The Quigley Shooting Asssociation
Annie Oakley, famous for her rifle and shotgun expertise with clay pigeons descended into poverty after her father died when she was five years old. Her mother was unable to support her and the other five children, and having lost the family farm, placed her in the county poorhouse. Soon after she was fostered by a couple who treated her very badly by over working her and administering frequent beatings, and on one occasion locking her out in the snow. Needless to say she ran away, and returned to the poorhouse. The experience was so traumatic that in later years she would not refer to this couple by name but referred to them as the “he wolf and the she wolf”.
After three years she returned to the family home and taught herself to shoot with her father’s old muzzle loader. Then she started hunting for the market and soon earned enough to enable her mother to repay her debts. She entered several shooting competitions, and in 1884 she was shooting with her new husband, Frank Butler in Buffalo Bills Wild West Circus. Sitting Bull , another performer, nicknamed her “little sure shot” and even “adopted” her as his daughter. Her husband, Frank, although a fine shot, soon realised that she was much better than him, so he concentrated on furthering her career. She became famous and was well respected for her humility, politeness and good nature. Her nature may well have been tempered like steel through the heat of adversity. She even took time to make her own dresses to reflect her modest disposition.
The big surprise for her took place in 1903 after she had left the Wild West circus. A gutter journalist saw an indictment against a failed Vaudeville performer called Any Oakley and jumped to conclusions publishing a libellous attack against Annie. This was followed by several other newspapers in the William Randolph Hearst newspaper empire. Initially Annie sought and obtained retractions but also decided to sue each of the 55 in turn. She spent most of the next seven years doing this and was awarded several hundred thousand dollars in compensation. This may seem to be a large amount, but having paid her travelling expenses to several states, accommodation and lawyer’s fees, it was reduced to a much smaller figure.
This unfortunately affected her shooting career but she thought quite rightly that she had been damaged. She had always comported herself in a ladylike manner and was extremely upset by this attack on her character.
Hearst papers had a bad reputation for spreading innuendoes and downright lies and it has been said that he caused the Spanish American War with some of his articles. Anyway juries loved her and she won 54 out of the 55 cases, making Hearst’s attempt at character assassination a joke. He had spent a great deal of money on investigations by the Pinkerton Detective Agency and had failed completely.
She died at the age of 66 on 3rd November 1926. Her husband, Frank Butler died 18 days later.
Destiny also had her revenge in the shape of Orson Welles who made the film Citizen Kane in 1939 portraying a newspaper magnate called Charles Foster Kane. The character of Kane played in the film by Wells was as close to the real life image of Hearst as you could possibly imagine. Hearst did everything he possibly could to stop this film, putting pressure on RKO , the studio producing the film. He even tried to get the original negative destroyed. To the credit of RKO they stood firm by Welles, and today the film is considered one of the best ten films ever made. Sadly the bystander casualty in this was Marion Davies, the Movie star and Hearst’s long time mistress, who was portrayed as a stupid silly girl in the film. Actually she was a fine actress and viewings of her pictures reveal this, and this is now acknowledged by film critics.
As for Annie Oakley , her character has appeared in many films, both documentary and fictional, possibly the last was the colour musical “Annie get your Gun”.
Mike Davenport 8th August 2015
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Leather – It’s Use in Historical Roles
I decided to write this article, because over many years of being involved in black powder shooting and re-enactment / living history, I have seen a fair few “period correct” items being made/sold that were made out of the wrong type of leather and sometimes not leather at all! The film and museum world are not exempt from the above either! And whilst this is not leather as such, I should also point out that the type of thread used for sewing is not always in keeping for the item being stitched. I once saw a French & Indian War “period” shooting bag (not possibles bag) that this guy was selling here in the UK made out of modern shoe upper leather stitched by machine with nylon thread. And it sold! If the stitching doesn’t show, then it is not normally a problem, unless you are a purist that is, but for any stitching that is visible, a definite no!
At this point I should explain the term “made out of genuine split leather”. This is not a true indication that the leather is always of good quality; there are good splits and bad, the same as anything else in this world. Most people do not know what the term “split” means, and why should they. During the leather making process, the skins/hides have to be reduced in thickness (we normally use the term substance or weight) as well as being made an even substance all over. This operation is call splitting, which can either be carried out after the hides have been limed or after being tanned. The hide is fed into a machine that literally splits it into two layers, one being the top grain or grain split, the other is called the flesh or drop split which is essentially the waste part of the hide. Do not be put off with that statement though. Some very good leather is and can be made from this. The obvious use as far as we are concerned is to make fringed soft rifle slips such as was made mainly by the North American Indians and frontier folk back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The tannage is normally chrome and the leather, yes suede is leather (some think it is something different) is normally very hardwearing and lends itself well to making these sort of cases. Work or gardening gloves are very often made of chrome splits as well as some suede jackets. Although soft, it never will have quite the nice, rounded feel and handle of a nice piece of deer or elk be it brain or chrome tanned.
To be honest, I am not sure where to begin, as there are many things to be taken in to consideration plus, I do not want to get too deep into the finer points of all the processes in making leather.
Now before I get started, I do appreciate that cost can play a big part when it comes to choosing and using the correct type of leather for any particular piece or pieces to be made. There will always be those that can afford “museum quality” leather and goods but there are far more people or organisations that work on a tight budget and most times, have to make do with what they can find. Leather is not easily bought on the high street and very often is only available by mail order from specialist companies. Very often, these will be able to offer help and advice on what type of leather would be suitable for any given item or period of history.
In all this there is one definite, that being, chrome tanned leather has only been around since the 1890’s, commercially that is, and even then, its use was minimal in these early years. Experiments in mineral/chrome tanning were carried out in 1858 by F. L. Knapp and then by Christian Heinzerling in 1878, followed by Augustus Schultz in 1884 and Martin Dennis in 1893. It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that tanners started to adopt this method of tanning both in the USA and here in the UK.
The majority of leather being produced worldwide today is tanned using chromium salts as well as purely modern made tanning materials that we call syntans (synthetic tans) Whereas, vegetable tanned leather has been with us for thousands of years. Nobody knows for sure when or how man realised that hides/skins could be preserved using tannin from trees. No doubt that it was found by accident.
I will not dwell on the processes used in tanning hides and skins (skins are from small animals, up to and including calf, hides from larger animals. The terms light leather and heavy leather generally refer to skins and hides) as they are many, but suffice to say that in its un-dyed tanned condition, chrome tanned leather is a very pale blue colour, in fact it is referred to as “wet blue” and in its dried condition, “pearl crust”. Vegetable tanned leather can vary from very pale beige to a mid brown colour. I am talking about modern leather here using modern extracts, they being spray dried powders derived from tree bark, wood, pods and leaves. Historically though, these extracts were not available to the tanner, the tannin would be leached out of the raw material and made in to a tanning liquor, the same as when you brew tea. Another way, was to break up the bark (usually aged for a number of years) in to small pieces and these would be thrown on to the hide in the bottom of a pit, another hide/skin was laid on top and this was then covered in bark, this went on until the pit was almost full at which stage, water was used to fill the pit to the top. This was a very slow process, very often taking one whole year to complete. The colour of the leather would have been darker that we are used to seeing nowadays with possibly a patchy appearance. I have seen examples of oak bark tanned leather from a very old, well established tanner here in the UK that had a slight mottled appearance.
Now that I have got the history out of the way and a brief outline of processing I will get to the point of this article. Too many times I have seen the very obvious use of chrome tanned leather in the making of early period items, admittedly it may have been dyed brown or beige to hide the blue chrome colour and make it look period correct. But the main giveaway being the colour of the raw edge after the leather has been cut. If the leather has been “dyed through” or “through dyed”, you will see more or less the same colour as the surface but if it is not, you will see a line of a very pale blue/off white colour this is a definite no no. That will kill your carefully worked out display or impression stone dead!
If you cut a piece of vegetable tanned leather, you will see the surface colour goes all the way through. Interestingly, in the case of sword scabbard butts, only the surface of the hides are vegetable tanned, basically just to give it some colour leaving a raw centre which will show up as an off white colour.
Chris Barnard.
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