Pepperboxes?

You nitpickers have made me sorry I posted the photos of my little Sharps pistol.

Notice I did not say either pepperbox or derringer.

I hope somebody at least looked at the two videos I posted because they were full of all kinds of interesting information about pepperboxes.

Replicas of my little Sharps pistol were imported by Navy Arms at one point, however they were chambered for 22 Long Rifle, not 22 Short like mine is.
 
"pepperbox in which the barrels didn't revolve."
Think about it.
Technically, pepperbox barrels revolve- just like turning a pepper mill. That's why they are called pepperboxes.
 
Technically, pepperbox barrels revolve- just like turning a pepper mill. That's why they are called pepperboxes
Click to expand...
Most do, but some do not.

Flayderman's guide is but one of many authoritative sources that have been describing the Sharps and Sharp & Hankins pistols as a "pepperboxes" for many years. The Remington Eliot pistol was similarly described, and its barrels did not revolve.

Norm Flayderman acknowledges that there is controversy about the subject, and he characterizes those who insist the pepperbox barrels must rotate as "hard liners".

The multi-barrelled pistols with revolving barrels predators the pepper milll by centuries. No one seems to know just how the pistol became to be so called, but in the early 1960s, Mark Twain wrote this:

"He wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a 'pepper-box'. "​

The pepper mill was invented by Peugeot in 1874.

Before that, pepper was ground in the kitchen in a mortar and pestle, and put on the table in a pepper box that required a spoon. Then, still some centuries before Peugeot's invention, pepper dispensers with multiple holes replaced the open boxes.

Regardless, the very common, long use, by authoritative sources, of the term "pepperbox" to describe the Sharps should establish it as a proper term.
 
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