I am working on a movie in New Orleans and looking to rent or buy shackles similar these:
They appear to have been on Ebay a while back and it was suggested that I post here in hopes of tracking them down. This is a fairly low budget period film and making them may be prohibitively expensive. Any ideas or information would be appreciated.
Well, when all else fails, go to an original source. What you are trying to depict is what was then known as a "coffle"
You can find the following at a variety of sites on the internet that host really old books and such for which the copyrights have expired or never existed in the first place.
Google this book title:
Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War.
Yeah, folks back then liked to give really long titles to their books. And the war referred to was what we now call the War of 1812.
Anyway. Therein you will find this account of Mr. Ball's method of being secured in a slave coffle in Maryland before being marched to South Carolina for sale around the year 1810:
"My new master, whose name I did not hear, took me that same day across the Patuxent [River], where I joined fifty-one other slaves, whom he had bought in Maryland. Thirty-two of these were men, and nineteen were women. The women were merely tied together with a rope, about the size of a bed cord, which was tied like a halter round the neck of each; but the men, of whom I was the stoutest and strongest, were very differently caparisoned. A strong iron collar was closely fitted by means of a padlock round each of our necks. A chain of iron, about a hundred feet in length, was passed through the hasp of each padlock, except at the two ends, where the hasps of the padlocks passed through a link of the chain. In addition to this, we were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and bolts, with a short chain, about a foot long, uniting the handcuffs and their wearers in pairs. In this manner we were chained alternately by the right and left hand; and the poor man, to whom I was thus ironed, wept like an infant when the blacksmith, with his heavy hammer, fastened the ends of the bolts that kept the staples from slipping from our arms."
Kindly note one simple, albeit awful, fact: no ankle restraints.
It also seems the reference to "staples and bolts" is what we now call a bilbo.
Indeed, the hinged cap shackle thingys utilizing padlocks about the ankles would look quite impressive in a dramatization regarding the horrors of slavery.
But such would not be historically correct for the simple reason that you can't walk properly with fetters. And when you consider it, the neck collar thing is truly terrible. And much easier to film. Plus, the audience can relate faces to the chains, rather than a bunch of unidentifiable feet.
