Certain Characteristics

Over the South, derringer suppliers had a brisk sales day. From Houston, Texas, came specimens of the pocket blasters having at least two features which many collectors consider “characteristic.” First, is the presence of a rather rounded and pronounced schnabel fore-end tip, more rounded than that of true derringers, yet definitely present, unlike the Bitterlich type which seem to have little or none. Less definitely characteristic is the barrel wedge escutcheon of nickel silver, fastened by two side screws finished flush with the plate and stock. Pineapple finials are rare on these, which are more commonly ovaled. Genuine derringer escutcheons of course are often pineapple-shaped in their ends, and usually set in with wire brads soldered to the backs, instead of a visible screw or pin.
A handsome pair of G. Erichson, Houston, derringers in the Pugsley collection show the “Houston schnabel” as well as screw-fastened escutcheons. The shape of the escutcheon is more curved around the

Pistols by Henry Deringer were sold in pairs. Some were cased with mould, flask, loading rod, but often they were carried in chamois bags in the pocket, or loose and ready to go. Specimens shown from C. C. Snook, Richmond, Va. collection are like new and unmarked except for numbers 6 and 7 stamped under barrels and in fore-end. Two dealers consider them unmarked but genuine Philadelphia Deringers. Possibility is, that gunmaker did not mark some guns shipped South after 1860 to avoid giving evidence he was trafficking with Secession States.

screws than the plain ovals on an E. Schmidt, Houston, derringer in the Metzger collection at Texas A & M College.
Who actually made these pistols is still in doubt, but the Erichson pair offer a “style suggestion.” This exists in the arbitrary profile of the hammers, flattened on their outter sides and shaped with a sort of “plateau” or ridge, nicely convexed along the edges and smoothly faired into the form of the hammer head and spur. The hammer nose which drops over the cone is quite long, shrouding the cone to protect the finish from cap-flash. On top of the hammer nose is a functionless style point, a little curved pad or curlicue which is a vestigial form of the lip that on an earlier pistol might have been a “dolphin hammer.”
The details are exactly like their counterparts on a 10-gauge W. Greener “warranted Indestructible By Gunpowder” double barreled shotgun in the author’s collection, the barrels of which are dated “1850.” Regardless of the absence or presence of British proof marks, it would appear that some Southern derringers were of predominantly Birmingham, England, make. Testimony of one of Birmingham’s principal gunmakers before a Parliamentary committee about 1854
indicates that up to the mid-century at least 95 per cent of all commercial or civilian gun locks consumed in the United States had been made and exported by British shops. As research continues, even more ties between the Southern derringers and British makers may be found. The Erichson pistols with their hammer forms do not mean that Greener made them; rather, that both had hammers and, probably, locks from the same (as yet unidentified) Birmingham lock maker.
Belgium in the old days apparentiy made a few of the worthy Henry Deringer’s competitive imitation pistols. The presence of the oval ELG proof stamp on the bottom of the barrel, hidden when stocked up, suggests that this mark was placed out of the way so the pistol could be sold as a genuine Deringer arm. This mark was seen by me on a “Lincoln-sized” pistol, otherwise plainly finished, unmarked, and apparently in new condition, which was examined nearly 20 years ago before the present replica business had begun. I have always viewed this specimen, whereabouts unknown now, as a “genuine” old pistol of the imitation Deringer breed. A Liege revolver maker, J. Berenger, also made “Deringer” pistols: the name coincidence may have inspired him as a copyist.

Three Memphis “derringers” by Schneider & Co., who also proposed to make Colt-type revolvers, reveal certain style points often found in Southern derringers. Big pistol is ordinary style though large size; middle has spur trigger with oddly curved lockplate and split nut on hammer. Flat butt is rare but characteristic. Bottom pistol has stubby ramrod. Octagon barrels also are “tip off” to Southern origins of a derringer pistol. Philadelphia Deringer pistols had rounded barrels flatted on top.

The assassin, John Wilkes Booth. The martyred President, Abraham Lincoln.

Derringer pistol used in the assassination of Lincoln,

The tall man slumped forward, his head sagging upon his breast, the tension in his mind suddenly ended by the smashing trauma of the small lead ball from a Derringer pistol which had entered his skull at the hairline. Labored breathing and a trace of brain oozing from the hardly noticeable point of entrance were the only signs he was still living.
Below, the theater audience wondered if this was some strange part of the play, for, on the stage, limping from the pain of his twisted foot stood a man whom they all knew, the celebrated thespian, John Wilkes Booth. He brandished a knife; called “bowie” by the press it was in actuality a Rio Grande Camp Knife with spear-point blade instead of clipped blade like the true bowie style. His ringing shout, “Sic semper tyrannis,” still seemed to hang in the thick theater air. It was recognized as the motto of the State of Virginia by many, but a few translated it literally, and gradually a horrible surmise arose in the crowd: The President is dead.
To horse, then hooves clattering on the cobbles in the alley behind Ford’s Theater, and away into the night. The chase was on. Puzzle upon mystery mounted in the wake of the event, in the accumulation of evidence. Why was the door to the President’s box unguarded? Why had General Grant stayed away? What was the strange connection between the events of that terrible April night and the strange and ruthless ambitions of Secretary Edwin M. Stanton? But most people overlooked the obvious: that Booth’s handsome visage with its drooping mustaches was his free ticket to any performance, his passport back stage in virtually any theater in America. No one could anticipate that he would call upon a tiny single-shot pistol of Henry Deringer to do a deed that, strangely, gave him a more positive, though hated, immortality than his stage career

The .44 caliber Colt pistol carried by Booth.

The .36 caliber Colt carried by Booth.

Right: Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., where the President was shot. Now a museum. Below: Right, pocket knife found on Booth when shot in Garrett’s barn. Left, dagger used by Booth to stab Maj. Rathbone.

had done. And as for the gaunt tired man with the rough-hewn face and the polished mind: was he truly a tyrant to thus perish? Many persons, in Government and out, thought so; surely he had usurped vast power through his exercise of executive prerogative and singlehanded control of people and events. But was this bad? Historians still cannot unravel the answer in the light of a hundred years of time.
From the theater, Booth fled into Maryland. He sought sanctuary, was given medical aid, eventually was trapped in a blazing barn. One report says he took his own life, another gives Sergeant Boston Corbett the dubious honor, a distinction which haunted the bluecoated noncom to his grave. All that now remain as relics from this dazzling moment in history are some guns, some knives, the testimony of witnesses who contradicted themselves with every paragraph, a diary mysteriously stripped of vital entries.
Today, Ford’s Theater is a museum, a sober monument to this black night in America’s growing up. There is The Pistol: inert, potentially defective with its broken hammer cap screw and split stock. There are Spencer carbines, the carbine Secretary Stanton refused to see tested on the day President Lincoln remarked, “They do pretty much as they have a mind to, over at the War Office.” Was ever a truer word spoken in jest? There are two Colt pistols: a .44 1860 Army No. 20407 with four-screw frame, and a .36 1851 Navy No. 111685. The knives are there, too: the big 9 Vi-inch long Rio Grande Camp Knife, made by Wm. Jackson & Co., Sheaf Island Works, Sheffield, England, and the little gentleman’s folding blade pocket knife, found on Booth’s body in Garrett’s barn. And there lingers on, too, the question posed by Booth when
he uttered his cry as he jumped from the President’s box onto the Ford’s Theater stage: how much power must a man assume, before a madman assumes he is mad? Sic semper tyrannis? It is a sobering instruction from history.