Peerless Handcuff Manufacturers

From time to time there has been debate about who actually manufactured Peerless Handcuffs. It turns out that several companies did. Smith & Wesson was certainly the first to do so. The first contract for them to make these handcuffs was dated July 1, 1914 and was for an order of 5,000 pair. S&W continued to be the sole provider with contracts from 1915 through 1917 for an additional 25,000 cuffs. None of these had serial numbers except for one order of 94 cuffs, which had serial numbers of 1 through 94.
World War 1 impacted on S&W's ability to make handcuffs and the government preferred they make firearms. James Milton Gill, the founder and president of Peerless had to find another maker. He did so with the ice skate company of Barney & Berry, located in Springfield, MA as was Peerless. They received a contract for 10,000 cuffs on December 31, 1918. These too were not serial numbered. Barney & Berry received a second contract on November 25, 1919 for 15,000 handcuffs and these may have been numbered. If they were the numbers were likely to be xxx - 15,000 or 15,999. Another contract was issued on May 9, 1922 to Winchester Arms for 15,000 cuffs and these were serial numbered 16,000 through 31,000. On May 29, 1924 Peerless returned to S&W and ordered 15,000 cuffs serial numbered 31,000 through 46,000. Smith and Wesson continued to be the sole provider of cuffs through January 19, 1939 providing an additional 70,000 cuffs serial numbered 61,001 through 123,309.  Again with Word War 2, S&W could not produce cuffs and a tool manufacturer in Springfield named Bemis & Call made cuffs for Peerless with contracts starting on December 5, 1940 through July 22, 1952. These had serial numbers 123,350 - 272,350.

Matt

Interesting, seems like the same game played with all the different vintage bean and tower models of cuffs. I'd like to know how many companies actually made the bean giant cuff. Probably lossed to history as most of these companies were put of business by the peerless innovation.

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Thank you Matt,

This is great information.  I will print this out and keep it handy for when the topic arises again.

Hi Matt,

 The information you posted makes sense as Barney & Berry were bought/taken over by Winchester in 1919. There apparently was some mismanagement within B&B.  I found the following from a skate enthusiast's website: 


"Arthur R. Goodfellow's wonderful 1972 book Wonderful World of Skates; Seventeen Centuries of Skating tells us that "The Barney & Berry company was in business until 1919 when the firm was purchased by the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. of New Haven."


Winchester, after buying the company used "Barney & Berry" as a tradename on various sporting and hunting goods sold in their outlet stores. That is ironic as look how "Winchester" became nothing but a tradename for products sold even to this day that have no actual connection to the firearms' manufacturer.

  --Vince

Thank you Vince, that's interesting.

Matt

My oldest pair of Peerless handcuffs made by Smith & Wesson have a patent date Feb 20 1912.  No serial number.
I believe these to be the second version of Peerless handcuffs,  Groove in jaw & only 1 link.

The story I was told by the president of Peerless:
The swing through handcuffs were actually patented in 1906 by George Butler of Boston MA and the patent was sold to Charles Gill (chief of police in Springfield MA)
Gill was friends of Wesson and that is how the whole thing started.

The patent was for George Carney, not George Butler and it was issued in 1912. There was no Charles Gill, but there was a James Milton Gill, who was President of Springfield Ice and Coal in Springfield. In 1914 he started Peerless Handcuff Company to market Carney's design. He was never Chief of Police in Springfield, but was a member of the Board of Police Commissioners.

Matt

James Milton Gill was the Chairman of the 5-member Police Commission, retiring in 1931.