How to kick someone’s ass with an umbrella

Saturday, January 29th, 2005

Boing Boing recently discovered How to kick someone’s ass with an umbrella, or, as Pearson’s Magazine titled it (in 1901), Self-defence with a Walking-stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions (PartI). It’s just one of the many fascinating articles in the Journal of Non-Lethal Combatives, edited by Joseph R. Svinth. My favorite quote, from the intro:

In this way blows can be made so formidable that with an ordinary malacca cane it is possible to sever a man’s jugular vein through the collar of his overcoat.

The walking-stick article, by the way, is the work of E.W. Barton-Wright, creator of bartitsu — a collection of jiu-jitsu “tricks” with a hokey pseudo-Japanese name. Bartitsu has a claim to fame though: Sherlock Holmes relies on his training in bartitsu (misspelled baritsu, which is at least conceivably Japanese, in Doyle’s story) to throw Moriarty off a waterfall in Switzerland. This is how he survives what was originally supposed to be his final story.

Leave a Reply