Pierre Vigny
French instructor of stick and umbrella defence, chief instructor of the Bartitsu Club in London and founder of self-defence schools in London and Geneva.
Quick Facts
United KingdomBiography
Pierre Vigny was born on 25 March 1866 in Taninges, in the Haute-Savoie department of France. He is known as the chief instructor of the Bartitsu Club in London, led by Edward William Barton-Wright, and as a teacher of stick and umbrella defence.
In 1886 he joined the 2nd regiment of French artillery in Grenoble and left the army in 1898. That same year he founded a school of fencing and self-defence in Geneva. His method of stick and umbrella defence drew on French savate and canne. We have not been able to verify in the sources who taught him these disciplines himself.
At the Bartitsu Club he taught under Barton-Wright's direction. In 1901 Pearson's Magazine published the articles "Self Defence with a Walking Stick", which Barton-Wright wrote based on his method. In 1903 he opened his own self-defence academy in London at 18 Berner Street, and in 1912 he founded another self-defence school in Geneva. His wife Marguerite, née Sanderson, assisted him as an instructor and developed techniques of self-defence with an umbrella.
He died on 22 November 1943 in Nyon, Switzerland, at the age of 77.