and turning kicks; cancels all this virtuosity, all this affected elegance.
French boxing lacks strong punches. The punch of the Joinville style does not land heavily upon the body.
The victory over Driscool (sic – Driscoll) is not an affirmation of the French method; it is a proof of the high personal worth of Charlemont, of his fine courage, his temperament and his dash.
What is needed is a rational method, less elegant and more useful.
Some further context may be useful. In a follow-up letter to the editor in December, Barton-Wright reported that Charlemont had by then refused the challenge because “he says he is not a pugilist, but a Professor of Savate”. Barton-Wright also claimed that it had actually been Pierre Vigny’s brother who had lost the bouts referred to in Charlemont’s original letter, and closed with some very disparaging remarks about Charlemont’s character.
This issue is confused by the facts that Pierre Vigny evidently had at least one brother, named Eugene, and possibly another, named Paul, and that when the newspapers referred to “Professor Vigny of Geneva” they did not always specify which Vigny brother had actually fought. It is certain that, on March 11, 1897, one of the Vigny brothers lost conclusively in a boxing match against an English boxer named Attfield, and was then defeated in a savate match against Charles Charlemont. It may also be notable that Pierre Vigny initially travelled to England to improve his boxing, before joining forces with Barton-Wright.
Addressing Vigny’s point re. shin kicks; the reliable efficacy of those techniques had been in serious question since the aforementioned Charlemont/Driscoll debacle a few years earlier. Many French observers were startled when Charlemont’s low-line kicks didn’t have the presumed devastating effect upon Driscoll, who was able to evade or simply ignore most of them, while dealing considerable damage with his gloved fists.
The rules of that bout, which were very close to those Vigny himself later instituted via the Bartitsu Club, represented a radical departure from the Charlemonts’ favoured style of French kickboxing. Vigny’s larger point, though, does not advocate a reformation of technique so much as of protocols.
Following the convention of academic fencing, the Charlemonts’ style required the formal courtesy of calling “touché!” at even the lightest touch of the opponent’s fist or foot. This had the effect of rewarding speed and dexterity, but at the cost of complexity and realism, given that it essentially paused the bout, artificially requiring both fighters to acknowledge the point, then re-set and start again.
One experienced witness to the Charlemont/Driscoll fight noted that Charlemont was handicapped by his long experience of kicking lightly in academic bouts, to the extent that those low kicks that did land lacked stopping power. Parsing the entire range of eyewitness reports on that fight, from both French and foreign observers, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusions that Charlemont would have lost if not for an accidental but strictly illegal kick to Driscoll’s groin, and that he certainly shouldn’t have been awarded the victory because of it.
The argument over academic touch-contact vs. professional full-contact continued in French kickboxing circles until the outbreak of the First World War, which had a devastating effect on the sport. Many young fighters naturally served as soldiers during that awful conflict, and many were badly wounded or killed. Hubert Desruelles, who appears to have at least occasionally taught at the Bartitsu Club as well as at his own schools in France, was severely injured in both arms during the war, putting an end to his athletic career.
During the post-War decades, French kickboxing slowly rebuilt itself to include both the traditional “touch” (assaut) style and a full-contact style influenced by the no-nonsense ethos of British and American boxing. If only a similar compromise could have been reached circa 1900 …
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 30th October 2017
During the first decade of the 20th century, the Millwall Dock area of London’s East End was a notoriously attractive target for all manner of plunderers, who found easy entrance and escape via the Dock’s complex, shifting maze of alleyways. The Millwall Dock Police, all of whom were former soldiers and whose average height was an impressive 5’11”, frequently found themselves in hot pursuit of agile thieves and looters on foot.
In December of 1903, the Chief Constable of the Dock Police introduced a unique weapon to assist his constables in making arrests of runaway thieves. This new item was a sturdy staff of 1″ oak with a wide curved handle, very similar to a shepherd’s crook. As well as proving useful as a general-purpose walking stick, the staff was ideally suited to catching fleeing felons by snaring them around the neck, arm, leg or ankle.
The Chief Constable devised training drills for his men in the use of the hooked staff, “introducing several cuts and guards which are, at present, little known”, according to a report in the Nottingham Evening Post.
In an editorial, a journalist for the West Somerset Free Press remarked that the new weapon seemed to have been designed on the “Japanese self-defence principle”. That comment was very likely intended as a general allusion to jiujitsu but it also, probably accidentally, evokes the use of specialised “mancatcher” weapons such as the sodegarami, tsukubō, and sasumata * in ko-ryu martial arts, most especially those associated with police work in feudal Japan.
The same journalist struck a pragmatic note of caution, observing that “there is considerable danger attached to the use of such weapons (…) for a man tripped up by a crooked stick might easily sustain severe injuries, and to maim prisoners is, to say the least of it, not consistent with English use.”
Nevertheless, by 1905 the crook-staff had become standard issue for Millwall Dock police constables. Very similar techniques were likewise advocated for civilian use by E.W. Barton-Wright and Pierre and Marguerite Vigny, all of whom promoted the use of crook-handled canes and umbrellas to trip and otherwise impede attackers:
* A modification of the sasumata has, incidentally, been revived in recent decades and is now widely used by Japanese police, security officers and even teachers; the latter regularly train in the use of the sasumata against knife-wielding school invaders.
Posted inAntagonistics|Comments Off on By Hook or By Crook: A New Weapon for the Millwall Dock Police (1903-05)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 14th March 2019
The “last hurrah” of the venerable English tradition of quarterstaff fighting took place on the gladiatorial stages of the early 18th century, when professional roughhousers such as James Figg “took on all comers” with various weapons for the chance to win prize money. As the sport of boxing overtook weaponed stage-fighting, the quarterstaff largely receded into folklore, aside from sporadic and largely undocumented revivals via rural fairs.
During the mid-late 19th century, however, the confluence of newly-devised protective equipment for sports such as cricket and fencing and the renewed enthusiasm for the tales of Robin Hood laid the basis for a widespread quarterstaff fencing renaissance.
From the 1870s onwards, the old/new sport became particularly popular among soldiers and was frequently a highlight of “assault-at-arms” exhibitions, featuring displays of martial gymnastics and all manner of antagonistics. Two instructional manuals were produced – Thomas McCarthy’s Quarterstaff: A Practical Manual (1883) and a chapter in R.G. Allanson-Winn’s comprehensive Broadsword and Singlestick(1898).
Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright claimed that he had often had to defend himself against attackers armed with quarterstaves – among an alarming variety of other weapons – during his travels abroad. It’s likely that he was referring to his time working in mining settlements in Portugal, where the folk-sport/martial art of jogo do pau was widely practiced during the late 19th century, though the matter of why he may have been repeatedly attacked there remains open to speculation. In any case, according to Barton-Wright’s own reports, his favoured tactic of closing in against opponents armed with superior weapons – notably a feature of his presentations of the Vigny method of stick fighting – was inspired by these encounters.
In England, quarterstaff fencing exhibitions persisted well into the 20th century, sometimes incorporating crowd-pleasing “stunt” elements, which had been disparaged by Thomas McCarthy as “made-up affairs, just for show”. Interestingly, a number of late-19th century reports on quarterstaff matches refer to disarmed combatants immediately shifting to boxing – though it’s difficult to say to what extent this may also have been tongue-in-cheek showmanship for the crowd.
This rare snippet of film from a 1925 military display in Portsmouth features a moment from a particularly “showy” bout with staves, reminiscent of professional wrestling:
“Look, what’s that up there?!” An old trick given a new twist.
The following, newly-discovered pictures represent a fairly late addition to the corpus of English quarterstaff fencing materials. They originally appeared in an Illustrated London News article titled “The Quarterstaff: Then and Now”(1934). The photos were taken at the Royal Air Force Depot in Oxbridge, and feature R.A.F. swordsmen Sergeant Turner and Sergeant Jarrold, “refereed” by Professor Ware. Note that, although Turner and Jarrold are shown here in regular gym kit for purposes of demonstration, during competitive staff play they would have worn protective equipment of the type shown above. The captions are by M. Pollock Smith.
A swinging a blow from Sergeant Turner, right, at his opponents ribs, successfully parried. Had the defending man had the grip of his left hand reversed, he would have been in a better position to retaliate with a riposte on his assailant’s head.
A swinging a blow from Sergeant Turner, right, at his opponents ribs, successfully parried. Had the defending man had the grip of his left hand reversed, he would have been in a better position to retaliate with a riposte on his assailant’s head.
A downward cut at the head successfully intercepted by the French head parry, like that of old English quarterstaff fighting. It will not take the defender a second to swing his staff round to hit at his adversary as he returns to guard. The lunge is a modern addition to the game.
As frequently happened in old-time fighting, one man has had his staff knocked out of his hands, so he has closed quickly, before receiving the coup de grace, to engage in a hand to hand struggle for the remaining stick. In modern play, dropping the staff would count as being hit .
Posted inAntagonistics|Comments Off on “The Quarter-Staff Then and Now” (1934)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 11th October 2018
Pierre Vigny strikes a pugilistic pose.
Mid-late 1901 was undoubtedly the heyday of the Bartitsu School of Arms, not least because it was during that period that the School’s champions were put to their greatest tests in public competition. Following a series of more-or-less academic displays and several novel style-vs-style challenge matches, both the sporting public and England’s combat champions were eager to see Bartitsu exponents pitted against “name” fighters.
It seems to have been widely accepted that sparring exhibitions of Bartitsu as a complete style – resembling a Dog Brothers gathering, in its combination of stickfighting, kickboxing and submission wrestling – would have been considered “brawling in a public place” under Edwardian English law.
Therefore, the next best option was to hold competitions in the various component styles. E.W. Barton-Wright was keen to oblige, proffering a series of open challenges via the pages of the Sporting Life, as was the custom then.
While the greatest controversy attended the exotic art of jiujitsu (and whether champions of that style would prevail against expert European wrestlers), Barton-Wright was also eager to locate a worthy boxer to challenge Pierre Vigny. Therefore, the following notification appeared in the Sporting Life of Wednesday, 10 July 1901:
Mr. E. W. Barton-Wright is anxious to find a good boxer who would willing to oppose one of his men for exhibition work to demonstrate the merits of English boxing against his system of boxing. No boxer under middle-weight need apply, as be that his man shall have no advantage in weight, therefore a heavy-weight would given the preference. Weight of his own man; 11 st. 4 lbs. Apply to the Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture, 67b, Shaftesbury Avenue, W.C.
The timing of the infamous October, 1899 Driscoll/Charlemont fight in Paris had been especially unfortunate from Barton-Wright’s point of view. The scandal resulting from that fight had generated massive ill-will against the French style among the English sporting public at exactly the time when he was attempting to introduce a “new art of self-defence” that incorporated French martial arts.
Thus, despite Vigny’s status as the Chief Instructor of the Bartitsu Club, Barton-Wright’s public pronouncements had tended to de-emphasise or even disparage savate per se, in favour of promoting their “new and improved” method of kickboxing that was unique to Bartitsu.
Within the week, Barton-Wright’s Sporting Life notice was answered by Professor Newton, a well-known boxing coach and partisan of the English style:
“Bartitsu vs. Boxing”: In answer to Mr. Barton-Wright’s challenge, which appeared the Sporting Life of the 10th last, Professor Newton, who is teacher of and firm believer in the British art of self-defence, has several pupils who have expressed their willingness to compete against Mr. Barton-Wright’s pupils at their respective weights in order to prove which is the better system. If a series of contests can be arranged, Mr. Barton-Wright will oblige by forwarding copy of his rules to the North London School of Arms and Physical Culture, 55, Barnsbury-road, London, N.
Unfortunately, but not uncommonly, nothing seems to have come of this proposed encounter. Beyond the formalities of public notifications in the newspapers, combat sports challenges were subject to behind-the-scenes negotiations and many never came to fruition, often due to personality clashes, logistical issues and/or disagreements over terms.
Two minutes per round. Sharp work right and left. Barry knocked Vigny down after nearly getting the right on the jaw with sufficient force. Vigny got up and kicked right and left. Severe business.
Round 2. Sharp and severe work at close quarters. Both on ground twice, and toppled over in an embrace among the people.
Round 3. Barry led. Vigny had a rough time of it, and they frequently clinched. To the end, a splendid encounter. Vigny kicked and boxed hard. Barry punched with might and main. When time was called, honours were to the advantage of Barry on points.
The results of this hard-fought bout were not widely reported; another journalist said that the fight was inconclusive.
The next prominent boxer to publicly accept Barton-Wright’s challenge was none other than Jerry Driscoll himself. Shortly after the Vigny/Barry fight, Driscoll wrote the following letter to the editor of The Sportsman (a similar notice appeared in The Sporting Life on the same day):
Sir,—As an Englishman who has beaten the best Savate boxer, viz, feet and hands, against my hands only, I should be pleased to compete against Mr. Barton-Wright’s man, for from £50 aside, upwards, and largest parse. Match to come off early in January. I will also wager a good side bet that I stop Mr. Barton-Wright’s man inside ten rounds, Mr. Barton-Wright’s man to have his feet padded, the same as when he competed against Jim (sic) Barry. I only stipulate that we must have one English and one French judge, and the Sporting Life to appoint referee. No 30-second rounds, nor either man allowed to rest fifteen minutes, was the case when I met Charlemont.
Yours, etc., Jerry Driscoll (Instructor to the principal English amateur boxing clubs). Railway Cottage, Barnes.
Driscoll’s claim to have “beaten the best Savate boxer” would, itself, have been mildly controversial. Although Driscoll was widely held to have been handily winning the fight until his opponent landed a probably accidental, but definitely illegal groin kick, as a matter of record, Charles Charlemont had won that fight.
Driscoll shortly followed up with another letter:
Seeing Mr. Barton-Wright is on the warpath with his savate instructor, and matching him against our past boxers, I will box his Frenchman ten rounds for £100 aside, National Sporting Club’s rules, any time he chooses make a match. Money ready as soon as Mr Barton-Wright makes an appointment through the columns of the Sporting Life.
… and he raised the stakes again in The Sportsman of February 14th, 1902:
If Barton Wright wishes to match his Frenchman with me, and is not out for advertisement, he will attend the N.S.C. (National Sporting Club) at one o’clock on Saturday next. Vigny can have a match for £lOO or £3OO aside, and as the distance is but of one hundred yards, I hope that Mr. Wright will be on hand.
A similar notice from Driscoll was published in mid-April. On April 22nd, Vigny replied:
Pierre Vigny, Instructor of the Bartitsu School of Arms, is prepared to box Jerry Driscoll, in the English style, Queensberry Rules, if the National Sporting Club will offer a purse worth competing for. Jerry Driscoll has refused to take Vigny on in the French style.
Two days later:
In answer to Jerry Driscoll’s offer to wager up to £300 that he will beat Vigny in the match to be decided during Coronation Week, Pierre Vigny writes accepting the offer, and is also ready to find the backing for that amount, feeling confident that he will be able to defeat Driscoll inside ten rounds. It Driscoll will make an appointment with his backer the National Sporting Club, Vigny will be pleased meet him, and will be prepared to make the deposit at once.
Driscoll, on April 26th:
In answer to Pierre Vigny, Driscoll says that if Mr. Barton Wright will post £100 at the Sporting Life Office, his (Driscoll’s) backer will wager £300 to £100 that be beats Vigny inside ten rounds, under Queensberry Rules.
Two days later, Driscoll wrote again noting that his backer was then away on business, but that as soon as he returned, the money for the side-bet would be delivered to The Sportsman office.
Then, on the 29th of May, Barton-Wright re-entered the fray:
Mr. Barton-Wright has written calling attention to the fact that the authorities of a certain club, after offering a purse of £300 for a contest between (Vigny and Driscoll) to decide the merits of boxing versus savate and after getting the consent of both men to this arrangement, have suddenly withdrawn their original offer and now are prepared to give only £lOO. Although both men are most anxious to meet each other, naturally they do not intend engage in a serious contest of this kind without some real inducement. The training expenses would cost about £25, so that the loser would practically get his bare expenses paid be receiving 25 per cent of the purse. Mr. Barton-Wright would therefore be very glad to hear from anybody interested this matter, and who, perhaps with others, will be willing to assist in the financing of same, and so to make this match possible.
The Editor of The Sporting Life also quoted Barton-Wright to the effect that the proposed stakes of £100 were too low to represent the fighting worth of either Vigny or Driscoll, and at that point the proposed challenge seems to have fizzled out.
Ironically, the mysterious reduction of stakes by Driscoll’s backers – as well as Barton-Wright’s insistence that Vigny would not fight for less than a £300 stake – may have allowed the Bartitsu Club to dodge a public relations bullet.
Given his persistent efforts to distance Bartitsu from savate, and from the negative fallout of the 1899 Charlemont/Driscoll fight in particular, Driscoll’s challenges clearly put Barton-Wright in a very difficult PR position. Regardless of the outcome (and of the Bartitsu Club’s modifications to the techniques and rules of the French style), a Vigny vs. Driscoll fight would inevitably have been perceived as a “rematch” between savate and boxing. With feelings about the Charlemont/Driscoll fight still raw, English public sentiment would have been overwhelmingly in Jerry Driscoll’s favour, likely casting Vigny, Barton-Wright and Bartitsu as the unpatriotic villains.
Even worse, from Barton-Wright’s point of view, would have been the public perception that he and Vigny were symbolically aligned with Driscoll’s former opponent. In reality, there was seriously bad blood between the Bartitsu camp and the Charlemont camp. Barton-Wright had actually used the outcome of the Driscoll/Charlemont fight as ammunition during his acrimonious exchange of letters with Charlemont, thereby morally aligning himself and the Bartitsu Club with Driscoll.
Thus, if the Driscoll/Vigny fight had gone ahead, Barton-Wright would have been forced into an unenviable position. Even if Vigny had won against Driscoll, in the hyper-partisan social climate of the early 1900s, the “optics” would have been damaging for the Bartitsu School of Arms.
The Bartitsu Club continued to stage assault-at-arms displays in Nottingham, Oxford and other regional locations during early 1902. Ultimately, Vigny’s regular opponent on that tour was the jobbing heavyweight boxer Woolf Bendoff. Though Bendoff’s professional record wasn’t especially impressive, it’s likely that he represented a diplomatic compromise away from the politically fraught possibilities of Pierre Vigny taking on Jerry Driscoll.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 5th July 2017
By 1910, the mystique of the Parisian “apache” street gangsters had fully piqued the curiosity of the bourgeoisie via works of tabloid journalism and popular fiction. Middle- and upper-class “slummers” eagerly consumed news reports of the most recent apache outrages, attended classes in “la langue verte” (the colourful Montmartre back-alley argot) and elevated the exploits of gangsters such as “the Panther” and “Golden Helmet” to the status of urban folklore.
Above: a postcard satirising the popular image of the apaches of Montmartre.
Manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon, producing clothing and accessories that fed into (and from) the apache craze. Among these were various gimmicked walking sticks containing secret weapons that might, in theory, be employed against apache muggers, who were infamous for wielding a variety of unusual weapons of their own, including knuckle-duster rings and even porcupine armour.
Despite intimations of an ad-hoc arms race between street gangsters and bourgeois gents, most of these weapons were probably, in reality, more often simply shown off as macho accoutrements. An article in The Sphere of 17 December, 1910 displayed the latest trends in anti-apache weapon canes:
The “bayonet stick” featured a spring-loaded blade which popped out of the handle, transforming the cane into a short spear. A highly similar weapon was used by Sherlock Holmes against a pair of street ruffians in the 1965 movie A Study in Terror:
The “rifle stick” included a lightweight shoulder stock attachment, presumably to be used when fending off apache muggers from a great distance.
The elegant derby handle of the “revolver and dagger” stick pulled out to reveal a six-shot revolver and a stiletto blade.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 17th January 2019
Tani executes a rear scissor choke submission hold.
This sketch series by Percy F.S. Spence records moments from former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani’s matches at the Royal Albert Hall on July 2, 1904. The sketches were originally published in the Illustrated London News two days after the event.
The main event that night featured a “best two out of three” heavyweight Graeco-Roman wrestling championship match between George “The Russian Lion” Hackenschmidt and Tom Jenkins, which was won by Hackenschmidt.
Tani won all three of his matches within fifteen minutes.
The “Sinbad” reference may be an allusion to the similarity between Tani’s acrobatic throws and the “knockabout” style of slapstick comedy seen in Edwardian-era pantomimes.
A possibly unique depiction of Tani executing a full handstand.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 20th December 2018
After some 16 years of intensive research, we now know a good deal about the origins and day-to-day workings of the Bartitsu School of Arms, a.k.a. the Bartitsu Club. One question that remains, though, is whether Edward Barton-Wright – the originator of Bartitsu and the founder of the Club – actually taught there.
By his own account, Barton-Wright possessed a “lifelong interest in the arts of self defence”. Even before spending three years studying martial arts in Japan, he had trained in “boxing, wrestling, fencing, savate and the use of the stiletto under recognised masters”, reportedly testing his skills by “engaging toughs (street fighters) until (he) was satisfied in their application.” By all other accounts, including those of seemingly impartial witnesses such as Captain F.C. Laing, Edward Barton-Wright was, indeed, a rugged and skilled fighter.
We also have evidence that Barton-Wright actively encouraged the Bartitsu Club instructors to teach each other their specialties. In a 1950 interview with London Budokwai founder Gunji Koizumi, Barton-Wright reminisced about trying to teach Yukio Tani to box, though he remarked that Tani “had no aptitude for the sport”. Similarly, wrestler Armand Cherpillod trained with Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi prior to representing the Bartitsu Club in a much-hyped challenge match against Joe Carroll; Cherpillod later confessed that he believed that the Japanese instructors were withholding some of their more advanced techniques from him.
Captain Alfred Hutton was rather a special case, in that although he was a Bartitsu Club instructor, his fencing classes were very likely not considered to be part of the “Bartitsu curriculum” (such as it was). Hutton himself was, however, an enthusiastic student of Pierre Vigny’s stick fighting and of Tani and Uyenishi’s jiujitsu. Hutton commented that while he was too old to practice jiujitsu as “free play” or sparring, he had nevertheless learned “about 80 kata, or tricks, which even at my age may one day or another come in useful.”
Direct evidence for Barton-Wright himself actually teaching classes is, however, scanty. English self-defence authority Percy Longhurst referred to learning a particular throw directly from Barton-Wright, while the anonymous author of the 1901 article Defence Against “Hooligans” referred to Barton-Wright keeping “an admonishing eye” over the classes instructed by Tani, Vigny et al. Allowing for journalistic license, one imagines that the instructors might rather have resented the admonishment.
The anonymous author of an interview with Barton-Wright that appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of 5 September 1901 also described Barton-Wright teaching jiujitsu at the Club, although it isn’t entirely clear whether this was a matter of regular practice or whether a special case was made for the reporter.
While Barton-Wright was, in fact, the only Bartitsu Club principal who had active prior experience in all of the key methods taught at the Club, his own experience on a per-discipline basis paled in comparison with that of the specialist instructors. Pierre Vigny was clearly the best-qualified to instruct students in the fine points of savate and of his own method of walking stick defence, and although Tani and Uyenishi were very young men at the time, they had both started training as children and their practical jiujitsu experience clearly far surpassed Barton-Wright’s.
If you have a club where there are Japanese jiujitsu instructors teaching jiujitsu, people teaching French boxing, people teaching boxing – how do you bring those together? Well, the problem is that the instructors themselves can’t bring it together. The jiujitsu teachers can’t engage with the students in boxing, the savate people or the boxe Francaise people can’t engage with the jiujitsu people in terms of jiujitsu, because they don’t have the experience. So (Barton-Wright) was probably, initially, the only one who understood what his system was! He was probably the only “master of Bartitsu”!
So we have an embryonic art. The only way that art can develop is if you develop a body of students who can then compete against each other.
Speculatively, therefore, it may be that Barton-Wright’s main role as an instructor was to supervise the preliminary training required of all new members of the Club. The Bartitsu School of Arms offered an unusual pedagogical system in that beginners had first to complete a course of private lessons before being permitted to join the group classes. Journalist Mary Nugent noted that “no class-work is allowed to be done until the whole of the exercises are perfectly acquired individually”.
We know little about the nature of these private classes except that they included a course of physical culture exercises to prepare students for the demands of Bartitsu training. Given his “jack of all trades” status, Barton-Wright himself would, perhaps, have been the best-qualified instructor to devise and implement such a course, which may have included preparatory exercises drawn from each of the key styles; thereby also freeing the specialist instructors to concentrate on their more advanced sessions. Thereafter, Barton-Wright might have supervised classes (or simply offered tips) in blending the various specialisms together, as in his collaborations with Vigny.
We await the discovery of further details on the practical role Barton-Wright played in developing his “New Art of Self Defence”.
