The Manly Art of Bartitsu
as used against PROFESSOR MORIARTY
E.W. BARTON-WRIGHT
First published in the UK in 2011
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ISBN: 978-1-78240-090-5
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Introduction
CHAPTER 1
How to deal with UNDESIRABLES
CHAPTER 2
How to ESCAPE when attacked from the REAR
CHAPTER 3
How to ESCAPE when seized by an ITEM OF APPAREL
CHAPTER 4
Defence against an UNARMED OPPONENT
CHAPTER 5
Use of the STOUT STICK
CHAPTER 6
Use of the SHORT STICK or UMBRELLA
CHAPTER 7
How to THROW AND HOLD a man upon the GROUND
CHAPTER 8
Self-defence from a BICYCLE
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was obliged by popular demand to resurrect his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, whom he had consigned to the abyss of the Reichenbach Falls at the end of THE FINAL PROBLEM in 1894, it was perhaps not surprising that he turned to the contemporary craze for martial arts to account for his hero’s remarkable escape. We know from Dr Watson that Holmes was an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman. Nothing then could be more natural than that he should also turn out to be proficient in baritsu, the Japanese system of wrestling, by which means he was able to prevail over his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, and reappear miraculously in THE EMPTY HOUSE in 1903.
“We tottered together upon the brink of the fall.
I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu,
or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has
more than once been very useful to me. I slipped
through his grip, and he with a horrible scream
kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the
air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he
could not get his balance, and over he went.
With my face over the brink I saw him fall for
a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounced off,
and splashed into the water.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Empty House (1903)
Conan Doyle’s account is, however, inaccurate in two respects. In the first place, the name of the martial art that saves Holmes was not BARITSU but BARTITSU; and in the second place, though it was derived from Japanese methods, it was the invention of an Englishman, who gave the system his own name – Edward William Barton-Wright. Barton-Wright was born in India in 1860 to a Scottish mother and a Northumbrian father, and he was by profession a consulting engineer. His work took him all around the world, and it was during an extended period living in Japan that he became fascinated by jiu-jitsu, and took lessons in the art himself. On his return to London in 1898, Barton-Wright began to develop his new system of self-defence, publishing two articles in PEARSON’S MAGAZINE and opening his Bartitsu Club in Shaftesbury Avenue in 1900. He brought two Japanese experts in jiu-jitsu over to England to teach in the school. Bartitsu was closely based on jiu-jitsu, but combined with it elements of boxing, wrestling, savate (French kickboxing) and stick-fighting. Barton-Wright claimed that his system was proof against attacks of every kind.
Barton-Wright’s system of self-defence met a number of concerns that were dear to the heart of the late Victorian and Edwardian gentleman. Notions of physical culture and muscular Christianity had been current since the mid-nineteenth century, and implied that it was a moral duty for the English gentleman to be a physically robust specimen. The dismay that many commentators expressed in the late 1880s about the increasing physical degeneracy of Englishmen as machines and mechanised transport took the place of manual effort derived in part from this devotion to the idea of MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO (a healthy mind in a healthy body). Alongside this there was widespread alarm at lurid newspaper accounts of the depredations of violent street gangs – Hooligans in London, Scuttlers in Manchester, Cornermen in Liverpool – whose methods did not answer to English ideas of fair play. In the face of this unmanly onslaught, the gentleman who did not wish to rely on the protection of a revolver (an option which many, in fact, chose during the period around the turn of the century) would be ready to look overseas for methods of self-defence that had a similar disregard for fair play. The Bartitsu Club, however, was by no means the only school of self-defence available. Numerous jiu-jitsu clubs were established, as well as schools that taught the art of stick-fighting, and these were frequented by both men and women. Mrs Edith Garrud famously opened a school of jiu-jitsu and trained ‘The Bodyguard’, a group of suffragette sympathisers who protected the leaders of the Suffragette Movement from attack during their public appearances. Sadly, this jiu-jitsu boom left Barton-Wright behind. The Bartitsu Club closed in 1902, apparently because of financial difficulties. He fell out with his chief jiu-jitsuka, Yukio Tani, who went to work in the music halls with the strongman William Bankier, and Barton-Wright’s system sadly faded into obscurity, its inventor himself dying a pauper in 1951. Nonetheless, thanks to Sherlock Holmes, he has not been entirely lost to posterity, AND HIS SYSTEM IS HERE PRESENTED AS ORIGINALLY EXPOUNDED.
“In this country we are brought up with the
idea that there is no more honourable way of
settling a dispute than resorting to Nature’s
weapons, the fists, and to scorn taking advantage
of another man when he is down. A foreigner,
however, will not hesitate to use a chair, or
E.W. Barton-Wright, “The New Art of Self-defence”,
Pearson’s Magazine (March 1899)