To advertise how women could benefit from jujitsu, Garrud wrote fictional self-defence scenarios for magazines that she sometimes staged as suffrage theatre performance with costumes and props.

Garrud is best remembered for training the Bodyguard unit of the Women's Social and Political Union in jujutsu self-defence techniques to protect their leaders from arrest and from violence from members of the public.

[4] The Garruds trained under the school's jujutsu instructors Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi, two experienced martial artists whom Barton-Wright had brought from Japan.

[12] In order to advertise the benefits of jujutsu specifically for women's personal protection, the Garruds took to the stage in music hall exhibitions and public demonstrations.

[6] As her renown grew, Edith was featured in 1907 as the protagonist in a short film entitled The Lady Athlete; or, Jiu-Jitsu Downs the Footpads, which was produced by the Gaumont British Picture Corporation and directed by Alf Collins.

[16] In response Garrud instituted a twice-weekly Suffragettes' Self-Defence Club at her dojo, exclusively for WSPU members and advertised in the organisation's official newspaper Votes for Women.

[11] In late 1909 an article in Health and Strength, a physical-culture journal, used the mocking inflammatory title "Ju-jutsuffragettes: New Terror of the Police" in a report about Garrud's Self-Defence classes.

The fictional story featured a diminutive lady in a deserted street who sees off an attack by two male assailants with blocks, holds and throws.

[21] As her fame grew she was represented in a satirical cartoon by Arthur Wallis Mills published in Punch, a drawing entitled The Suffragette that Knew Jiu-Jitsu.

It featured Edith, in a traditional Edwardian dress and hat, using jujutsu on a police officer, played by her husband William, similar to the routine they did on stage.

[27] From 1911, in response to increased demand, Garrud moved her Suffragettes' Self-Defence Club to the Palladium Academy, a dance school in Argyll Street.

[3] In 1913, the Asquith-led government instituted the so-called Cat and Mouse Act whereby suffragette leaders on hunger strikes could legally be released from jail in order to recover at home before being re-arrested to complete their sentences.

[31][32] The Bodyguard fought a number of well-publicised hand-to-hand combats with police officers who were attempting to arrest Pankhurst, most famously during the so-called "Battle of Glasgow" on 9 March 1914 and during the WSPU "Raid on Buckingham Palace" on 24 May 1914.

A number of these incidents are described in the unpublished memoir of Bodyguard member Katherine "Kitty" Marshall, titled Suffragette Escapes and Adventures.

[37] In a 2018 journal article, Mike Callan, Conor Heffernan and Amanda Spenn argued that although Garrud and the WSPU's employment of jujutsu was short-lived, her classes did "introduce women to new ideas about the possibilities for their gender and undermine assumed notions of their vulnerability" and contributed to the art becoming a part of the culture of the time, with a lasting significance demonstrated by supporters of Christabel Pankhurst's 1918 general election campaign in Smethwick using jujutsu against opponents.

Theatre and performance scholar Diana Looser wrote in 2011 that:[24]Edith Garrud's importance lies in her appreciation and deployment of the broader political potential encoded in jujutsu skills.