Edith Garrud: The Jujutsuffragette

This chapter introduces a woman who lived during the Conciliation Bill debates and who experienced and helped to shape some of the events surrounding the Votes for Women movement. Edith Margaret Garrud and Edward William Barton-Wright had always taken a keen interest in the growing calls for female political representation, with Edith becoming a member of newly established suffragette organizations such as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and Women's Freedom League. Edith’s instruction of WSPU and WLF members and her politicisation of her martial arts practice had drawn the attention of the media, beginning with an editorial written for the physical culture periodical Health and Strength entitled “Jujutsuffragettes: A New Terror for the London Police”. The “Cat and Mouse Act”, the new government and police tactic sought to avoid publicly embarrassing confrontations such as Black Friday by tasking police with the targeting of known suffragette troublemakers and engaging in a deliberate cycle of arrest, imprisonment, release and re-arrest.