² “Girl Whose Skill in Jiu Jitsu Enabled Her to Overcome Robber,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 5, 1909, 3; Girl's Wit and Jiu Jitsu Land Masher on His Back,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 4, 1909, 3; “She Routed a Footpad, but Not Cupid,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 24, 1912, 7.

³ After Berger successfully thwarted the attacker, disbelieving policemen asked for a demonstration. Much to their amusement, Berger offered a brief tutorial of her technique on Detective Frank Gard, as a few reporters watched in astonishment. Berger even received letters from adoring male admirers who offered proposals of marriage. She politely declined these requests. Ibid.; “Social Sets of Other Cities,” Washington Post, Sept. 10, 1909, 7.

⁴ “Doubt If Women Boxers Will Ever Be Numerous,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 26, 1909, 11.

⁵ On family violence and women's empowerment in the age of industrialization, see Pleck, Elizabeth H., Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (Urbana, 2004)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (Urbana, 2002)Google Scholar; Martin, Del, Battered Wives (San Francisco, 1976)Google Scholar; May, Martha, “The ‘Problem of Duty’: Family Desertion in the Progressive Era,” Social Service Review 62 (Mar. 1988): 40–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muncy, Robyn, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; McGerr, Michael, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York, 2005)Google Scholar. For the debate on women's rights versus obligations in the public sphere, see Kerber, Linda K., No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York, 1999)Google Scholar.

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⁹ McCaughey, Martha, “The Fighting Spirit: Women's Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment,” Gender and Society 12 (June 1998): 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ For scholarship on various strategies in the suffrage movement involving the body and otherwise, see Kraditor, Aileen, The Ideas of The Woman Suffrage Movement (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Du Bois, Ellen Carol, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, 1999)Google Scholar; Adams, Katherine H. and Keene, Michael L., Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Women's Suffrage Movement (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1975)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Looser, Diana, “Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies: Martial Arts and Women's Performance, 1900–1918,” Theatre Research International 36 (Mar. 2010): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹³ Hancock, Harrie Irving, Physical Training for Women by Japanese Methods (New York, 1905)Google Scholar, xi, 1.

¹⁴ Ibid., xi.

¹⁵ “Boxing Girl Arrives,” Washington Post, Oct. 30, 1904, S4.

¹⁶ “Emphasizes Opposition to Athletics for Women,” St. Louis Republic, June 24, 1901.

¹⁷ See also “Football, Boxing, Cycling Harmful to Women,” Washington Post, Nov. 20, 1921, 68; Edith E. Moriarty, “As a Woman Thinks,” Tulsa Daily World, July 31, 1920, 6.

¹⁸ “Ban on Boxing of High School Girls,” San Francisco Call, Dec. 28, 1911, 11.

¹⁹ “Size Doesn't Count If You Know Jiu-Jitsu,” Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, July–Dec. 1904, advertiser section, 111.

²⁰ “Boxing to Be a Fad for Women,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 26, 1902, 48; “Boxing Girl Arrives,” Washington Post, Oct. 30, 1904, S4.

²¹ “Girls Take to Boxing,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1915, III1; “Urges Boxing in All Schools as Truancy Cure,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 11, 1920, 17.

²² “Roused to Curb Crime Carnival,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 25, 1906, 1.

²³ “Notice to Highway Men” and “Clever in the Art of Jujutsu,” Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, May 10, 1920.

²⁴ “Fifty Girls of Spokane Train to Whip Mashers,” Washington Post, Dec. 26, 1914, 4.

²⁵ “Girls of Philly Have Boxing Club All of their Own,” San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 17, 1920, 14.

²⁶ “Safe from Attack,” Cosmopolitan, vol. 39, May–October 1905 (New York, 1905)Google Scholar.

²⁷ “If a Bold Man Attacks You, Jiu Jitsu Him,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 20, 1915, C1; “JuJutsu A La Movies,” Philadelphia Evening Ledger, June 17, 1916, amusement section.

²⁸ Skinner, Harry H., Jiu-Jitsu: A Comprehensive and Copiously Illustrated Treatise on the Wonderful Japanese Method of Attack and Self-Defense (New York, 1904), 7Google Scholar.

²⁹ Watts, Emily, The Fine Art of Jujutsu (London, 1906)Google Scholar; Svinth, Joseph R., “The Evolution of Women's Judo, 1900–1945,” InYo: Journal of Alternative Perspectives (Feb. 2001)Google Scholar, http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_svinth_0201.htm (accessed June 16, 2014); Looser; “Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies,” 9.

³⁰ “Woman Grabs Highwayman,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 1905, 1. Ten days later the New York Times reported that Emelie Marten used jiu-jitsu on a man who followed her on her walk home. When he approached and winked at her she did not wait to ask his intentions, instead “she caught the man by the lapel of his coat with one hand, and with the other had seized one wrist, then with a quick twist she threw him.” When the man stood up and tried to speak she put him on the ground again. He did not dare attempt to approach her again but instead ran away as fast as he could. “An Insulter Jiu Jitsued,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 1905, 7.

³¹ Sewell, Jessica Ellen, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–1915 (Minneapolis, 2011), xxiiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³³ “Women Police Grapple with the Masher Evil,” New York Times, Mar. 23, 1924, xxii.

³⁴ “Women Who Find the Streets Safe,” Washington Post, Nov. 5, 1905, SM7.

³⁵ Adler, Jeffrey, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁷ “Athletic Women,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 28, 1889, 6.

³⁸ “Girls Should Be Boxers,” Seattle Star, May 28, 1901, 3.

³⁹ “Self-Defense for Women,” Washington Times, Aug. 29, 1902, 6.

⁴⁰ Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago, 1995), 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watts, Sarah, Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (Chicago, 2003), 46–47Google Scholar; Hoganson, Kristin, Fighting for American Manhoood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ It is important to note that Yamashita taught Roosevelt judo, which was a derivative of Japanese jiu-jitsu created by Jigoro Kano in 1882. Judo concentrated on the philosophical aspects of martial arts training, with an emphasis on the improvement of self and society. Kano also revised many jiu-jitsu techniques to improve upon their effectiveness and efficiency. Most Americans at the time made no distinction between judo and jiu-jitsu. Throughout this article, we refer generically to the Japanese martial arts introduced in America as jiu-jitsu, although sometimes the specific practitioners and techniques may have actually been teaching and sharing the art of judo. Rarely was this distinction made in the accounts from the era.

⁴² Svinth, Joseph R., “Professor Yamashita Goes to Washington.” Martial Arts in the Modern World, ed. Green, Thomas A and Svinth, Joseph R. (Westport, CT, 2003), 52–55Google Scholar; Joseph R. Svinth, “Jiu-Jitsu for Women: Annotations,” http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_sandow's_0800.htm (accessed June 16, 2014); Svinth, “The Evolution of Women's Judo, 1900–1945.”

⁴³ “A Japanese Woman Teaching American Girls,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 1904, 5.

⁴⁴ “A Japanese Woman Teaching American Girls,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 1904, 5.

⁴⁵ Jessie Ames Marshall, ed., Chronicles from the Nineteenth Century: Family Letters of Blanche Butler and Adelbert Ames (privately published, 1957); Clark, Anne Biller, My Dear Mrs. Ames: A Study of the Life of Suffragist, Cartoonist and Birth Control Reformer, Blanche Ames Ames, 1878–1969 (Amherst, MA, 1996)Google Scholar. On the Ames sisters' involvement in the birth control movement, see Baker, Jean, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion (New York, 2011), 213Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ “Boxing Classes for Women,” New York Tribune, Nov. 2, 1922, 14.

⁴⁷ “Smashing Cures Mashing Says Ethel Intropodi; Look at Her,” Tacoma Times, Sept. 9, 1912, 2.

⁴⁸ “Englishmen Learn Japanese Wrestling,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Magazine Section, Apr. 10, 1904, 7C. On the British suffrage movement, see Kent, Susan Kingsley, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914 (New York, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayhall, Laura Nym, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Ruth, Janice E. and Sinclair, Evelyn, Women of the Suffrage Movement (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Smith, Harold L., The British Women's Suffrage Campaign: 1866–1928, 2nd ed. (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

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⁵⁰ “Suffragettes Train for New Campaign,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 7, 1910, 43.

⁵¹ “Jiu-Jitsu for Militants,” New York Times, Aug. 20, 1913.

⁵² “The Suffragette That Knew Jiu-Jitsu,” Punch, or the London Charivari, July 6, 1910, 9.

⁵³ Just as the media in the 1960s and 1970s highlighted portraits and spectacles of radical feminists to explain and dismiss all feminists as aggressive or unfeminine, the press in the 1910s reacted to physically empowered women in a similar way. For media coverage of second-wave feminists, Bradley, Patricia, Mass Media and the Shaping of America Feminism, 1963–1975 (Jackson, MS, 2003)Google Scholar.

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⁵⁵ “British Suffragettes Are Going to Take Up Art of Self-Defense,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Apr. 15, 1911, 14.

⁵⁶ Putnam, Emily James, “Women and Democracy,” The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Opening of Vassar College, October 10 to 13, 1915, A Record (Poughkeepsie, NY, 1916), 113–14Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Adler, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt, 46.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 75; “Wife Beating and the Whipping Post,” San Francisco Sunday Call, Jan. 7, 1906, magazine section. On government involvement in issues related to family violence, see Gordon, Heroes of their Own Lives, and Pleck, Domestic Tyranny.

⁵⁹ Chicago's Protective Agency for Women and Children was founded in 1885 to offer assistance to victims of domestic violence. Adler, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt, 76. See also Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Meyerowitz, Joanne, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago, 1988)Google Scholar; Rosen, Rush, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore, 1983)Google Scholar; McGerr, A Fierce Discontent; Peiss, Cheap Amusements.

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⁶⁴ “A Fad for Fighting,” St. Paul Daily Globe, July 10, 1892, 12.

⁶⁵ “Claims Boxing Cures Girls’ Bad Tempers,” El Paso Herald, Jan. 27, 1915, Sport and Classified Section.

⁶⁶ “Ju-Jitsu as a Husband Tamer: A Suffragette Play with a Moral,” Health & Strength, Apr. 8, 1911, 339, repr. in Journal of Non-Lethal Combatives 1 (Dec. 1999)Google Scholar, http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_healthstrength_0100.htm (accessed June 15, 2014).

⁶⁷ Looser, “Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies,” 11.

⁶⁸ “Ware the Woman with the Wicked Jolt,” San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 6, 1913, 5.

⁶⁹ “Suffrage Here to Stay,” New York Tribune, Nov. 28, 1918, 15.

⁷⁰ “What Chance Has a Burglar against Girls Like These?” San Francisco Chronicle, Standard Magazine section, June 11, 1922, 3. A 1925 article details yet another case of a woman trained in jiu-jitsu who successfully defended herself against a thief. The author used the incident to illustrate why all American girls should learn self-defense and further made the link between self-defense training and the new liberated woman: “All Honor to Miss Howry and other girls who carry the doctrine of equal rights into the practical field of self-defense!” “A Girl's Jiu Jitsu, Washington Post, Sept. 2, 1925, 6.

⁷¹ Louise Le Noir Thomas, “How a Woman Can Protect Herself upon the Street,” Ogden Standard, Magazine Section, Apr. 14, 1917.