Hi all,
I’ve enjoyed a few previous threads about E.W. Barton-Wright’s “Bartitsu”, which was in a sense both the first Bullshido, and also the first serious eclectic MMA system to be taught in the Western world. Bartitsu research is a bit of a hobby of mine so I hope you enjoy this introductory post.
Under Bartitsu is included boxing, or the use of the fist as a hitting medium, the use of the feet both in an offensive and defensive sense, the use of the walking stick as a means of self-defence. Judo and jujitsu, which were secret styles of Japanese wrestling, he would call close play as applied to self-defence. In order to ensure as far as it was possible immunity against injury in cowardly attacks or quarrels, they must understand boxing in order to thoroughly appreciate the danger and rapidity of a well-directed blow, and the particular parts of the body which were scientifically attacked. The same, of course, applied to the use of the foot or the stick. Judo and jujitsu were not designed as primary means of attack and defence against a boxer or a man who kicks you, but were only to be used after coming to close quarters, and in order to get to close quarters it was absolutely necessary to understand boxing and the use of the foot.
This was written in the year 1902 by Edward William Barton-Wright, an English engineer who had studied ko-ryu jujitsu in Japan in addition to a range of other self defense arts. As well as being perhaps the first man to teach Japanese martial arts in Europe, Barton-Wright went several steps further by developing his own eclectic system called “Bartitsu”, combining Jujitsu (Shinden-Fudo Ryu, Kyushin-Ryu and probably early Kodokan Judo), scientific boxing, street savate and Pierre Vigny’s method of self defense with a walking stick. Bartitsu was basically an Edwardian MMA, almost seventy years before Bruce Lee shocked the martial arts establishment by doing the same thing.
Barton-Wright promoted Bartitsu through a series of magazine articles and by staging mixed-styles challenge matches, initially taking on all comers himself, then managing jujitsuka including Yukio Tani, Sadekazu Uyenishi and Taro Miyake, and the Swiss svingen wrestler Armand Cherpillod. These men went up against Graeco-Roman, catch-as-can, Indian and many other wrestling styles in heavily-hyped contests that took place in the music halls (q.v. American vaudeville theaters) during the early years of the 1900s.
Bartitsu enjoyed its heyday between 1899 and 1904 and for a time the Bartitsu Club was one of the chic meeting places for gentlemen with an interest in learning how to protect themselves on the mean streets of London. Unfortunately Barton-Wright was a mediocre promoter and his “New Art of Self Defence” became over-shadowed by jujitsu, which was rapidly evolving into sport judo.
The Bartitsu Club closed its doors for the last time around 1903 and both the name and the art might have been completely forgotten, except for a mention by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes story, “the Adventure of the Empty House”, in which Holmes explained how he had defeated his enemy Professor Moriarty through the use of “baritsu”. This typographical error led to about a hundred years of confusion as Holmes scholars tried to figure out which martial art the Great Detective had studied.
Barton-Wright’s concepts of eclectic combative training combining the best of European and Asian martial arts were developed further by French self defense enthusiasts including Jean Joseph Renaud and George Dubois. These men produced some excellent training manuals of their own, notable even today for their realistic approach to unarmed, knife, stick and revolver combat.
Although he continued to teach Bartitsu into the 1920s, Barton-Wright spent most of the rest of his career working as a physical therapist, and he died in 1951 at the age of 90. He deserves to be remembered as a real pioneer of practical close combat in the Western world, and as a man who was, in many senses, almost a hundred years ahead of his time.
A much more extensive biography is available here. .
