![]() Modern dictionaries define “knuckledusters” and “brass knuckles” as the same thing. Reid had begun developing the My Friend knuckleduster at his New York factory, and at the end of 1865 he received a patent for it. 32-caliber rimfire revolvers, including some 1,200 that could be used as either cap-and-ball or cartridge revolvers that technically didn’t infringe on the Smith & Wesson/ Rollin White cartridge revolver patents.ĭoctors diagnosed Reid’s 9- year-old daughter, Annie, with an unnamed lung disease and advised him to move her to an environment with “cleaner air.” So in 1864 Reid moved 100 miles north to the village of Catskill in the Catskill Mountains, bought an old gristmill and for the next three years operated the mill while also setting it up as his new gun factory. And from 1861 to 1865 Reid produced about 3,000 pocket-sized. 22-caliber cap-and-ball pistols for inventor Rollin White (who had sold his cartridge revolver patents to Smith & Wesson). In 1860–61 Reid made about 100 small single-shot. Bowen in his definitive book James Reid and His Catskill Knuckledusters, “Reid began making his first pistols at this time.” In Jersey City, N.J., he started a prosperous machinery-making business that in 1861 he moved to New York City, where the 1862 directory lists it as the James Reid Manufactory. And one of the strangest revolvers was James Reid’s “My Friend” knuckleduster, a unique pepperbox designed as a pocket hideout gun that also turned out to be an ideal frontier gambler’s “friend.”īorn in Belfast, Ireland, on April 9, 1827, James Reid was a successful “iron turner” (machinist) in the cotton mills of Glasgow, Scotland, when he immigrated to the United States in late 1856. But others besides the big three also made revolvers, especially after Colt’s patents for cap-and-ball revolvers expired in 1857, and after the Smith & Wesson/ Rollin White patents for cartridge revolvers expired in 1869. ![]() After that, his Colt company, along with Smith & Wesson and Remington, led the way in producing multishot pistols in the United States. Sam Colt did not actually invent the revolver, but in 1836 he did patent the first revolver mechanism that worked when it was supposed to. These pocket-sized guns had some punch as well as multiple shots. Knuckledusters Were the Friends Of James Reid and Gamblers, Too Close
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