Edith Garrud: the martial arts expert who practised ‘suffrajitsu’
- London On The Ground
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Britain’s first woman jujitsu teacher trained the female bodyguards of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.
In a 1910 essay Edith wrote: “Jujutsu is […] stronger than just brute force. So, it is not only a good skill, but a necessary protection for women. Women need to defend themselves throughout life.”
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Born in Bath in 1872 as Edith Williams, she grew up in Wales and returned to Bath aged 16. She trained as an instructor in 'physical culture', a health and strength training movement that began in the 19th century.
In 1893 Edith married a fellow physical culture instructor, William Garrud, who specialised in boxing and wrestling. The couple moved to London, where William taught physical culture at universities.
In 1899 they both joined Edward Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu School, which used Japanese martial arts to promote self-defence in all forms. It closed in 1902, but gained a level of immortality after the fictional private detective, Sherlock Holmes, referred to his knowledge of the Japanese wrestling form 'baritsu' (miss-spelt by author Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle) in The Adventure of the Empty House.
The Garruds continued to learn jujitsu under Sadakazu Uyenishi, a Japanese instructor they met at Bartitsu.
By 1906 Edith was demonstrating jujitsu with other women in theatres and music halls. A November 1906 column in a sports newspaper called Football Chat referred to seeing"a troupe of lady wrestlers, captained by Miss (sic) Edith Garrud" at Hammersmith Palace.
The article's author imagined these "interesting young ladies [...] would make a nice, loving wife for enthusiastic Football-concert husbands. Just fancy wandering home in the "wee sma'," and having the strangle lock put on one! Gee! it makes me feel quite goosey."
When Sadakazu Uyenishi returned to Japan in 1908, the Garruds took over his dojo, or martial arts school. Edith held classes for women and children, with Edward providing instruction for men.
Edith opened her own dojo in 1909, becoming the first British women to teach jujitsu and one of the first women to teach martial arts anywhere in the West.
The Garruds staged martial arts demonstrations together. Edith would demonstrate jujitsu moves, while Edward provided a commentary. In some of the shows William would portray a policeman, defeated in his attempts to apprehend Edith, playing a women’s rights campaigner.
Edith was a member of the Women’s Freedom League, which had broken away from the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) to pursue similar aims with more moderate methods.
Nevertheless, she agreed to demonstrate jujitsu at a WSPU in 1909, but William was unable to attend due to indigestion. WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst encouraged Edith to assume both roles, that of narrator as well as martial artist.
She explained jujitsu to the audience before asking volunteers to test her skills. A doubtful policeman soon discovered how efficiently she could perform a shoulder throw.
Edith began providing self-defence training to WSPU members at twice weekly classes at her dojo. Women campaigners had been assaulted and groped by police and male vigilantes and needed the means to protect themselves.
A journal called Health and Strength coined the scornful phrase ‘ju-jitsuffragettes’ to describe these women and implied that their training would encourage them to attack the police.
However, in a response in the same publication, Edith embraced the phrase and called policemen “the greatest friends and admirers the woman suffragette has”.
Beyond her involvement with the WSPU, Edith did much to raise the profile of women’s self-defence.
She wrote fictional stories about women defending themselves from male attackers with the use of jujitsu techniques such as blocks, holds and throws.
She also choreographed dramas, including one entitled Ju-Jutsu as a Husband Tamer: A Suffragette Play with a Moral, which showed a woman overpowering her drunken husband when he attacked her. An article in Health & Strength included photographs of her demonstrating the moves.
In 1911 Edith led the athletics division of the Women’s Freedom League in the coronation procession of George V.
In spite of her membership of the moderate Women’s Freedom League, Edith Garrud became increasingly associated with the more militant WSPU.
She trained a group of women that were assembled to prevent Emmeline Pankhurst’s re-arrest when she was released from jail to recover from hunger strikes. The group became known as the Bodyguard.
Under the so-called Cat and Mouse Act of 1913, suffragettes that went on hunger strike while serving a prison sentence could be released temporarily for recuperation and then re-arrested to complete their term.
The mission of the 30-strong Bodyguard was to prevent the police from returning the WSPU leader to prison.
Using secret locations to avoid detection by the police, Edith trained them in jujitsu and the use of Indian clubs. These wooden implements were intended for exercise, but were also effective weapons of defence (and could easily be hidden under the long skirts of the period).
Among the more famous of the Bodyguard’s encounters was the ‘Battle of Glasgow’ early in 1914, when they held 50 policemen at bay for several minutes as the officers tried to arrest Pankhust at a hall in Glasgow. Eventually the police captured her, but the Bodyguard had demonstrated their skills in front of a crowd of 4,000 people.
On another occasion in 1914, the Bodyguard managed to smuggle Pankhurst away from a fight with the police after she had given a speech in Camden Square. The police apprehended someone they thought was the WSPU leader, but was in fact a cleverly disguised decoy.
Edith did not usually take part in these ‘front-line’ incidents, as she was too strategic an asset to the WSPU to risk being arrested herself. However, she proved her effectiveness not only in training the Bodyguard, but also in devising its tactics, drawing on jujitsu principles of outwitting a bigger and stronger opponent.
The press called the Bodyguard ‘Amazons’ and used the term ‘suffrajitsu’ to describe the techniques Edith taught them.
Emmeline Pankhurst disbanded the Bodyguard soon after the start of World War I and suspended militant action to back the war effort. Women over the age of 30 won the right to vote after the end of hostilities in 1918 and universal suffrage for everyone over 21 came a decade later.
In 1914 William wrote The Complete Jujitsuan, which became a standard guide. Too old to join the military, he became the jujitsu instructor for the Volunteer Civil Force in World War I.
The Garruds had three children, Owen, John and Sybil. The eldest, Owen, was killed in the War at the age of 24.
Edith and William Garrud continued to teach jujitsu and self-defence until they sold the dojo in 1925.
William died in 1960, aged 87, and Edith died in 1971 at the age of 99.
In her 1910 essay, mentioned at the start of this post, Edith wrote:
“Physical strength seems to be the only area where women have not shown they are equal to men. While we are waiting for the evolution which is slowly taking place and bringing about that equality, we might just as well take time by the forelock and use science, otherwise ju-jitsu.”
Edith Garrud did not just take time by the forelock. She took it in an arm-lock and threw it over her shoulder.
Edith Garrud's former home in Thornhill Square in Islington can be seen on my Beautiful Barnsbury walk, which has its next outing on Saturday 30 August at 11am.
Above photos from Google Maps (left) and Wikipedia (right).
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Fascinating post! They should make a film about her life!