Edward William Barton-Wright

Edward William Barton-Wright CE, FRSA, MJS (member of the Japan Society) (8 November 186013 September 1951) was an English entrepreneur specialising in both self defence training and physical therapy. He is remembered today as one of the first Europeans to both learn and teach Japanese martial arts and as a pioneer of the concept of hybrid martial arts. Early life He was born Edward William Wright on 8 November 1860 in Bangalore, Madras, India. E.W. Wright was educated at Dedham Grammar School, Essex, at Lens, Pas-de-Calais in France, and in Germany. He then worked as a clerk for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway before embarking on a career as a civil and mining engineer. He worked as manager for his father's mining interests based near Odemira in the Alentejo region of Portugal, from 1886 to 1892, without success. In April 1892 he legally assumed the name Edward William Barton-Wright. Returning to England in 1892, he promoted a company, Barton Wright Ltd., antimony specialists, at Millwall, London, but was declared personally bankrupt for the first time the following year. He then worked for mining companies in Egypt and the Straits Settlements (modern day Malaysia and Singapore). Establishing Bartitsu In a 1950 interview Barton-Wright professed to having had a "lifelong interest in the arts of self defence" and earlier interviews indicated that he had studied various fighting systems during his travels as a young man. While working as an antimony smelting specialist for the E.H. Hunter Company in Kobe, Japan (c. 1895–1898), Barton-Wright studied jujutsu in at least two styles, including the Shinden Fudo Ryū in Kobe and Kodokan judo in Tokyo.