Interesting box of ammo

Deadly killer....

According to historical anecdotes, (which you can believe, or not) the .41 RF derringer was one of the most feared weapons of its day. It was the preferred arm of the river boat gamblers and others who did not pack a full size handgun.

It was widely feared, because it was (justifiably) regarded as a sure killer. NOT a sure stopper, although likely countless fights were stopped at the sight of that gun.

The reason it was a deadly killer was the low power of the round, the outside lubricated bullet, and the state of medicine at the time.

The .41 RF has about enough power to go "half way through a man". Death from being (torso) shot with the .41 was almost certain, although it might take a couple weeks or so, with such treatment as was possible at the time. The bullet lube was somewhat sticky, and often ammo was carried in a pocket, so the bullet carried dirt, and small foreign objects with it, and stayed in the body. Death from infection was a near certainty.

With the bigger, more powerful rounds (.44, .45) the bullets often completely penetrated the body. When this happened, docs basically "plugged the leaks", and hoped for the best. If the bullet didn't kill you outright, you had basically a 50/50 chance for survival. With the .41 bullet inside you, it was slim, and none, and slim wasn't around much...

Many people in the era knew what would happen, if not why, so the .41RF was a feared gun to face, for those who knew most.
 
I've always looked at that claim as being more than a little bit suspicious, 44.

Why?

Because there were a TON of small, underpowered, cartridges with externally lubricated bullets that used sticky, tallow-derived lubes, that were packaged in very popular pocket guns.

Even many of the powerhouse cartridges of the day, such as the .44 S&W American or the .44 Colt, both of which gained fair popularity, used externally lubricated bullets.

Yet it's only the .41 SR that seems to have this fearsome reputation as the bringer of plagues...

That said, most doctors with even a modicum of surgical skill could do a fairly good job of removing a deeply lodged bullet.

And by the time a lot of these guns were around, they even had anesthetics to make it a lot more pleasant.
 
Mike, I agree with you on a number of points. Lots of rounds in those days were about the same as the "deadly" .41RF. Nearly all the early heel type bullets were outside lubricated. And a good doctor did have a decent chance at removing a bullet.

BUT

What we remember, and what gets into legend status is only part of the picture. Sharps and Hawken rifles got tremendous reputations, but they weren't the only guns around and in widespread use in their day. They got the name, and it stuck in our history. I think the legend of the .41s deadliness is likely the same thing. And, like most other legends, probably embellished over time.

Kind of like how "the .45 will knock a man down, even if he's just hit in the little finger." We know the facts, but legends like this still persist.

Good docs do the best they can. But sometimes even their best isn't good enough. Didn't we have a president who was actually killed by the docs trying to find and remove a bullet?
 
I've heard the infection tale before and in another context. My daughter bought me a book about dueling culture. One fear was that crap on your clothes would be pushed into the wound - causing infection.

The lead ball wasn't an infection danger. One participant decided to duel naked so that if he were hit, removing the lead ball would be easy and he would have less chance of infection. The other gentleman refused to duel with such a lewd opponent.
 
I recall one of the several sea stories of the Napoleonic Wars, the hero puts on a clean silk shirt and stockings to minimize the risk from cloth driven into a wound.

While the .41 RF gets the ink, I figure that about anything would do.

Before WWII, a penetrating wound combined with the criminal classes' reluctance to promptly seek medical care and the lack of antibiotics could prove deadly.
 
No, the lead ball isn't an infection danger. It is the stuff on your clothes and on the bullet. We all know that, it was probably even realized back then.

Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World has an interesting scene regarding exactly that where the ship's doctor is wounded accidentally.

The doctor's assistant tells Russel Crowe's character that "the bullet took in a bit of shirt with it. If it's not removed, it will fester..."

"Legends" such as this and the Sharps and Hawkins rifles often arose well after the heyday of such items. Often legends have their basis in fact, but legends are, by their very nature, overblown.


And yes, James Garfield was the President you're thinking of. The bullet lodged behind his pancreas, but the doctors, even with probes, couldn't locate it. It's thought that the incessant probing was the cause of the infection that eventually killed Garfield. When he was autopsied after his death the bullet was found enclosed in tissue cyst and would have probably been harmless had Garfield survived.
 
Jim Watson said:
I recall one of the several sea stories of the Napoleonic Wars, the hero puts on a clean silk shirt and stockings to minimize the risk from cloth driven into a wound.
Click to expand...

I though the hero put on a red shirt so the crew wouldn't see him bleed and brown pants so they wouldn't see him, uh, get dirty... :)
 
The old joke (as I heard it) went like this...

Hitler is planning a visit to the Eastern Front, and pondering what uniforms he should take. His valet tell him "when Napoleon visited the front, he wore a red uniform, so that if he was wounded, the troops would not see the blood and lose heart".

Der Fuehrer pauses a moment, then orders, "Fine! Pack my brown uniform pants!"

:D

(which, of course has nothing to do with the .41RF, but I just couldn't resist);)
 
Well, the Chinese and other Asians considered the proper undergarment for war to be a thick, loose silken shirt.

Apparently arrows would tend to drive the shirt into the wound, but wouldn't penetrate it, making the wound both cleaner and the arrow easier to remove.
 
This is purely speculative on my part, but part of the .41RF's reputation might come from who carried them. I'll try to word this as tastefully as I can, but this still might be a bit descriptive for the squeamish.

Apparently, Remington Model 95's were quite popular among practitioners of the "oldest profession" with many such ladies carrying their guns tucked in a garter. Considering that the gun and its ammunition, if carried in this manner, would be quite close to a portal for any number of, shall we say, professionally acquired pathogens, I could see where the risk of some very nasty infections might be increased if shot with such a gun.

It is also worthy of mention that many cartridges which we consider anemic or underpowered today were considered perfectly adequate in the 19th Century. By and large, only soldiers and/or cowboys carried large caliber handguns with private citizens and big city police being quite content with small calibers like .32 S&W Long, .41 RF, or .31 and .36 caliber percussion revolvers. The larger .44's and .45's were primarily valued not because smaller calibers were considered inadequate for people, but because the larger calibers could more reliably put down a large animal like a horse or steer which would have certainly been an important consideration for a cavalryman or cowboy.
 
Hopkins and Allen made single shot rifles in 41 caliber. About a year ago at Cabelas, some one was selling a collection of 4. I remember this because one was a 22 rimfire, I was aware of the 32 rimfire and the 44 rimfire,but the 41 rimfire was new to me.
 
It's always been my personal theory that most cowboys didn't own a large caliber Colt, S&W or one of the other makes.

I'm thinking that most of them actually owned a small break top or solid frame in .32 or .38 as their "cowboy gun."

The cost of a Colt SAA or like handgun would have been prohibitive for a cowboy, at fully a month's, or even two's, wages.

That's money that I suspect they would have first and foremost spent on a rifle, which would have been far more useful to them in the long run.

I have my Great Grandfather's "cowboy gun," from when he was a working cowboy in the Dakotas in the 1880s and 1890s...

It's a Harrington & Richardson .32 S&W breaktop.

In his writing he also made reference to having a rifle, but we don't know what it was, or where it got to. Probably sold to a fellow cowboy when he moved east in the early 1900s.
 
It's always been my personal theory that most cowboys didn't own a large caliber Colt, S&W or one of the other makes.

I'm thinking that most of them actually owned a small break top or solid frame in .32 or .38 as their "cowboy gun."

The cost of a Colt SAA or like handgun would have been prohibitive for a cowboy, at fully a month's, or even two's, wages.
Click to expand...

That's a good point. A few years ago I looked through a reprint of the 1901 Sears Catalog and noticed that a large revolver like a Colt or S&W cost $10 or more while a small handgun like a derringer, H&R, or Iver Johnson revolver usually cost $2 or less (about the same as an inexpensive pocket watch).

The cost of "name brand" guns like Colt, S&W, and Remington likely also led to the continuing popularity of percussion revolvers like the Colt 1851 Navy, 1860 Army, and Remington New Army long after they were technologically obsolete. I would imagine that a Civil War surplus percussion revolver could have been purchased quite inexpensively during the 1870's and 1880's.
 
Mike -

Here are the rest of those pictures you wanted to see... note the mention of Remington on the first one.

photo23_zps0eabbe33.jpg


photo24_zpse4141aa7.jpg


photo25_zpsab488cab.jpg
 
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Excellent.

Pretty much exactly what I expected to see. I'll stick with my opinion that that box of ammo was manfactured sometime between 1933 and 1935.

It's not often that a box of ammo can be dated to within a span of just a couple of years.
 
"Thanks Mike, with the Dupont logo on the box it might even rule out 1933."

I'm trying to find some more specific information on it, but I seem to recall the deal being finalized in the spring or early summer, 1933.

As the companies worked up towards finalization, things like logos, printing on the boxes, advertising, etc., all would have been prepared so that pretty much from day 1 new ammo would have been packaged in the appropriate boxes.

It's even likely that production with the new logos would have started before the "it's now official" day, and would have been warehoused to wait for shipment until then.
 
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