SHERLOCK Holmes and the Mystery of the Jujitsu Suffragette will be astounding visitors to a Northwich museum this month.

Weaver Hall Museum and Workhouse, in London Road, will be unfolding the stories of a Victorian martial artist who inspired the great fictional detective and the woman who was one of his first pupils.

When Sherlock Holmes struggled with his arch enemy Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls he uses the martial art of ‘Baritsu’ for his escape.

This, like the slow-motion fight sequences in the recent Sherlock Holmes movies, was inspired by the very real Victorian martial-art of Bartitsu.

Its creator, Edward Barton-Wright studied Jujutsu while working in Japan.

When he returned to England in 1898 he combined this with English boxing, French stick fighting and Savate, a type of kickboxing favoured by French sailors, to create one of the first modern martial arts.

Following Barton-Wright’s instruction a man would be ready to defend himself using whatever he had to hand, from his coat to a bicycle.

One of his first pupils was a woman called Edith Garrud and in 1907 she appeared in an early martial arts film, Ju-jutsu Downs the Footpads.

Garrud started to run classes for women but she is most remembered for training ‘The Bodyguard’, a unit of 30 militant Suffragettes who fought in widely reported hand-to-hand skirmishes with the police.

Weaver Hall Museum and Workhouse will tell the stories of Barton-Wright and Garrud, complete with physical demonstrations, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday, January 26.