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Vampire Slaying / Vampire Killing Kits (Alleged Antiques)

I just saw on 'pawn stars' someone sord a mid victorian vampire protection kit, wanted to share the photo and thought here was as good a place as any, if there is aomewhere better please feel free to move it, btw the caliber of the guns is .50!!! And the bullets are silver
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wow! I'd rather make my own I think, especially at that price! But it is very nicely done...

It looks like it would make a likely crafts project kit at your local arts and craft supply store. Like those bead-it-yourself jewelry kits that are sold in stores.
 
I just saw on 'pawn stars' someone sord a mid victorian vampire protection kit, wanted to share the photo and thought here was as good a place as any, if there is aomewhere better please feel free to move it, btw the caliber of the guns is .50!!! And the bullets are silver

Was there a vampire problem in Mid Victorian times?
 
Was there a vampire problem in Mid Victorian times?
Vampires were quite a common theme in vicrorian Britain culmulating with Bram Soters 'Dracula' in 1896, the artist whos name is engraved on the boxs' most famous painting was 'the vampire'.There is however a theory that the 'vampire' was a metaphor for the influx of immigrants from eastern europe in the victorian period.
 
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Some daft twat posted photos on Facebook of a Victorian Vampire Killer Kit -

Victorian Vampire Killer Kit. Made from an old and well-used home-made violin case. Found at a thrift store

Victorian Vampire Killer Kit..jpg

Victorian Vampire Killer Kit 2.jpg

We've had discussion of these before but I can't find the thread now.
 
We've had discussion of these before but I can't find the thread now.
The vampire killing kit discussions have now been consolidated into a single thread.
 
Another vampire hunter's kit up for auction, allegedly owned by Lord Hailey.

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/20243509.vampire-slaying-kit-ex-oxford-student-goes-sale/?ref=rss.



So with that provenance there's absolutely no chance of it being another modern fraud.
though that said, a Facebook friend who knows about historic firearms reckons that the pistols, which are presumable authentic, are comparatively rare ones and £3000 wouldn't be a bad price for them.
 
though that said, a Facebook friend who knows about historic firearms reckons that the pistols, which are presumable authentic, are comparatively rare ones and £3000 wouldn't be a bad price for them.

My question would be: Why would a man apparently preparing to defend his life against lethal supernatural creatures in the late Victorian era, use a pair of single-shot percussion pistols? They were 50 years out of date, pitifully underpowered, inaccurate beyond arm’s length and took a geological epoch to reload.

He could have strolled to the Army & Navy Store, and bought a superb Webley-Green or RIC offering six powerful metallic cartridges, accuracy and a fast reload.

My verdict? Fake.

maximus otter
 
My question would be: Why would a man apparently preparing to defend his life against lethal supernatural creatures in the late Victorian era, use a pair of single-shot percussion pistols? They were 50 years out of date, pitifully underpowered, inaccurate beyond arm’s length and took a geological epoch to reload.

He could have strolled to the Army & Navy Store, and bought a superb Webley-Green or RIC offering six powerful metallic cartridges, accuracy and a fast reload.

My verdict? Fake.

maximus otter
I was going with the 'vampires are not real' thing, but that works :cool2:
 
My question would be: Why would a man apparently preparing to defend his life against lethal supernatural creatures in the late Victorian era, use a pair of single-shot percussion pistols? They were 50 years out of date, pitifully underpowered, inaccurate beyond arm’s length and took a geological epoch to reload. ...

The only explanation I've ever been able to consider would be a need to custom-load the older percussion smoothbores with something that couldn't be delivered using standardized revolver cartridges.

This in turn depends on which alleged vampire-killing object(s) it may be you wish to shoot.

For example ... One claim (among the myriad conflicting claims ... ) states that a vampire can be killed if shot with a sacred or blessed "bullet" (as opposed to a bullet of a particular material like silver). A muzzle-loading firearm would be handy if one thought it might be necessary to hand-load the pistol with something suitably blessed / sacred available at the scene.
 
I was browsing a glossy illustrated book last night before sleep. It had sat on my shelves for a long while. The author was Francis (X.) King, who cropped up in the old Unexplained part-work as a specialist in sex-magic among other things. Anyway, the work in question was The Encyclopedia of Mind, Magic & Mysteries, a large-format work that was typical of the bright-eyed and busy visual style of Dorling Kindersley who always made use of every tool in the desktop-publishing cupboard to make everything look fit for an eight-year-old. Maybe it's the Kinder in the name that suggests it, but they are essentially not books for readers so much as products aimed at gift-buyers for non-readers. I digress.

Leafing idly through the pages - I think King was on auto-pilot too - I reached pages 114 - 15. In a chapter entitled Creatures of the Night, King deals with vampires. I doubt if the photo captions were part of his text, mosty likely editorial but much of the layout is summed up under a blurb entitled "Anti-Vampire Kit" The left hand page shows some silver bullets and a sprig of wolfbane; the right page juxtaposes a rope of garlic, a hand-mirror and a crucifix. More arty-crafty than wetty-panty.

The slightly skittish text does not suggest for a moment that such a kit existed or was known to the writer or editor. But I wonder if the term Anti Vampire Kit had ever been actually used before this? The date was 1991 and this was the first edition. Was there ever a second? Could this glossy volume have inspired someone to have a go at creating such a kit for real or can they be really be traced back into the eighties, as suggested above? 8)


I had that exact Mind Magic and Mysteries book many years ago.

I remember the vampire page, i had drawn a vampire in the hand held mirror you mentioned.
 
The only explanation I've ever been able to consider would be a need to custom-load the older percussion smoothbores with something that couldn't be delivered using standardized revolver cartridges.

This in turn depends on which alleged vampire-killing object(s) it may be you wish to shoot.

For example ... One claim (among the myriad conflicting claims ... ) states that a vampire can be killed if shot with a sacred or blessed "bullet" (as opposed to a bullet of a particular material like silver). A muzzle-loading firearm would be handy if one thought it might be necessary to hand-load the pistol with something suitably blessed / sacred available at the scene.
I'd be surpised if a hollow-point 'man-stopper' (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.455_Webley) with a clove of garlic and silver sixpence in the front end wouldn't do the job. And if it's not really a vampire, it'd probably work on a human. :cool2:
 
My question would be: Why would a man apparently preparing to defend his life against lethal supernatural creatures in the late Victorian era, use a pair of single-shot percussion pistols? They were 50 years out of date, pitifully underpowered, inaccurate beyond arm’s length and took a geological epoch to reload.

He could have strolled to the Army & Navy Store, and bought a superb Webley-Green or RIC offering six powerful metallic cartridges, accuracy and a fast reload.

My verdict? Fake.

maximus otter
My friend's point was that, though the package as a whole is no more than 20 years old, the elements that make it up are not - and that the pistols in particular are probably worth more in themselves than the guide price, to a collector of antique firearms.
 
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