Chapter 1: The Female Pugilist

Dear Mister Priest,

I hope this finds you well and in good health. I was sorting through some personal effects of my great-grandmother when I came across something that made me think of you, so I have made you a copy for your interest. This is an extract from the diary of Detective James Shelduck of New Scotland Yard. A gentleman who became a long-term companion of my great-grandmother although she was many decades his senior.

The events recounted took place in 1897, when my mother was only 10 years of age, my grandmother 45 and my great grandmother, who I’ve been told I take after, would have been 75. I fear that the title must have been added at a later date since this would have been 16 years before the Government passed the so-called “Cat and Mouse” act whereby Suffragette leaders on hunger strikes could legally be released from jail and then re-arrested. In response the Women’s Social and Political Union of which my predecessors were an active part established a thirty-member, all-woman protection unit known as “The Bodyguard”. Trained by Edith Margaret Garrud in Ju-jitsu and the use of Indian clubs as defensive weapons, they fought a number of well-publicised hand-to-hand combat battles with Police Officers attempting to arrest their leaders. This earned them the names “Amazons” and the “Jujitsuffragettes”. Maybe the Detective found my great-grandmother worthy of this accolade being ahead of her time in this regard and added the title accordingly, although she was more highly skilled in Aikido as am I. She was truly a Granny Strongarm although of course she was not an Armstrong - my little joke.

Feel free to visit me on your next visit to London. I would like to entertain you by showing you the techniques mentioned in the extract so that you may experience them first-hand. I am sure that you would enjoy it as much as Detective Shelduck did. I maybe 92 but I still maintain stiff discipline of staff and pupils alike at St. Agatha’s and more than capable of showing you a thing or two.

Yours Sincerely
Mrs. Georgina Armstrong

26th April 1897

As the youngest detective at the Yard, I often receive the investigations that none of the seniors want. So I thought as I was called into the chief’s office. After pleasantries, he explained that because of my youth I was not set in my ways and so he was entrusting to me a case most baffling and perplexing. This was, it was stressed, to be a low-key investigation conducted by myself and myself alone, reporting only to him. It was a matter most sensitive that it must not become public knowledge for surely the fate of the whole Empire was hanging by a thread. He instilled in me that it was my solemn duty to Queen and country to resolve this case with the utmost speed and stealth. When I enquired upon the matter at hand, he was hesitant as if greatly ashamed. He lowered his voice yet could not look in the eye as he briefed me on the facts.

“The other day a group of suffragettes dared to gather outside Parliament The bare-faced cheek of it. Our officers were called to clear them in no uncertain manner. When they refused to move, they tried to arrest them”. His voice trailed off and went quiet for a moment before resuming so subdued that I had to lean forward to hear him. “This lady ... a single well-to-do lady of some considerable age and distinction...”. His voice became choked with emotion and he had to pause to clear his throat. “She ... overcame ten of our best. Literally throwing them around as if they were nothing more than rag dolls while her compatriots made good their escape”. I looked at him in disbelief. Were it April the first I may have thought he was fooling me, but his distress was plain to see.

“Are they sure it really was a lady and not, well a female impersonator or working-class woman?” I asked gently. He shook his head “No doubt it. All of the officers swore that it was a middle or upper class woman wearing a corset, white blouse, long black skirt with big hair and an even bigger hat felling ten of our best as if they weighed nothing” his voice cracked with emotion. Such a preposterous suggestion cut an incongruous image that I could not comprehend. Rough tough lower-class working women with strong study bodies from hard manual work and a propensity for drink and violence I could understand but not a decent gentle noble classed woman. That seemed something too abnormal and terrifying to contemplate. I told him so. He looked up and stared at me in earnest at me. “Now you understand why this must go no further. This is not an isolated incident. A lady meeting the same description has overwhelmed other officers at other suffragette outrages but previously only engaging with one or two officers never defeating such numbers before”.

He paused, cleared his throat once more then told me quietly “I had a discrete conversation with Colonel Smythe-Westington at the reform club not mentioning that our perpetrator was female. He informed me in confidence that the Army had similar problems out in the Indies and the Orient where the locals fought using some ungodly hand-to-hand fighting art of the military. There were several styles apparently but to him this sounded like something called, oh what was it called, Jujutsu or something”. He paused again to regain composure. “Find this Amazon, James. Find her and stop her before she can pass on this sinful unchristian knowledge to others of her fair sex. For once it is known that the Police cannot control mere womenfolk, it will be war. Mark my words it will be wife against husband, sister against brother, mother against son. How can a righteous noble upstanding gentleman bring himself to fight a woman? Even one with such dangerous tricks that should remain the providence of the military that could hurl him bodily around”.

27th April 1897

So sensitive were the reports that they were locked away in the Chief’s safe and he only permitted me to review them in his office. The reports were consistent yet bordered on fantasy. An elegantly dressed grey-haired lady of some elderly age stepped in to prevent the arrest of the suffragette leaders. In the first account I read, this lady placed her old wrinkled hand around the officer’s wrist in a shocking vice-like grip. Instantly he found himself writhing in agony with his knees bending as he was forced to march stooped facing the ground wherever she wanted him to be. He was in great fear that his arm was about to break in several places, while he watched helplessly as her companions escaped. Then with a flick of the wrist he found himself thrown by the arm with great speed through the air to land heavily upon his back rending the breath from his body. The other accounts were no less fantastical. An officer going to the aide of another who was restrained by the arm found himself similarly incapacitated as the old lady held both officers in grips of steel. Totally humiliated by an stern-looking elderly lady who forced them to their knees as the younger women made good their escape whereupon they were both hurled away as if disposing of rubbish upon the wind. No man it would seem could restrain this Amazonian old woman as she humiliated their pride tossing them this way and that, and contorting their arms and wrists to snapping point, no matter how many tried to subdue her.

I noted that a couple of the account described a different combative woman. In these instances the officers reported the presence of a younger middle-aged lady who bore some familial resemblance to the elder. Confronting the officers, this lady who was also well-dressed fought them like a prize fighter. Punching with startling strength unseemly for a gentle woman, the officers fell to the ground, rendered unconscious by the lady’s fists. One of the other officers being incapacitated by the elder woman wrote that he thought that she called out to the younger, who appeared to be her daughter, referring to her as Victoria.