.31 Colt Revolvers

[mec]

Looking into things, I can help but notice that the biggest selling c&b colt- and the biggest seller until well into the 20th century, was the variations of the 1848 Pocket Model. These actually started out with the baby dragoons like old Sam Houston ordered and lasted through 1873 along with several other popular Colts and even re-appeared when Colt cleared out their inventory in 1885.

My messing around with them with fffg, pyrodex and a couple of other modern powders along with 50 grain balls and the 60 grain bullet have caughed up velocities in the 650-720 fps range and energies a lot like the .22 long rifle from a NAA mini revolver.

This is a pretty low power level and might not be expected to promote much in the way of stopping power. ( Although I was gratified to hear of a guy here who put a long rifle solid all the way through his leg from his NAA)

What I'm wondering is , Has anybody heard of or read any accounts of defensive uses of the old c&b .31's. With over 300,000 of them in circulation before the ctg era, there are bound to be some stories- whether of instant incapacitation or gooey death from infection.

 

[Iggy]

Hmmm??

Seems like an awful lot of people managed to die from wounds created by black powder pocket pistols and pocket autos before Elmer Keith told them they couldn't be killed by any thing less than a Magnum!!

Now I got all the respect in the world for Ol Elmer. I carried his .41 mag for years, but I think a .31 slug made out of pure lead fired from short range would still tend to spoil your whole day.

 

[Old Fuff]

Yes indeed, at close range those pocket pistols killed a lot of folks. First as cap & ball revolvers, and later using .32 RF & .32 Colt cartridges. In later years a lot of sudden death occured as a result of someone being hit by a little .32 ACP slug, which had nothing on the revolvers except a little more velocity. Most of the Colt's in the California Gold Rush during the early years were pocket models because those were what was available at the time. Go read some contemporary literature from the period.

 

[BigG]

In the Californy gold fields of 1849 a Colt revo would bring $500 cash. Now, think of it. You only had the Patersons, the 1,100 Walkers and maybe some of those 1849 pocket models, possibly some 2nd Model Dragoons -IIRC Walker was 1st Dragoon. Not a big selection.

 

[Gatofeo]

Bullet energy wasn't the only thing that stopped aggressors back then.
Many people died days, weeks or months after their wounds from infection. Antibiotics were not in wide use, then (some home remedies may have worked because of their antibiotic properties).
The late gun writer Elmer Keith wrote that the old deringers and pocket guns were not taken lightly. Not because of their power, but a wise gunman knew it could kill by infection.
Keith noted that such guns were often carried for long periods of time, and all manner of crud would find its way into the barrel. In the case of muzzleloading pocket guns, there was also that filthy cloth patch that went into the wound and was difficult to find or feel.
Doctors were few and far between in the old days. If you got shot, there was a good chance you would bleed or infect to death.
Interestingly, death by infection is an age-old problem.
I recall reading of Alexander the Great some years back. Though he won a battle, he continued to lose troops by the hundreds for weeks after a battle because of infection and gangrene. The ancients factored this into their casualty figures as they plotted their losses.
The agony and stench after ancient battles must have been hellish.

 

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

1851 Navey patent infringement

I have a .31 caliber 5 shot Cooper pocket or ladies muff pistol that is a patent infringement by being made double action and the rear sight is on the far tip of the hammer as it rises.

It is listed in collector books as rare.

Pic available.

Fitz

 

[GrayBear]

.31 Revolvers -

mec, that's an interesting post and the question might raise a lot of speculation. If you include the .31 Remington that would bump the numbers sold up by several more thousand. The key may be they were easily concealed.

As to the guns popularity versus the fact they are little written about is, IMHO, due to Hollywood's inaccuracies and to Western writers who did all their writing east of the Hudson river. Want to create shock and start arguments? Tell folks Louis L'Amour spent very little time in the west and then challenge them to read his auto-biography.

In the western movies every man wore a gun on his hip. In real life one of the first laws passed after a town was organized was an ordinance against open carry in town.

Interestingly, the ordinance rarely prohibited concealed carry.

Many men carried a pocket pistol or a derringer through the early 1900's. Many women carried purse pistols. Both my grandfathers and at least one grandmother carried concealed weapons on many occasions well up into periods after WWI.

My grandfather died in 1951 at the age of 81, when I was 20. He was born in Tennessee in 1870, moving via covered wagon to Texas in 1882. He "cowboyed" in the late 1880's and early 90's and had tales of the cowboys having pistols in their saddlebags more often than on their hip.

Shoot somebody and walk away, leaving the body on the floor? That's another Hollywood and western writer fantasy. On the record, every "white-man" shooting Wyatt Earp was involved in, including the OK Corral, and every shooting Wild Bill Hickock was involved in (including his own murder in Deadwood) was reviewed by a Grand Jury or at least a Coroner's Jury or Miner's Court.

To me, concealability might be your answer as to why so many were sold and Hollywood the answer as to why so few are written about.

BTW, I have a .31 Remington-clone brass-framed 5-shot and it's a fine little shooter at across the room ranges of 20 to 30 feet.

That's a wonderful cased set you have pictured. Is it yours?

GrayBear

 

[mec]

Yep. My cased set. Incidentally, my great grandfather came to texas in 1871 by wagon and carried a Smith and Wesson 1 1/2 at the time. Came from Chicago right after the fire.

I was kind of fishing for stories involving the .31s and you do hear about the pony express carrying them and the 49ers using them- at least after 1850. Mine is called a Wells Fargo even though there is no record of WF ever buying a .31. Collectors hung names and dates on all of these and most of them were wrong. Like the 1849 pocket model and the 1851 Navy actually both came out in 1850. Since there were over 325,000 of the Colts alone, I am sure that much mayhem is associated with them.

We hear more stories about the Colt Navy than any of the others.
I've always believed that Hickock did the Tutt shooting and most of the others with Navy revolvers but recently, I've been running into stories that cast doubt on this. One source even believes that the story about the gift of the two engraved Navy's in 1868 was a fake cocked up by a collector years later to help him sell a couple of bogus revolvers.

 

[Old Fuff]

>> I was kind of fishing for stories involving the .31s and you do hear about the pony express carrying them and the 49ers using them- at least after 1850. Mine is called a Wells Fargo even though there is no record of WF ever buying a .31. Collectors hung names and dates on all of these and most of them were wrong. Like the 1849 pocket model and the 1851 Navy actually both came out in 1850. Since there were over 325,000 of the Colts alone, I am sure that much mayhem is associated with them. <<


Contemporary literature – in the form of newspaper accounts, personal journals or diaries, etc. seldom contain exact details of guns, other then general descriptions like; pistol, revolver, six-shooter, Colt’s, and such. The Colt company used terms like “holster†(meaning saddle holster), “belt†(meaning a revolver intended to be carried in a holster or belt on the person) or “pocket†(meaning a revolver intended to be carried on the person in either a holster or in a pocket). There was a large demand for “smaller†revolvers soon after the introduction of the Walker and then the Dragoon series (both names invented by collectors, not Colt.) Colt had no trouble making a smaller gun, but because of the steels available at the time had to reduce the caliber to .31, and later with the “Navy†to thirty six.

Historian have made a point to study surviving photographs of the period, because they provide a clue about what was being carried, and by what method. However men did not always pose with their guns, and sometimes the photographer might provide some for that purpose. Still these old pictures sometimes provide a wealth of information.

Last but not least, occasionally guns have survived that can be reliably associated with a certain person or incident. Usually such arms have been passed down through their families.

Sales figures and serial numbers prove the substantial popularity of Colt and other pocket revolvers. On the basis of availability alone we can presume they were used in many shootings, or more likely prevented shootings by simply being available when the threat occurred.

>> We hear more stories about the Colt Navy than any of the others.
I've always believed that Hickock did the Tutt shooting and most of the others with Navy revolvers but recently, I've been running into stories that cast doubt on this. One source even believes that the story about the gift of the two engraved Navy's in 1868 was a fake cocked up by a collector years later to help him sell a couple of bogus revolvers. <<

I have an original copy of the Nichols account of the Hickock/Tutt shooting. While the story made Hickock famous on a national rather then local basis, the author himself admits that he wasn’t actually present at the time and he is relating second-hand accounts. After reviewing this and other newspaper accounts I believe that it is likely Hickock did use a Navy revolver, but the distance over which the fight occurred could have been exaggerated. That said, having shot a number of original Colt Navies long before the reproductions became available, they often shot point-of-aim/point-of-impact at around 75 yards. Hickock was locally renowned for his marksmanship might well have downed Tutt with a long shot.

Joseph Rosa, undoubtedly the most informed authority on Hickock, has written a number of books about him, and believe the pair of Navy revolvers you mentioned were indeed presented to Hickock. There is at least one photograph of him wearing what appear to be these guns. There is a second image in which Hickock is part of a larger group. While the distance is too great to identify the pistols they are of the right size, and unquestionably ivory handled.

 

[mec]

That makes me feel better about the Hickock Navy Stories. I can usually kill Dave tutt about two to three out of five attempts with my navy- which is not the best shooting navy out there. - Trigger is heavy. I don't doubt a bit that the 75 yard story is feasible. I believe Keith Caradine hit four out of five with his on a history channel episode.

 

[Johnny Guest]

Contemporary news accounts - - -

- - - of pistol fights were certainly no more accurate than those published in modern times. Many news accounts were written days, even weeks, agfter the action, and journalistic standards were even lower then than now. Frequently, a writer would embelish a story with details just to one-up the competing news organs, and the details that were added were sometimes simply "logical," or just made from the whole cloth.

Even when the accounts were fairly accurate, we may misinterpret them in light of common, modern, useage. For instance, if the old story mentions that John Doe shot Sam Jones with a "Navy revolver," today we may (logically) expect that he did it with a Colt's model 1851. In fact, though, the original story may have had to do with the CALIBER of the revolver. For some reason, the .36 was the caliber originally ordered by the Navy for their pistols, and the .44 was called the "Army" size pistol. The confusion is not helped by the fact that some thousands of Navy size (.36) revolvers, both Colt and Remington, were delivered to the U. S. Army during the War of Northern Aggression.

Also, there is a tendency to latch onto a brand name to describe a TYPE of product. I'm told that for decades, ANY ball point pen was called a Bic, in France. Many places, all bottled soft drinks are called Cokes, all adhesive bandages are called Band Aids, and so forth. There was a time when ANY revolving pistol was called a Colt's, and any repeating rifle was a Winchester. Still more confusion in the contemporary accounts.

Yeah, a bit off topic. Sorry.

Johnny