Edith Garrud (1872–1971) – the Founder of Saffrajitsu
- Paul Budden
- Mar 7
- 10 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
by Paul Budden
William Garrud and his wife Edith were introduced to jūjutsu by Edward Barton-Wright in 1899 and in 1904; they became students of Uyenishi Sadakazu in Golden Square London. When Uyenishi left Britain in 1908, William Garrud taught the men while his wife Edith looked after the women and children. Photographs of "Edith Garrud, the well-known Suffragette," throwing a uniformed British policeman appeared in the London Sketch on July 6, 1910. Soon after, Punch printed a cartoon showing uniformed policemen cowering before a solitary "Jūjutsu Suffragette." Garrud, whose abilities and politics manifested themselves quite remarkably in her practice and she capitalised on the considerable media interest in her classes to highlight women's vulnerability in Edwardian England. She used jūjutsu as a force for social change in alliance with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Uyenishi had passed the Golden Square School ownership to the Garruds in 1906, Edith joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL). Establishing an Athletics Branch with a need to extend
physical culture's possibilities for women was a critical driving force. Garrud's position in the Athletics Branch was demonstrated in 1910 when she headed the group's procession in a WFL parade.
Despite her initial association with the WFL, it was with the WSPU that Garrud's fame began to be known. Asked by the female suffrage group in 1909 to give a small public jūjutsu demonstration, Garrud demonstrated her abilities at a WSPU' Women's Exhibition'.
Though initially unsure about her demonstration's reception, she was 'inundated with applications afterwards', a warm reception that perhaps signalled her growing importance within the WSPU.
Located in her London dojo, Garrud soon found herself teaching twice-weekly jūjutsu classes conducted exclusively for WSPU members seeking to protect themselves physically. However, due to wide English media interest in the WSPU more generally at this time, it was perhaps unsurprising that Garrud herself became a person of considerable interest.
In late 1909, Health and Strength magazine reported on Garrud's WSPU classes with the somewhat provocative title 'The New Terror of the Police'. However, she was very much opposed to the idea of jūjutsu being used against the Police Force, instead insisting that it
was solely for the protection of women against the brutality of men.
Unfortunately, Garrud was associated with her inflammatory and eye-catching media profile. This association intensified following Garrud's efforts to promote jūjutsu on a much grander scale.
Jūjutsu as Social Protection
Rather than stir up public controversy in the wake of Health and Strength's publication, Garrud preferred to remain ambiguous about jūjutsu's potential for suffragists. Instead, her writings on
the subject in newspapers and magazines centred more on the necessity of self-defence for women, as opposed to voting rights.
Writing in the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women in 1910, Garrud's opinion was that women were weaker than men and needed jūjutsu to the physical arguments on a level footing. Echoing
the defensive stances noted in Godfrey's examination of female jūjutsu, Garrud utilised the idea that a woman's subordination to a man required some form of protection. Garrud needed to address physical encounters between men and women and highlight violence between the sexes. Indeed, the article title, 'The World We Live In', made this point explicitly. Garrud was careful to add that this violence was most generally found in the home or in the street and far removed from political agitation.
Distancing her brand of jūjutsu from any political overtones, Garrud's frankness about domestic violence and its prevalence in Britain was remarkable. Though jūjutsu would be used by the WSPU to fight with the police, Garrud stressed its importance was in protecting women from 'ruffians'. This was not a new approach. After all, the Daily Express had implored women to learn jūjutsu in 1908 because 'street attacks against women had become so frequent. What made Garrud's promotion of jūjutsu for such ends unique was the regularity and forcefulness of her arguments in the public sphere. In public exhibitions, Garrud would invite willing male ‘combatants' to attempt throat or shoulder grabs, which to her mind, were common forms of attack against women. This tactic seems to have set Garrud apart from other female instructors regarding the public promotions of jūjutsu. Though domestic and public violence against women was becoming more unacceptable, general outcries against it were relative to its occurrence in daily life. Garrud's most notable response to male physical abuse was the decision to meet it head-on. As evidenced in the photograph taken by the Daily Mirror in 1909, Garrud regularly sought to demonstrate how men were physically assaulting women and how women could fight back with the use of jūjutsu. Indeed, Garrud's own classes specifically advertised jūjutsu for this means. Writing in Health and Strength in 1910, Garrud vehemently reiterated that jūjutsu was being taught to protect women from 'the attack of a ruffian' and not 'the man in blue.5' This was a point she took to theatrical lengths the following year with her play entitled 'Ju-Jutsu as a Husband Tamer.' Again Health and Strength was used as a media platform, with the 8 April edition running an article on the play with pictures.
The stills depicted one of Garrud's regular students, Ms Quinn flipping an assailant over her shoulder, displaying the successful application of Garrud's teachings and the potential of jūjutsu. The man in question played the role of the abusive and oft-drunken husband, who, upon returning home, attempted to mistreat his wife. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had taken up Garrud's brand of jūjutsu. Tired of his repeated assaults, the woman threw him across the room, after which his equilibrium was restored. The man then swore to abstain from all alcohol in future and become a better husband. Whilst the description of the abusive, alcoholic husband was familiar to many readers, the introduction of jūjutsu as a viable solution was relatively new and unusual. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not it was taken seriously outside of Garrud's classes. Regardless, Garrud was able to promote the idea of jūjutsu for such ends to bringing domestic abuse issues into popular journals. Garrud was thus able to use the popular interest in jūjutsu to examine and highlight the worrying trend of violence against women in early twentieth-century England. This use of jūjutsu by the London-based instructor for such means was not the first and by no means the last.
Jūjutsu as Social Change
Despite measured and thought-provoking rhetoric, Garrud's experiences hinted at a much more political use for jūjutsu. This political use sought to utilise jūjutsu for social change. Indeed, it soon became clear that the fear stirred up by the media that suffragists would use jūjutsu against policemen was far from paranoid. In July and August 1910, newspapers reported on Garrud's wrestling matches with London policemen as publicity stunts. A series of six stills were published that showed Garrud successfully pinning a London policeman to the ground. The Sketch commented that the 'Jujitsu suffragette (Garrud) demonstrates how a policeman can be dealt with.' The pictures demonstrated a policeman, or more likely, a man dressed as a policeman, attempting to 'arrest' Garrud.
Unperturbed by the man's approach, she promptly and swiftly threw the man to the ground immobilising him using a series of holds. In this way, Garrud simultaneously demonstrated how women could protect themselves with jūjutsu while at the same time hinting at the art's subversive Political qualities. As clashes between the WSPU and law enforcers became more prevalent, Garrud's exhibitions were reported once more within the English media, fuelling the
idea that the WSPU might gain the upper hand physically and one day further advance their cause. Garrud's July performance was followed in August by a light-hearted contest between Garrud and two real London policemen, as reported by the London Daily Mail.
Garrud successfully tossed her first opponent over her shoulder, but the second officer proved a significantly tougher opponent, something she realised once he had successfully pinned her to the ground. Though Garrud's record that day read one victory and one defeat, the paper was steadfast in its assertion that 'the London police force may well shake in their shoes at the prospect of what the future may hold'. Furthermore, her first opponent's admission that had Garrud flipped him in the street, as opposed to the comfort of her dojo, he would have surely 'cracked' his skull seemed to reiterate the newspaper's apprehension. A July pictorial in Punch
magazine demonstrated how Garrud's presence was troublesome for the London police. The regularity with which Garrud alone was the centre of attention within these reports was remarkable. The jūjutsu instructor had captured the media's attention. Not only that, she proved adept at manipulating this interest for her own purposes.
Even the very space of jūjutsu became politicised during Garrud's WSPU tenure. From 1911 to 1913, Garrud's dojo was used to hide WSPU members wanted by police for arson and various other offences. Following the failure of Conciliation Bills in 1911 and 1912, which would have partially extended the vote to women, angered WSPU members took to criminal acts to express their anger and force political change. Soon arson and window-smashing became the 'norm' within pockets of WSPU members, which led to further confrontations with the police. Due to many protestors' decisions to target retail shops in London's Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus
area, Garrud's dojo on Regent Street became the ideal hiding place.
Garrud later recounted to Raeburn that WSPU members would flee to her dojo following attacks and hide their hammers and stones in the floorboards or under exercise mats whilst the women changed into their training clothes, transforming the militants into jūjutsu practitioners. If and when policemen attempted to enter the dojo, Garrud would curtly inform the officers that they were interrupting her ladies-only jūjutsu class. On one occasion, Garrud's protestations were so ardent that the police conceded to a brief search by a solitary elderly man who told the officers waiting outside that nothing untoward appeared to be happening.
Although Garrud's involvement with the WSPU was relatively benign at this point, the following year would see the establishment of the WSPU Bodyguard in 1913, trained by Garrud and headed by Gertrude Harding. From this point, one sees the true potential for jūjutsu in all political
matters. From February 1914 until the outbreak of the Great War in August the same year, the Bodyguard clashed with English and Scottish policemen on several different occasions. Using a variety of weapons in their confrontations, including barbed wire and a handgun firing blanks, the Bodyguard also made effective use of jūjutsu in their hand-to-hand combat. This highlighted the larger project envisioned by Garrud in her promotion of jūjutsu for social and political purposes. Garrud sought to change the way women interacted with and understood their own bodies. In pictorial exhibitions of her jujutsu 'habitus', her self-defence skills were only called upon in times of external aggression; she was never the aggressor. Women trained by Garrud could retain their appearance as 'vulnerable' women whilst content in the knowledge that they could enact swift justice against any would-be attacker if called upon. This was based on the idea of subconscious reaction, an ingrained body knowledge that would react when called upon.
Garrud's teaching sought to equip women with the skills necessary to protect themselves. For the WSPU, jūjutsu was taught as a means of hand-to-hand combat against the group's opponents.
As detailed previously by van Wingerden, Harrison and others, a common rebuttal of female suffrage centred on the idea of purely physical force. Namely, that woman's supposed inherent physical frailty, especially when compared to men, did not entitle her right to political participation. For some, this argument was based on supposed 'natural laws'; for others, it was centred on the idea that to vote for one's country meant being able to fight for one's country.
Regardless of the motives expressed, it is clear that Garrud's jūjutsu programme sought to dispel any ideas about woman's frailty, empowering women to impart justice to the ruffian, drunken husband or even the policeman. This new individual perception did not conform to societal ideas of a woman's weakness. For women such as Edith Garrud, Phoebe Roberts and Sarah Mayer, jūjutsu or judo as it became known, was a major part of their lives. It came to shape their individual identities and societal interactions. For the unnamed participants of Garrud's classes, the importance of jūjutsu did probably not hold the same importance. Nevertheless, it did introduce women to new ideas about the possibilities for their gender and undermined assumed notions of their vulnerability.
For Gertrude Harding and the 25-member Bodyguard, jūjutsu allowed them to physically attack the most common example of state power, the police. It allowed them to showcase their new identities as women of physical strength. Interestingly, while the Bodyguard failed to resurface following the end of the Great War in 1918, jūjutsu's importance persisted. When Christabel Pankhurst ran for the Smethwick candidacy in the 1918 General Election, female supporters used jūjutsu to subdue protestors at her public speeches, demonstrating that jūjutsu had forever changed the position of women in the social world. Confirming that Garrud's efforts to promote jūjutsu, often done in flamboyant ways, had long-lasting effects. At the end of the Great War, as demonstrated by Roberts and Garrud, the development of judo in Britain was
influenced by theatre and the women's movement. These two entities are embodied by Sarah Mayer. She began her association with judo in London in the 1920s and became the first foreign
woman in Japan to be awarded a judo shodan in 1935.
Edith Garrud pushed outward into the realm of domestic politics and made great use of the media to further her political agenda. Her association with the WSPU demonstrated the suffragist group's eye for new opportunities and their importance in attack and defence.
Jūjutsu for political purposes was short-lived, yet the martial art's longevity continued as shown in the ideas and beliefs of the time, best exemplified by the case of Sarah Mayer, who came to judo in an entirely different context. Mayer, like Roberts, used the pursuit as a means of travel, advancement and even celebrity.
*This article is an extract from Safrajitsu–A Martial Art for Women by Paul Budden, featured in FLWK Vol. 4 Autumn issue 2022. The article has been edited for the web publication to celebrate International Women's Day 2025.
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