Mark Lyons O--O Cuffs 24 Aug 2024
#28It has been a while since we talked about George Brindamour and his cuffs. (George Brown 1870 - 1950)
I was supposed to post a picture of a very rare cuff that Brindamour named the "Canadian Cuff" (picture found in this blog), and time got the best of me. Well, here it is.
I was very happy to have received it a while ago. If it is indeed a 3rd model Phelps, I am pleased to have model 1, 2 and now 3.
I have posted a picture of every other known cuff and will do it again here.
Brindamour collection
A horrible close up pic.
Houdini Radner Auction
Unknown --Hill Collection?
Some history;
George Brindamour, was of French Canadian ancestry and called Woonsocket his home at that time. Like so many of his contemporaneous entertainers in an age long before television, in order to make a living in this line of work, you had to be on the road performing almost constantly. Brindamour prided himself especially on his escape artist’s ability. He called himself the “Handcuff King” and was perceived by the Great Houdini to be such a threat to his supremacy in this particular arena of entertainment that Houdini regularly referred to the dashing and debonair Amazing Brindamour as nothing more than “a cross-dressing fancy dancer.”
In each city or town where Brindamour set up his traveling road show, he started off with a bang – a big, free public spectacle that would excite the populace and get some real buzz going in the local daily newspapers, which would, in turn, guarantee his shows ran to packed houses. In some places, he would, with great pomp and circumstance, be handcuffed, manacled and tossed into a local lake or river, always to the murmurs and gasps of the assembled audience. He’d pop up out of the water in no time flat, free of all encumbrances. Occasionally, he’d be handcuffed and sealed into a good sturdy pine box and again would free himself in the blink of an eye. Houdini, too, would perform grand stunts like this, as he set up shop in a community and the two got to a point where they’d try to outdo each other.
In North Kingstown, The Amazing Professor Brindamour was using a new stunt to stir up interest, something the Great Houdini hadn’t done yet! As you can see by the accompanying publicity photo, Brindamour would have himself locked up in the local town’s jailhouse cell, chained spread eagle to the bars in a manner that would make it seemingly impossible to escape.
His audience would wait outside in anticipation to see what might happen. Here in North Kingstown, the jailhouse was in the basement of Town Hall. The local paper at the time, the Wickford Standard, reported in its Jan. 19, 1900 edition that “the door of the cell was then securely locked, then another strong iron grated door in the corridor was locked which made it a seemingly impossible feat for the Professor to escape ...
n the short space of 2 minutes and 20 seconds, the professor advanced smilingly into the room and handed the handcuffs to the audience to be examined. The corridor door and cell were also examined and found to be intact. It was certainly a mysterious feat and was deserving of the vociferous applause which he received.”
Brindamour married his assistant Helen Hilliard, known as Nille (1872 - 1950).
