Ladies and Safety

Another combination of my favourite subjects: stage combat and Edwardian self-defense. To add “…and ladies” would have been very sexist, why would you think I’d say something so rude? Oh yeah, the title of this article.

Let me just say at the outset that women tend to be more concerned with personal safety than men because of the long history (and continued) violence against women perpetuated by men. Let’s face it, there’s very few reports of attacks on women by other women in all of history. To be prepared for an assault from a larger and more muscular foe full of testosterone and backed by a patriarchal society is something every woman worries about.

So to me it’s no surprise that Bartitsu was espoused by the suffragette movement, and women embraced jiu jitsu especially.

To wit, here’s an interview with a New York lady from The Evening World newspaper in 1921. The original link is here, what follows is my transcription:

Using Jiu Jitsu on Time and Mashers, Mrs. De Hart Tells How to Master Pests In Three-Minute Hot Weather Interview

Woman Who Has Laid Low 40 or 50 So-Called “Men” Proves She Is as Clever and Forceful in Speech as She Is in Using Her Steel-Spring Muscles in Protecting Herself Against Attentions of Pestiferous Males.

By Fay Stevenson.
Of course any woman who is clever and quick enough to “nab” every masher who annoys her by using her shillelagh or using a few jiu jitsu grips is clever and quick enough to pass The Evening World’s three-minute hot weather interview test with flying colors. Leave that to her!
When Mrs. Eleanor De Hart, an attractive widow, captured her fortieth or fiftieth masher (she is not quite certain of the number), I thought it was high time to ask this courageous lady a few questions which might be useful to some of her weaker sisters if she would answer them.
A few days ago Mrs. De Hart was accosted in Central Park by a man describing himself as James Zamorelli, twenty-five years old, a Post Office employee. Mrs. De hart did not have her shillelagh (more of this little weapon later), but she gave him a few strenuous jiu jitsu grips and then Policeman Lawlor of the Arsenal Station came to her aid.
Magistrate Silberman of the Night Court complimented Mrs. De Hart for her spirit, sentenced the man to one day in the workhouse and would have made the sentence more severe if the man had not possessed an excellant war record. Then the Magistrate said he though he had seen Mrs. De Hart in court as complainant in similar cases and she admitted that she had arraigned many other flirters recently and obtained a conviction in each case.
Naturally, I expected to see a sturdy, athletic woman when I rang the bell to Mrs. De Hart’s apartment at No. 949 Amsterdam Avenue, but instead a slender, daintily built woman of medium height, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, met me and smilingly ushered me in.
“You see I’m not a cave woman or anything like that,” laughed Mrs. De Hart. “I am simply disgusted with these men who go about the city trying to force themselves upon women of all ages, young and old.”
Then Mrs. De Hart explained that she was the widow of a New York dentist, had no living children and liked to feel that she could go about the city unmolested.
“I was always interested in self-defense and wanted to develop my right arm,” said this plucky little widow as she held forth a decidedly well developed one. “Any woman can have an arm like that and with a few jiu jitsu grips she will be safe anywhere at any time. I don’t believe in dumbell exercises. I used an eight-pound flatiron in each hand when I was a young girl. I took arm exercises with these irons regularly for several years and that is the secret of my strength.”
Then I told Mrs. De Hart about The Evening World’s three-minute interviews and she immediately caught the spirit of the thing.
“Quick arm work and head work ought to go together,” she declared. “There’s my alarm clock on the desk. It says 12.15.”
“That is just right with my wrist watch,” I said and her decidedly well developed arm motioned a gay “We’re off.”

Read the rest of the interview, with more strong women from Venus with Biceps: A Pictorial History of Muscular Women…

…and a video featuring my friend and great FDC stunt fighter, Casey Hudecki to round things off:

Article at PlayFighting: Vancouver Stage Combat

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Bartitsu, Stage Combat