Combat Without Weapons

Despite his endorsement of violent acts against humans as described in Combat Without Weapons Hartley Leather was a lay reader and freemason. How he wrestled with aggression v. faith is conjectural but his booklet was innovative when gallantry in self-defense ruled. Historically the basis for the killing methods he proposed probably first saw light in Britain when the Anglo-Indian engineer Edward William Barton-Wright founded the Bartitsu School of Arms in London in 1898. In 1900 Barton-Wright invited the Japanese jujitsu expert S. K. Uyenishi to teach at his school. Uyenishi soon began teaching extreme versions of jujitsu to British officers before returning to Japan in 1908. Following the sowing of these first seeds jujitsu techniques spread throughout the British Isles and abroad. Although Uyenishi had taught his own Ju-Jutsu as a recreational activity it was probably from his jujitsu techniques combined with Bartitsu applications that unarmed combat for killing developed.