Edith Garrud (1872-1971)

BBC News 2015

Edith Garrud was born in Bath in 1872, grew up in Wales, and later moved to Islington when she married her husband, a sports instructor. She was one of the first people to learn jujitsu in the UK and became an expert martial artist. At the time, women didn’t have the vote as they were seen as the weaker sex. Through her martial arts training, Edith demonstrated she could defend herself and take down men twice her size. She was tiny compared to the men she fought - only 4ft 11.

Garrud joined the suffragette movement and set up the ‘Suffragettes Self-Defense Club’, as well as playing the lead in an early action film, and also acting as a fight choreographer for a play on the London stage. She trained the 30-women-strong protection unit dubbed ‘The Bodyguard’, which protected suffragette women from rearrest after they were released from prison. The press nicknamed them the ‘Suffragitsu’.

Her work was dangerous and undercover - throughout the protests, they met in secret locations for training and sabotage planning. In a time where women were fighting for their rights, Garrud empowered fellow women with the knowledge and power to defend themselves, feel independent of male protection, and able to respond to violence and intimidation.

She died at the age of 99 in1971. Edith Garrud’s legacy has been immortalised by an Islington People’s Plaque above her former home on Thornhill Square.