Florence LeMar
Florence "Flossie" LeMar was the stage name of Florence Gardiner, an athlete and entertainer who toured throughout New Zealand and Australia during the early years of the 1910s.
Little is known of Florence's early life, except that she had been born either in New Zealand's South Island or in Australia circa 1885. She spent her formative years in New Zealand and showed special prowess in athletics, becoming both a champion swimmer and skater during her teen years.
By 1913 she had married Joe Gardiner, an expatriate Englishman who worked as a professional wrestler. Joe is believed to have coached Florence in the skills of jujutsu, which he may have learned while in England. The two then developed a theatrical performance in which Florence delivered a lecture on the benefits of jujitsu as a means of self defence and physical culture, especially for women and children, followed by a series of skits in which she demonstrated a variety of jujitsu techniques against Joe, who played the role of the attacker. Described as being "a refined Vaudeville novelty for all the family", the act toured music halls and variety stages throughout Australasia.
In 1913 the couple either wrote, or had ghost-written, a book entitled The Life and Adventures of Miss Florence LeMar, the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl. Essentially similar to their stage act, the book consisted of a polemic essay on the benefits of jujitsu for women, an exposition of self-defence techniques and a series of tall tales about Florence's jujitsu victories against a selection of desperate characters in exotic locations including London and New York.
It is believed that Florence and Joe had divorced by the early 1920s. Florence appears to have continued to work in show-business for a time, and also served as a jujitsu instructor for the New Zealand police force. Much later in life, she sold confectionery in movie theatres.
Popular culture
Florence LeMar was the subject of the popular play The Hooligan and the Lady, which premiered during the 2011 New Zealand Fringe Festival.
She is depicted as a member of a secret society of bodyguards protecting the leaders of the radical suffragettes in the graphic novel trilogy Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons (2015).
External links
References
Coney, Sandra Stroppy Sheilas and Gutsy Girls: New Zealand women of dash and daring Tandem House, New Zealand, 1998, ISBN 1-877178-29-2
Gardiner, Joe and LeMar, Florence The Life and Adventures of Miss Florence LeMar, the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl, privately published by the authors in Wellington, New Zealand, 1913.