{"id":6395,"date":"2021-10-19T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T06:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=22671"},"modified":"2021-10-19T08:34:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T06:34:13","slug":"jujitsu-suffragettes-how-women-fought-for-the-vote-with-an-ancient-martial-art","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/jujitsu-suffragettes-how-women-fought-for-the-vote-with-an-ancient-martial-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Jujitsu suffragettes: how women fought for the vote with an ancient martial art"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Rachel Dinning\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

At the dawn of the 20th century, Edith Garrud was observing a political demonstration at the House of Commons when a police officer told her to move along. She demurely pretended to drop her handkerchief. \u201cExcuse me, it\u2019s you who are making an obstruction,\u201d was her retort, and she threw the surprised man over her shoulder. She then slipped innocently through the crowd while the stunned officer attempted to regain his composure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last heroine left,\u201d was how Edith (1872\u20131971) described herself in an interview with Godfrey Winn for Woman<\/em> magazine in 1965. The interviewer was indeed impressed by Edith\u2019s unusual adventures during the heated campaign for women\u2019s suffrage prior to the First World War<\/a>, a campaign of such historical importance that suffragettes were represented at the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. What is less well known is the connection between the suffragettes and the martial arts contests that featured as part of the Olympic Games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1906, the Daily Mail<\/em> coined the term \u2018suffragettes\u2019 to describe the female campaigners (male militants were known as \u2018suffragents\u2019) who were impatient with the peaceful methods of polite persuasion advocated by the National Union of Women\u2019s Suffrage Societies. One of these campaigners, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, founded the Women\u2019s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her eldest daughter, Christabel, in Manchester in 1903.<\/p>\n

Listen:\u00a0June Purvis considers the roles of Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst<\/a> in the fight for women\u2019s suffrage in Britain, on this episode of the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<hr\/><p>Pankhurst\u2019s military-style organisation employed headline-grabbing tactics such as holding demonstrations, undertaking deputations and boldly interrupting political speeches. Edith was involved with both the WSPU and headed the athletes\u2019 branch of the more democratically structured Women\u2019s Freedom League (WFL), which was formed in 1907.<\/p>\n<p>Suffragettes risked their reputations and put themselves in physical danger. Elizabeth Robins\u2019s hit stage play, <em>Votes for Women!<\/em>, and the successful accompanying novel, <em>The Convert<\/em> of 1907, vividly evoked the disturbing scenes of their confrontations. As Robins highlighted, a speaker at rallies had to learn not only to be persuasive but also self-assured when faced with insults from hostile crowds.<\/p>\n<p>Even in society drawing rooms, when the topic of suffragettes and women\u2019s rights entered polite conversation, chivalry often made a sharp exit. A <em>BBC History Magazine<\/em>\u00a0article by June Purvis on <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/20th-century\/anti-suffragette-postcards\/"\">anti-suffragette Postcards<\/a> showed how militant campaigners were portrayed as unhinged, disorganised female monstrosities. As a result, the response to women behaving \u2018badly\u2019 could be vitriolic and, worse still, violent.<\/p>\n<section class=\""highlight\"><div class=\""highlight__content\" editor-content=\"\"> <h4>Read more articles about <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/victorian\/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-suffragettes\/"\"><strong>the Suffragettes<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/h4>\n<ul><li><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/female-suffrage-how-the-battle-was-won\/"\">Female suffrage: How the battle was won<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/20th-century\/emily-davison-the-suffragette-martyr\/"\">Emily Davison: the suffragette martyr<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/edwardian\/cat-mouse-force-feeding-suffragettes-hunger-strike\/"\">Cat and mouse: force feeding the suffragettes<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><p> <\/p><\/div> <div class=\""highlight__image-container"\"> <div class=\""highlight__image"\"> <div class=\""img-container\" img-container--highlight-image=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2015\/10\/Forcefeeding-ed7dc4e.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" srcset=\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2015\/10\/Forcefeeding-ed7dc4e.jpg?quality=45&resize=410,410\" https:=\"\" sizes=\""(min-width:\" calc=\"\" width=\""556"\" height=\""556"\" class=\""img-container__image\" img-fluid=\"\" wp-image-42003=\"\" alignnone=\"\" size-highlight_image=\"\" img-container__image=\"\" alt=\""This\" illustration=\"\" from=\"\" a=\"\" women=\"\" social=\"\" and=\"\" political=\"\" union=\"\" poster=\"\" condemns=\"\" the=\"\" force-feeding=\"\" of=\"\" suffragettes=\"\" in=\"\" many=\"\" were=\"\" subjected=\"\" to=\"\" this=\"\" brutal=\"\" procedure=\"\" between=\"\" august=\"\" london=\"\" title=\""Force-feeding\" poster.=\"\"\/><\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3>Physical aggression<\/h3>\n<p>In the 19th century, violent self-defence \u2013 involving, for example, the use of knives and firearms \u2013 had come to be regarded as foreign and uncivilised. The suffragettes therefore tried, for the most part, to combat any physical aggression directed towards them with minimal aggression \u2013 and most even refrained from using their hatpins.<\/p>\n<p>Hatpins may not strike us as being a particularly menacing weapon today, but back in the Edwardian era \u2013 when women\u2019s hats were huge and the pins themselves could be up to 16 inches long \u2013 they were potentially lethal.<\/p>\n<p>Newspapers and publishers were certainly alive to their dangers, filling their pages with stories of hatpin suicides, accidents and murders. In the <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/victorian\/11-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-sherlock-holmes\/"\">Sherlock Holmes<\/a> story, <em>The Adventure of the Abbey Grange<\/em> (1904), the evil Sir Eustace Brackenstall stabs his wife with her own hatpin.<\/p>\n<ul><li><strong>Read more: <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/20th-century\/world-first-policewomen-who-when-female-police\/"\">\u201cSherlock Holmes in skirts\u201d: the world\u2019s first policewomen<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul><p>Meanwhile, so anxious were the authorities that suffragettes might turn their hatpins into deadly weapons that they banned them in prison chapels. This inspired Katherine Willoughby Marshall \u2013 who was arrested for throwing a potato at <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/second-world-war\/facts-winston-churchill-prime-minister-speeches-clementine-childhood\/"\">Winston Churchill<\/a>\u2019s fanlight \u2013 to affix her headgear with a toothbrush to great comic effect.<\/p>\n<p>Not all suffragettes refused to fight fire with fire. In fact, a number carried dog-whips to keep rowdies at bay. The most famous woman to wield this weapon was the Scottish suffragette Flora Drummond, who was known as \u2018The General\u2019, as she wore military-style uniforms, and as \u2018The Precocious Piglet\u2019, for cornering Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n<p>Teresa Billington-Greig, a founder of the WFL, treasured her dog-whip and wrote a piece entitled <em>The Woman with the Whip <\/em>(1907), where she linked women\u2019s political inequality with sexual harassment on the streets. Maud Arncliffe Sennett, who ran a party accessories shop in London, was arrested in 1911 for smashing the windows of the <em>Daily Mail <\/em>office. She added the receipts for her 960mm-long leather dog-whip and hammer to her scrapbook, and the whip is now kept in the Museum of London.<\/p>\n<p>When the university graduate Helen Ogston interrupted Lloyd George\u2019s speech at the Albert Hall in 1908, she wielded her whip against the stewards. She returned bruised and burnt by a cigar, but the warrior received much warm praise. \u201cLet me touch the hand that used the dog-whip!\u201d cried one lady at a suffragette meeting. Not everyone was so impressed though: crowds regularly sang uncomplimentary songs about whip-wielding women, while the press drew parallels between these campaigners and drunkards.<\/p>\n<p>What was needed was a form of self-defence in battle that was both socially acceptable and employed minimal violence. Katherine Willoughby Marshall\u2019s solution was to wear cardboard armour; other suffragettes hired prizefighters to protect them from attack. But soon women were learning to protect themselves in hand-to-hand combat.<\/p>\n<p>Edith Garrud\u2019s husband, William, was a jujitsu teacher. This Japanese martial art was based on the idea of applying pressure to joints, using opponents\u2019 strength and weight against them. Jujitsu was considered ideal for people of smaller statures and Edith assisted William at his school with classes for women and children.<\/p>\n<p>Following a presentation to the WSPU, Edith became a celebrity \u2013 so much so that <em>Health & Strength<\/em>, the oldest known English physical culture magazine still in print today, featured her in an amusing piece entitled \u2018Ju-jutsuffragettes: A New Terror for the London Police\u2019: \u201cThe Policemen of London are feeling rather uneasy just at present. The various arts of self-defence (boxing, wrestling, ju-jutsu, etc), have for years past formed an indispensable part of their training, but they have become extra specially keen upon perfecting themselves in those methods\u2026 The Suffragettes have taken up the study of ju-jutsu\u2026 We shall cease to read of their frantic but helpless struggles in the arms of giant constables\u2026 We shall see the prime minister as he emerges from No 10 Downing Street, seized suddenly and compelled to kneel for mercy, simply because some fair damsel has put a deadly-arm lock upon him. Mr Winston Churchill, strolling peaceably across Parliament Square, will unexpectedly find himself turning a somersault in the air.\u201d (<em>Health and Strength<\/em>, April 1909)<\/p>\n<p>Critics of women\u2019s sport wondered whether lady athletes were \u2018proper\u2019. Would, for example, cycling render women barren, would lady cricketers develop a stoop, could swimming turn hair white, did boxing lead to an over-ruddy complexion? To counter unfavourable depictions of campaigners as being unfeminine, suffragettes who practised martial arts cultivated a dainty appearance. In photos from the upmarket <em>Sketch<\/em> magazine, Edith wears a fashionably huge hat, which stays in place until she is on the ground. So, despite the potentially racy, close, physical nature of the sport, Edith shows that a jujitsu girl could be lithe, ladylike and respectable. Jujitsu allowed suffragettes to level the playing field without offending expectations of femininity.<\/p>\n<p>Edith\u2019s school, located just off Oxford Circus, became a refuge for suffragettes engaged in smashing windows in the West End in 1912. They would hide their hammers under the floorboards and pretend to be engaged in a jujitsu class when police officers came knocking on Edith\u2019s door. That the jujitsu class was used as a mask for rebellious behaviour reveals the extent to which the British public had accepted jujitsu as a sport for women.<\/p>\n<section class=\""highlight\"><div class=\""highlight__content\" editor-content=\"\"> <h4>The British craze for Japan in the early 1900s<\/h4>\n<p>When Japan opened its doors to the west in the 19th century, it became a close ally of Britain. Suddenly, Britons became fascinated in all things Japanese. For example, Standen, a Sussex country house run by the National Trust, is a charming example of the influence of Japanese culture on English interior design of that era.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Following a stay in Japan, the engineer Edward William Barton-Wright (1860\u20131951) popularised Japanese jujitsu through his new martial art \u2018bartitsu\u2019, which famously appeared, misspelled as \u2018baritsu\u2019, in Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s 1903 story The Adventure of the Empty House. In this tale, Sherlock Holmes uses his knowledge of the art to cast the evil Professor Moriarty into the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Jujitsu became a worldwide craze and was taken up by people from all walks of life, including politicians, police officers and actresses. Admiration for Japan surged during its victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904\u201305, and the Japan-British Exhibition, held at White City in 1910, was a public relations success. Japanese martial arts appeared in the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides manuals (next to tips on how to tie up burglars!) and, during the First World War, pamphlets appeared on the use of jujitsu against the German soldier.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Judo, which was developed out of jujitsu by Jigoro Kano in the 1880s, permeated jujitsu instruction in Edwardian Britain. In 1918, the London Judo Budokwai, the oldest martial arts club in Europe, was formed. Men\u2019s judo has become a regular fixture at the Olympic Games since 1972 while women\u2019s judo became a medal sport in 1992.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <\/p><\/div> <\/section><h3>Cat and mouse<\/h3>\n<p>Edith\u2019s involvement in the campaign intensified in 1913 with the passing of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act 1913 (dubbed the \u2018<a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/edwardian\/cat-mouse-force-feeding-suffragettes-hunger-strike\/"\">Cat and Mouse Act<\/a>\u2019) under which hunger-striking suffragettes would be released from jail then rearrested once they had recovered. Headed by Gertrude Harding, a bodyguard of 30 women was formed to protect Emmeline Pankhurst from the clutches of this law. They were trained in jujitsu and carried Indian clubs, which were normally used in exercise classes.<\/p>\n<p>Katherine Willoughby Marshall, a member of Emmeline\u2019s bodyguard team, later recalled:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur orders were that as the clock struck nine we were to jump out and attack the seven policemen and detectives, who had been placed in front of the house where Mrs Pankhurst was a prisoner. Behind our taxi was also another lot of bodyguards, and as the clock struck nine, out rushed the bodyguards who had remained at the house. The blue car was directly in front of the front door, and all of us fell on some policeman or detective. I chose a big man with a large mackintosh cape. I knocked his helmet over his eyes and brandished my club about his head. Out came Mrs Pankhurst and into the blue car, which was driven away by a smart woman driver, hell for leather\u2026The bodyguard [and] I got into the waiting taxi and away it went with orders to drive as quickly as possible to Piccadilly Circus. The taxi driver was very interested and wanted to know what it was all about, so I told him that we had helped Mrs Pankhurst to escape. He said he had never seen anything like it and was very intrigued to have been in the rescue.\u201d (Katherine Willoughby Marshall, <em>Suffragette Escapes and Adventures<\/em>, 1947)<\/p>\n<p>Arguably the best-known image today of a jujitsu suffragette is a Punch cartoon, which features an assertive militant, skilled in martial arts and armed with a dog-whip. The cartoon was prominent earlier this year at the unveiling of a green People\u2019s Plaque dedicated to Edith at her former Islington home. It was later pasted into her scrapbook, which has now disappeared without trace. One wonders what other secrets this elusive piece of suffragette history holds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Emelyne Godfrey\u2019s books include <em>Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society: Duelling with Danger<\/em> (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/magazine-issue\/december-2012\/"\"><em>This article was first published in the December 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rachel Dinning Published: Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 12:00 am At the dawn of the 20th century, Edith Garrud was observing a political demonstration at the House of Commons when a police officer told her to move along. 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She demurely pretended to drop her handkerchief. \u201cExcuse me, it\u2019s you who are making an obstruction,\u201d…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/6395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}