Edith Garrud - The suffragette that knew martial arts
The first British female teacher of jujutsu, Edith Garrud (1872-1971) taught the suffragettes to protect themselves.
A passion for martial arts
Edith Margaret Williams was born in Bath in 1872 and started her career as a physical instructor for girls. She shared this passion for physical culture with her husband, William Garrud, a wrestling and boxing instructor.
They came in contact with Edward Barton-Wright who had spent three years in Japan, and studied judo and jujutsu. He elaborated his self-defense techniques known as “bartitsu” and opened his club in London in 1899.
The Bartitsu Club was notably opened to women. Edith was thus able to train alongside her husband. By 1908, Edith and William became jujutsu instructors themselves with William in charge of the men’s class and Edith teaching the women and children.
Jujutsu specializes in speed, precision and the use of soft, flowing movements to deal with aggression rather than using just brute strength. The couple showcased their skills through demonstrations. In one of them, Edith defeated a male aggressor played by her husband. The sight of this 4ft-11inch (150cm) woman effortlessly throwing a much taller man greatly impressed the audience.
In 1907, Edith starred in a short film Jujutsu down the footpads in which an innocent lady overpowers two ruffians.
Vote for women
Edith took an interest in the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1909, she was invited by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) to give a demonstration in the presence of Emeline Pankhurst and other leading figures of the movement. As William was ill, Edith demonstrated alone and invited members of the audience to test her skills. This included subjecting a skeptical police officer to a powerful shoulder throw.
In 1910, Edith also wrote a series of essays, advocating for the growing community of female martial artists and how self-defense could free women by giving them the means to protect themselves:
“You constantly read in the papers reports of dastardly attacks on helpless women by thieves and ruffians. A woman who knows jujutsu, even though she may not be physically strong, even though she may not have even an umbrella or parasol, is not helpless. I know many women personally who have tried the tricks I shall explain to you and come out on top. They have brought great burly cowards nearly twice their size to their feet and made them howl for mercy.”
The bodyguards
The suffragettes faced dangerous and violent situations. This was especially the case on Friday 18th November 1910. 300 WSPU members marched on the House of Parliament and faced police officers armed with batons. Women were subjected to six hours of beatings and arrests and there were widespread reports of sexual abuses.
Emeline Pankhurst thus asked Edith to train a group of women that would be known within the WSPU as the Bodyguard. Led by Gertrude Harding, they acted as agitators, disruptors and decoys.
Edith trained them in hand-to-hand combat and the use of homemade concealed weapons such as wooden India clubs and the fashioning of cardboard body armor. The suffragettes took advantage of their opponent's surprise and exploited their weaknesses.
They for instance struck directly at a police officer’s helmet to knock it from his head. Policemen were held accountable for the loss of uniform items and had to pay for their replacement. They cut the suspenders so that the policeman had to hold back his pants, blinded the police with a charge of umbrellas etc.
When told by a policeman that she was making an “obstruction” during a demonstration near the House of Commons, Edith pretended to drop her handkerchief, threw the policeman over her shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.
In prison, suffragettes went on hunger strikes and were subjected to force-feeding. The “Cat and Mouse Act” of 1913 allowed hunger-striking prisoners to be released and then re-incarcerated as soon as they had recovered their health. The Bodyguard thus protected and hid those women.
Edith for instance hid militant suffragettes in her dojo, telling the police not to disturb her lessons and leave her property.
A quiet retirement
Edith’s contributions to the suffragist movement ended with the beginning of the First World War. Little is known of her life afterward.
She and her husband would run the Golden Square dojo until their retirement in 1925 and retired to a quieter life. William passed away in 1960. In an interview in 1965, Edith said that her recipe for a long, happy and healthy life was:
“Self-discipline. Of course, I had to be extremely disciplined to succeed at jujutsu and hold my own with men […] but it is the mind which really has control, not only of your muscles and your limbs and how you use them, but also your thoughts, your whole attitude to life and other people.”
She died in 1971. A plaque on the building that had been her home can be seen today: “Edith Garrud 1872–1971. The suffragette who knew jiu-jitsu lived here”.
Further reading
Dorlin Elsa, Se défendre : une philosophie de la violence
Godfrey Emelyne, Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society: From Dagger-Fans to Suffragettes
Kelly Simon, "Edith Garrud: The jujutsuffragette". In McMurray, Robert; Pullen, Allison (eds.), Power, Politics and Exclusion in Organization and Management
Ruz Camila, Parkinson Justin, ““'Suffrajitsu': How the suffragettes fought back using martial arts”
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A mysterious stranger met with us in a gloomy underground parking garage and passed us some information on how to stick it to the tumblr Man. So here we are again for now. At least until the Automattic Inc. goons bust down our doors.
What better way to announce our return than a photo of a fashionable Suffragette who also stuck it to the Man?
Date unknown, but probably 1910s.
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I want women actively to resist, to refrain from cooperating with men, to cease making our resources available to men who are likely to then use against us what they have taken. I want men to be ‘irrelevant’ to our enterprise of constructing our own knowledge; I do not want them ‘revered’. I am advocating non-violent non co-operation.
It is ironic that it is Mahatma Gandhi who is held up as the originator of this method of resistance. Elizabeth Sarah informs me that in 1906 he visited Britain and on his own ready admission stated that it was from the suffragettes that he learned the power of non co-operation. As they refused to pay fines and were imprisoned, as they refused to acknowledge the authority of the law or its makers, as they ‘invented’ the method of hunger striking they revealed that a group defined as powerless, excluded from political participation (for they were kept out of meetings), were able to exert a great deal of power. They were able to act and the oppressor had to react. The oppressor could change his ways or he could show that his rule is maintained by force, but either way his ideology that the oppressed are content with their lot is seriously challenged.
As males cannot be authorities on women's experiences, what they make of this thesis does not much matter; but as they possess enormous power what does matter is what they can take and use. I have tried to practise what I preach and to provide them with as little as possible. I cannot condone violence against the enemy, but I can withdraw my labour from the exploiter and will not be swayed by the argument that he has more rights, that his interest is greater, his authority more legitimate.
I do not believe that women are now of age so that it is perfectly in order for us to start criticising (attacking, condemning, demolishing, deriding) each other in public forums, for I know, as women have found again and again, that our words will be taken down and used as evidence against us. We play into men's hands when we represent our sex negatively; we oblige them by doing some of their work for them. I know we are perfectly capable of generating our own valid meanings and I know that we do not all agree. I even know that I will never agree with some women; but my 'criticisms' are in private until the view of a woman carries the same weight as a man's, and is not just the raw data for his patriarchal products. While the world is arranged as it is I choose to assert my intellectual and creative existence as a woman and to promote a positive representation of women's lives, values, and ideas. Let men do what they will with this.
-Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them
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On this day, 105 years ago, after fighting for a long time, Polish women finally got the right to vote.
On November 28th 1918 the real democracy started in Poland 🇵🇱
Polish suffragettes protesting in Kraków, 1911
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Superb mural on the Lord Morpeth pub in Bow
The Lord Morpeth pub was formerly a meeting place for the suffragette movement
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give me a skirt that won't grope me
If someone would start selling those nifty suffragette pantaloons you can bicycle in I bet they could sell a bunch.
But every skirt in stores looks like a horrible tube that will rutch up on your tush as you walk like an handsy subway creeper; you try to walk in little tiny steps. Sitting without flashing? Some kind of mysterious party trick.
Then there's a whole article in the fashion section hand wringing if skirts that aren't tight are "too conservative"
If that bothers you? Pantaloon!
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Emily Davison
Emily Davison, a well-known British suffragette, was born in 1872 in South East London. She was a high achiever who received a scholarship to study literature at Royal Holloway College after graduating from high school. This was cut short when her father died and her mother was unable to pay the tuition expenses. Emily worked as a teacher until she had saved enough money to complete her studies at London University, where she earned a BA. She later spent one term at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
At the time, academia was dominated by men, and Emily developed strong opinions on the limited opportunities available to women in society.
Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Unit (WSPU) piqued Emily's interest, and she soon became a radical member. Emily quickly rose to the position of WSPU head steward, and she quit her job to devote more time and effort to "the Cause." Emily was a suffragette who was discovered lurking in air ducts within the House of Commons, allegedly only listening in on Parliament (she did this three times); she tossed metal balls labelled "bomb" through windows and was taken to prison 6-7 times in four years.
The 1913 Epsom Derby drew tens of thousands of spectators, including King George V and Queen Mary. Anmer, the King's horse, competed in that year's Derby. Anmer was third from last when the horses thundered around Tattenham Corner. Emily had pushed her way through the crowds and slid beneath the guardrail. As Anmer rounded the final corner, he couldn't help but collide with Emily, who was standing in front of him, holding the suffragette flag close to her. Jones was flung from his seat, and the horse fell, only to climb back up and finish the race alone. Jones was injured with broken ribs, bruises, and a concussion. Emily was transported to the hospital, but she died four days later from catastrophic internal injuries.
Thousands of people filled the streets of London for her funeral, which was organised by the WSPU. Her body was then transported to King's Cross Station before being transported to her family's home in Northumberland for burial. Emily was buried in Morpeth, a little distance from her mother's home in Longhorsley, on June 15th, with her mother's inscription "Welcome home the Northumbrian hunger striker" and the WSPU motto "Deeds not words" on her gravestone.
It is still unknown if Emily genuinely planned to commit suicide in the name of the suffragette cause on that fateful day. A return train ticket and an invitation to a suffragette meeting that night were discovered in her handbag, indicating that the act was not planned. However, Emily's prior actions may indicate that she was willing to murder herself for the cause.
Emily was persuaded that a selfless deed would boost the profile of the suffragette movement. This, however, was not the case. The public saw her acts as those of a "mentally ill zealot," and some former supporters of the suffragette movement were so outraged by the episode that they no longer wanted to be linked with "the cause." The media focused on the horse's and jockey's well-being (who never seemed to recover from the shame he felt) rather than the reason Emily died.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170629103230/http://www.historyextra.com/article/premium/suffragette-martyr-emily-davison
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Manifestation féministe à Londres le 13 juin 1908, devant la bannière de Bath, Frances Balfour et Millicent Fawcett. Agence Rol.
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New York, November 1917. "Calm about it. At Fifty-sixth and Lexington Avenue, the women voters showed no ignorance or trepidation, but cast their ballots in a businesslike way that bespoke study of suffrage."
That year, after a massive campaign by the suffragists, New York voters passed an amendment to the state constitution granting women the ability to vote. New York was the first eastern state to do so and was a major victory for the suffrage movement.
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“To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.” William Blake
Everyone (of a certain age) knows the song Jerusalem. The music was written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 to boost British morale during World War 1. This song, words by William Blake, is the official anthem of the British Women's Institute, and historically was used by the National Union of Suffrage Societies. It is also the song that traditionally ends the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms.
I mention this song as it contains the lines:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
Yesterday we were informed that in this “green and pleasant land” of ours, one in six of British wildlife species is in danger of extinction. Bird populations are expected to be reduced by 43%, and 26% of British mammals are expected to disappear.
Far from being a “green and pleasant land” we are knowingly destroying the very environment we depend upon for our well-being. From polluted waterways and beaches to the sanctioning of pesticides and herbicides banned elsewhere in the world; from anti-clean air campaigns to the promotion of more fossil fuel extraction and carbon emissions, we are knowingly walking into an ecological disaster.
Neither Sunak nor Starmer seemed concerned about our countries ecological future, and neither it seems do many of our fellow citizens. The former are more interested in personal power, the latter more concerned about how much it will cost them in monetary terms.
A lesser-known poem by William Blake is “London” wherein he describes:
“The bleak, polluted urban environment that resulted from the unrestricted burning of coal, the discharge of raw sewage into the Thames, and the inexorable spread of contagious disease." (J.C McKusick: “The End of Nature: Environmental Apocalypse in William Blake and Mary Shelly.”; Springer Link, 11/11/15.
If Blake’s environmental apocalypse turns out to be as true for the 21st century as it did for the 19th, then we will only have ourselves to blame.
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Jolly old acab
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It's official. Ladies, Don't Expect Too Much.Even way back in 1918, this suffragette didn't have many good things to say about marriage. Or any good things, really. In fact, her advice is pretty brutal! According to the anonymous suffragette, marriage was really best avoided at all costs. Let's be honest; a lot of the things she warns the young ladies of 1918 about remain relevant today. Avoid those Bounders, but don't let a Yard Swiller pass you by. Take note, ladies. The suffragettes, of course, fought for women's equality at the time, and tensions were high.
Printed just before women officially gained the right to vote in 1920!
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Suffragettes
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