Defence Against “Hooligans”: Bartitsu Methods in London (1901)

An article by “S.L.B.” from “The Sketch”, April 10, 1901:

Last year, a very interesting exhibition of self defence was given at St. James’s Hall, and was the subject of prolonged discussion by many of the people present. Mr. Edward Barton-Wright, who gave the demonstration, was honoured with an invitation to repeat it before the Prince of Wales, but he met with a bicycle accident and the exhibition became impossible. It may be that the style of self-defence introduced to public notice would have failed to attract attention by reason of its novelty alone, but Mr. Barton-Wright had not mastered it without the firm intent to give it a fair chance before the public. He proceeded to found a Club at 67b, Shaftesbury Avenue, where physical culture may be studied under Professors of all nationalities, some of the best of the world’s athletes and sportsmen being engaged as instructors. To-day the work is in full swing, stimulated by the uprising of the “hooligan”.

In his early days, Mr. Barton-Wright was an engineer, and his duties took him into strange lands and among ill-disposed people. He had to go slowly, and to learn that the knowledge of boxing under the Queensberry rules, his sole accomplishment then among the arts of self-defence, is of little or no use against men who attack their opponents with feet as well as hands, from below the belt as well as above it, from the back as well as face-to-face, and with bludgeons, life-preservers, knives and other persuasive weapons. The straightforward stroke that, catching the ruffian upon the “point” or “mark”, disables him from further attempts, is of little or no good when it cannot be delivered, and in every city he visited the young engineer found more and more to learn.

Soon he was seized with the bright idea of combining the self-defence of all nations into a system that, when properly acquired, should enable a man to defy anything but firearms or a sudden stab in the dark.

The chief point to bear in mind was that an adequate system of defence must be able to meet any form of attack; the man who endeavours to disable you by kicking you in the stomach is entitled to as much respect and consideration as he who strives to garrote you, or to try the relative resisting powers of a loaded stick and your skull.

The Bartitsu Club, through its Professors, over whom Mr. Barton-Wright keeps an admonishing eye, guarantees you against all danger. In one corner is M. Vigny, the World’s Champion with the single-stick: the Champion who is the acknowledged master of savate trains his pupils in another. He could kill you and twenty like
you if he so desired in the interval between breakfast and lunch – but, as a matter of fact, he never does. He leads you gently on with gloves and single-stick, through the mazes of the arts, until, at last, with your trained eye and supple muscles, no unskilled brute force can put you out, literally or metaphorically.

In another part of the Club are more Champions, this time from far Japan, where self-defence is taken far more seriously than here. The Champion Wrestler of Osaka, or one of the shining lights among the trainers for the Tokio police, dressed in the picturesque garb of his corner of the Far East, will teach you once more of how little you know of the muscles that keep you perpendicular, and of the startling effects of sudden leverage properly applied. The Japanese Champions are terribly strong and powerful; at a private rehearsal of their work, given some two months ago on the Alhambra stage, I saw a little Jap. who is about five feet nothing in height and eight stone in weight, do just what he liked with a strong North of England wrestler more than six feet high, broad, muscular and confident. The little one ended by putting his opponent gently on his back, and the big one looked as if he did not know how it was done.

There is no form of grip that the Japanese jujitsu work does not meet and foil, and in Japan a policeman learns the jujitsu wrestling as part of his equipment for active service. One of the Club trainers was professionally engaged to teach the police in Japan before he came to England to serve under Mr. Barton-Wright.

When you have mastered the various branches of the work done at the Club, which includes a system of physical drill taught by another Champion, this time from Switzerland, the world is before you, even though a “Hooligan” be behind you. You are not only safe from attack, you can do just what you like with the attacking party. He is as helpless in your well-trained hands as a railway-engine in the hands of its driver. The “Hooligan” does not understand the principles on which he works; you do, and, if it pleases you to make his machinery ineffective for further assaults upon unoffending citizens, you can do so in a way that cannot be believed until it is seen. No part of South London need have terrors for you; Menilmontant, La Vilette and the shadier side of the Bois are as safe for you in Paris as the Place de l’Opera. I find myself wishing that the Bartitsu Club had been in Shaftesbury Avenue as recently as some five or six years ago, when shortly after midnight the slums of Soho would send forth ruffians at whose approach wise men sought the light.

The work of the Club makes a strong appeal to Englishmen, because they are naturally of an adventurous disposition and have a great aversion to the use of any but natural weapons of defence in the brawls that they are bound to encounter now and again. There is a keen pleasure in being able to turn the tables on a man who tries to assault us suddenly and by means that he relies upon to give him an unfair advantage. I am well assured that a few of Mr. Barton-Wright’s pupils sent into a district infested by “Hooligans” would do more to bring about law and order than a dozen casual arrests followed by committal with hard labour, with or without the “cat”. And there is an element of sport in the Bartitsu method that should appeal to any “Hooligan” with a sense of humour.

Edwardian Jiujitsu ephemera

Thanks to Steve Childs for these early 20th century illustrations.

It’s hard to tell who is the aggressor in this card by Will Adams:

A rare colourised photograph of French jiujitsu pioneer Ernest Regnier (“Re-Nie”), on the right:

“To conquer by yielding”; Lafcadio Hearn on jiujitsu

An excerpt from Lafcadio Hearn’s “Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan”, 1895.

Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So is it with all things. . . . Firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life. Hence he who relies on his own strength shall not conquer.

- Tao-te-king

Kazo and Iwao, Hearn's eldest children, at jiujitsu practice.

There is one building in the grounds of the Government College quite different in structure from the other edifices. Except that it is furnished with horizontally sliding glass windows instead of paper ones, it might be called a purely Japanese building. It is long, broad, and of one story; and it contains but a single huge room, of which the elevated floor is thickly cushioned with one hundred mats. It has a Japanese name, too, — Zuihokwan, — signifying The Hall of Our Holy Country; and the Chinese characters which form that name were painted upon the small tablet above its entrance by the hand of a Prince of the Imperial blood. Within there is no furniture; nothing but another tablet and two pictures hanging upon the wall. One of the pictures represents the famous White-Tiger Band of seventeen brave boys who voluntarily sought death for loyalty’s sake in the civil war. The other is a portrait in oil of the aged and much beloved Professor of Chinese, Akizuki of Aidzu, a noted warrior in his youth, when it required much more to make a soldier and a gentleman than it does to-day. And the tablet bears Chinese characters written by the hand of Count Katsu, which signify: Profound knowledge is the best of possessions.

But what is the knowledge taught in this huge unfurnished apartment? It is something called jiujutsu. And what is jiujutsu ?

Here I must premise that I know practically nothing of jiujutsu. One must begin to study it in early youth, and must continue the study a very long time in order to learn it even tolerably well. To become an expert requires seven years of constant practice, even presupposing natural aptitudes of an uncommon order. I can give no detailed account of jiujutsu, but merely venture some general remarks about its principle.

Jiujutsu is the old samurai art of fighting without weapons. To the uninitiated it looks like wrestling. Should you happen to enter the Zuihokwan while jiujutsu is being practiced, you would see a crowd of students watching ten or twelve lithe young comrades, barefooted and barelimbed, throwing each other about on the matting. The dead silence might seem to you very strange. No word is spoken, no sign of approbation or of amusement is given, no face even smiles. Absolute impassiveness is rigidly exacted by the rules of the school of jiujutsu. But probably only this impassibility of all, this hush of numbers, would impress you as remarkable.

A professional wrestler would observe more. He would see that those young men are very cautious about putting forth their strength, and that the grips, holds, and flings are both peculiar and risky. In spite of the care exercised, he would judge the whole performance to be dangerous play, and would be tempted, perhaps, to advise the adoption of Western “scientific” rules.

The real thing, however, — not the play, — is much more dangerous than a Western wrestler could guess at sight. The teacher there, slender and light as he seems, could probably disable an ordinary wrestler in two minutes. Jiujutsu is not an art of display at all: it is not a training for that sort of skill exhibited to public audiences; it is an art of self-defense in the most exact sense of the term; it is an art of war. The master of that art is able, in one moment, to put an untrained antagonist completely hors de combat. By some terrible legerdemain he suddenly dislocates a shoulder, unhinges a joint, bursts a tendon, or snaps a bone, — without any apparent effort. He is much more than an athlete: he is an anatomist. And he knows also touches that kill — as by lightning. But this fatal knowledge he is under oath never to communicate except under such conditions as would render its abuse almost impossible. Tradition exacts that it be given only to men of perfect self-command and of unimpeachable moral character.

The fact, however, to which I want to call attention is that the master of jiujutsu never relies upon his own strength. He scarcely uses his own strength in the greatest emergency. Then what does he use ? Simply the strength of his antagonist. The force of the enemy is the only means by which that enemy is overcome. The art of jiujutsu teaches you to rely for victory solely upon the strength of your opponent; and the greater his strength, the worse for him and the better for you. I remember that I was not a little astonished when one of the greatest teachers of jiujutsu (1) told me that he found it extremely difficult to teach a certain very strong pupil, whom I had innocently imagined to be the best in the class. On asking why, I was answered: “Because he relies upon his enormous muscular strength, and uses it.” The very name jiujutsu means to conquer by yielding.

I fear I cannot explain at all; I can only suggest. Every one knows what a “counter” in boxing means. I cannot use it for an exact simile, because the boxer who counters opposes his whole force to the impetus of the other; while a jiujutsu expert does precisely the contrary. Still there remains this resemblance between a counter in boxing and a yielding in jiujutsu, — that the suffering is in both cases due to the uncontrollable forward impetus of the man who receives it. I may venture then to say, loosely, that in jiujutsu there is a sort of counter for every twist, wrench, pull, push, or bend: only, the jiujutsu expert does not oppose such movements at all. No: he yields to them. But he does much more than yield to them. He aids them with a wicked sleight that causes the assailant to put out his own shoulder, to fracture his own arm, or, in a desperate case, even to break his own neck or back.

With even this vaguest of explanations, you will already have been able to perceive that the real wonder of jiujutsu is not in the highest possible skill of its best professor, but in the uniquely Oriental idea which the whole art expresses. What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching,— never to oppose force to force, but only to direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely by his own strength, — to vanquish him solely by his own effort? Surely none! The Occidental mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles. Yet how fine a symbolism of Intelligence as a means to foil brute force! Much more than a science of defense is this jiujutsu: it is a philosophical system; it is an economical system; it is an ethical system (indeed, I had forgotten to say that a very large part of jiujutsu training is purely moral); and it is, above all, the expression of a racial genius as yet but faintly perceived by those Powers who dream of further aggrandizement in the East.

(1) Kano Jigoro. Mr. Kano contributed some years ago to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society a very interesting paper on the history of Jiujutsu.

The remainder of Hearns’ essay considers jiujitsu as a metaphor in ethical, political and other spheres.

An Edwardian jiujitsu exposition

(From Womanhood Magazine, 1904)

A VERY INTERESTED GATHERING assembled at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on December 20, at the invitation of Mr. Granger, Agent General for Australia, to witness a demonstration of the Japanese School of Ju Jitsu. Mr. Granger’s talented son, whom his friends were pleased to see happily restored after a dangerous illness, explained the various points in the system, which, he said, was recognised as long ago as the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century there was a Chinese priest who was a very great expert. Gradually the system was adopted by the Japanese Government, and is now regularly taught in the schools.

Ju Jitsu may in truth be termed the “gentle art of self-defence,” and its basis is to act upon a knowledge of the most tender spots in the human body, so that a person skilled in the art, though apparently weak, can protect himself or herself against the biggest bully that exists. In Ju Jitsu no strength must be put forth into the defence, and it is for this reason that ladies learn it more quickly than men, because men want to put strength into it, whereas women use finesse. The principle is to defeat the opponent by utilising his strength and playing upon his most vulnerable point. In Japanese school and university training the system has much the same position as established games have in England. The Japanese woman is educated in it, and it enters into the training of soldier, sailor, and policeman.

A most interesting part of the demonstration was that in which two English ladies, Mrs. Watts and Miss Roberts, took part. Mrs. Watts gave a demonstration of throws with Mr. Eida, and she and Miss Roberts also gave a demonstration of practice. The points illustrated by Mr. Miyake and Mr. Tani were various ways of falling without inconvenience, illustrations of the balance of the human body, and how to throw one’s antagonist; also what is called “the locks”— as for example, the arm lock, in which the arm of the person who attacks, however strong he be, must be broken either at the elbow or shoulder; the leg lock, where excruciating pain can be caused by pressure at a point at the bottom of the calf, or the foot may be injured; and the neck lock, in which a person becomes unconscious owing to pressure on the arteries. Mr. Granger incidentally remarked that the Japanese have no less than three ways to rapidly restore consciousness which are unknown to European medical men, but these are not made known.

Among others who took part in the demonstration were Mr. Kanaya and Mr. Uyenishi. As Mr. Granger humorously remarked, Ju Jitsu is a triumph of knowledge and skill against mere brute strength, and any lady who knows the game is more than a match for any husband who does not.

“One man, one Suffragette”

A 1907 Punch Magazine cartoon offers a satirical training suggestion to those London bobbies whose duties brought them into conflict with radical Suffragettes. The following year, under the tutelage of Edith Garrud, the Suffragettes themselves began training in jiujitsu …

“Jiu Jitsu Lessons For Youths” (1906)

From “The Foolish Almanack for the Year 1906 A.D.”

By observing the following six rules any boy of twelve can easily protect himself from the attacks of a full-grown man:

I. As your opponent makes for you, step quickly under his arm, and, stooping, grasp his left ankle with both hands, fingers interlocked. Rise smartly, and with a circular motion throw him over your right shoulder.

II. Enraged, your adversary will reach for you with his right hand. Step lightly aside, and, as his arm passes you, strike it sharply with your fist. This will break his wrist.

III. Your antagonist will now reach for you with his left hand. Take two rapid steps backward and kick his open palm, at the base of the thumb, upwards. This will dislocate his shoulder and cause a compound fracture of his left floating rib.

IV. Your mortified foe will attempt to kick you. Catch his foot in your left hand and twist his leg off at the knee.

V. Your enemy will make an effort to kick you with his other foot . Step quickly behind him and butt him in the small of the back with your head. Properly administered, this blow should break and dislocate every vertebra in his spinal column.

VI. The last attempt your adversary will make will be to bite you. As he opens his mouth place your open left hand on his forehead, and, thrusting your right down his throat, take a good hold, and with a long, strong pull, turn him inside out. This trick is somewhat dangerous and should only be tried by an expert, as otherwise your opponent may be painfully injured.

William E. Steers and the Hilltop dojo

(With thanks to the late Richard Bowen as well as to John Bowen and Joe Svinth.)

William E. Steers is one of the “mystery men” of the early British jiujitsu scene. His name appears in connection with those of many more famous figures – London Budokwai principal Gunji Koizumi, judo founder Jigoro Kano, soldier/author/journalist E.J. Harrison and pioneering challenge wrestlers Mitsuyo Maeda, Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi.

Unfortunately, few biographical details are available, and those that are offer a scattershot impression of William Steers. We know that he was born circa 1857. Contemporary sources noted him as having been an auditor for the British Ministry of Munitions; he was also an “extraordinary scholar” and a member of the Society of Arts. By the age of forty he had evidently travelled widely in various capacities throughout the British Empire, possibly as far away as New Zealand.

In 1903 Steers set sail for Japan, where he befriended E.J. Harrison and began training in jiujitsu. Returning to London the following year, Steers joined the Golden Square dojo of former Bartitsu Club instructor Sadakazu Uyenishi. There he made the acquaintance of Gunji Koizumi, who had recently arrived from Liverpool where he had been briefly affiliated with the highly dubious Kara Ashikaga School of Jiujitsu. During this period Steers may also have studied with Mitsuyo Maeda, a prominent competitor on the professional wrestling circuit.

Circa 1909, Steers commissioned the design and construction of an extraordinary house in the Surrey Downs. As it was built atop one of the highest hills in the Tandridge district, near the town of Caterham, Steers named his new home “Hilltop”.

Created by the architectural firm of Parker and Unwin, Hilltop featured a unique blending of Japanese aesthetics with those of the then-burgeoning English Arts and Crafts movement. According to an article in The Craftsman journal of 1910:

By a life spent in close study of the characters and customs of many nations, perhaps more especially of the Japanese, he has gained that breadth of outlook which much travel alone can give, and has come to feel that we have much to learn from the older civilizations of the East, civilizations which on the other hand, we of the West are beginning to mar.

It’s likely that the gi-wearing figure standing in the doorway in the following picture is Steers himself:

The interior of the house featured a graceful combination of Asian and European motifs:

However, by far the most unusual feature of Hilltop was its gymnasium, which melded the typical features of an Edwardian physical culture studio with those of a Japanese martial arts dojo.

Quoting the architect:

… when Mr. Steers came to settle in England it was his wish to do this in a home and among surroundings which would make it possible for him to practice and demonstrate to others what he had come to believe in. His position being as follows:—that it is everyone’s first duty to society and to himself or herself to be always in the most perfect health possible. He even goes so far as to say that few of us are justified in being ill, and would put no duty before that of keeping in perfect health, claiming that only when this has been accomplished are we capable of our best in any sphere, and that it is our duty never to give anything short of our best.

Believing in the physical and perhaps even greater mental alertness and agility resulting from the practice of the Japanese art of self-defense, jiujitsu, he would have it taught in our schools and colleges, to our military, naval and police forces. He holds that its practice gives a physical, mental and moral self-reliance which nothing else can.

One of the principal rooms of his house had therefore to be so planned as to give ample facilities for the practice of this art, while at the same time it was not to be spoiled for the many other uses to which it might be put. On the accompanying plans this room is called the gymnasium. It is worthy of careful study from both decorator and athlete.

It was not possible to secure quite as much sunshine in this room as could have been wished, partly owing to considerations for its privacy and partly to the necessary position for the living room. The gymnasium, however, gets all the northeast, east and southeast sun there may be, that is the morning sun, and its use as a gymnasium is almost entirely in the morning. The front of this room being composed of rolling shutters and large opening windows through which one enters onto an exercising lawn, terminating in an open-air swimming bath, necessitated extreme privacy and therefore an aspect away from the road which runs by the south end of the house. The room is carried to the full height of the house—that is, two stories—so, when the rolling shutters, together with the French windows on either side of them and the row of windows above are all open, as is almost always the case, the room is a very high one with practically one side open; in fact, it becomes a three-walled room. This sense of openness and airiness may be experienced which would be unobtainable in a less lofty room, even though as open in front. The floor, like a dancing floor, is carried on springs, and is covered with Japanese reed mats two inches thick. A dressing room and bath are connected with the gymnasium.

In summer, with mattresses thrown down at night upon the reed mats and the front thrown open, this room becomes one of the most delightful sleeping apartments imaginable. The Japanese custom of having no apartments set aside exclusively for sleeping in is one that Mr. Steers holds we might well adopt. Is it not possible that in some of our smaller houses we could frequently with advantage so adapt the furniture in some of the rooms in which part of our daily occupations are performed, that by simply throwing down mattresses and bedclothes when night comes we could sleep quite comfortably? Some claim that it is unhealthy to sleep at night in a room used in the daytime; surely this idea belongs to the days when it was customary to keep all windows closed. In these days when we all appreciate the hygienic value of fresh air and no longer open windows merely to “air the room,” but live with the windows open day and night, this claim can have no significance.

The decoration of the gymnasium was undertaken by Mr. Hugh Wallis of Altrincham. He was asked to go to Caterham, to stand in the middle of the room and imagine he was standing in a green glade or clearing in a forest, then to paint on the rough plaster of the walls the vistas among the trees, their foliage, boles, stems and branches, glimpses of sky and distant landscape, and in the foreground, characteristic woodland flowers in the grass. When the artist reached Caterham, however, the spirit of the delightful Surrey scenery surrounding him took so great a hold of the imagination that he had perforce to reproduce it in his delightfully decorative style. The vistas between the trees widened out and became filled with glimpses of distant country, broadening finally into wide peaceful scenes in the luxuriant Surrey countryside.

According to British judo historian Richard Bowen, Steers shared Hilltop with fellow jujitsuka E. H. Nelson, who had helped to organise their teacher Sadakazu Uyenishi’s “Text-Book of Ju-Jitsu”. Strangely, however, Steers was only to occupy Hilltop for a few years. In 1911 he sold the property and the following year he returned to Japan, where he enrolled at the Kodokan in Tokyo and became a student of Jigoro Kano’s. Kano later described Steers as having been the most earnest foreign student he had ever taught. At the age of fifty-five Steers was awarded the black belt rank in Kodokan judo, being only the second Westerner ever to achieve that rank.

Re-settling in London, Steers continued to display an almost evangelical zeal for judo, most especially for its emphasis on both moral and physical fitness. In 1918, at the age of sixty-one, he gave a speech entitled “A Perfect Manhood, or, Judo of the Kodokwan”. During the lecture he advocated free tuition in judo for almost every English citizen and performed a demonstration of “hand-throws, waist-throws, leg-throws, and lateral and frontal sutemi – a sacrifice for a gain.” This event aroused huge enthusiasm within the newly-founded London Budokwai, whose members sent copies of the text to many hundreds of politicians and educational institutions. Unfortunately, nothing came of their efforts.

Steers became Budokwai member number 52 and went on to become the clubs’ first honourary secretary. He was responsible for introducing his friend E.J. Harrison to the club, and later, the prominent American martial artist and scholar Robert W. Smith.

Steers’ most historically significant accomplishment, though, was that he was instrumental in forging ties between the London Budokwai and the Kodokan. In 1920 the Budokwai hosted a visit by Professor Kano and 4th-dan instructor Aida Hikochi, and thereafter the club officially took up the study of judo. Both former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani and Gunji Koizumi were accredited Kodokan 2nd-dan black belts, with Tani becoming the Budokwai’s first professional teacher. This shift marked the end of the era of eclectic “British jiujitsu” begun in 1898 by E.W. Barton-Wright, and the beginning of the formal development of judo in the UK.

William E. Steers died in his early 70s during the year 1930.

The mystery of the “Japanised Englishman”

Pieter M.C. Toepoel was, in a sense, the E.W. Barton-Wright of the Netherlands. A boxing and physical culture teacher and something of a free-thinker, attracted to novelties, Toepoel was the first man to teach Japanese martial arts in Holland. He eventually developed a Bartitsu-like method combining boxing, jiujitsu and even self defence with a walking stick.

In his 1910 book Het origineele jujutsu, Toepoel recalled that:

…in 1899 I read in an English Magazine about an international system of self defence which had used amongst others a couple of pins from jiujitsu.

This is obviously a reference to E.W. Barton-Wright’s Pearsons Magazine articles on Bartitsu. Thus inspired, Toepoel made his way to London and possibly Paris and seems to have picked up an eclectic jiujitsu education. His book name-drops former Bartitsu Club instructors Sadakazu Uyenishi and Yukio Tani as well as Koyama, Miyami, Re-nie (Ernest Regnier, who pioneered jiujitsu in Paris), Okashi, Saito and Apollo (strongman William Bankier, who became Tani’s manager after the Bartitsu Club era), but does not identify Toepoel’s (main?) instructor in the art.

Most puzzlingly, Toepoel refers to learning jiujitsu upon the thin carpet of a shabby old London boxing club, and described his teacher – introduced to him by some boxing acquaintances – as a “Japanised Englishman” who had trained daily for seven years with Taro Miyake. Toepoel further notes that they would stop practicing when others entered the club, implying that this was a security precaution so that others would not “steal” their techniques; he was also apparently made to promise that he would never teach jiujitsu himself in the UK.

This is all very curious; who was the “Japanised Englishman”, and why all the secrecy?

Toepoel refers to both Tani’s Oxford Street school and to Uyenishi’s Golden Square dojo, which would seem to date his training in London to the period of roughly 1904-1909. By that time, there were several books and numerous articles available on jiujitsu, not to mention two full-time schools and several rather marginal ones. Although Japanese wrestling was hardly being taught on every street corner, it was quite widely available and it’s odd that a jiujitsu teacher at that time would have been quite so secretive.

Taro Miyake arrived in London in 1905, so it would seem to be impossible that any English jiujitsuka could have trained with him for seven years prior to 1910, unless that person had begun studying with Miyake in Japan.

On the face of it, and assuming that Pieter Toepoel was above adding in a bit of spurious detail for the sake of drama, there were only a few jiujitsu practitioners in London at that time who could conceivably have been described as “Japanised Englishmen”. Our candidates include:

E.W. Barton-Wright, who does not seem to have impressed anyone else as being “Japanised”, but who had spent three years in Japan, apparently spoke Japanese tolerably well and who was rumoured to have continued to have taught Bartitsu privately after the Bartitsu Club closed down in 1902.

William Garrud, who was teaching his own classes (in person and by correspondence) by 1905, but Garrud was possibly even less “Japanised” than was Barton-Wright.

“Professor Vernon-Smith”, who advertised jiujitsu classes at his Anglo-Japanese Institute of Self Defence (3 Vernon Place, Bloomsbury Square). The latter school seems to have employed Sadakazu Uyenishi as well as “a staff of expert instructors teaching gymnastics, boxing, wrestling, fencing, la savate etc.”; very little else is known about it, or about Vernon-Smith.

William E. Steers, a passionate Japanophile who travelled to Japan in 1903, studied jiujitsu there with fellow expatriate Englishman E.J. Harrison and returned to London in 1904, where he began training at Sadakazu Uyenishi’s school. Later, circa May 1912, Steers went back to Japan and studied judo with founder Jigoro Kano, who described him as being “the most earnest foreign student I have ever had”.

On the face of it, W.E. Steers seems to be the best candidate. The dates roughly match up and Steers’ huge enthusiasm for all things Japanese might well have led to his being characterised as a “Japanised Englishman”. The detail of Toepoel’s instructor training for seven years with Taro Miyake is still puzzling, in that Miyake was affiliated with Tani’s Oxford Street school, while Steers was enrolled at Uyenishi’s dojo at Golden Square. However, it is reported that Steers did study judo with the famous Mitsuyo Maeda from the year 1907, when the latter first arrived in London.

Shifting into pure speculation; assuming that W.E. Steers was Pieter Toepoel’s jiujitsu teacher, why would there have been such secrecy surrounding their lessons? Perhaps Steers felt that he was not really qualified to teach the art; I have found no other records of him as an instructor, though he was active and influential at the administrative level during the early years of the London Budokwai. As he was not a teacher in any official sense, though, Steers would presumably not have been concerned about Toepoel as a potential commercial rival, so why would he have required that the latter promise never to teach jiujitsu in the UK?

Also, Steers was evidently quite a wealthy man, so a shabby, thinly-carpeted boxing school seems an odd choice for a training venue, unless, again, Toepoel’s lessons were being “hidden” for some reason.

Research is ongoing …

International Concourse in the Arts of Self Defence (1902)

A pictorial report on a Bartitsu Club exhibition from Caras y caretas (1902)

The Spanish text reads:

International Concourse in the Arts of Self Defence

On the 23rd of November was held in the School of Arms in London an interesting tournament and demonstration of the various self defence methods that have been adapted into the “Bartitsu” system which has, as with many other Japanese trends, been adopted easily in Europe.

The Japanese champions were there along with wrestlers and boxers from Britain and from the European continent. Part of what one might describe as a match of over-riding interest was an encounter between a professional wrestler who represented the Cornish and Devonshire style and a champion of Osaka (Japan) named Uyenishi. The Japanese wrestler won each of the three rounds of this contest.

A professional boxer contended against the school’s champion of the French savate, and the result was indecisive. Several of the competitors explained aspects of the Bartitsu system, and through their exhibitions much interest was sown in the employment of the walking stick as a defensive weapon.

Our pictures reproduce the main scenes of this interesting tournament in which, overall, the Japanese dominated, and if partially, in some of the European exercises, failed, they were not truly defeated since with the methods of their own country they were victorious against all attempts to dominate them.

“The Secret Lock: A Splendid Yarn of Jiu-Jitsu” (1911)

GoogleBooks has made available this thrilling 12-page tale for red-blooded boys of all ages by Percy Longhurst (author of Jiu-Jitsu and Other Methods of Self Defence). It was originally published in the August 1911 edition of Boys’ Life Magazine.

For full enjoyment of the story, please note that the term Jap was not used pejoratively during the Victorian or Edwardian periods, being rather in the nature of a simple abbreviation (q.v. “Brit” for British, “Aussie” for Australian, etc.) The modern pejorative use dates to the Second World War.