A woman grabs a policeman's hands and immobilizes him. The agent looks at her in bewilderment and she takes advantage of it to kick him and throw him to the ground. Assault? She prefers to call it self defense. The man came with a baton ready to attack her just for claiming her right to vote with a banner. The same action is repeated by all of her friends who, coordinated, bring down the entire police force with jiu-jitsu movements.
Now that the Oscars are approaching, anyone might think that it is the plot of one of the nominated films, but the truth is that this is a real scene. We are in London in 1910. The suffragettes take to the streets to demand justice and equality. What they ask for seems obvious, but at that time a large part of society did not understand it and tried to silence them with insults, beatings or imprisoning them. Several of them died in their fight. A fight that forced them to prepare mentally and physically with notions of martial arts. Lisa Lugrin, Clément Xavier and Albertine Ralenti have captured this reality in the graphic novel Jiujitsufragistas, which has just arrived in bookstores by Garbuix Books and which in 2021 won the Château de Cheverny award for historical comics.
Lugrin explains to La Vanguardia that everything arose when they learned the story of Edith Garrud, the first feminist self-defense trainer. “None of the three of us had heard her name before her. This surprised us. Especially to me, that she practiced martial arts since she was ten years old. But when I was little at school, very few women were named to us. This is something that little by little is changing but there is still a long way to go”.
Why jiu-jitsu?, more than one will ask. “At the turn of the century, many sports were prohibited for women. Not so this martial art. For two reasons. The first is that in England it was unknown to the vast majority, and the second is because it came from Asia, which is why it was considered an inferior practice. This legal vacuum allowed Edith to become a teacher and form the bodyguards of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, better known as the Amazons of London”, points out the author.
Both Edith and her husband William taught before what is known as Black Friday. On November 18, 1910, a total of 300 suffragettes gathered in front of the British Parliament as part of their campaign to demand women's suffrage. The consequences were not long in coming: two dead women, many others imprisoned and countless injuries. That day marked a before and after, as the protesters' need for protection became evident. Therefore, having notions of martial arts is something that turned out to be very useful and the role played by Edith was indispensable.
The couple taught jiu-jitsu until 1925 and during that time many suffragettes attended their classes. Edith's last public appearance was in 1965, during an interview for her 94th birthday. The journalist's condescension did not please Edith. Despite this, the woman politely responded to her questions. Of course, when saying goodbye to her, instead of returning her greeting, she grabbed him by the wrist and gave him an implacable arm lock, showing that despite her age, she never lost her reflexes. .
