The “womanly art of self-defense” and the “God-Man Mystery”

In April 2013, Tony Wolf published a very interesting article on his Bartitsu blog on a series of photographs taken by Percy C. Byron in New York City which depicted “Dr. Latson’s Method of Self Defense”. It appeared at the time that these pictures had never been used or published before and although we know who Dr. Latson and quite possibly the woman who served as a model were, the exact nature of the techniques demonstrated remained unknown.

It does appear that a part of this method was indeed published; most interestingly it was exactly two months after the mysterious death of Dr. Latson. It is not impossible that Ms. Rosenthal chose to publish (in several newspapers) some of the notes from her former lover’s method and thankfully we are now able to learn more about this method which seems to combine jiu-jitsu, calisthenics and possibly some variant of Irish…