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Brum’s Not So Secret Weapon
Jim Hipkiss was hidden away in the depths of the Wrestling Heritage A-Z for years, noted as a short lived 1930s wrestler with a background in judo. Whilst that turned out to be true we found there was much more to his story after author Gary Harper got in touch. He told us, “Jim Hipkiss was pretty much responsible for introducing judo and Ju–Jitsu to the midlands ,but so little is written about him in the Ju Jitsu histories as it’s all about London and Liverpool.“
James Hipkiss was born in the Aston district of Birmingham on 20th June, 1897, the son of James and Jane, both ammunition workers. In 1918 he married Elizabeth Norton, and together they parented three children.
He was a renowned ju-jitsu exponent who turned to wrestling in the 1930s to earn a bit of money and could be found on wrestling bills between 1934 and 1938. Our earliest discovery was seven years earlier when Jim won the British Ju-Jitsu championship by defeating Alf Morgan at the British Legion Institute in London on 16th March, 1927.His interest in Ju-Jitsu had begun in his mid teens when little was known about the Japanese art of self defence in Britain. Two men in Birmingham who did know the sport were George Faulkner and Arnold Peters, and the three men began training together in Sutton Park, a few miles north of Birmingham centre. Faulkner had taken part in both the Greco Roman and freestyle competitions of the lightweight class of the 1908 Olympics.To further his expertise Jim went to London where he was instructed by Yukio Tani at the Japanese Club, the Budo Kwai.
In December, 1928, three years after the launch of the British Ju-Jitsu Society in Coventry, with 600 members within eighteen months, the British Ju-Jitsu School opened in Church Street, Birmingham, with Head Instructor Jim Hipkiss.
In April, 1929 he won the Midland Counties amateur lightweight wrestling championship, which was held at the Nottingham Police Athletic Club. In the years to follow Jim Hipkiss appeared regularly in both Ju-Jitsu and catch-as-catch-can exhibitions, and on at least one occasion, a charity show he had organised in aid of Birmingham Hospital, he took part in a boxer v Ju-Jitsu contest. He was dedicated to furthering the advance of Ju-Jitsu in the midlands, with demonstrations, talks and even a weekly series for children on the BBC Radio Midland Service.
All of this must have put Jim in a strong position to take advantage of the burgeoning professional wrestling scene. Our first discovery is of a May, 1934, contest with Johanffeson in West Bromwich. With both men wearing judo jackets and using wrestling rules it took Hipkiss less than eight minutes to extract two submissions from Johanfesson. Johanfesson was a veteran from the Music Hall challenges of the early twentieth centuries and would have been well placed to offer advice to Jim regarding the wrestling business. Jim continued professional wrestling until 1938. Opponents included Stan Stone, Costas Astreos and Steve Szalay.
Away from wrestling Jim and his pupils were demonstrating ju jitsu around the midlands and he was physical training instructor for Birmingham City Football Club and the Warwickshire County Cricket Club.
With the outbreak of war Jim was appointed the instructor of Birmingham’s Home Guard. He wrote a booklet, “Unarmed Combat,” price two shillings (ten pence) explaining personal defence against armed and unarmed assailants, which became a Home Guard manual. In 1941 he was invited to the House of Commons to give a demonstration of unarmed combat, no doubt the first time guns, knives and tommy guns had been seized in Parliament.
Following retirement from all forms of combat in 1946 James qualified as an osteopath and opened up his own business, to be joined later by his daughter and two sons. He was to become President of the Midland Osteopathic Association and Vice President of Osteopathic Association of Great Britain.
James Hipkiss died on 26th April, 1979. Following his death a letter was published in the Birmingham Evening Mail “He will be missed by many grateful patients including myself. He was indeed a kind, gentle man.”
Page added 21/04/2024
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