Bartitsu is an eclectic martial art and self-defence method originally developed in England in 1898–1902, combining elements of boxing, jujitsu, cane-fighting, and French kickboxing (savate).

In 1898, Edward William Barton-Wright, an English engineer who had spent the previous three years living in Japan, returned to England and announced the formation of a "new art of self defence".

Barton-Wright had previously also studied "boxing, wrestling, fencing, savate, and the use of the stiletto under recognised masters", reportedly testing his skills by "engaging toughs (street fighters) until (he) was satisfied in their application".

As detailed in a series of articles Barton-Wright produced for Pearson's Magazine between 1899 and 1901, Bartitsu was largely drawn from the Shinden Fudo Ryu jujutsu of Terajima Kunichiro (not to be confused with the SFR taijutsu associated with the Bujinkan lineage) and from Kodokan judo.

In his notes for a lecture delivered to the Japan Society of London in 1901, Barton-Wright wrote:[4] Under Bartitsu is included boxing, or the use of the fist as a hitting medium, the use of the feet both in an offensive and defensive sense, the use of the walking stick as a means of self-defence.

6 (January 1901), journalist Mary Nugent described the Bartitsu Club as "a huge subterranean hall, all glittering, white-tiled walls, and electric light, with 'champions' prowling around it like tigers".

Tani, Uyenishi and Cherpillod fought in many such challenges on the music hall wrestling circuit and the facility with which the Japanese athletes were consistently able to defeat much larger and stronger adversaries quickly established the efficacy of jujutsu as a fighting style.

Some critics, however, complained that jujutsu's submission rules were "unsporting" because they allowed unfamiliar techniques such as choke holds and joint locks, which were banned in European wrestling styles.

[10] Other members included expatriate French fencing master and journalist Anatole Paroissien and messrs. Marshall, Collard, Marchant, Roger Noel, Percy Rolt, Lieutenant Glossop and Captains Ernest George Stenson Cooke and Frank Herbert Whittow, both also members of the London Rifle Brigade School of Arms, under the direction of Captain Hutton; and William Henry Grenfell, the 1st Baron Desborough, who was named as the Club president.

Thus, the tactics of the unarmed Bartitsu practitioner were to mount an aggressive defence, employing damaging variations of standard boxing and savate guards, and then to finish the fight with jujutsu, which Barton-Wright evidently viewed as a type of secret weapon during an era in which his Shaftesbury Avenue academy was the only place in England where it could be learned.

This fusion of aggressive boxing/savate defences with jujutsu was another innovation of Bartitsu as a martial art[3] According to interviewer Mary Nugent, Barton-Wright instituted an unusual pedagogical system whereby students were first required to attend private training sessions before being allowed to join class groups.

[12] It is evident that Bartitsu classes included pre-arranged exercises, especially for use in rehearsing those techniques that were too dangerous to be performed at full speed or contact, as well as free-sparring and fencing bouts.

[3] According to an anonymous article published in "The Sketch" of April 10, 1901, these sessions may have involved a type of circuit training in which students would rotate between small group classes taught by each of the specialist instructors.

After breaking with Barton-Wright, purportedly due to an argument and a fight, Tani also continued his work as a professional music-hall wrestler under the shrewd management of William Bankier, a strength performer and magazine publisher who went by the stage name of "Apollo".

This fad lasted until the beginning of World War I and served to introduce Japanese martial arts into Western popular culture,[11] but Bartitsu per se never again returned to prominence during Barton-Wright's lifetime.

[19] During the 1980s, researchers Alan Fromm and Nicolas Soames re-affirmed the relationship between "baritsu" and Bartitsu,[20] and by the 1990s scholars including Yuichi Hirayama, John Hall, Richard Bowen, and James Webb were able to confidently identify and document the martial art of Sherlock Holmes.

A similar philosophy of pragmatic eclecticism was taken up by other early 20th-century European self-defence specialists, including Percy Longhurst, William Garrud and Jean Joseph-Renaud, all of whom had studied with former Bartitsu Club instructors.

[3] In 1906, Renaud introduced a similar concept in France named Défense Dans la Rue in order to fight the increase of street violence at the time.

This art was a mixture of boxing, savate and jiu-jitsu inherited from bartitsu, and was broadened by contemporary authors like Émile André and George Dubois, who had been influenced by master-at-arms Joseph Charlemont.

[23] In the 1920s, Brazilian physical culture teacher Mario Aleixo published an article for the Eu Sei Tudo magazine about his Defesa Pessoal, which mixed capoeira, jiu-jitsu, boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling and jogo do pau.

Barton-Wright's champions, including Yukio Tani, Sadakazu Uyenishi and Swiss schwingen wrestler Armand Cherpillod enjoyed considerable success in these contests, which anticipated the MMA phenomenon of the 1990s by a hundred years.

In 2001, the Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences (EJMAS) web site[26] began to re-publish many of Barton-Wright's magazine articles that had been discovered in the British Library archives by Richard Bowen.

(August 2008) comprises resources for neo-Bartitsu drawn both from Barton-Wright's own writings and from the self-defence manuals produced by his colleagues and their students, including Yukio Tani, William Garrud, H.G.

Host Tony Wolf travels between locations in Europe including the Swiss Reichenbach Falls and the adjacent town of Meiringen, London, Haltwhistle, Rome and Amantea, explaining the origins and heyday of Bartitsu via narration, animated graphics, re-enactments, archival photographs and interviews.

Interviewees include authors Will Thomas and Neal Stephenson as well as martial arts historians Mark Donnelly, Emelyne Godfrey, Harry Cook and Graham Noble.

Baritsu has been incorporated into numerous Sherlock Holmes-inspired pastiche novels and short stories and also into the rules of several role-playing games set during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

[41] The manga and anime series Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), Dantarian no Shoka (The Mystic Archives of Dantalian) and Kengan Ashura all feature characters who are proficient in baritsu.

Richard Ryan, the fight choreographer for the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes, has described the "neo-Bartitsu" developed for that project as being a combination of "Chinese Boxing (Wing Chun), swordplay and elements of Brazilian Jujitsu."

[44] In the DVD commentary for "A Scandal in Belgravia" (episode one of the second season of the BBC TV series Sherlock), writer Mark Gatiss describes a framed glass sign above the title character's bed as showing "the rules of baritsu, the Japanese martial art which got Holmes out of the situation at the Reichenbach Falls in 'The Final Problem'."

Aiden English and Simon Gotch, known collectively as The Vaudevillains, are professional wrestlers signed to NXT and WWE who incorporate Bartitsu, or "Victorian Era Martial Arts" as some announcers have described, into their wrestling style mainly with stances and selective attacks.