Edward William Barton-Wright
| Edward William Barton-Wright | |
|---|---|
A montage of techniques from Bartitsu. Barton-Wright is pictured in the middle.
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| Born |
8 November 1860 Vepery, Chennai, India |
| Died | 26 April 1951 (aged 90) Surrey, England |
| Style | Bartitsu |
Edward William Barton-Wright CE, M.J.S. (member of the Japan Society) (1860–1951) was an English entrepreneur specialising in both self defence training and physical therapy. He is remembered today as having been one of the first Europeans to both learn and teach Japanese martial arts and as a pioneer of the concept of hybrid martial arts.
He was born Edward William Wright on 8 November 1860 in Vepery, Chennai, India, the third of six children of railway engineer William Barton Wright and his wife Janet (née Forlonge, generally called Jessie). He had a twin brother, who died shortly after birth.
After returning to England with his family during the 1880s, Barton-Wright was educated in France and Germany. Following matriculation, he worked as a railway clerk before embarking on a career as a civil engineer and surveyor. He worked for railway and mining companies in locations including Egypt, Portugal and the Straits Settlements (modern day Malaysia and Singapore). In April 1892 he legally assumed the name Edward William Barton-Wright.
In a 1950 interview Barton-Wright professed to having had a "lifelong interest in the arts of self defence" and earlier interviews indicated that he had studied various fighting systems during his travels as a young man. While working as an antimony smelting specialist for the E.H. Hunter Company in Kobe, Japan (c. 1895–1898), Barton-Wright studied jujutsu in at least two styles, including the Shinden Fudo Ryū in Kobe and Kodokan judo in Tokyo.
Upon returning to England in early 1898, Barton-Wright combined these martial arts to form his own method of self-defence training, which he called Bartitsu. Over the next two years, he also added elements of British boxing, French savate and the la canne (stick fighting) style of Swiss master Pierre Vigny.
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