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Handcuffs in Saxony - about 1870

12 visible archived posts · 12 preserved total · topic ID 2074

Jenny Florstedt 04 Jun 2007

1869 wird Karl May nach einer Reihe von Diebstählen und Hochstapeleien verhaftet. Bei einem Lokaltermin gelingt ihm aber die Flucht.
Nach späteren Aussagen des begleitenden Polizisten "zerbrach" er die
"eiserne Brezel mit einem Ruck".
Welche Handfesseln waren um 1870 in Sachsen (Mittweida) gebräuchlich?
Und ich würde gern wissen, wie man eine solche Handfessel "zerbrechen" kann.

In 1869 the german author Karl May (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May) was arrested after a lot of impostures.
Karl May had to visit the scenes of the crime but he managed to absquatulate. The accompanying police-man telled later, May has breaked the iron handcuff with a jerk (zerbrach die eiserne Bretze mit einem Ruck).
I want to know: what kind of handcuffs were used in Saxony about 1870?
And how is it possible to break them?

Thank a lot!

Jenny

michael griffin 04 Jun 2007

Hi: just wild guess here. Is it possible that he just slammed them on a hard edge and let inertia open them? can do with a lot of lock s of the time

Steve Santini 04 Jun 2007

Depending on how they were forged or cast it is possible to crack or break certain metals that either have imperfections in the material or were tempered improperly during manufacture.

Santini www.thedarkmaster.com

Atame.Muc 05 Jun 2007

My guess is that they used a Darby on Karl May and that he did not really break the restraint but slammed it on a hard ground, so that the locking bolts where pushed down and released the bows for a very short moment, which could be used to open the bows by pressing the wrists against the tubes. As far as I know Houdini used this method to show English authorities how unsafe a Darby is.

Best regards,
Guenter

axylon 05 Jun 2007

has anyone really slammed-open standard Hiatt cuffs? I had heard that it was only possible if the springs were gaffed to be weak.

Dorson 05 Jun 2007

Yes, it can be done Andrew, I have done it with an old pair of Thompson's, old Hiatts, and new Hiatts(1960-70's). Houdini used to strape a flat piece of lead to his leg if my memory serves me to give a surface to hit and absorb some of the energy and sound of the impact. With my Thompson's, I used to do a kind of magic act where I pretended to fall and hit the floor and cuffs would fly open.

-Dorson

Franklin 05 Jun 2007

Before dealing with the conclusions on how to defeat the restraint, answer the first question:

What sort of restraints were in use in Saxony in 1870?

I think that is great question. I have no answer. But I would like to know what was used in Saxony.

Of course, there are probably very few who even know about Saxony.

Joe Lauher 05 Jun 2007

This is a good question. I have a pretty good idea of what kind of restraints were used in England during the 19th century, but I have no good picture of what was going on in Germany.

I have one pair of German Darby cuffs that I definitely can say were from the 1870s era. They were made by the sword firm W.R. Kirshbaum of Solingen. The company went out of existance 1883 when it merged to form Weyersberg, Kirschbaum & Cie.

What other cuffs do we know were made and used in Germany in the 19th century?
When were Stotz cuff first made?

Joe

Steve Santini 05 Jun 2007

Probably Berliner style cuffs were in limited existance.

So were manacles that fastened with padlocks.

I have a set of very old, Medieval actually, German figure 8 handcuffs that fastened with a padlock.

These are pictured in the article I did on my visit to the Kriminal Justice Museum in Rottenburg that appeared in the first Annual.

Santini

holstcollection 05 Jun 2007

#10

Hello Jenny,

As you understand, it's impossible to tell what handcuffs they used in 1870 since there were several possible handcuffs. There even might have been handcuffs we don't even know about.
Joe Lauher refers to the Stotz handcuffs which is one of the possible models. You might be interested to see what a German handcuff from that time look like, please see picture below.

Regards,

Lars Holst

www.holstcollection.com

Jenny Florstedt 06 Jun 2007

#11

I thank you very much.

I want to write a small article about the incident.
But it's not possible to explain the "disruption", because we do not know, which handcuffs are used? Is it right? So it seems to be a dead-end.

Jenny

Franklin 06 Jun 2007

#12

Hi Jenny:

Don't give up on your article simply because you can't verify all the minor details. The fact he "broke his irons" and escaped seems to add a nice touch of glamor and mystery to the incident. After 130 years, who really knows what happened? What matters is that something did happen, so why not write about?

As my father told me as a kid: don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story unless you're in court. If the nature of your proposed article permits, why not speculate a bit? Is it a possibility that the police officer was actually sympathetic to Herr May and assisted him in his escape, coming up with this rather ridiculous sounding excuse to cover up his complicity? Who knows? The unkown can often be more entertaining and captivating than reality.

Oh, and thanks very much for adding a new word to my vocabulary: absquatulate. I love it.

Franklin