Image: Fencing display at Bath club

Description: A newspaper report on a "Ladies' Night at the Bath Club" on Saturday 10 June 1899, with special features "swordsmanship, swimming and bartitsu". Original caption: Ladies' Night at the Bath Club: A Varied Entertainment "A curious and amusing entertainment was given last Saturday by the Bath Club at their premises in Dover Street, Picadilly, the occasion being the ladies' night. Swordsmanship, swimming, and bartisu were the special features. The last-named item is, as was demonstrated by Mr. E. W. Barton Wright, a branch of the art of self-defense entirely new to England. It comes from Japan. It embodies all the best and most practical points in boxing, la savatte, the use of the dagger and of the walking-sticks, combined with a most scientific and secret style of Japanese wrestling. It also comprises the art of falling so as to reduce all risk of being hurt when thrown, and to land upon one's feet facing the enemy, and also the art of putting "locks" on one's opponent—that is subjecting different parts of his body to strains which he cannot possibly resist" captions within the illustration: Swimming / A Backward Dive Bartitsu / How to throw a man by yielding to pressure / The weak spot / How to fall on one's head Elizabethan Sword Play / The two handed sword. Touché!!! / Rapier & Cloak
Title: Fencing display at Bath club
Credit: London Daily Mail, 13 June 1899; immediate source: http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/tag/historical-fencing/
Author: Henry Marriott Paget (1856–1936)
Permission: Copyright expired
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: PD
Attribution Required?: No