Modern Self Defense (On the Beat), by R. H. Sigward

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odern and modern... This may have been modern in 1958 when the book came out. ...if it wasn't for the fact that this is bog standard ju jitsu techniques - methods that have some centuries of history prior to the 1950s. "Says nothing about ju jitsu here...", you say? Not on the cover it don't. But in the introduction there's a presentation of the art both from a historical and technical point of view. And further, you don't need many hours of training to recognize many of the techniques here.

Even by searching everywhere on the Net using various powerful search tools I can't find anything about the mysterious R. H. Sigward. Strange... He was probably a police officer, since the book has some references to the police ("On the Beat", drawings of a police badge, and an introduction by one Thomas J. Gibbons - "Police Comissioner, Philadelphia Police Department").

Beats me (pun intended) what this book has to do with the police though. No uniforms, no handcuffs, no arrest techniques, no come-along holds here. What you do find here is self-defense for sivilians. If only the self-defense and ju jitsu methods were any good I'd be quite happy about it thank you. Instead you find the usual mix of sub-standard ju jitsu, including some knife defenses that you'd be a true blue daredevil to attempt in a real situation. Personally I get embarassed seeing something like this attached to the ju jitsu name.

There are lots of photographs - which of course is a good thing. Still, it could be that a stylist would have come in handy here - there were noone present, that's for sure! To say that you have all kinds of clothing being used is a mild understatement... And shorts that looks like underpants...? It doesn't help that there's some sort of short (as in really short) top to top it off (again pun intended). The female model is perfectly well dressed, adding some balance to the picture - a breath of fresh air in this flee-market mayhem.

As if this wasn't all, then you have exponents/models that seem to be bored beyond belief (the old "I'm bored, let's eat something - syndrome"). In short: This is something that I've seen far better, many times over.

You can always get this book through Abebooks. Even though a first issue (like this one here) don't come cheap - you have to spend the dough at something. So why not use them on Philly cops in the "underpants" :-)?

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